most of us are heaving through corrupted lungs {{Self}}
Marlene woke to a room devoid of air, the sheets wrapped about her like a winding cloth.
Her dreams had been nothing but memories, blinding green light and responding red. Screams and tortured gurgling and the smell of burnt flesh.
She could never escape the battle, her murmured "I'll fight" chasing her down through days and weeks, worming its way through the keyhole and finding her, without fail. It was the one thing that saved her, in a bizarre turn of events, the one thing that made living with herself in the aftermath bearable. And still, the pain of it always stole her breath.
Watching people fall. The spurt of blood. Hair and faces torn, bloody, dirty, all in shades of grey and red and green.
And she remembered falling herself, feeling every muscle scream, every bone longing to break if it would release this awful pressure, remembers the way it curled through her like poison until every nerve was screaming, remembers hearing herself scream like someone far away. And she remembers it stopping as suddenly as it had started, a friendly spell breaking the curse's hold.
She had escaped alive, oh yes, by some miracle. But no one had escaped unscathed, and Marlene was no exception.
The bruises faded with time, but the scars remained, and the nightmares dogged her no matter what she did.
The nightmares of pale hands reaching for her, dragging her down beneath a pulsing sea of dead bodies, the nightmare of faceless men chasing her through the streets of London while faceless people watched, the nightmares of seeing Lily, Sirius, Dorcas, lying lifeless in unforgiving piles as Death Eaters laughed...
Most nights, her screams never made it to daylight, never rang through the flat. But there were always tears that stained her lips with salt, the racing pulse and breathlessness.
There was something inside of her that was still screaming.
When the world had regained some small degree of oxygen, when she could close her eyes without seeing bursts of spell-light on the black, Marlene unraveled herself from the sheets and the last bits of nightmare and tip-toed through the flat, her bare feet cold on the floor. The window, too, was cold to the touch, and she pressed her forehead flat against it, grateful for its unforgiving chill.
She didn't deserve forgiveness, after all. How many times had she curled beneath this window, sitting on the floor with her hands in her hair, wondering if she had just said goodbye to her friends for the last time, if she had just made her last words to them nothing but another excuse. How many times had she feigned ill, lost herself in small tasks, made herself scarce, when the time came for action? She was surprised they could look at her at all anymore, her brave friends with their war stories and battle scars and haunted eyes.
There was no one to blame for her anger, her guilt, her shame, the haunting memories of never having done enough, and the guilt-ridden wish to turn back time, to allow herself a second chance.
She dug her fingernails into her palms until the pain turned into blood.
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