"Brought you some stew."

Clementine's tone was razor sharp as she descended down the stairs into the basement. They'd set up a number of candles for Marlon to be able to see, but the rest of his accommodations were quite limited. She stepped forward and stood in front of his hunched figure, her brows tightly knit into a frown, and set the bowl down on the floor next to him. Marlon perked up, his grey eyes darting from Clementine to the bowl of stew. When he spotted it, he viciously took it between his two hands and gulped down its contents. Clem studied him as he ate.

His face was matted with dirt and blood, most of it Brody's. The rest of the kids had offered to let him clean up but he'd shook them off, claiming he deserved to be dirty. He'd done wrong, and he knew it. His blonde hair was beginning to thin in places, and his cheeks were gaunt from the lack of food. It wasn't like they didn't feed him down there, Clem thought. He just refused to eat unless absolutely necessary.

"You need to eat more," she suggested, taking the bowl off the ground when he'd cleaned it up.

"Why?" he asked, his voice weak and nimble, as if it were about to break.

"As much as I hate to admit it, we need you alive," she told him bluntly, her hands on her hips. "You were their leader for years, keeping them alive. Now we need to prepare for the raiders, and we need every able body in shape to fight."

"They'll take us all, Clem," he said, his voice stronger than before, "You don't know these people like I do."

"Then help me understand," she pleaded, kneeling beside the boy. She thought on his words for a moment before adding, "Wait, what do you mean you know these people?"

Marlon recoiled and shrunk in on himself, shaking his head aggressively. He kept mumbling something unintelligible, and nothing Clem did could get his attention. She sighed heavily and stood up, pursing her lips. Turning around and walking away, she knocked twice on the basement trapdoor. It opened at once, and she walked through into the sunlight.

Marlon was left to his own thoughts. They wouldn't understand, he kept thinking. He hadn't meant for any of this to happen, so why were they taking it out on him? Questions like that wandered around his head for at least an hour, at which point the basement door creaked open again. Sunlight seeped through, and Marlon had to shield his eyes from the blinding rays hitting his face. Once the door closed once more, the dim lighting of the candles returned and a tall figure stood at the base of the stairs.

Their face was cloaked by darkness as it approached Marlon, and at that moment he thought he might be about to die. It wouldn't be unlike those movies he used to love, where Death took the repentant soul into the abyss of Hell, never to return. His eyes misted over and he had to close them, waiting for a fatal blow to put him out of his misery.

Instead, he felt the light pressure of a hand on his shoulder. Marlon shook his head and opened his eyes hesitantly. Even through the dimness of the candlelight, he would recognize those dreads everywhere. Louis was kneeling beside his best friend, a sad expression clouding his usually jovial face and dark heavy circles decorating his brown eyes.

"Lou – Louis?" he let out, his voice raspy. Clearing his throat, he said, "What are you doing here?"

It really was a good question, Marlon thought. The dreaded boy had not come down at all in the three weeks Marlon had been down here, and that had hit him hard. You would think his best friend would have wanted to know how he was doing, or if he was eating well. Instead, Marlon had received visits from Clementine and Violet alone, both of them reluctantly bringing him food every now and then.

"I'm here to check on you." A little late for that, don't you think?

"How come you didn't come sooner," Marlon said instead, a hint of a plea in his voice as he studied his friend's features.

Louis looked away for a moment, his face hidden in darkness once more. Marlon took note of that, as he had taken note of most of the little things that happened inside the basement. For instance, every night – or when he assumed was night – the pipes would howl with the wind from the autumn weather. He also knew that there was a family of five rats living between the shelves at the back of the basement, all of which would scuttle away every time the basement doors opened and someone came in.

"I wanted to, I did," Louis assured him, closing his eyes, "I just needed time to think, you know?"

"I guess," muttered Marlon, looking down at his hands. They were intensely pale, and he could not stop them from shaking. When had that started?

Louis took that chance to sit down next to his friend and sigh. He was tired, Marlon could tell. The way he slumped his shoulders after every breath, like it cost him his life to draw air into his lungs. He was struggling with something, and Marlon knew it was most likely him.

"Dude." Louis's voice pulled him out of his thoughts, and he blinked rapidly, "Why'd you do it?"

"What do you mean?" asked Marlon nonchalantly; or as nonchalantly as one could be with little to no food in their system.

"Why did you give them up?" Louis's voice cut through the air like a knife, a clear layer of tension building between them.

"I had to, Louis," alleged Marlon, his hands running through his already thinning hair, "I had to," he whispered.

"But why didn't you tell us, though?" Louis inquired. Marlon could hear the hurt in his friend's voice, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I was afraid," he replied.

"Yeah, you made that clear enough three weeks ago," Louis shot back bitterly, though Marlon could tell his friend's inner struggle was preventing him from really speaking his mind.

"Has it really been three weeks?"

"Yeah, and that's why we need your help," said Louis, looking straight into Marlon's eyes. Over the years they'd developed a sort of silent language that they only shared when other people were around. They wouldn't even be able to explain it to someone who wasn't them, but it made sense to Marlon and Louis.

"I know what you're thinking, man," Marlon assured the dreaded boy, "I'm useless."

"You're not useless, dude!" declared Louis, outraged that he'd suggest such a thing. "You kept us alive for years!"

"But at what cost?" whispered Marlon. "Every month I was forced to make the safe zone smaller, and last year with the twins…" he trailed off, looking at a far off point.

Louis shook his head and squinted at him, putting the pieces together. "What do you mean, you were forced to make the safe zone smaller?" he demanded, his voice strong in contrast with Marlon's.

Fuck, Marlon thought. Why did he have to open his stupid mouth? He looked down at his hands again, and then at his best friend. His face was contorted in a frown, but Marlon thought it was very close to becoming a scowl. He didn't blame him; he deserved it. He couldn't keep it from him any longer…

"I –," he paused, looking for the right words. Finally, he decided the truth was the best route, "Last year with the raiders. It wasn't the first time we'd run into them," he admitted.

"How so? I thought you said you were caught out by walkers trying to gather some supplies from a broken down house."

"Yeah, it wasn't exactly like that," Marlon said slowly, closing his eyes and fighting off the tears that threatened to break surface with his eyes.

"Then how was it?" Louis practically yelled, standing up in frustration. Marlon knew when Louis was getting sick of something, like the time he'd gotten sick of Mrs. Martin's stupid jokes, and this time he was starting to hate Marlon more and more each second. Again, he didn't blame him. He sighed and indulged the dreaded boy.

"Brody and I first encountered them about three years ago. They told us they had heard of a community that almost fell but was saved by some Mexican dude, asked us if we were a part of that. When we said we weren't, they got suspicious. They said we couldn't have survived out here on our own, but I assured them we did. There was this woman with them, Lilly. She seemed to be their leader, and said we could make a deal."

"What kind of deal?" Louis asked hesitantly, raising an eyebrow.

"They would leave us alone to our devices, as long as we didn't bother them, and gave them a piece of our rations every month. It didn't have to be a lot, she said, just enough to feed a small group. Brody told me to tell her to fuck off, but I couldn't. They had rifles, man. We were scared fourteen year olds fighting against full grown adults with semis," Marlon put his face in his hands, letting the tears fall freely as he remembered how scared he'd been.

"Was that why we've had a 'food shortage' these last couple of years? And we've been having fewer and fewer places to hunt?" Louis was on his feet now, pacing the limited room he could, throwing his arms in the air.

Marlon looked on from the floor, not daring to stand up and trusting his legs. "Lilly said that in order to stay out of their way, we would have to make our hunting zone smaller sometimes. It made sense at the time," he excused, shrugging.

"Dude, what the fuck?" Louis exploded, anger boiling inside him. As the boy stood over him, Marlon shrank in on himself, wanting nothing more than for the floor to swallow him whole. "And what about the twins, huh? Were they also a sacrifice for your little raider pals?"

"No, you know I'd never do that!" Marlon yelled back, though his voice came out cracked and thin compared to his friend.

"What do you mean by that? You did exactly that last year!" Louis spat, venom in his words. As he paced, his billowing coat had knocked a couple of candles off the floor, leaving only the light from those on the shelves to cast the enormous shadow of Louis, and the fickle one of Marlon.

"I didn't mean for that to happen," came Marlon's weak response, devoid of any strength. "I brought the twins along with Brody with me to talk to the raiders, but as reinforcements. I wanted to negotiate new terms with them. I told them the deal was killing us."

"When Lilly saw Minnie and Sophie, she told me we could hash out new terms, as long as they went with her."

"And you just gave them up? Just like that?" Louis demanded, kneeling back beside Marlon, his voice dangerously low. "I thought you loved them! I thought you'd fight for them!"

"I tried, okay?" Marlon said, too weak to argue with his best friend, "But you have to understand, they were armed. They threatened to kill them if I didn't take the deal. What would you have done?"

"I would have fucking gone myself if it meant it kept my friends safe!" Louis declared, his voice raising once more, tears of anger filling his eyes. "Not give them away like pigs for the slaughter."

How had they gotten to this point? Marlon thought about that as Louis paced the room in front of him. The shadows the candles were casting on Louis reminded Marlon of an old tale Mr. Howe had told him way back when. He couldn't remember what it was called, but he recalled that he used to love it.

It was about a group of people trapped in a cave, who could not move their bodies or their heads. They were shown figures on a wall, but they were merely reflections; shadows of real objects that they could not see or touch, but which stood behind them at arm's length. They would think everything they saw was real, and they'd be okay with it. "Complacency," Mr. Howe had called it. He said that complacency was one of mankind's greatest flaws.

And it was only through lifting the veil off the lie, the tale claimed, that the people in the cave could escape the endless cycle and be free in the real world, away from the lies the shadows portrayed. He would often think about that same tale whenever Louis or Aasim asked him about the reason for pulling back the zone. He'd say it wasn't safe enough, and they would scoff about it but never do anything about it. That was their mistake, Marlon thought.

He'd been feeding them lies upon lies, showing them a mere reflection of the reality of their situation, and their complacency had blinded them to the truth. Had they dug deeper, they would have found that outside the cave lay a wasteland of raiders and kidnappers; sometimes both. He knew it wasn't their fault, though. What reason did they have to doubt him, anyway? It was his fault, he'd realized not long ago; three weeks ago, actually.

His own fear and sense of self-preservation kept him from being honest with his friends, and now it had cost them Brody's life. How many more people had to die for his mistakes? His friends didn't deserve to be led by such a spineless idiot like himself. They deserved someone like Clementine, who had immediately called his bullshit when things seemed off. Clementine who had dug deep enough. Clementine who had not been fooled by the pretty shadows Marlon was showing the rest of the kids.

"I know," he said finally, finding his voice, "You guys should have just killed me off that day," he muttered, just loud enough for Louis to barely hear him.

"Don't say that, man," Louis whispered, finding Marlon's eye, "Don't ever fucking say that."

"But it's true," the boy replied; because at that moment he wasn't a young man. He wasn't a leader, doing his best for his own people. He was a scared little child who had been found out doing something they shouldn't, and was now paying the consequences. "Who am I kidding? I'm a fucking joke."

"No, you're not," Louis told him decisively, stretching his arm and placing a hand on Marlon's shoulder. "You're my best friend, and you made a mistake. But now we – I need my best friend. Please, Marlon," he pleaded, his voice wavering for a mere second.

"I – how can you even trust me after what I did?" Marlon asked, genuinely confused. Shouldn't Louis be beating him up? Shouldn't the other kids have voted to kick him out by now?

"Trust is a strong word," Louis said, looking away from Marlon, "but it can be earned back, you know?"

"You really think so?"

"I know so," Louis assured him, smiling faintly for the first time since he'd come in.

"But – how?"

"You can start by coming back and helping us with the defenses. You may be an ass but no one's denying you've got skills."

"I do, don't I?" Marlon said, more sure of himself this time.

"Alright, buddy, let's not get cocky," Louis warned, though his tone was back to his playful self.

The dreaded boy extended a hand, which Marlon took. With little effort, he lifted Marlon off the ground and clapped him on the shoulder. They shared a look between them, the message decoded instantly as they smiled and shook their heads

"Are you sure the rest will take me back?"

"They weren't sure at first, but someone convinced them otherwise," Louis assured him.

"Who?"

"Clementine," said Louis, clearly amused by Marlon's shocked expression.

"Clem convinced them to take me back?" Marlon exclaimed, baffled.

"She's one of a kind, huh?" Louis commented, wagging his eyebrows.

"She really is."

With that, the two friends walked toward the basement door, leaving behind the shadows that the candles cast upon them. Leaving behind the lies and the secrecy. Before Louis had a chance to bang on the metal door to be let through, Marlon cast a smug glance at him.

"So, you and Clementine, huh?" he said, genuinely curious.

"Shut up or I might change my mind," Louis teased back, smirking when Marlon flinched. It would be a slow ride, but Marlon knew they could mend their relationship. He had to believe it.