AN: Another chapter here.
There's a somewhat detailed AN at the end that you might want to read if you're wondering some things to expect from this story or if you're concerned. If you don't want to read, by all means don't, but I'm putting it out there for anyone who might appreciate it.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Morning came with a new adjustment to make. Daryl was accustomed to the wakeup call being made with a whistle or a blast of noise from something like an air horn. At Region Thirty Three he was awakened by the shouting of a loud guard that informedthem, as he passed around the large bunk space, that it was time to rise and shine and inmates had ten minutes to dress and make their beds before bathroom time. Daryl learned that bathroom time was when they were allowed to piss, if they so desired, and brush whatever teeth they had. The latter of the two activities was supervised and not at all optional.
Civilized people always brushed their teeth. Dociles, even if they didn't know well enough to know that they really benefitted from the activity, were expected to comply without complaint.
When his toothbrush was returned to his cabinet, Daryl followed the others out of the building they resided in and stopped his steps only a moment when he found the morning sun to be a good deal brighter than the light the bulbs gave off. From another part of the building that he was leaving, he could see that there was another officer leading a line of women. He searched, in vain, for Carol. He couldn't find her, though, or else he was simply unable to identify her in a crowd.
Region Thirty Three, though, was a large facility. She could very well be housed in a different building entirely.
The trip to the mess hall wasn't very long and Daryl was somewhat pleased to learn that, as dociles, they got a recess following breakfast that, at least as far as he understood, could last as long as they could manage to behave themselves. In some of the places their outdoor activities and interactions was very limited, so having a good deal more time to do those things was welcomed in his mind.
Daryl had always been something of an "outdoorsy" person. One of the worst things about his captivity was being forced to spend a lot less time simply breathing in fresh air.
For a large facility, everything seemed to run like clockwork at the place. Daryl was starting to think that perhaps the rumors were true and they were sort of working their way up some kind of ladder and, at the end of it, they'd be in some kind of special government facility that was created to bring all docile inmates together. The government, after all, had to have a stronger interest in a location like this than it had in the previous places that he'd been. Everything here was, on the whole, simply in better shape.
Of course, it may have simply been that he was now in a location where more was to be had and, therefore, more could be "wasted" on the comfort of veritable half-humans.
The kitchen staff of the mess hall, just like the night before, worked like a well-oiled machine. Two lines of food were going out from the kitchen and two lines of inmates filed in at a time from either side of the building. As each person passed, their tray was ready and handed to them and they filed down the center line between the groups of tables with everything moving smoothly.
If Daryl hadn't had to get his tray and follow in line behind all of them, it really might have been a fascinating thing to observe for at least a little while.
As soon as he got his tray, Daryl started looking for Carol. There were already women there, but he didn't know how many groups of inmates there were and if she was ahead or behind him in arriving at the hall. Twice he thought he saw her and only realized, nearing the table, that it wasn't her. It was someone with a similar haircut, maybe, but it wasn't her.
The second time that he mistook someone for her, he backed his way out of the tight space he'd gotten himself into and then started to rejoin the others searching out their spots in the center aisle. This caused a disruption, nearly cost someone their tray, and left Daryl stammering out an apology while he heard an officer nearby warning about flags.
Flustered, Daryl was ready to abandon the search for Carol altogether. He waded through the few people who were spitting words at him about the incident and headed for three tables that were entirely without inmates. Before he could put his tray on the table, though, another of the officers yelled at him and informed him that those tables were "occupied".
Daryl turned, accepting that he was being denied the chance to even eat with the apparently invisible inmates, and turned his eyes back to searching out what might be a comfortable place among the group.
She appeared to him again, just like the evening before, as though she'd materialized out of nothing. She might have touched him, to get his attention, but she didn't. Instead, from just behind him, her voice came.
"We're over here," she said. "I saved you a seat."
Daryl smiled when he saw her. Partly it was because he was happy to see her. Partly it was because he was happy to know that he had somewhere to sit and consume the food that wouldn't be any good if it were to get cold. And partly? Well, partly it was because the statement struck him as something better fitting to teenagers or kids than to dociles in the mess hall of Region Thirty Three.
Daryl hummed out the best acceptance that he could at the moment, but Carol probably hadn't heard it. She was already working her way through the crowd and toward the table that Daryl would be joining her at with her friends. He followed her, hoped for the best, and tried to keep from running into anyone else and pissing off the officer that already seemed keen to introduce him to the way that flags worked around here.
When he reached the table, Carol sat down where she'd abandoned her tray. The table she'd chosen was near a wall and the officer that was overlooking it was a young man—the kind who had very likely been born sometime just before the dead had started to roam about and who probably had little to no recollection of what a life without dead men walking and wild ones locked away even looked like. The young officer, though, looked less jaded with his existence than some of the others. Maybe it was owing to his age. Maybe that was why they chose this table.
Or maybe it was just coincidence.
Sitting at the table was a blonde, a woman with dull red hair that had likely faded with her age and the fact that it was heavily streaked with grey, Carol, and a black woman with short cropped hair. The black woman was the only one of them who sat straight backed against the back of her chair without slumping slightly forward like the rest of them.
Without introduction, Daryl took the open seat that he assumed belonged to him. Once he'd settled, Carol took it upon herself to start up the introductions.
"Daryl this is Dori," Carol said, gesturing toward the redhead to her side.
The woman smiled at Daryl, a genuine smile instead of one of the fake ones that usually came with meeting someone new, and she gestured awkwardly with her hand in something that resembled a wave.
"Hi," she said, but she offered nothing else. What else was there to say, though? Small talk wasn't easy to come by and breakfast wasn't the place to talk about the deeper subjects.
"And that's Lisette," Carol said, gesturing toward the black woman.
"How'd you do?" The woman asked, her speech coming out with an accent that Daryl couldn't immediately place, though it was musical and nice to hear.
"And this..." Carol started, but she was interrupted.
"Is LC456F," the blonde said. "Formerly Andrea Harrison—when I was allowed to have a name."
Daryl immediately realized the blonde was not in good spirits this morning, though of course he'd have no reason of knowing if there was a cause behind her bitterness or if she was simply always like this. These days, it could go either way.
"That's a helluva mouthful," Daryl commented. "Your number. Not your name," he added quickly, not wanting to provoke her to have a worse day than she was already having.
She nodded her head. Across her lips there appeared a hint of a smile.
"It is," she said, but she offered nothing more than that.
"They give you a whole license plate where you were captured," Daryl said. "Standard there?"
The blonde didn't look perturbed by his question, exactly, but he wasn't sure how much longer he should press her for information. She held his eyes for a moment and then she dropped hers back to her food.
"From when I was captured," she said, but like before, she didn't offer him anything more in the way of explanation.
Deciding that he might have used up his quota of questions for one meal, and not wanting to be cast out from the table when he'd only just found a place to sit, Daryl decided to stop his line of questioning.
Daryl...Dixon," He offered, looking at all of the women in a sweeping motion as he said it. In return he got a few nods and some noises that were akin to humming. They had his name, but there wasn't much to say about it.
He didn't know what to say after that, though, so he fell into silence. It seemed like it didn't bother any of them because they were relatively quiet too and focusing on their food. Daryl glanced around the space at the masses of inmates. There was room for them, but there seemed to be more now than there'd been the night before—maybe they ate in shifts.
He looked back toward the three empty tables that he'd been turned away from. Slowly they were filling up as another line of inmates were being brought in. All of them were bound, though their hobbles and everything else appeared to be somewhat loose, and all of them were keeping their heads down.
Daryl looked at Carol because she seemed the easiest for him to talk to.
"Them people—wilds?" Daryl asked.
Carol followed his glance. He realized that, maybe because of his question, everyone at the table was looking toward them now.
"Being punished," Carol responded quietly. "They flagged out."
Daryl hummed.
"Flagged out?" He asked.
Carol looked a little uncomfortable. She made a humming noise, like she was carefully considering what she might say, and then she spoke to him again.
"You get three flags," Carol said. "Whatever you've done—it doesn't matter. If you get three flags? You go back through taming."
Daryl shivered.
Even when you got strikes or stripes or anything else at the places he'd been, three of them only landed you in solitary for a little while so that you could think about what you'd done wrong. Sometimes, and only in worse case scenarios, it might land you having to talk to an officer who talked down to you and attempted to explain to you, like you were barely capable of thought at all, why you were being punished.
You only went back through the taming process for serious offences—murder, sexual assault, extreme violence. You didn't go back, once you were docile, for something like minor offences.
"That officer was gonna flag my ass for bumping into somebody on accident," Daryl said, careful to keep his voice only just above absolute silence.
Carol frowned and nodded at him.
"That's Mills," she said. "Be careful. Some of the officers are fond of handing out flags. They'll flag you for just about anything."
"You go through taming on some damn trumped up charges?" Daryl asked. "That ain't right."
Carol looked uncomfortable with the conversation. She immediately broke the contact between them visually by dropping her eyes.
"None of this is right," Andrea said, clearly not as put off at the moment. "You can't treat people like this."
"We're not people," Carol said quietly. "Not anymore. Not to them."
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AN: A few quick things about this story. The subject matter is, as I'm sure you can tell, touchy and going to be handled as delicately as possible. It's going to be dark in some places. I'll try to lighten it up in the places I can too.
This will be a Caryl story (as in "couple") but for pretty obvious reasons it's going to be slow burn. I ask you to have patience.
Characters will be a little different here than we've seen them in other places, but it's a whole different world. I hope that, as we go along, anything that's "different" about them will make sense to you.
I'm sure you can guess the types of things that you might expect to see. Unless they're extremely graphic, I won't be offering warnings for discussions about violence or for violence. Those things can be expected here in certain situations. I don't write rape. I may sometimes allude to it or have someone speak about it in some way (if the situation calls for it, I don't do gratuitious rape), but I don't write detailed depictions of it. That being said, if anyone is speaking about it in any great detail (which I don't plan, but I'm putting it out there just in case) then there will be a warning.
Other characters play major roles in my stories (besides just Carol and Daryl), so you can expect to see other character interactions in the story. I'm putting that out there in case this is the first of my stories that you've read before.
I think, for now, that should cover everything that I need to say. If you have any questions or concerns, though, please let me know. You can leave them in reviews (which I hope you'll leave even if you don't have questions or concerns) or message me if they're of a more private nature.
I hope you're enjoying so far!
