AN: Here we are, another chapter here. I don't know if I can say there are more answers or more mysteries. I'll leave that up to you to decide.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Daryl had occupied himself for the rest of his recess by asking one of the guards if he could find out about the classes that Carol had mentioned to him that the place offered. The guard had seemed somewhat anxious to give him information on them, and he'd been taken through to another building that smelled like mold and school glue.
There he'd had the chance to stand and listen to a woman who was probably camp counselor worthy while she told him about all the wonderful things he could do to fill his time—none of them were even remotely interesting, of course, but they were all available to him at any point that he wanted to sign up for one of the classes.
He didn't tell her directly that he'd skip macaroni art, because he figured she might find him insulting and do something ridiculous like flag him for it, so he said that he'd think about it. And then he'd thought about how much he wasn't going to do a single damn one of their activities the whole way back to the yard.
The time from recess to lunch was minimal. They'd been allowed outside for most of the day, though Carol had never come back. Daryl had spent most of his time trying to figure out how to get close enough to the guys that were smoking cigarettes to strike up a conversation and find out where they got them and how he might acquire some of his own. When they'd been temporarily herded back inside, it had only been for bathroom breaks and some kind of bunk inspection where Daryl quickly learned that his bed should be made every day—something he wasn't used to—because that's what civilized people did and he didn't want to be mistook for being anything less than that.
Lunch passed with some of the same silence as the morning meal, and it seemed that Michonne was now a fixture at their table. Daryl didn't mind the silence as much, though, because once—just as he'd sat down—he'd caught Carol smiling softly at him before she'd dropped her eyes to her plate and focused on the food that they were meant to consume before they were left for an afternoon of leisure if nobody fucked up and got them all put under lock down again.
Daryl followed Carol out from lunch just as he had from breakfast, but this time they found themselves with something of an audience. Andrea and Michonne tagged along near them and didn't show any signs of going off on their own. When Carol designated the spot that she was going to sit, stretching her legs in front of her on the ground, everyone else followed suit.
Carol, it seemed, made a good deal of the decisions—and Daryl wasn't sure if that was some kind of "rule" of their "group" or if it was simply the way that things seemed to happen.
Still, he had no argument with it, and he settled down next to her on the grass as soon as their location was chosen.
"Is it illegal to ask questions around here?" Daryl asked when he was seated. "I can't help but notice that everybody gets uptight about it."
He didn't get a response at first from any of the three women around him. Then Andrea turned and looked around, one direction and then another, to verify that they were without immediate supervision. None of the officers found four people sitting on the grass to be too much of concern.
"You can ask whatever you want," Andrea said when she was satisfied that there were no guards close by. "But nobody's under any obligation to answer you. Not about their lives."
"You have to be careful," Carol said, filling in the blanks that Andrea left. "Around here? Sometimes just—saying that you don't like eggs? It can be seen as criticism. And criticism? It can be seen as unrest. And unrest? Unrest gets you flags and lands you in taming."
"They're fond of that shit here," Daryl said.
"More than you'll ever imagine," Michonne said. It was the first real thing the woman had said to him and Daryl believed her—after all, she was fresh out of taming and it was clear it wasn't her first trip there. He wanted to press to find out exactly what the taming was like here, since it seemed to be at least a little different in every location, but he knew that asking her to recount it right now would be cruel just to feed his curiosity.
"You got two tags," Daryl said, directing his question toward Andrea. "Can I ask—what they for?"
Andrea glanced at Michonne and then she stretched her back, dropping her hands behind her, palms down, to hold a reclining position.
"Improper conduct," Andrea said. "I've been through taming here—what? I don't know. I can't even count. I don't even keep count."
"Why do you keep going back?" Daryl asked.
"Because some people just can't be tamed," Carol said.
Daryl looked at her. Her expression wasn't one of malice. It was a joke. She was wearing a half-smile. Andrea, too, rather than taking offense to such a suggestion seemed amused. She nodded her head, more or less bobbing it from side to side.
"Some people won't be tamed," she said.
"Improper conduct covers everything," Carol said. She visibly checked their surroundings, just as Andrea had done earlier, to make sure that nobody had decided to walk near them and might overhear their chat. "It's bogus most of the time. You find an officer that doesn't like you? Piss one off? You'll get tagged for improper conduct for the way you put the cap on the toothpaste."
Daryl chewed on the new knowledge for a minute, not that it was too new. In most places you had to be careful. If someone didn't like you, for whatever reason? They'd make your life a living hell. They could do that because they mattered and you didn't. Nobody was looking into the charges brought against an inmate. There was no judge or jury or justice system that said whether or not they were being treated fairly. They were wild animals, plain and simple. At the core of it? They'd always be wild. The taming? The domestication process? They went through it but there was no guarantee that it would stick. For some it simply didn't stick. Sometimes the re-taming was legitimate. Sometimes someone snapped. They became a danger to themselves. They became a danger to others. They went back through taming or, if that didn't seem to work, they went away—to wherever it was they took the wilds that simply couldn't be made docile.
But sometimes? It was just bogus shit that somebody made up because your face wasn't one that they cared to see. And when you were an inmate? There was nothing you could do about it. There was nobody on your side and nobody was looking out for you. At least, not on an individual level—the government, of course, was always interested in you and your place within the greater population.
He looked at Andrea, determined to drain the blonde of information for as long as she was offering it over.
"You pissed someone off?" He asked.
"I've pissed a few people off," she responded. "Everybody has. You stay here long enough and you will too. Some people? Live to be pissed off."
Daryl waited, sure that there was plenty more information to be told—like who she'd pissed off, how she'd done it, and who around here lived to be pissed off and should be avoided—but nothing else was said. If he was getting anything out of anyone, it was up to him to drag the information out one question at a time.
He'd never been much for conversation, but it appeared he was about to have to become the chattiest asshole in the whole of Region Thirty Three or he was going to have to live his life in a constant state of wonder.
"How'd you get matching numbers?" He asked, offering the question up to Michonne and Andrea both. He had a pretty good idea, from what Carol had told him, that they were out there together. It wasn't that uncommon that someone got captured with someone else—they took them in groups as often as they could—but he still didn't know all the details.
"She turned herself in," Andrea said.
Daryl looked at Michonne, but she wasn't going to say anything at the moment and that was clear. She'd set her face and she almost had a stone countenance. It was too soon, perhaps, out of training for her to want to share a lot of information. Carol had warned him to be patient with her and he was starting to realize that the patience Carol had spoken of had to simply carry over to everything.
Luckily, he had a great deal of patience and he had more time than he knew what to do with for it to take effect.
He turned his attention back to Andrea, but the expression on her face said that either she was tiring of questions or he was beginning to tread into territory that she didn't want to follow him into.
"They shot me," Andrea said. "When they captured me? They shot me. She turned herself in."
Daryl swallowed.
From what he understood, they didn't hurt people during capture if they could avoid it. Capture was, and they told them this often—reminded them of it in case they forgot—for their own good. It was to save them from themselves. It was to save them from each other. It was to save them from the wilderness—both that around them and that which had started to be inside of them.
"They shot you?" Daryl asked. "Why—would they shoot you?"
Immediately he saw it. The moment that he'd hit a brick wall. He'd asked all that he was allowed to ask and he'd made more the welcome amount of conversation for the day. Andrea's face went as stone-like as Michonne's and she got to her feet. She offered a hand to Michonne and the woman took it. Andrea pulled her to her feet and Daryl held his breath, half expecting a booming voice to remind Andrea of the number of flags that she had or to tell her that she'd just flagged out and was on her way to taming again. The voice didn't come, though. Nobody had noticed the touch.
Either that or touch, as long as it was something acceptable, was allowed.
Daryl hadn't learned all the rules yet, and the longer that he stayed there, the more he realized there were a lot of rules to learn.
Just as Carol had done earlier, the women offered no real goodbye. They offered no real confirmation that they were leaving. There was no closure to the conversation. The only evidence that Daryl had that his question wasn't going to be answered was the fact that they walked off and left him sitting there in the grass.
"Did they shoot you too?" Daryl asked. "Or—I can't ask that?"
Carol sucked in a breath.
"That's their story," she said. "That's—theirs to tell when they're ready. Just..."
"Give it time," Daryl supplied for her. "Yeah, I got that. You didn't answer the question."
"You haven't told me anything about yourself," Carol said.
The tables turned, Daryl suddenly got a churning feeling in the pit of his stomach. He was walking around asking questions and expecting information. He wanted to hear everyone's stories. He wanted to know everything that they had to tell.
What he'd forgotten was that was—given the old rules of polite conversation that applied, at least somewhat loosely today—that meant that he should also give them personal information himself.
It mean that he was going to have to go back in his mind to a time that he didn't always like to remember in great detail and he was going to have to trudge it out for them. He understood, just thinking about it, why it was that they left when the question was one that they didn't want to answer. It was easier just to walk away from it.
But walking away would mean leaving Carol sitting there, alone, in the grass. And, for whatever reason, Daryl didn't want to do that.
Quid pro quo. He wouldn't give her everything. Eventually, maybe he'd tell her everything. But there was time for that.
