AN: Here we go, another chapter.

I hope that you enjoy. Let me know what you think!

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After dinner, Carol had taken Daryl to what they called the Rec room. Her friends, three of them at least, had come in tow. It was part of the building that Daryl had come to earlier to find out about all the macaroni art classes that were available to them should they be seeking stress relief that could only be brought about by the calming and traditional art of gluing noodles no good for eating to scraps of paper.

The whole building smelled like glue, mold, and—at least to Daryl—nightmares from grammar school. Of all the buildings he'd been in so far, which weren't that many from what it appeared the prison had to offer, the recreation building was by far the shittiest.

To gain access to the space, the only thing they'd really had to do was go through a regular check before entering the building. The guard stopped them and each of them was to hold their hands out to the side, do a full turn for inspection, and then stop with their backs to the guard and wait to be patted down and cleared. Daryl thought the officer took a little longer, and was a little more thorough, when checking the women he was with for anything they shouldn't have, but he guessed that was probably how things went around here. Other than some less than pleasant facial expressions, none of the women gave away that they noticed the overly thorough inspection too much.

Just as they walked into the building, leaving the guard behind, Daryl heard the guard yell out "Three to five". The women kept walking, so he kept walking too, but the moment they showed him into the little room where they were going to "do a puzzle," Daryl decided it was open to ask the question.

"Three to five?" He asked, watching as Michonne went to get a puzzle box from the shelves and Lisette set about clearing a space on the floor that would be large enough for everyone to sit with the puzzle that they very likely would never even begin working.

"Three to five minutes," Carol said. Daryl raised his eyebrows at her to ask for more information. That's all he was doing these days. He felt like there was nothing that didn't beg him to ask for more. "Three to five minutes," Carol repeated. "A guard will be set to pass by every three to five minutes. Look in the door. Do a head count. Walk away. Then he'll come back."

"Seems like a lotta damn work," Daryl said. "Just to make sure some fight don't break out over some board games."

"Monopoly does get kind of heated," Carol said. She laughed at her own joke and Daryl couldn't help but smile at it—though he was really smiling more at how she looked when she so pleased with something as simple as a silly joke. It was a welcomed change from her more serious countenance that seemed to be the norm when they were with the rest of the general population.

"It isn't for fights," Andrea said. "It's for fucking."

Daryl handn't really thought of that even being too much of an issue. The place had pretty tight security, so it wasn't like it was happening right under the noses of the guards. Of course, being as he had always "taken his time" on things like that—too much time, some might say—he also didn't think of it quite as readily as some might. He was, perhaps, quicker to accept a look but don't touch policy.

"So that happens a lot around here?" Daryl asked.

"Improper conduct, inmate!" Lisette belted out.

The sound of her voice coming out louder than it normally would in such a small room made Daryl jump. The barked words, however, struck all the women as hilarious and they laughed at the joke that they shared over it. Apparently it happened more than Daryl might have imagined.

"Improper conduct covers everything," Carol said, apparently seeing Daryl's confusion and wanting to bring him into the joke as well. "So—when a guard catches two inmates..."

She stopped and wiggled her eyebrows, smirking at herself even as she did. She was, for just a moment, genuinely embarrassed by the conversation and it was all over her face. Daryl bit his lip to keep from laughing at her embarrassment and nodded.

"Well—then they yell out 'Improper conduct, inmate,'" Carol finished. She shrugged at the end of her statement as if to say that was simply all it was.

"I didn't even think of it being no problem," Daryl admitted. "Shit's so locked up and they—hell, I guess I was in something like solitary for so long at the other places? You forget that kinda thing happens."

Everyone sat on the floor, so Daryl followed suit. He took a seat next to Carol and watched as Michonne opened the puzzle box and dumped all the pieces on the floor in front of them all. Hands went into the pile and they started sorting them, face up. The puzzle was to keep their hands busy. It was to make it look like they'd legitimately come in here to pass their time with a game. Daryl had already learned that outside. He'd also learned that Carol, and the others too he could supposed, retired to the Rec room because it was quiet and very few inmates ever came there. Very few people realized that while miming the puzzle work was obligatory, actually doing the puzzle was not.

Daryl looked up when he heard the heavy footsteps of a guard. Just as the women said he would, one of the officers stopped outside the door. He leaned in, quietly counted all of them, and then he stepped back out without a word and continued on down the hallway.

Lisette made something of a snorting noise and Daryl looked at her when everyone else did.

"Coming 'round here to make sure the only puzzle pieces getting fitted together are gonna end up making a nice picture of some Labradors," Lisette said.

A collective bunch of snickers ran through them all and, for a moment, Daryl felt strangely out of place. He felt like he was invading some foreign land. Except, he had been invited here. He was welcome. And even if he didn't understand why, he appreciated his acceptance into the small group.

"Is that why everyone sort of—stays apart?" Daryl asked.

He had everyone's attention for a moment. Sitting on the hard floor, all concrete under the thin and very well-worn layer of carpet, and talking like this? Everyone seemed different. Everyone seemed like they'd gone back in time. They weren't inmates at Region Thirty Three. They weren't dociles. They'd gone back even farther than their days as wilds.

This? It was pleasant. For a moment it was almost the most pleasant interaction that Daryl could ever imagine having. The chat here? It seemed easier to have. It seemed to just come naturally. Nobody was wearing the strained and worried expression that they'd had outside when he'd tried to talk to them about their lives.

Here? In the Rec room? Daryl might actually get some answers to the ever growing list of questions that he had about his new companions.

"People are going to naturally be around who they feel more comfortable with," Carol offered. "And maybe, for some people, that's a single sex environment."

She shrugged.

"And some are coming from male or female camps," she added. "Maybe it's just what you're used to."

"A lot of it has to do with the enforced separation," Lisette said. Carol looked at her and for just a second the two women locked eyes across the small circle that all made with their bodies.

"What separation?" Daryl asked.

Carol looked at him like she would answer, but then she stopped before she formed a word and dropped her eyes back to the pieces of the puzzle that she was turning over and over in her hands. Daryl heard the sound of approaching boots and made a show of examining the pieces of the puzzle that were closest to him as though the edges were the thing of greatest concern in his life at the moment.

The guard stuck his head in, went through the count again silently, and then walked away. He whistled as he went, this time, the sound trailing back behind him and echoing in the otherwise empty hallway.

Daryl waited a moment and then looked at Carol.

"What separation?" He asked.

Some of the tension had returned to her with the checking of the guard. It was visible in how she held her shoulders. He could see it on her face. She leaned closer to him and spoke with a softer voice than they'd been using before.

"For a while, we were on lockdown," Carol said. "Region Thirty Three is coed, but for a while they tried to separate the general population. Women went to eat with the other women. We had recess while the men ate. Then—back to bunks and the men had recess."

Daryl shrugged.

"Why?" He asked. "Why go through makin' the thing coed if you just gonna split people up? Don't make no sense."

To Daryl, doing something like that seemed like taking one step forward and two steps back. It would require more guards and it would require a lot more effort to watch the prisoners if you were going to enforce no interaction whatsoever between the men and the women. It would be simpler, honestly, to just have two separate camps—like most places.

"The split was temporary," Michonne said quietly. She was working on a small square of the puzzle and she almost had part of what appeared to be a duck put together. She was the only one who seemed genuinely interested in the activity. "There were more than a few inmates that turned up pregnant. The government didn't want to have to deal with all the messy after effects. There was some question about how it was happening if security was being enforced. There was a crackdown and there was separation."

"How do you know?" Daryl asked.

"Besides the fact that I can put two and two together?" Michonne asked sharply. Then her expression softened and she looked almost apologetic. Almost. "I used to—work for the government. Before the turn. With the law. I have a pretty good idea of how things work. It's different now, but some things don't change."

"So inmates was knockin' each other up?" Daryl asked.

"Most of it wasn't inmates," Andrea said. Daryl looked at her and she shook her head. She looked almost amused by the whole thing. "They said it was inmates, but most of it wasn't. Most of it was..."

Instead of saying anything, she simply gestured her head in the direction of the hallway. Daryl furrowed his brow at her.

"The guards was knockin' people up?" Daryl asked.

He got shushed by all four women collectively and it was effective. It took him a solid minute to relax enough to feel like speaking. By then, he had to sit quietly and wait for their guard to come around do his little inspection. Once he'd gone clomping off again, for however long it would take him to reach the end of the hall and make his way back, Andrea had decided to speak and enlighten him a little more.

"You can't say anything about it," Andrea said, keeping her voice low—something uncharacteristic for her. Of course, she was treading a fine line with two flags to her name already. "They know you can't. If you do? It's criticism. They'll call it what they want, but you'll get flagged. If you say it was a guard? Two flags. One for criticism, one for lying."

"And you can bet they'll trump up a reason to add the third," Lisette said. She hummed to herself as though to confirm her own words were true.

Daryl was stunned. Maybe he was naïve. Maybe he should've thought all of these things would happen regularly. He hadn't thought about it, though. Never, really. It hadn't been an issue in any of the places he'd been and it had never really entered his mind. After all, the government was there to protect them. It would keep them safe from themselves. It would keep them safe from all the evil that they were capable of and it would help them become normal, good citizens—even if they were normal citizens who lived in cages like zoo animals. The officers were the closest representatives they had of that government. They were the closest examples they had of humans who had never been wild. They were the nearest examples of people who didn't behave as animals did.

But then, maybe they still did.

Daryl was a little uneasy with the chain of thoughts that came crashing through him as he considered this information that was new to him. He didn't say any more about it, though, and he wouldn't until he'd had time to mull it over, so that the women wouldn't think he was foolish for simply having neglected to consider anything like this a very real possibility.

He swallowed.

"What happened to the ones that got knocked up?" Daryl asked.

The women exchanged looks. No one answered him. He wondered if they were trying to figure out how obvious of an answer he really needed and didn't want to be insulting. He decided to clarify.

"What happened to the kids?" He asked. "After they was borned? They keep 'em or what?"

Daryl could practically feel a change come over the air around him. Gone was the lightness that had been in the room before. Gone was the ambiance that was suitable for playful chatter. There weren't any smiles on lips and there wasn't the glimmer in anyone's eye of someone that was enjoying a playful exchange.

All the women suddenly looked much tenser than they had before. They exchanged looks between them that Daryl wasn't invited to understand.

Finally it was Carol that broke the silence.

"Wilds aren't fit to raise children," Carol said. "And prisons aren't the place for that. They took them—that's all anybody knows. They took them...to...to a..."

She seemed to be struggling to find an answer for Daryl. Maybe she didn't know the answer or maybe she couldn't quite recall what would be the correct answer.

"To a better place," she said, finally, though her voice didn't make it sound at all like she believed what she was saying.

Before Daryl could even open his mouth to press for more information, Andrea got to her feet. She didn't offer, as none of them ever seemed to do, any kind of farewell to the group. She simply left the room and ducked down the hallway that would take her back to the open air. Michonne, in the same fashion, took to her feet and darted after Andrea. Carol stood then too. Unlike Michonne and Andrea, though, she at least offered the excuse that she had to go. She had something to do, and then she left through the same hallway.

Lisette got to her feet and Daryl looked up at the woman. She frowned at him, but it was more a frown of pity than one of genuine disgust or sadness.

"I guess you're going too?" Daryl asked. "I seem to have a way of getting people to go places."

She continued to stare at him a moment longer, and then, in the somewhat odd accent she had, she spoke to him with more sincerity than she ever had before.

"If you're going to ask questions, then you're going to have to accept the answers you get," Lisette said. "Like putting the Labradors together. You reach into the pile. Just because you wanted the nose doesn't mean that you won't get a tail. You keep picking up the pieces, though, and you'll get the nose."

Daryl was almost amused, but he understood.

"Yeah," he said, nodding. "Sorry—by the way—if I said something wrong."

Lisette hummed.

"You'll pick up the puzzle pieces?" She asked. "If we don't leave the room as we found it, we can't come back to it."

Daryl looked at the scattered pieces on the floor, Michonne's spot the only one marked by a partially constructed section of the picture they were trying to recreate, and he nodded.

"I got it," he said.

And he assumed she heard him because, without saying anything, she turned and left him there while she walked—with much less urgency—out of the room and down the little hallway.