AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

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

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After breakfast was, more than likely, not the time to have the conversation that Daryl wanted to have. He couldn't sit on it any longer, though. He'd been thinking about it all night, and the longer he thought about it, the more that he wanted to know.

But he wasn't just going to ask. He wasn't just going to demand more information without offering some of his own—even if he felt he had much less to offer than probably every other person at Region Thirty Three. So, rather than open with his questions, he ate breakfast in amiable silence with the women that he was accustomed to dining with and then he left the table with Carol followed her through the yard while she decided where she might want to spend her leisure time for the morning.

It was cooler today. Soon they'd have to issue them something a little more substantial than the gray jumpsuits they wore. Soon, they'd need something with sleeves if they were going to be outside. Especially those who were more cold natured than Daryl. He'd been used to going without jackets and coats—even when he might have needed them.

But that wasn't really what people did. They wore extra clothes when they were cold.

"I was never married," Daryl said as he followed Carol. She glanced back over her shoulder at him. She didn't say anything. That was the closest she came to admitting that she even heard him. "Never," he repeated. "I don't know...I think I thought about it, but I didn't really think about it with nobody in particular. I just thought about it. Like you might think about anything."

Nothing. It got absolutely nothing. She was being quiet today. He couldn't remember for certain, but he was almost positive that she hadn't said a word over breakfast. No one, really, had said anything over breakfast. Now he wondered if he'd really just put his foot into it so deeply that nobody was really speaking to him. They were holding a group vow of silence against him.

He cleared his throat and settled down against the fence that she chose to put her back against. It was a chain link fence that separated their yard from another part of the facility—likely the part of it where the wilds were being kept always contained and locked up. It was for their own safety.

"I mean—before it all happened? I dated a couple of women," Daryl continued. "One or two. If you can call it dating. Nothing special really. Probably wasn't dating."

Carol nodded her head, looking ahead of her. Daryl followed her line of vision, but there was nothing there of particular interest, just other people milling about and finding ways to pass the time. Lisette was laughing about something that Dori had to say and a short distance from that Andrea was involved in a game of catch with three other inmates—but there was nothing much to see.

"But you dated," Daryl said, finally. "You were married?"

Carol looked at him. Her expression, soft and somewhat pleased with watching the comings and goings of others, went hard and concerned for a moment. She furrowed her brow at him. The crease between her brows only softened slightly before she nodded and then sighed.

"Yeah," she said. "I was married. Not really that long. Not—if we're talking about marriages that last half a century. But I was married too long to him."

Daryl swallowed.

He wanted to ask for more. He wanted to ask about her husband. He wanted to ask why her voice sounded the way that it did when she spoke about it. He didn't feel, though, that he could come right out and ask that. As she would tell him, that was a story for another time. It was her story. She could share it or she could keep it, but it was only to be shared when she decided.

But Daryl could come up with a few suspicions of his own.

"Were you married at the turn?" He asked, choosing to continue speaking but to steer away from pressing her for details that she might not want to share about the particulars of her marriage.

Carol nodded.

"I was," she said, almost mournfully. Daryl didn't feel, though, that she was mourning the husband's passing. She was upset that there had ever been a husband. "When it happened? We—went together. Like the news told us too. There was supposed to be a safe zone. It was going to be about thirty miles outside of Atlanta, Georgia."

Daryl swallowed again.

"That's where you're from?" He asked.

Carol shook her head.

"I'm from North Carolina," she said. "But—my husband, Ed, and I lived in Atlanta."

"He was from Atlanta?" Daryl asked.

Carol laughed to herself.

"He was from North Carolina too," Carol said. "We both were. Same small town. A year after we got married? He wanted to move to Atlanta."

She fell silent for a moment, looking out in front of her like she was seeing something as it played before her eyes. Daryl didn't say anything to interrupt whatever she might be thinking of. His silence paid off because, instead of getting up and excusing herself as she often would, Carol continued speaking when she'd finished seeing whatever it was her mind was giving her to look at.

"He said—he said we were moving there for a job," Carol said. "It was supposed to be better than what he had. Really? It was about the same. Maybe he made a hundred dollars more a month. He just wanted to move because—as he said—there were less people minding your business in a town where nobody knew you."

She shrugged.

"Maybe I liked it that way too," she said. "Less people—minding my business. Less people...thinking about what they thought you'd be and comparing it to what you turned out to be."

"What'd you turn out to be?" Daryl asked.

Carol looked at him. She stared at him. The intensity for a moment was so uncomfortable that Daryl shifted away from her just a bit. His movement broke the stare.

"Wild," Carol said. "I became wild. So—so—wild."

Daryl swallowed.

"Before you was wild," he clarified. He knew, though, that she'd understood what he meant. He also knew that jumping straight to the after effects of the turn was her way of saying that she wasn't going to answer the questions that he was asking. He waited a moment in her silence to be sure and then he decided to offer her something more. "We all turned wild," Daryl said. "Or else we wouldn't be here. I—I weren't much of nothing before that, though. Hell, half the things they tell me separate us from the people? The tame people? I'm not too sure I didn't just start this life wild and go downhill."

Carol let out a quick, sharp laugh. It was a genuine laugh. It wiped away the harsh mask of concern that she'd been wearing over her features.

"You weren't wild before," Carol said. She shook her head at him. "You're not wild now. You were never wild."

She looked around, a quick check on their privacy, and then she lowered her voice.

"None of us were," Carol said. "None of us ever were. We're people. Just the same as anyone else."

"We done things," Daryl said.

"You think the guards didn't?" Carol said, this time furrowing her brow for a different reason. "You think—the guards didn't do the same things we all did? You think the supervisors that come down? The doctors we see? You don't think they had to do the same things that we did?"

Daryl sat there, quiet for a moment, and thought about it. Sure, he'd wondered these things before. He thought he remembered, in the beginning and when he'd first been captured, raising that point. He also thought he remembered earning himself extra days in taming just for even suspecting that maybe the experience that belonged to him as something barely more than an animal was something that was universal.

"It was different," Daryl said. "Some people didn't get as deep in it. Some people didn't do the same things. They got out. They got picked up and saved before it was too late. They looked for help and they didn't ignore the surrender notices."

"Did you ever actually see one of those notices?" Carol asked.

Daryl hesitated a moment and then he shook his head.

"No," he said. "No," he repeated. "We were—by that time? We were—in Virginia? I think. We started in Louisiana. I'm not from there. But that's where I was at the turn. There looking at some kinda jobs. Thinking about a new start. The one we got weren't the one we were planning on. We made it to Georgia, though. Looking for some safe zone. Maybe the one you were heading toward. Near Atlanta. Outside of it, they said on the news. Was gonna be some huge place. Everything you needed. We got lost. Got our asses lost in the damn wilderness. Didn't never see a surrender notice."

Carol nodded her head slowly. It wasn't that she was agreeing with him. She was listening to him and she was thinking about her own story.

"If you'd seen it," Carol said. "Would you have gone? Would you have surrendered?"

Daryl looked around now, growing a little uncomfortable because he worried that this kind of conversation would be sure to get them in trouble.

"I wanna say yes," Daryl said. "But—I think I was too wild then. I don't think..."

He hesitated. There was no reason in the world not to say Merle's name yet, but it was something that Daryl couldn't bring himself to do very often. He hadn't really said his name since the capture. If he didn't say his name, it was easier to keep his distance.

Maybe that's why T-Dog disliked it so much when Daryl asked about Jacqui by name.

"I don't think my brother and me would've turned ourselves in," Daryl said. "I don't think we'd have trusted it."

Carol nodded.

"I saw one," she admitted. "I saw it. I—I tore it down off the tree it was nailed to. I read it. I held it in my hand. But I couldn't trust it. I didn't trust it. How was I going to? The government—was gone for all those years? While I was—out there? Being what they tell me is wild? I couldn't trust it. I couldn't take that chance."

As she'd spoken, she'd moved closer to Daryl. She'd lowered her voice. Her eyes had gone wide with something akin to fear or panic—for a moment she was back there. For a moment she was remembering being captured. She was reliving some of it. Her voice was so low that it was barely more than air that she was blowing out in the words—and that air blew warm against Daryl's face and reminded him, for the first time in a long time, that they were both still alive. It was the closest contact that he'd had with anyone who wasn't a correctional officer in more years than he could count.

He closed his eyes against it for a moment—surprised that something so simple, something that might have made him wish she would back away from him in another time and place, was something that very nearly choked him because he hadn't realized how much he wanted it.

If he turned his face toward her? Instead of looking just to the side of her and somewhat in front of him as he was now? There would be so little distance between them that...

He didn't even want to think about it. He already knew that it wasn't allowed here. The thoughts weren't allowed her either. The guards could probably read their minds. Especially after everything that had happened with scandal.

Suddenly Daryl remembered the scandal, and he remember what T-Dog had said to him—he remembered what had brought him to start this conversation in the first place.

He turned toward Carol and she backed away, breaking the proximity between them. Daryl actually felt the cold against his skin again, when she moved, and it made him realize how truly close they'd been for just a moment.

"You weren't out there alone," Daryl said. "Was it—just you and your husband? Who were you out there with?"

He dared to ask it, and he saw her eyes widen with the question, but he was patient enough to wait if that's what she needed—patience he was learning.