AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

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

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Carol's response to Daryl's question was exactly what he expected. She stood up. She started like she was going to walk off—like she always did. She was going to leave him there, question unanswered, and she was going to walk away. She'd hide under saying that she had something to do, but Daryl knew that she didn't have anything to do. None of them did. Being able to do things? Being able to fill idle time with things? That was something that had been taken from them. They'd lost that privilege, if it could be called that.

This time, though, when she got to her feet, Daryl didn't want to let her just walk away and leave it all unspoken about. He didn't want to be left, sitting in the dirt, wondering how he might have talked to her about her life in a way that would have kept her there and kept her carrying on a conversation that didn't end abruptly.

It wasn't about the question anymore. It wasn't about the curiosity that he felt about the lives of the people who surrounded him. It was about not wanting to simply be dismissed and ignored.

As soon as Carol hit her feet, and before she'd taken three determined steps away from him, Daryl took to his feet. He doubled his steps and reached her in no time. He reached out, caught her wrist, and pulled it to keep her from going forward even another foot. As soon as he realized that he was touching her—forbidden under most circumstances at Region Thirty Three—Daryl dropped her wrist. Luckily no guard had seen the transgression, though, and it was enough to get Carol's attention.

She stopped her forward progress and turned back to face him. Her face was screwed up in concern again. The emotion seemed to be her go to emotion for all things that weren't entirely pleasant.

"Why do you care?" Carol asked.

Daryl felt himself start. It was the first time that he had to really think about that. He'd asked himself that same question more than once since he'd arrived at the facility, but until now he hadn't bothered to give himself an answer. He'd walked away from himself as surely as the others had walked away from him. This was the first time that he had to find an answer—for himself and for Carol—because this was a game of quid pro quo and he couldn't demand responses from her if he wasn't willing to give them in return.

"Because—I'm human," Daryl said.

He swallowed at the strange taste of the words in his mouth. For so long he'd been taught that he wasn't human or, at the very least, that he wasn't entirely human. Carol had given him permission to think of himself as a human, but still it was strange to do so when he'd tried to convince his mind that it wasn't true.

"I'm human," he repeated, the words barely coming out. "And—you are too. Every damn one of us got here somehow. We got here someway. Did shit. Saw shit. Lived through it. I been alone a long damn time—but I care what the hell you went through to get here."

He shrugged when he finished speaking. The words didn't sound like a satisfactory answer to his own ears, but they were all that he had at the moment. It was a question that he hadn't answered for himself, and he didn't have time to really think about it, so the best he had to offer was a knee jerk response.

"I just do," he added, finishing it up.

Carol sighed deeply enough that her chest visibly rose and fell. The look on her face didn't leave. It changed, slightly, but it almost went to something like desperation. She looked around her, tension visible in her movements, and Daryl was reminded of the old adage that people could become "caged". They were all caged now, but Carol looked it at the moment.

"I didn't mean to upset you," Daryl offered quietly. He almost wished, at the moment, that he could take it back. He could take the question back. He could take back the insistence that she answer it. "You don't gotta tell me," he added, shaking his head at her when he was sure that he had her attention for another minute.

Carol looked around again and Daryl thought that she looked like she relaxed a little. Being told that she didn't have to answer it, obviously, was enough to make her feel a little better about it.

"I don't want to talk about it here," she said.

Daryl nodded.

"We don't go nowhere else to go," he said, hating to be the bearer of bad news.

"I want—I want to play Monopoly," Carol said. She nodded her head at him slowly and raised her eyebrows like she was trying to silently tell him to copy her. He started to nod his head before the words even sunk in for him. He smiled to himself and then wiped it away as quickly as he could.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah," he repeated when she continued to nod her head at him. "We'll—play some monopoly. Good game."

She looked a great deal more relaxed. A smile almost formed on her lips. This time, when she turned to walk away, she looked back over her shoulder at Daryl to be sure that he was following. He closed the one step difference between them and caught up with her to walk beside her toward the building where they could go to the Rec room and play Monopoly.

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Carol shifted her position at least twenty times in the first three minutes of their time in the dimly lit room that had one naked bulb for lighting. Daryl put himself in charge of setting up the game and making it appear that they were actually playing it, and then he put himself in charge of opening the blinds on the windows. Whatever she was dealing with at the moment, he figured, was enough that she didn't need to think about setting a scene for Barney Fife when he made his rounds.

When he felt like things were set, Daryl returned to the chair across the table from Carol and waited the moment or so that it took for approaching footsteps to reach the door. He waved sarcastically at the officer that stuck his head in the door and waited until the man walked off to lean back in his chair and give Carol whatever time and space she needed. They were working on three minute intervals to talk, but from what Daryl could tell their time was really unlimited.

Finally, Carol settled her elbow on the table and settled her face in her hand. To keep from looking at him at the moment, she took some of the little houses and began to set up a city full of row houses in the middle of the board.

"My husband died before we made it to the safe zone," Carol said. "I—uh—we never made it there. We were caught on the highway, outside of Atlanta, when the planes were flying over."

Daryl hummed and Carol looked at him, really focusing on him with her eyes for a moment.

"You saw them?" She asked.

"Planes?" Daryl asked. She nodded gently. "Yeah," he said. "Everybody did. Planes. Helicopters. Early days? They were—trying to get things under control."

Carol shook her head, her face still resting on her hand. She sighed.

"They were killing people," Carol said.

Daryl sat forward, uncomfortable with her words.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Daryl asked. "We had a radio. We were listening to the news until the signal went out. They was—relocating people. Trying to stop the spread."

"They were killing people," Carol repeated. "They bombled Atlanta. The planes were dropping bombs or explosives or something."

She closed her eyes.

"The screaming—we could hear it on the highway," Carol said.

Daryl sat there, shaking his head. He couldn't believe that she was telling the truth, even if he knew that she really stood to gain nothing from lying.

She continued to nod hers, now bringing her eyes back to the little houses that she went thumping around with her fingertip.

"They asked me. When they captured me? If I saw the planes," Carol said.

Daryl hummed. They'd asked him to. He'd told them that he had. After all, he assumed that most people had seen them flying around. It seemed like for at least a week the skies had been full of choppers and planes.

"I told them I saw them," Carol said. "But—I didn't tell them what I saw."

"Understandable," Daryl said.

He pursed his lips and brought his finger to it to gesture that she should be quiet. Immediately he put on a show of rolling the dice and Carol followed his lead by picking up some of the cards and holding them in her hands like she was studying properties that she owned or might be interested in acquiring. They waited until the officer had made his check and his footsteps were fading again before Carol spoke once more.

"I guess it was another reason that I couldn't trust the Surrender Notices," Carol said. "It just felt like—cleaning up what they didn't get before."

Daryl didn't know what to say. He was hearing her words, but honestly he wasn't sure how he felt about them. Thinking about it seemed so foreign that he was almost driven to think of it as some kind of movie or fictional depiction of what might happen.

"Maybe they was just—clearing out the infected? Clearing out the dead?" Daryl offered.

"The dead don't scream," Carol said coolly.

Daryl felt a shiver start at the base of his spine and run all the way up.

"Your husband died then?" Daryl asked.

Carol shook her head and hummed.

"We fled the highway," Carol said. "We went with a small bunch of people. We ran to get away from what was happening. We were afraid that—if they bombed the city we were next. The traffic jam or whatever? We thought maybe they stopped us to have us there for easier—access? I guess."

Daryl nodded at her to let her know that she should continue when she glanced at him. She'd abandoned torturing the little houses and now she was toying with the card, turning it over and over in her fingers, while she thought about her story.

"We—made our own camp," Carol said. "One night? It got overrun. My husband was—he couldn't get away."

Her voice trailed off a moment and she studied the card in her hand with far more concern that was ever necessary in any game of Monopoly.

"And I didn't help him," Carol said.

Daryl swallowed. He wanted to ask her more about that, but he didn't dare to interrupt her. Not while she was talking. He was going to let her say whatever it was that she wanted to say. He was going to let things go wherever they might. She might be open to more questions later, but for now he was going to let her tell the story that she'd set out to tell him.

"You were alone then?" He said, choosing the question as the most innocent and the least leading that he could think of.

Carol shook her head.

"No," she said. "I wasn't alone. But—that's—I don't want to talk about it."

She looked at him and, for the first time ever, her eyes looked damp. She shook her head at him again.

"I don't want to talk about that," she repeated. "Please?"

Daryl quickly nodded his head, his stomach twisting. He almost spat curse words when he heard the officer approaching again. He wanted to yell at him that they were people and capable of refraining from fucking if left alone for more than five minutes. He wanted to yell at him that what they were talking about—what he felt like she was keeping to herself—wasn't exactly something that stirred up the desire to fuck in either of them. But he didn't say anything. He simply waited for the officer to pass and then he quietly offered the best condolences that he could for the moment.

"You don't gotta," he said. "But—if ya do..."

She nodded at him, seeming to understand the words that he left unsaid.

"I'm sorry," he offered, wishing that he could reach across the table and offer something—anything—that might be more comforting than the hollow and empty words.

"Me too," she said quietly. She looked at him again. Though her eyes were still a little damp, she offered him a smile—like she was trying to soothe him for the hurt he felt over simply imagining what might be hers and what might be the story that she wasn't telling.

Like she could read his mind, she reached her hand across the table and gently touched his. Her hand was soft and warm against his skin. She brushed her thumb, quickly, over his skin before she pulled her away and dropped it into her lap. The whole interaction was so quick that Daryl was left almost wondering if it had really happened or if he'd imagined the whole thing.

When he looked at her, though, her expression was lighter. Her cheeks were a little more blushed than they had been. And once again, she'd developed a strong interest in the cards that told her the merits of various properties on the board that they were almost wholly ignoring.

Daryl cleared his throat, searching to change the subject to something that might be easier for her—something that might be less close to her.

"Michonne and Andrea?" Daryl asked, leaving the rest of the question unasked but remembering that the two women had also left the room in something of a huff before.

Carol looked at him again, her expression not changing from the one that she seemed to have adopted for his benefit. She shook her head gently at him.

"Not my story to tell," she said.