AN: Here we go, another chapter here.

Warnings for violence.

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

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Daryl wanted their conversation to go on longer. If he'd been allowed to, he might have spent the remainder of his day in the quiet little room with Carol, pretending every three minutes to be locked in a game that neither of them had the slightest bit of interest in playing. But he wasn't allowed to do that. Neither of them were. In fact, they'd spent very little time there before the officer that passed by every three minutes stopped in to tell them that they had to leave.

There was a disturbance and they were under lockdown. Everyone would be returning to their bunks where they would wait, just as they did any time there was something like this, until whoever their supreme captor was decided that they should be free to roam about again.

Silence fell over Region Thirty Three as it had once before. Allowed out of his bunk only to go to the bathroom—almost always under guard—and to eat in silence in the cafeteria, Daryl kept his head down. He didn't know what had caused the disturbance, but it didn't take more than the first meal to know that at least one of their own little circle had been involved. It appeared that Andrea, for whatever reason, had finally earned herself the third flag that they'd been threatening her with. Now it was she that was in the lineup of bound inmates, heads down, that ate separate from the rest. And now it was Michonne that wore the overall concerned and unpleasant countenance that Daryl had once thought was something wholly belonging to Andrea's personality.

It took three days for the silence to be lifted. However, even though they were told the silence wasn't being enforced, most people guarded it anyway. Something was going on. Daryl didn't know what, but he could sense that there was something out of the ordinary happening around them. The guards were on edge, for lack of a better way of explaining things, and even with the silence they'd still found reasons to flag people left and right. Daryl wasn't sure, but he was almost positive that one person got flagged because they put their fork on the wrong side of their plate. He knew, for a fact, that one of the inmates was flagged because she scuffed her foot on the floor and jerked enough that she dropped her cup off her tray and created a mess.

Something was going on, and whatever it was? Every inmate had to be on pins and needles lest they be the next to come back bound and looking like they barely had the strength to even carry their own shackles.

On the fifth day of self-imposed silence, the recently tamed inmates were brought back into the space and were lined up at the front. Daryl watched as they released each of them and pushed them forward to get a tray and return to their spots. He watched as, one by one, they did what they were told. Many of them returned to the empty tables set aside for them, but a few slowly went toward their more regular spots.

Andrea, among them, started toward them and Daryl watched her the same as he'd watched those that were walking before her. Nothing about her seemed like it had just days before, but that was something they were all accustomed to. None of them were the same as they were. They were always changing. And if something in them rose up? It was taken care of immediately.

Daryl meant to stay in his seat with the others. He meant to simply track her forward progress with his eyes and be there to welcome her back to the table. He never meant to move from where he was already sitting—but sometimes things happen when you don't even mean for them to happen.

Andrea's step faltered on her way down the aisle and Carol—closest to the aisle and closest to Andrea—got to her feet and immediately went toward the woman. Carol's movement, for whatever reason, brought Daryl to his feet. He imagined, that many others might have followed suit, but he didn't really notice them.

Andrea dropped her tray and gave into the faltered step, going down to her knees despite Carol's efforts to keep just a thing from happening. Daryl heard one of the guards call out a warning.

"8294F, back to your seat!" He barked.

"She's hurt," Carol protested.

"This is your last warning," the same guard called—one unknown by name to Daryl but who commonly favored keeping with the female population. It was Carol's last warning when it was only the second. The words bristled in Daryl and he reached the two of them, ignoring that now his number was scrambled into the mix of warning and flags.

In a matter of moments, they were surrounded for causing a disturbance. There was confusion of guards and voices and noises. Daryl had never felt good at processing things when a lot was going on at once, and he didn't feel any better at handling it now. It was too much. It was a sensory overload. It didn't help that Carol was arguing back with the guard, the sound ringing in Daryl's ear, and he was caught between her and Andrea, trying to heave the blonde back to her feet.

But when he did start to filter things out, and get control of himself despite the chaos, what he heard made something inside him snap.

"8294F—two flags," the now irate officer bellowed. "Three if you don't sit now!"

Carol backed away from Daryl more out of shock than anything else. To go from warning to two flags was a jump for anyone.

"LC456F—flag!" The officer said.

"What the hell are you flagging her for?!" Daryl spat without meaning to. "What the hell are you flagging anybody for?! She can't even stay on her feet! You need to take her to the damn hospital where the hell you put her!"

"Inmate..." the officer barked, red faced to the point it looked like the blood vessel in his forehead might pop, but he stopped. He didn't know who Daryl was. Another officer called out Daryl's number and the red-faced officer repeated it. "6245—flag!" He finished.

Daryl sucked his teeth and got an arm under Andrea who was, though he was ignoring her, trying to insist that she was fine, that she was sorry, and that he should leave her be. He didn't listen. He was, at the very least, going to get her through the crowd of people and to a chair where she could sit like a human being.

After all—they were humans. They weren't meant to wallow around on the floor with injuries inflicted in the name of their own good.

Maybe that's what had snapped inside him—maybe it was Carol's words that had snapped inside him. Whatever it was, it was done now. As done as anything else had been. There was no turning back.

"Improper conduct, inmate!" The officer continued to bellow at Daryl. "LC456F—6245—improper conduct!"

"I'm helping her, not fucking her," Daryl commented, loudly enough that it gained a collective sound from the surrounding inmates.

"Flags to you both, LC456F, 6245," the officer said.

Deciding he was damned anyway, at this point, Daryl pushed on and got Andrea to a seat. The blood was drained out of her face to the point that she looked like she might go over again, but this time not just to her knees. Daryl was pretty sure that his face was the same cherry red color of the officer who was having the worst day of his life because his so-called wild wards understood better than he did what common human decency was.

So that was when Daryl sealed his fate for the day. Leaving Andrea in the care of Michonne—who was collecting flags from the moment she moved to help her—Daryl stepped forward and toward the officer.

"No," he said. "I'm Daryl! That's Andrea. And that's Michonne. And right there?" He gestured toward Carol who was just behind him and somewhat slack jawed. "That's Carol. We've got names! You're supposed to be taking care of us? You're supposed to be doing what the hell is good for us? You don't have the damn decency to take this woman to the clinic where you shoulda taken her!"

"Daryl," Carol said, putting her hand on Daryl's shoulder to try to pull him back. "Daryl—don't—Daryl...stop..." she stammered.

But officer pissed-at-the-world wasn't hearing it now.

"Flag 8294F—improper conduct!" He barked. "Take her..."

And when they moved to do so, without waiting to hear his own sentence, Daryl moved to try to get himself between the officers and Carol. He managed, for a moment, to hold them back—though it really wasn't going to do anything. He was outnumbered. He was overpowered, and outnumbered, and there was nothing that he could do. He put his body between her and them, felt her fingers curl into his shoulders as she braced for whatever might happen with the intense heat of the moment—a moment caused, at least in Daryl's mind, just because someone was feeling itchy to punish and to show his dominance—and he shoved one of the officers away from the both of them before two more wrestled him to the ground.

His breath was knocked out of him as he hit the ground, a knee immediately going into his back and putting an unnecessary amount of pressure on his kidney, and he turned his head just in time to see another officer manhandling Carol unnecessarily as he led her away.

Now, if it had been loud before, the din around them was incredible. Daryl closed his eyes, went limp, and accepted what they might do to him. Despite the fact that he very nearly went limp and allowed them to put the handcuffs on him, he accepted the few open-palmed blows to the back of the head that they were determined to give him. He accepted them wrestling him to his feet instead of letting him gain them like he would have if given the time, and he accepted being led out.

But he didn't put his head down. He didn't duck it and he didn't cower at them or their threatened punishment.

What they didn't know was that—even though he hated it? He could handle anything that they could do to him. And he knew, a lesson he learned before he'd even been tagged and declared wild, how to keep from giving them the satisfaction of seeing him beg them to stop. He wouldn't beg. They'd stop because they had to—whether that was because they deemed it enough or because they killed him—but he wouldn't beg them.

When he was passed off to the officer that was waiting to take him to taming, Daryl didn't say anything. He continued walking, allowing himself to be directed. He didn't fight the officer—one who actually looked forlorn about his job—and instead he simply went where he was told to go. Out of the back of the building, out where he'd never been before, Daryl walked toward another building. That's where they were going. That's where they "re-tamed" those that had simply come undone.

Daryl had come undone.

He looked at the dirt ahead of him and wondered which of the scuffed prints belonged to Carol. He didn't know when he'd see her again, or what she'd be like when he saw her, but in his mind he whispered a silent "good luck" to her as he trampled over her left behind steps.

"You should've just sat down and kept your mouth shut," the officer guiding Daryl said. There was no bite to his tone. He was simply stating his opinion. Maybe it was even out of concern.

"Couldn't do that," Daryl responded.

"Wild ones never can," the officer said. "Not even the supposedly domesticated ones."

"That's where you're wrong," Daryl said, keeping his feet moving ever toward the building even as they exchanged words. "We're not wild."

"Wild enough to buck authority that's trying to keep you in line," the officer said, a little more offense to his voice this time.

"Check her out," Daryl said. "Possibly bleeding internally. Could have broken ribs—punctured lung? Anything really. If it's being wild to help? Then..."

Daryl stopped speaking and chuckled to himself, remembering suddenly something that Andrea herself was somewhat known for doing in some situations when she felt most degraded. When, in response to his overheard humor, the officer shoved him forward as a way of shaking it out of him, Daryl opened his mouth and issued forth the same yip and howl that he'd heard her make.

"Fucking animals," the officer said, anger and frustration seeping into his voice now. It only served to further Daryl's humor at the moment—misplaced as it may be considering their nearing of the building.

"Just human," Daryl said, not breaking his stride in the least.