AN: Here we go, another chapter here.

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

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"Inmate 6245?"

Daryl opened his eyes. He'd been awake for a little while, but he'd been doing his best to block out everything around him by closing his eyes and focusing on not using his ears for anything. It was his third time waking in this hell. He couldn't really say if it was morning or not because that was difficult to tell. Every day had been the same—except a little worse than the day before. Every night he'd been returned to the same small space. And every night, he'd found her hand threaded through the bars and her face pressed against them. He hadn't really seen her yet, though. It was really too hard to see with much detail. He'd felt her, though. Daryl had let go of Carol's hand hours ago when, in her sleep, she'd readjusted her body and the bars between them had become too great a barrier.

Now there was an officer waiting for him. He was standing right outside his cell.

Daryl didn't bother sitting up yet, but he did hum to let the officer know that he'd stopped in front of the right cell. The man clicked on a flashlight in response, lighting up the rather dim area, and shined it into Daryl's cell.

"I'm officer Hokes," the man said, an unknown officer to Daryl.

"I'm Daryl," Daryl responded.

"Why are you in here, 6245?" The man asked.

Daryl shifted around to put his back against something solid and push himself into a sitting position. They could do what they wanted. They could take turns beating him until he no longer even felt that his body was his own—his own body wouldn't treat him with such cruelty—but they couldn't reduce him to nothing. He understood, now, a little better how it was that Andrea had walked, attempting to carry a tray, to a point where she simply collapsed in the cafeteria.

He wondered how she was too. Was she alive? He wondered about Michonne. She'd been steadily racking up points in an effort to do something when nobody else was doing anything. She could likely be in her own little hell-chamber at this moment. He wondered if T-Dog had even noticed his absence or if he'd relished the break from Daryl pressing him to talk about his life. He wondered about Lisette and Doriana—both of which seemed to have learned to stay quiet during things like that. How long did it take before you didn't care? Before you didn't care for the people in here the same way that you hadn't cared for the people out there? Was that the definition of returning to being human? The absence of care and compassion was the becoming of full human.

If that was the case, Daryl would remain wild.

"6245? Can you hear me?" Officer Hokes repeated.

"Yeah," Daryl said, swallowing down the knot that he'd brought to himself—a knot in his throat brought on not by his desperation, but rather by an odd feeling of desolation.

"I asked you a question," Officer Hokes said.

"And if I answer it?" Daryl responded. "What? You gonna give me breakfast if I give the right answer and you gonna just walk away if I give the wrong. But—I don't believe the right answer and...I can't understand what's wrong with the wrong. Maybe..." Daryl broke off and chuckled to himself. "Maybe I shoulda just paid more attention in school."

The officer stepped closer to the bars and shined the light in something of an arc around Daryl and the neighboring cells. Daryl followed the light with his eyes and saw when it landed on the lump that was Carol. She was awake. He knew that she had to be. But, like him, she was trying to shut out the world.

"I want to know the truth," Officer Hokes said, his voice quieter than before. "Why are you in here?"

Daryl swallowed and gestured his hand toward Carol's cell.

"Same reason she is," Daryl said. "You were gonna kill Andrea. Or—somebody was. Just wanted to help. Save her if she could be saved. Let her die with some damn dignity and not on the dirty ass floor of the cafeteria—with every damn body watching—if she couldn't. With me there? She's probably dead any damn way."

"Andrea?" The officer asked.

Daryl sighed, but he didn't feel, at the moment, the same kind of energy from this officer as he normally felt. The man's voice was different. His demeanor was different. He hadn't come into the cell yet. He hadn't started barking orders yet. He hadn't pulled Daryl to his feet and demand that, whether he could or not, he stand with some sort of respect. He was simply there.

"LC some-damn-number-or-another F," Daryl said with some boredom. He had no idea what kind of training the officers in this place had to go through to remember everyone's code. He assumed repetition helped, and maybe that's why they called them out so much and flagged them for sneezing on some days, but it seemed easier to associate true names with someone. But then, maybe he only thought that because he was still wild—somewhere down deep inside where he'd never be anything else.

"Late Capture..." the officer mused.

Daryl hummed to ask him to repeat himself, but the officer hummed and dismissed his own words.

"Can you get up, inmate?" Officer Hokes asked.

Daryl flexed his muscles slightly to test them. Most of them seemed to shake and protest every time he tried to use them. This time was no different. He didn't want to admit it, though, so he simply sat in silence and hoped that the punishment for insolence was going to be less severe than the way he'd feel if he had to admit that the trip from the hard floor to standing was just going to be too much to handle on his own at the moment.

"6245?" Hokes repeated. "Are you hard of hearing?"

Daryl chuckled to himself.

"That's the damn way to be," Daryl commented. "Deaf—wish I was. Lucky sons-a-bitches these days."

"How long have you been in here?" Hokes asked.

"You full of questions," Daryl said.

The officer clearly shifted his weight. He dropped the beam of the flashlight toward the floor and Daryl figured that he was about to either give up on him and walk away—off to have a chat with some other inmate that was more agreeable and more desiring of the status of "docile" or "semi-tamed" or whatever Region Thirty Three wanted to call them—or he was about to punish Daryl.

Daryl didn't care either way right now.

"Three sleeps?" Daryl responded. "Four? Could be a very long day. Could be a month. Feel the same in here."

The officer pulled out a very loud collection of keys. The din of the metallic clicking and clacking together of the implements made Daryl's ears hurt in the space. He unlocked the door, walked in, the light beam dancing out behind him now as the flashlight was tucked under his arm, and offered a hand in Daryl's direction.

As a knee jerk reaction, Daryl flinched away from it, but then he realized it was simply a hand offered in assistance. He took it and the officer helped pull him to his feet. Daryl stood there for a moment and tried to ignore his somewhat shaking knees.

"You're out," Hokes said. "Stay in line. Or you'll be back here before you know it."

"Home sweet home," Daryl said. But then, as an afterthought, he looked at the officer and swallowed. "Thanks," he said quietly.

The officer shook his head.

"But—Carol?" Daryl said. "She ain't done nothing I didn't do. Less even."

Hokes nodded.

"Step into the hall, inmate," he said, something of the original quality returning to his voice. "Do you need to be bound now?"

"No," Daryl said quietly. "I ain't going nowhere. Don't know if you all notice but—ain't nowhere to go."

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The best thing about the whole of Region Thirty Three was that mirrors weren't hanging around. They were dangerous, after all. They could be broken and people could use the shards to injure each other. Realistically, Daryl assumed that they'd, more than likely, the use the shards to try to injure themselves. But that didn't go with the ideas of those in charge. They were all happy here, in captivity.

The worst part was, maybe it was true. At least, at one point, Daryl had been pretty sure it was true for him.

Back in their routines, people weren't talking about what happened to them. Though Daryl was full of questions for everyone, nobody else seemed to have questions like he did. Maybe it was a lack of care, maybe it was a lack of curiosity, or maybe it was just that, deep down, they felt like they already knew. When they gathered for meals, ignoring the way that Carol looked and, therefore, the way that Daryl knew that he must look, people treated their return like they'd come back from vacation if anything.

Andrea wasn't dead. She wasn't at their table for the first meal, but by the second day outside of training, she'd returned. She'd said nothing about it other than she'd been to the clinic. Something internal—something not quite right—but it was taken care of and she had another scar to show. She'd offered, instead of any detailed explanation of her experience, an apology to both Daryl and Carol which neither had accepted.

Michonne hadn't been sent to training yet, but she was sitting on pins and needles with two flags to her name. One slip and she'd be gone. She knew it, but she expected it. She accepted it. Maybe, in her eyes, it was worth it.

T-Dog had spoken to Daryl as though he'd never been gone. He hadn't mentioned that he'd gone to training. He hadn't asked for details. His only form of "welcome back" was to tell Daryl that he'd snagged a book for him, and hidden it under his mattress, that he thought he might like—but the ending was missing so they could talk about it if he wanted. They could figure out what they thought happened because T-Dog had some ideas. Maybe Daryl's would be the same.

Lisette was stoic about the whole thing. She pretended as though nothing at all had happened. Doriana was almost jovial. She went the route of pretending that the world was made of marshmallows and run by fairies and—now that they were all back together—there was nothing but happiness and joy to be discussed. Look for the silver lining.

Daryl just felt different.

He felt like, after having come back from training, he was a different person than he'd ever been for having gone through training before. Before? All the times he'd been through training he'd come back feeling a little less wild. He'd come back feeling that they were right. He was too far gone. He'd been a bad person. More than that, he'd been something sub-human. He needed their help and he wanted their help to become something better. He didn't want to be, any longer, a wild one. This time, though, he felt different. He came out feeling that he was human—that everyone who ate with him and slept around him and shared his experiences was human—and that they, those in power, were the not-quite-humans. He came out feeling like he wanted to hold onto something, even if they called it wildness. Maybe, this time, the difference was the injustice he felt behind the reason that he'd been sent to training. Or, maybe, it was simply the strange comradery he'd found in those around him. It was a comradery that he'd never experienced before, but he liked it.

He wanted something better, for himself and for those around him. That hadn't changed. Maybe it never would, but he was no longer sure if he wanted what they told him he wanted. He didn't want to become one of them. Not entirely.

While sitting at dinner one night, listening to Dori tell them some story about her life before the turn—a life that sounded wonderful but too far removed to relate to—an officer approached their table. Daryl bristled at his presence and felt his muscles tense. He waited for some trumped up accusation to fall on one of them. He waited for Michonne, since she carried the most flags already, to be flagged for having her cup on the wrong side of her tray—or something equally ridiculous—and to be dragged away.

Instead the officer held out an envelope.

"8294F?" He asked.

Carol looked at him.

"That's me," she said.

"You've got orders," he said, passing her the envelope. He walked off as soon as she'd taken it and Daryl glanced around. A few more officers, it seemed, were milling about and handing out envelopes. Instead of carrying a large pile, delivering them all at once, they were delivering one, walking away, and returning with another—slowly the "orders" were making their way around to a number of prisoners. They might even, eventually, come for him.

Carol ripped open the envelope with her finger, the same way she might have once sat and opened bills at a kitchen table in a life far removed from this one, and she extracted the paper. She read it quietly and carefully, her expression unchanging. Then she folded it and put it back in the envelope before she tucked the whole thing under her tray. Nobody asked her what it said with their mouths, but they were all asking her with their eyes.

She shrugged.

"They made me an appointment," she said. "Tomorrow—at the clinic."