AN: Here we go, another chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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Daryl separated and isolated Carol away from the crowd, after dinner, as surely as if he'd been a cowboy culling cattle from a herd. Immediately upon hitting the yard, seeing his opportunity, he slowly pushed her toward one of the back fences, walking this way and that to keep her moving, and everyone else somewhat slipped away to the sides to do something else.
He'd gotten a letter, a little later than the rest, that had sent him to the clinic. The general consensus, since the members of their small group all felt limited in sharing their experiences, was that they'd all been given some kind of information chip. Andrea hadn't been asked to the clinic, but as soon as she realized what they were all discussing, it didn't take her long to discover that she'd simply been chipped without any discussion of what they were doing while they were patching her up. And though everyone seemed a little annoyed about the chip, especially since it was uninvited and unwanted but too deep to remove themselves, Carol seemed especially quiet about it. So, of course, Daryl wanted to know what was on her mind—and he didn't feel like she was going to be quite as willing to share in a crowd.
When he finally got Carol somewhat separated from the rest of the "herd," Daryl realized he really had no idea what he wanted to say or how to say it. He searched for the words in silence and Carol seemed oblivious to his struggle. Finally, fearing that she'd simply dart off again, he decided he'd better say something. Even if it wasn't the best, at least it might lead them to having more to discuss.
"You—uh—I'm sure the chip thing, it ain't nothing," Daryl said. He very nearly scrunched up his own face at the words, especially since he didn't believe them in the slightest and wasn't sure why they'd been the ones that his brain had decided to expel from his mouth.
Carol's eyes widened a little, but then returned to their normal size. She did the customary glancing around them that Daryl no longer even noticed.
"It's a tracking device," Carol said. "Or—I don't know, it stores all our information. It's something. It's not nothing or they wouldn't have called us all back there."
Daryl hummed.
"But they called us all back," he pointed out. "So that means it's just—something they're doing now. Sure as taming. Everybody gets a little bit more shit. Lot of people here. You heard 'em say that tomorrow we're on partial lockdown. Three new groups coming in. Probably too damn much information."
"And if they transfer us, our information goes with us," Carol said.
Daryl wasn't entirely sure if she was agreeing with him or pointing out her own theory, but he nodded and hummed just the same. Either way, one theory was as good as the next. There was never any telling what the powers in control of them were doing.
"They're chipping the tame people too," Carol said. "The doctor was chipped."
Daryl shrugged.
"So there ya go, it's what the hell they do these days," Daryl said.
"It means we'll never be free," Carol said. "Don't you see that? It means—this is it. We really are prisoners for the rest of our lives. There's no freedom."
Daryl cocked an eyebrow at her. Honestly, until she'd said that, he'd never even contemplated the idea that they might be free. He just assumed this was the way that things were now. Some people were in power, some were prisoners. That's how it all went down. They'd die here, just as they lived here, and they'd be just as forgotten as every other prisoner that died in these types of facilities. They weren't even allowed their names, their numbers would surely be lost.
"What the hell ever made you think that you'd be free again?" Daryl asked. As soon as he asked the question, he almost wished he could take it back. The expression on Carol's face told him that he might as well have called her a dumbass for her thoughts. He hadn't really meant to do that. He muttered a quick and quiet apology, and her face fell to a more neutral position before it switched again into one that might have been imploring him not to be a dumbass.
"That's what they've told us," Carol said. "At least—that's what they told me. We could be tamed. We could—get out there. We could—become just as civilized as them. We could—get our lives back together."
Daryl swallowed. Something about Carol's demeanor changed by the time she'd reached the end of her statement. There was something there that he wasn't used to seeing that much in the woman who could be quick to leave a conversation and in the woman who seemed just as accepting of their fate as he was. He would have never dreamed that she thought that there was any chance at some kind of "normal" life for all of them, but now it was coming through that maybe she did. Maybe she thought it was possible. Or maybe it was just some kind of hope that she was holding onto.
He shook his head.
"If they told you that," he said, already knowing he didn't believe what he was about to say, "then it must be true. These things? Don't mean nothing. Not if they're chipping everybody."
Carol laughed to herself and shook her head at him.
"It means—this goes with us," Carol said, looking around her. "It means that if we escaped? They'd track us down. It means that—if we tried to assimilate? Legally or otherwise? It means they'd track us down. It means we'll always be tagged. We're always—at least a little bit wild in their eyes."
Daryl chewed at his lip. He couldn't tell her that what she was saying wasn't true or that it was ridiculous to think that way. He'd already, in his opinion, lied to her. And, for whatever reason, he didn't want to lie to her. He guarded his silence instead and she regarded the ground with a little too much interest to dedicate to a pile of dirt and grass. After a moment, her expression changed and she sucked in a deep breath. When she looked at him, she was wearing a half-sincere smile.
She shook her head gently this time. The movement was barely perceptible.
"It doesn't matter," she said.
Daryl guarded his silence. He just looked at her. That's all he could do. There was an odd aching in his chest just to know that he couldn't tell her that what she wanted—or at least what he thought she might want—was probably something that would never happen.
And, oddly enough, he'd never really felt such a strong need before to tell anyone that what they wanted might really happen.
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Carol saw something in Daryl's expression that made her stomach do a somersault. She knew, immediately, what the look was, but she didn't know if she wanted to believe it. She didn't know if it mattered at any rate. Not with their lives. Not with Region Thirty Three hanging around them.
But it was flattering to see that look on his face—and it was something that she hadn't seen in a long time.
Carol swallowed and offered him the best smile that she could muster. Sometimes, even though it didn't truly make anything better, you just wanted some comfort. You wanted someone to tell you that it was going to be OK, even if they had no power to promise such a thing. And you wanted them to hold you, even if they had no way at all of protecting you.
"I never told you," Carol said, lowering her voice in case there might be any eavesdroppers—though at the moment all of the guards were more occupied by the more active members of the general population, "thank you."
Daryl furrowed his brows at her. She felt her smile growing more sincere.
"For holding my hand?" Carol said. "You didn't have to do that. You didn't have to do anything."
"You were scared," Daryl said.
Carol nodded her head gently.
She wasn't exactly scared. Scared wasn't the word that she might have used. It was always the same, so she really knew what to expect. They might do different things, and every now and again they might come up with something new that they wanted to test out on the prisoners to see how they responded, but she still never really felt frightened. The worst that they could do to her, in there, was to kill her. And though she didn't particularly want to die—and though she still held onto some belief that there might be something in this life worth living for—she wasn't afraid to die. Sometimes, and especially in the taming rooms, death felt like it would be a welcome and sweet relief.
She wasn't scared. At least, she wasn't scared of them.
If anything, she was scared of herself. She was scared of what she'd been, of what she'd become. She was scared of what she sometimes believed that she could be. She was scared of the thoughts that she had of things that, if she had the power to do them, she might do to some of the people that she'd met while in one facility or another. She was far more frightened of herself than she'd ever be of a guard.
And she was scared that the things they told her were true.
Maybe Daryl had been right, after all. Maybe she'd been scared.
"Still," Carol said, allowing herself a pause before she continued. "You didn't have to do it."
Daryl looked uncomfortable, but she allowed it. He probably was uncomfortable. She didn't know much about him, not beyond what he'd told her, but she was sure that there was a great deal left to uncover there—if she ever got the chance.
"Maybe I was a little scared too," Daryl said quietly. He didn't sound convinced by his words and Carol wasn't sure if it was because he was speaking before he was sure of what he wanted to say or if he was really trying to say it simply to make her feel better. Maybe he was simply trying to create another shared experience between them. It didn't matter. She'd take it for exactly what it was worth. And these days? It was worth a great deal.
"It's OK to be scared," Carol said.
Daryl looked struck, but he didn't say anything. Carol let the silence between them be comfortable a moment, but she kept watching him and she noticed that he wasn't turning away from her. He was looking at her intently. He was focused on her every move. She was sure that, at that moment, he was probably noticing things about her that nobody had ever noticed before—things she wasn't even aware of.
It was flattering and unnerving.
Her heart thundered in her chest. She didn't know what she was going to do. She didn't know what he was going to do. It wasn't as though they had too many options to decide for themselves what they even wanted.
Carol cast a nervous glance around her and assured herself that the officer nearest them was too occupied with the sandwich he was eating to be paying them any attention. They were talking. They weren't threatening anyone. They weren't even giving off the signal that they might be a threat to each other. For just a moment, they were almost forgotten. They were almost invisible.
Carol's pulse picked up a notch and she began to regret her actions before she'd even done them, but she knew that regretting something left undone was worse than regretting an action. Quickly, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to Daryl's.
She didn't dare to leave them there too long. A quick stolen kiss, she'd learned well from Andrea and Michonne, could be had. It was anything more that drew the attention of those around them. She broke the kiss as quickly as she'd initiated it and immediately she felt her breathing change its pace and felt her cheeks flood with warmth that she was sure was visible.
Daryl stared at her. He stared at her with the same intent look as before. This time, though, his brows were slightly furrowed. She almost grew angry from her embarrassment and wanted to yell at him that he should say something. But she didn't, and she didn't have to.
His face broke into a smile. There was just a hint of one there. It played at the corners of his mouth and drew one side up further than the other. He let go of a breath in an almost sigh.
"What was that?" He asked.
Carol swallowed.
"I think—it's what they call a kiss," she said. She raised an eyebrow at him.
He laughed quietly.
"Smart ass," he said, glancing around them to assure himself that nobody had seen them and nobody was calling them out for their actions. He brought his eyes back to her. "But what..."
Carol sucked in a breath and quickly let it out. She was using a different store of courage, right now, than she'd used in a long time. It seemed almost more difficult to be brave at this moment than it had even when she was being taken to one of the private rooms in taming.
This mattered to her in a different way, even if she didn't want to think about why or how.
"I know a place," Carol said quietly, barely giving voice to her words and counting on Daryl's ability to either have super hearing or to read lips. "They're not too bad after lights out. Right after, the guards haven't changed. The ones that are there are tired. They forget a lot. Right after lights out, ask to go to the bathroom. Say you forgot. Say you were—brushing your teeth and ran out of time. They won't escort you. I know where you're at. Go to the bathroom. If I'm not there—wait in the shower? Out of sight?"
Daryl went slightly bug eyed.
"What if we get caught?" He asked.
Carol shook her head.
"Flag," she said.
He looked uncomfortable and she shook her head again.
"You don't have to," Carol said. "I'll be there. I won't wait long, but I'll wait. You don't have to come. If you don't—I'll know you weren't...comfortable. And—it'll be OK."
"If we get flagged..." Daryl started.
Carol smiled at him, ignoring the fact that she almost felt like her chest was closing up. Her breathing was becoming shallower and shallower as she pushed the limits of her own bravery.
"Then you'll hold my hand," she said quickly.
Rather than stay and embarrass herself by coming to pieces from embarrassment, nerves, or some other sneaky emotion that was trying to choke her, Carol quickly turned and darted as fast as she could back across the yard and toward the safety of her bunks—she only had to get through "night routines" and then she'd really test the limits of her new-found courage.
