AN: Here we go, another chapter here.

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

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"This is Edith," Regina said, her hand on the back of the almost-woman that she was presenting to Samirah.

A short trip to make some arrangements and iron out some issues had taken Samirah away, but she was back. The fact that John and Regina had been accepted to adopt, something that was apparently akin to making it through an obstacle course that was lit on fire, was something to celebrate. Samirah hadn't realized, however, that the girl they were getting was hardly a child.

To cover her shock, Samirah forced a smile and offered a hand toward Edith. Edith didn't take it, though, and she offered no smile of her own.

"It's nice to meet you," Samirah said, attempting to save the situation.

There was still no response from the almost-woman. Samirah studied her. If she was sixteen, she was born at the turn of the world. Any older would mean that, whether she held any memories of it, she was born before. Any younger would mean she was born in the thick of things—when it was really bad and when adults had to have a certain mettle to survive.

Edith had a story, but she wasn't sharing it with anyone. She was too tight lipped for that, it was clear.

"Isn't she lovely?" Regina prompted. Samirah shifted her gaze to the woman. Regina had wanted a baby so badly that Samirah had hoped for her that it would come to pass. She'd been nearly consumed with it like a fever. However, even with the fever clouding her mind, Samirah couldn't believe that this was what Regina wanted.

"She's beautiful," Samirah said, the words tasting strange in her mouth when directed to Regina about Edith, who was present. Regina seemed pleased with the confirmation, however, and immediately excused Edith—whom she'd drawn from her room for the presentation—to return to her leisure. As soon as the girl left, Regina went back to preparing dinner, which Samirah's arrival had interrupted, and Samirah lingered around the kitchen for a few moments and worked on finding the right words for what she wanted to say. Finally, she sucked in a breath and committed to it. However, what came out was unsatisfying and not at all what she'd planned to say. She halted at the one word. "Edith?"

Regina looked at her, a smile on her face, but there was more behind the smile. It couldn't hold long and then it finally fell.

"She's a capture," Regina said, as though this might be news to Samirah. "She's slated to go to Region Thirty Three if she doesn't—assimilate. But she hasn't had much of a chance. The wild born children don't get adopted unless it's—a situation like ours. She hasn't had any—upbringing."

Samirah leaned against the kitchen counter and kept quiet to let Regina keep talking. The faucet was on. All the information would come out because it needed to come out. Regina needed to share this with someone—all of it—and likely John already knew about it and had his own opinions. She needed fresh ears and Samirah was willing to be that.

"They said that if we take her, then they can promise us another wild born. A younger one. And if that works out? Captivity born infant? Or even—if there are any—we get first dibs on a baby given up," Regina said. "It's the shortest distance."

"Three children?" Samirah asked.

"We don't have to keep her," Regina said, her words coming out as little more than air. "If she assimilates well? She'll be released. If not?"

She didn't finish and Samirah didn't need her to finish. If not, the girl would go into the facilities where she would be tamed with the hope and understanding that, eventually, she may be able to be released into society as a fully functioning member.

"What do you know about her?" Samirah asked.

Regina shook her head.

"Nothing," she said. "She's—a wild born. She was captured. I know her number and that's it. She doesn't talk about it. She doesn't seem to talk about much, really."

"Edith isn't her name?" Samirah asked. Regina shook her head.

"My mother's name," Regina said. "Edith and then Louise for John's mother. We had to give her something. I can't call her WB639 like she's a robot while she's here."

"Did you ask her what her real name is?" Samirah pressed. Regina half nodded and half shrugged as a response.

"She doesn't want to talk," Regina said. She shook her head. "I'm just trying to get through this. I'm just—trying to focus on giving her what I can for the time that she's here. It's up to her where she goes from here. Realistically? She's old enough to make her own decisions. I know—or I think—she'll go to Region Thirty Three. You know how it is, once wild, always wild."

Samirah felt her stomach roll.

"That's not always true," Samirah said.

Regina looked at her and raised her eyebrows.

"It's not?" She asked. The question was clearly not a real question. It was something of a challenge. It exerted Regina's beliefs on the topic with nothing more than the tone of her voice.

"If it is, then we're wasting our time," Samirah said. "All the—attempts to...tame? We're wasting our time."

"We're biding our time, I think. Sometimes. There's discussion right now about—euthanizing or whatever you want to call it. Lessen the burden," Regina said. "If—if they could be tamed? If it could really happen that they'd be released and not revert immediately back to what they were? Why would we even be discussing the most humane way to handle the numbers?"

Samirah's stomach, now, was churning to a point that she wasn't comfortable with. She willed herself not to gag at the thoughts that were turning over and over in her mind.

It was the year 16 AT. The Power was dealing with things. The world had to keep moving forward. It had to keep progressing. There were ways that this could go, and right now it felt like everything around them was being set up into a number of experiments. Which way would humankind go? Put on the board, how would they play?

And Samirah was in an uncomfortable position, but it was one that she couldn't refuse.

"If they can't be tamed," Samirah said, "then I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what—John's working for. If they're just animals, with not a shred of something human inside them? I don't know what I'm working for..."

Regina shook her head.

"Maybe you're working for nothing," Regina said. "Or maybe I'm just being pessimistic. Maybe they can be tamed. Maybe they can be released. Maybe—it'll all work out. Or..."

Samirah hummed, already knowing what her friend was thinking, but needing her to lay it out all out between them.

"Maybe we eradicate them all and we start over," Regina said. "A fresh slate."

Samirah swallowed at the thought, a salty taste in her mouth to go with her unease.

A fresh slate. How many times had the world seen that?

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"Are you crazy?" Michonne asked, almost hissing in her attempts to keep her voice low.

"I think so," Carol confirmed, nodding her head at the woman. Huddled together on the bunk for a moment, they were doing their best to speak in nothing above a whisper so as to not wake any of the other women. Michonne had heard Carol when she'd slipped back into the room—managing to avoid the guard entirely because he was sleeping on the job—and she'd immediately pressed her for some kind of explanation about where Carol had been.

And this time she hadn't been stealing treats from the kitchen.

"What if you get...?" But Michonne didn't finish.

Carol shook her head at her at any rate. She could make Michonne out, given the fact that there was light coming in from the small upper windows in the dorm that let in a faint glow from the floodlights outside. She could see the concern on her face.

"I don't think he had anything," Carol said. "And if he did? I don't really care. I don't. Even if it kills me—I haven't lost anything that was worth anything to me anyway."

"I wasn't talking about disease," Michonne responsed. "What if you get—pregnant?"

Carol felt her heart skip a beat. That was the last thing that she wanted. It was the last thing that anybody wanted. They knew what happened. They knew it was torture to have children taken from you. It was torture, too, to have to carry the child to term, all the while living in Region Thirty Three, and then to deliver that child never to be allowed to hold it in their arms. Carol shook her head.

"I'm not getting pregnant," Carol said. "If that ship hasn't sailed entirely, it's certainly left the dock. It won't happen."

"But you're willing to take the chance it could," Michonne pointed out.

"Don't play high and mighty with me," Carol said. "We take some chances for a little comfort. We do things. You're going to tell me that if you and Andrea could...if a baby could come from it? Then you wouldn't?"

Michonne didn't respond.

"I know you," Carol said. "I know Andrea. And I know—your story. Don't lecture me. You're not my mother."

Michonne accepted the warning in Carol's voice. She had to. Carol hadn't lied. In regard to Andrea and Michonne, she might not know it all, but she knew most of it. She'd been the first and only one, at least in the beginning, to reach out to the two women—late captures who'd both come in looking almost entirely broken in both the physical and emotional senses of the word—and she'd taken on their pain to help lighten the load for them.

"I just don't want to see you..." Michonne said, leaving it hanging. It was all she offered in defense of herself at the moment.

"You never even asked me why," Carol said. "Or how it was. Or what I—felt."

Michonne, seeming to feel that it was her duty as a friend, responded back with those questions, rearranged but otherwise exactly as Carol had presented them, in a somewhat defeated voice. Carol ignored the questions. She'd answer them as she wanted. That was all there was to it. She would say what she wanted to say. Nothing more and nothing less. Michonne already knew that too.

"I felt," Carol mused.

"Felt what?" Michonne asked.

Carol shook her head.

"I don't think it matters," Carol said. "It doesn't matter. It's not...it doesn't matter what I felt. It just—I felt."

Michonne snorted.

"I think I know what you felt," Michonne teased.

Carol frowned at her and Michonne raised her eyebrows.

"Joke," Michonne offered. Carol shook her head. A joke might be funny at other times, but at the moment she wasn't feeling like laughing or making light of the whole thing. She was surprised at herself, actually, because she'd thought that it might be nice. She'd thought that maybe she could offer a little comfort to Daryl. Maybe she could offer him something nice, some temporary escape from this whole cruel world. She'd thought that she might enjoy being in a man's arms again. She thought that she might get a little pleasure—if she was lucky—from the whole thing. But she'd never expected to feel the way that she felt. She'd never expected to really feel.

"I felt," Carol repeated. "I feel and..."

"And?" Michonne pushed.

"And I don't know what it is," Carol said. "But I know that—for the first time in a long time? It isn't fear or hate or...pain. It feels...good."

Michonne squirmed a little on the mattress, moving herself next to Carol. In the dark and quiet bunk—with Officer Sleeps-A-Lot on guard and not likely to wake unless alerted or unless something made too harsh a noise—she took a chance and dropped an arm around Carol's shoulder, bringing her closer to her for a hug.

"I'm sorry I called you crazy," Michonne said quietly. She knew that the chance to feel something good, these days, was worth the risk. If it weren't, she and Andrea would have never gotten the reputation from the guards of having to be flagged differently to keep them apart as much as possible. Everyone knew it wasn't an accident. Michonne would understand, if she was honest, the novelty of something that felt good in a sea of so many things that felt so bad. She seemed to be understanding, now, that that was all that Carol wanted right now, even if she hadn't realized it before. "Hold onto the feeling," Michonne said. "As long as you can. The rest? It'll work itself out."