AN: Here we are, another chapter.

Warning here for mention of rape. It's not terribly detailed or anything, but it is mentioned so I wanted to offer a warning for anyone triggered by that.

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

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"Do you think you've got any chance of—of stopping worrying and going to sleep?" Daryl asked. "I'm not trying to push but—I gotta clean up scrap all day tomorrow cleaning up after that construction crew. And it's all gotta get done tomorrow because then we got them days off for the big surprise. Whatever the hell that means."

Carol was surprised to hear his voice because she thought he was asleep. She thought he'd been asleep for at least a couple of hours and she thought that she'd been relatively quiet. But, apparently, he could hear her worrying.

"I can go to the couch," Carol said, starting to roll to get out of bed. Daryl caught her arm in the semi-darkness of their bedroom.

"Or you can tell me what the hell's going on and we can talk about it and then we can both go to sleep," Daryl offered.

"It's nothing," Carol said. "At least—it's nothing new."

It was nothing new. It was just the constant repetition of everything that could possibly go wrong all circling around in her mind. It hardly ever stopped, but it was loudest at night when she had nothing else to occupy her.

"Wanna talk about it?" Daryl asked.

Carol smiled to herself because she could hear the heaviness in his voice. He'd at least dozed a little while he'd been in bed. She could tell that he wanted, too, to return to that state as soon as possible. He was awake, but he was attempting to hover somewhere around the line between sleeping and waking without giving over entirely to being conscious.

"I want you to go to sleep," Carol responded.

"Wanna—hold my hand?" Daryl asked. He laughed to himself as he felt around in the darkness and, finding her elbow first, worked his way down her arm to trap her fingers with his. At first the action was playful, but then it was a gentle grasping of her hand in his. His thumb trailed over her hand lazily.

"That's supposed to make me feel better?" Carol asked, making sure that she put enough joviality in her voice to let Daryl know that she was teasing.

He hummed at her.

"It did," he said. "It has, at least. Before."

Carol swallowed. She remembered.

"In the taming pens," she said.

He hummed.

"Don't talk about that," he said.

"It does," Carol mused. Daryl hummed in question and moved around a little on his side of the bed, tugging at Carol's hand accidentally as he did so. "It does make me feel better," Carol said, clarifying her statement.

"Better enough to sleep?" Daryl asked.

Carol answered his question by settling back in the bed and moving closer to him. She untwined her fingers from his and, instead, found his body. He shifted again and settled on his back and Carol carefully curled herself close to him to see if he'd protest. When he didn't, she rested her head on his arm—and he still didn't protest.

"Did you want to tell me what was on your mind?" Daryl asked.

"I think it's gone," Carol admitted. "At least—for now."

"Keep 'til morning?" Daryl asked.

Carol laughed to herself. Nothing she worried about these days was anything that was going away. It was never anything exactly new or original. Everything she worried about would still be there the following day.

"Oh yeah," she agreed. "It'll keep until morning."

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"Milton! Who is Wild A?" Andrea asked. She heard the strain in her own voice from repeating the question. She'd drawn out every word of it in a different way each time she'd repeated it.

"I brought Michonne here for your comfort," Milton responded. "I brought her for you. Not for me, Andrea. Not for the project. I brought Michonne here so that you could be happy. Not so that I could be threatened in my own home. I do NOT appreciate being threatened in my own home!"

Milton's voice broke out into a yell at the last line and Andrea backed up instinctively. She hadn't seen Milton anywhere near what she might classify as angry, but it was obvious that he was getting there. Michonne backed up as well, both of them giving him some space in the living room. They'd woken up well before dawn to wait for him—since he usually managed to slip out while they were both still sleeping these days—and trap him into speaking to them. It was clear that Milton, his breakfast interrupted, was growing tired of being trapped.

"Nobody is threatening you," Andrea said. "Nobody. Not me. Not Michonne. We're not threatening you. But if I'm the second Wild A? Then I'd like to know where the first one is."

Milton looked at Andrea before he dropped his eyes somewhat mournfully back toward the breakfast that he'd barely begun to eat when they'd started questioning him.

"Who was the father of your baby?" Milton asked.

"I don't want to talk about that," Andrea responded. "I want you to tell me who Wild A is. Where is she? What happened to her?" She sighed and pulled out a chair to sit. Putting herself at Milton's level, instead of standing over him, visibly seemed to relax him a little. His shoulders changed—rolled back instead of showing how stiffly he sat in the chair—and he rolled his eyes toward Michonne. Andrea glanced at Michonne and gestured toward the couch with her head. Michonne took the hint and went to perch on the arm of the couch so she could still be somewhat included in their triangle. "Milton—this is your baby. You know that, right? It'll be my child. And Michonne will help me raise it. But it's your baby too. Your son or daughter."

"I believe I'm aware of that," Milton said. Andrea wondered if there might not have been a hint of amusement on his features.

"Are you?" Andrea asked. "Because you never ask me how I'm feeling. Beyond that one time in the bathroom when you asked me if you should call someone. You don't ask how the baby is and you don't ask how I'm feeling and you don't—engage with me. You haven't even told me congratulations or that you're happy about this at all. And now I find out I'm some second Wild A? Am I just an incubator?"

Milton swallowed.

"Alice tells me everything about your health," Milton said. "She's a doctor. It's her job to monitor your health and report to me about it. I assumed that you would understand that I was pleased with the fact that you're pregnant. Would it make you feel better if I were to tell you congratulations? If I were to ask you about—how you're feeling?"

"Yes," Andrea said. "It would, actually. Especially if—you weren't asking me about how I would feel if you did something horrible to me."

"In addition to that?" Milton asked. "Because the questions that I ask you are necessary for the project. There are unpleasant aspects of this whole project for everyone involved. I do what I do for the greater good. For your own good. Long term."

"In addition to the questions," Andrea ceded. Milton nodded his head. He reached across the table, a short distance, and dragged the leather bound legal pad toward him that he was carrying these days. He opened the cover and used his pen to scratch notes on the pad. Andrea assumed that, maybe, he needed a reminder to ask polite questions in addition to the ones that he normally subjected her to answering. She waited until he was done. When he didn't say anything else, she assumed he was going to wait for a fresh new day to start with the polite chit-chat. And she didn't care, because she had other things on her mind. "Who is Wild A, Milton?" Andrea asked again.

"Who was the father of your baby?" Milton asked.

"Quid pro quo?" Andrea asked. "I answer yours and you answer mine?"

"I'll tell you what I can," Milton said. "But I can't tell you everything. To do so would be to compromise the whole experiment. The whole project of Wave Thirty Three. To do so would mean starting over and it would mean that—you would be removed from the project. Do you know what that means, Andrea?"

"They would kill me," Andrea said.

"First they would keep you in prison," Milton said. "Long enough for the child to be born. They would tell me that you were well, but what they would really mean is that you were alive. They wouldn't tell me anything else about you once they'd given me the child, for whom I'd have to find a suitable surrogate."

"What can you tell me?" Andrea asked.

"Who was the father of your baby?" Milton repeated.

"What does that matter?" Andrea asked.

"It matters, I believe, a great deal more than I even know at this precise moment," Milton said.

"I don't know," Andrea said. "We weren't formally introduced."

"A type of insemination in the wild?" Milton asked.

"The type where—I didn't hear them coming," Andrea said. "We made camp and set snares. Michonne went the next morning to check the snares and I was washing clothes. I guess they hit me with something. I didn't know him. I told you before that there were some horrible people who took advantage of their situation in the wild." Milton nodded and scratched something on the piece of paper. "Please don't write that down," Andrea said.

"You have to be honest with me, Andrea," Milton said. "It's important that I know—your history. What happened to the man?"

"He lost his head over the whole thing," Michonne said. "Am I allowed to answer?" She asked, raising her eyebrows at Milton when he looked at her like she'd done something out of turn. He nodded.

"You mean to say that he went mad from grief or shame or some other such emotion?" Milton asked, this time directing his question to Michonne.

"I mean to say that it wasn't hard for me to find them," Michonne said. "And when I found them? And saw—what was going on? He lost his head. I decapitated him. Then I killed the other three men that were with him."

"I see," Milton said, scratching further notes onto his legal pad. "Do you ever regret that course of action?"

"Never," Michonne said. "And—just so you know? I'd do it again." Andrea saw Michonne stir a little, like she might stand up from her seat on the arm of the couch. In many ways, Andrea had made peace with what happened that day more than Michonne had. "You weren't planning anything like that, were you, Milton?"

Milton shook his head.

"On the contrary," Milton said. "It was one of the changes that I made from the original model."

"What model is this?" Andrea asked. "That you keep talking about?"

"The model for recreating the circumstances of Wild A," Milton said blankly. "The woman about whom you have so much interest."

"I'm interested in her because, apparently, I'm supposed to be her," Andrea said.

Milton cleared his throat.

"You are not Wild A," he said. "In fact, it's incorrect to say that you're even the second Wild A. You're Andrea. A late captured wild who is part of the experiment to recreate, study, and record the experiences of Wild A following a modified model. Does that make you feel better informed?"

"No," Andrea admitted. "Because I still don't know who Wild A was or what the—fuck is in this model."

"Telling you everything would force me to start again," Milton said. "And I've already told you that if that were to happen? You would be the one to suffer the most loss. It's really better to trust me. If you trust me, you won't get hurt. After the incident, how did you react when you learned you were pregnant?"

"Does she really have to answer this?" Michonne asked, interjecting on Andrea's behalf. Andrea waved a hand at her.

"You want to know something about Wild A," Milton said. "My questions and the way that you answer them will help me determine how much I can tell you without compromising the integrity of the project."

"I'll answer them," Andrea assured him. "I—was upset, at first. I didn't know I was pregnant until I was pretty far along. I kept explaining away the symptoms. I think Mich knew before I did, but she didn't make me come to terms with it. But—when I finally accepted it? I had no choice but to come to terms with it. I was going to have a baby. A baby was something that I had always wanted, but never really thought I'd have. I chose to look at it as a blessing out of something terrible."

"So you weren't angry?" Milton asked.

"I was angry about what happened," Andrea said. "But—I never felt angry with my son. He was a baby. A perfect, wonderful little boy. And I wasn't angry with him because he didn't do anything to me or anyone else."

"But you were angry when they took him?" Milton asked.

Andrea shrugged and swallowed. She could feel her throat swelling and chest aching. All they had to do was mention it and she felt like she couldn't breathe. She had managed to overcome a number of things in her life—Andrew's conception among them—but she hadn't managed to overcome her feelings surrounding her capture. She shook her head.

"I don't know if anger was what I felt first," Andrea admitted, hearing herself choking on her own words.

"What emotion would you say you felt?" Milton asked.

"All of them," Andrea said. "Every terrible emotion that exists—all at once."

Milton nodded his head.

"Did you want to kill them?" Milton asked.

Andrea nodded her head. It was the only response that she could give.

"You did kill one of them, didn't you? One of your captors was killed at your capture," Milton said.

"I killed him," Michonne said. "When they processed us, they assumed it was Andrea. She thought that—they would kill her for it and she said it was her. I found out later that she took the rap for it. But—I killed him. She couldn't have. They took her in unconscious. Strangled her because she wouldn't—stop screaming and fighting."

"You thought they would kill you and still told them you did it?" Milton asked.

Andrea sucked in a breath and held it for a moment, wishing it would somehow calm her mind.

"I wanted to die," she said.

Milton nodded his head.

"Do you want to die now?" He asked.

"Sometimes," Andrea said. "You know that."

"I know you wanted to die," Milton said. "Do you want to die now? At this moment?"

"Are you going to make me want to die?" Andrea asked.

"Your death is the farthest thing from my intentions," Milton said.

"Who was Wild A?" Andrea asked.

Milton closed the cover from his legal pad.

"My breakfast is already cold," Milton said. "I don't like—to eat it when it's cold. I'm going to be late for work and I don't like tardiness. You need to call them for your breakfast and you need to eat because Alice says that's an important thing when you're pregnant. What you've told me will help me decide how much I can tell you. Any of you. Both of you. I'll tell you this evening after I've eaten my dinner in peace and without threat from either of you."

"Can we tell T-Dog too?" Andrea asked.

"You can tell any of your friends," Milton said. "As long as they have the presence of mind to keep a secret to save their own lives. To save all of your lives."