AN: Here we go, another chapter here.

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

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"I'm going to make sure he's OK," Alice assured Andrea. "But first I just want to make sure you're OK."

Carol stood back a decent distance. Melodye sat quietly in the corner on a chair and Carol wasn't even sure if Andrea and Michonne had noticed the woman yet. Andrea had one thing on her mind and that was being assured that her baby was fine. Michonne seemed preoccupied, but Carol assumed that much of her concern was owing to the fact that Andrea was so worked up.

"Your heart is pounding," Alice said, giving up on trying to listen to Andrea's heartbeat. "I'm not going to get anything accurate out of you until you calm down a little. Here," she said, offering Andrea the sheet that she'd brought, "shimmy out of your pants and get comfortable."

Rather than being bothered by the prospect of a thorough examination, Carol thought Andrea looked relieved. She couldn't blame her. Honestly, if she was in her position, she'd have given Alice permission to do with her what she pleased as long as she told her what she wanted to know. Michonne helped Andrea, who was still reduced to hobbling around while she tried not to put too much weight on her foot, and she finally got her situated for Alice to examine her.

"Everything looks fine," Alice said, finishing up her examination as everyone else in the room seemed to be holding their breath. "Everything related to the baby, I mean. Your cervix looks good. It doesn't look like you're having any problems. There's no indication of anything. I'm going to see if I can pick up a heartbeat."

Carol felt Andrea's relief when she heard the familiar sound of the fast-paced heartbeat. She was pretty sure that if Alice listened, at that moment, to Andrea's heartbeat, she would have heard it slowing down rapidly. Andrea relaxed against the table.

"So he's OK?" She asked.

"Fine," Alice said. "Perfectly fine. At least, as far as I can tell." When she was entirely finished with her examination, Alice walked around to stand beside Andrea again and Andrea sat up to make the conversation a little more comfortable. "What got you in here?" Alice asked. "Just paranoid or was there something concrete that made you think it wasn't right?"

"It just didn't feel right," Andrea said. "I didn't feel right. Now—I just feel silly."

Alice laughed.

"Don't feel silly. Ever. I'd rather every one of my patients page me ten times a day with a worry than let something go unsaid that could be an indication of a problem. You told me on the phone that you didn't feel right. So what does that mean?" Alice asked.

Andrea glanced at Michonne and then back at Alice.

"I wasn't sick this morning," Andrea said. "I was queasy, but I wasn't sick. Everything hurts, and that includes my back and—everything. It just felt off."

"I saw your back," Alice said. "And, honestly? I'd be more surprised if everything didn't hurt. And maybe your morning sickness is getting better. Or maybe your body just decided that you had enough going on right now and it thought—it would be nice to give you a break."

"Are you mad that I made a big deal over nothing?" Andrea asked.

Alice shook her head.

"You didn't know it was nothing," Alice said. "And—your current circumstance aside? Your back hurting could be an indication of something that I want to know about. A change in the way your pregnancy is going could be an indication of something I need to be aware of. It just so happens that this time? He's just fine and it appears to be nothing. But—I don't want that to stop you from telling me if it happens again or you feel that way again. I'm just glad it's nothing."

"Being worried about your baby is the sign of a good mother," Melodye offered, getting to her feet. As she stepped forward, Carol could see an expression cross Andrea's face that let her know that the woman hadn't been aware of Melodye's presence.

"Andrea has always been a good mother," Michonne said.

Carol didn't miss the change in Michonne's stance. She stepped forward, just a half a step, but it was enough that her body language made clear what she was thinking. Carol had seen it before.

Michonne wasn't threatening anyone, but she was prepared at that moment to protect Andrea, if that's what she had to do.

Melodye was a stranger to them both and they'd been through a lot in a couple of days. The fatigue of their experiences was on both women's faces, as were the bruises and cuts and other battle scars of their recent experiences.

Alice must have sensed it too. She quickly intervened to introduce Melodye and bring her into the realm of friend instead of leaving her as a possible foe.

"Michonne, Andrea? This is Mel. This is my partner," Alice said. Both women clearly relaxed a little. Michonne took a breath that was deep enough that it was visible to Carol.

"Andrea was always a good mother," Michonne repeated, softening her tone this time. Instead of threatening anyone, this time she reached and took Andrea's hand. Andrea smiled softly at her and kissed her hand as a response.

"You were some of the ones that lost your child," Melodye said. "And I'm so sorry to hear—to hear all of it. They said the children were taken to be kept safe, but it seems that many of them must have already been safe or they wouldn't have even been alive in the wild to be captured."

"Neither of us would've been captured if it hadn't been for Andrew," Michonne said. "Andrea could've gotten away from them but she went back for him. That's how she lost enough time for them to catch her. That's how they were able to get her."

"And you?" Melodye asked.

"They shot Andrea," Michonne said. "They took Andrew, and they took Andrea. After they shot her. I let them take me."

"Al, the baby's a boy?" Melodye asked, gesturing a hand toward Andrea.

Alice shrugged her shoulders and shook her head at the same time.

"We don't know," she said. "Not yet. But boy or girl, whatever we call it has just as much chance of being right as the other."

"I think it's nicer to call the baby something," Andrea said. "I like—I prefer—to think of the baby as a boy instead of just baby."

"She called our son a girl until he was born," Michonne said.

Melodye laughed quietly and then offered both of them a warm smile.

"Well, congratulations," she said. "I'm glad that—he's doing well. And I'm sorry about what happened to you. And what happened to your son."

Not regarding her as anyone suspicious, both Michonne and Andrea quietly thanked Melodye. It was Carol that broke in, next, to let them in on what they would eventually find out. She felt like, if nobody told them, they'd feel betrayed when they discovered Melodye's role because she showed up at their house to evaluate them. And feeling betrayed, Carol knew, wouldn't help them when it came down to winning her over—if that's what any of them really had to do.

"Melodye's going to be working with the project," Carol said quickly. She smiled as convincingly as she could when she realized she'd suddenly gotten everyone's attention. She was accustomed to having quite so many eyes on her at any one time unless they belonged to guards that were hoping to catch her for one imagined crime or another. "She's going to be one of the psychiatrists that's evaluating us."

Andrea backed up as much as she could in her current position. Michonne's earlier tension returned. Carol thought that, maybe, she should have picked her words more carefully to break the news to them.

Melodye handled it, though, by simply putting her hands up in mock surrender and offering the same smile as before to the women.

"I'm part of the psychiatric evaluation team, yes," Melodye said. "Milton hired me to give a second opinion. I'll be sitting down and talking to you several times. I'll be talking to you about your past, how you're doing here, and about—what you want for the future. What you want for yourselves and your child."

"And you already think I'm crazy," Andrea offered. "So that's—great. That's excellent. Alice?"

"Nobody thinks you're crazy," Melodye said, not allowing Alice to answer Andrea's concern for her. "Nobody. I don't. Alice doesn't. And Milton certainly doesn't. You were one of the reasons he hired me. What happened to you was one of the reasons that he hired me."

"She's right," Alice said quickly. "Andrea—Milton was so bothered by what happened to you? He had the Governor hire Melodye as a second so that there would be more than one evaluation submitted. And then? He had the Governor make a decree that no one within Woodbury could touch a citizen without due cause. Not even guards are allowed to touch a citizen unless that citizen is an active danger to themselves or others. Not a suspected danger. An active danger. Milton just added a huge level of security for every person in here because of what happened to you. And, on top of that? He had it decreed that nobody can touch you without your permission except in the case of a medical emergency when you're not able to speak for yourself. His level of protection, right now, is so high that you could have me charged for examining you because—with everything—I forgot to ask your permission to do so."

Andrea's mouth fell slightly open.

"I wouldn't do that," she said, shaking her head.

Alice laughed to herself.

"I didn't think you would," Alice said. "But you could. That's how serious Milton was about stopping what happened from happening again. To you or anyone else. You and Michonne are safer, but everyone—Carol and everyone else—is safer too."

"And hiring me was another part of that safety net," Melodye said. "So to speak. Before it would have been Maggie's evaluation alone that would have decided who was mentally wild and who wasn't. Who was ready to go into society and who was better off never having contact with society. Now we both get a say in the matter."

"And you don't think I'm crazy?" Andrea asked. "For—calling about an emergency that actually wasn't an emergency at all?"

"I think that you're human," Melodye said. "At least—without talking to you for very long—I think it was a very human thing to do. I had a nephew and when he was about...four, I guess? He swallowed a dime. He was fine, but my sister was convinced that the dime was going to break down in his system and cause some kind of poisoning and kill him. She called me, crying hysterically about it, and she worried herself sick until she took him, in the middle of the night, to the emergency room. She wasn't satisfied until the doctor told her that he wasn't the first child to ever swallow a dime. He might not be the last. But it certainly didn't seem like it was going to be fatal. I didn't think she was crazy. I thought she was being a mother. And that's what I think you're doing. You're being a mother."

"How do we know what gets us dubbed as Wild?" Michonne asked. "How do we know—if we're failing the test? Because, frankly, the only thing that go us dubbed as wild before was surviving. It was doing what we had to do to survive."

Melodye frowned at Michonne and shook her head. Carol felt her own shoulders tense. She wanted to know, as desperately as Michonne, what it was that would get them dubbed as wild or not wild.

Because, as Michonne had said, before it seemed that the simple act of surviving, however they could, had been their downfall.

Carol had never made it to a safe zone. When her husband had been killed, and she'd been left in a world with her infant daughter that was overrun with the Dead, she'd thought herself safer alone than in the company of people she didn't know—especially if those people were men. She'd learned to kill the Dead to save her life and to save her daughter's life.

And, as time had gone on, she'd stopped seeking the shelter of a safe zone. She'd learned she didn't need it. She'd learned that she could survive and that, even if it wasn't always easy, she could keep herself and her daughter alive.

Once she'd begun to see little groups of neighborhoods popping up here and there—some sign that civilization was on the mend—she'd tried to venture near to near to one of the communities. She'd thought about seeking some kind of help there. But they'd shot at her when she neared their fences and she'd fled.

Among the Dead, away from the new-forming towns, Carol could keep Sophia safe. The Dead were simple. They wanted to kill her to eat her. Their motivations were clear. Their actions were predictable. Humans weren't quite as predictable. They were much more dangerous.

So Carol avoided humans, in the so-called wild and in the community clusters. And when she'd started to see the notifications, she'd simply moved farther away from them because the government that was behind the notifications was a government full of people—dangerous and unpredictable people—and Carol didn't know if she could survive with them. She didn't know if she could keep Sophia safe.

But, alone, with only the Dead to commonly contend with, Carol was surviving. And her daughter, growing like a weed, was surviving.

When they'd been captured, Sophia was a child—her infancy was years behind her—and Carol's fears had only been confirmed. She could protect her daughter against the Dead, but it was people that she couldn't trust. And that distrust of people, it seemed—or at least the distrust of people who expected to be blindly trusted without question or concern—was what had made her wild.

Though, if such a thing was truly at the heart of being wild, Carol didn't know how there was anyone who wasn't wild. And she was certain that she wasn't tame because her distrust of people, now, was even worse than it had been back then—she'd been taught to trust them even less when all her darkest fears about mankind had been realized.

So she didn't know how any of them could truly prove their human status.

Unless, of course, they had an insider's perspective on what exactly they needed to do to be considered human. Then they could play their roles perfectly. They could win the game.

Melodye shook her head at Michonne. She hesitated, starting to speak and then stopping it more than once, before she finally gave a definitive response to Michonne.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I can't tell you that. But you'll be fine. I'm sure you will."

Carol swallowed.

Melodye was going to be around the office a lot. Alice had said so herself. And, if Carol read her correctly, she was warm and open. She wanted to help them.

And Carol really wanted the woman's help.

Given enough time, Carol was sure that Melodye would tell her exactly what she needed to know—exactly what they all needed to know. She might not ever tell her outright, of course, because she believed that she couldn't or she shouldn't, but Carol thought that she'd eventually tell her all that she needed to know—she just had to convince her that it wasn't what she was doing.