AN: Hi everyone, here's another chapter.
Please pardon my absence. I've been surrounded by people and without internet.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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"I'm really not starving myself," Andrea muttered around the food she was chewing.
Judging by the way that she was eating the food, Carol wasn't sure if she was telling the truth. She ate like she hadn't eaten in days. If her appetite was always so strong, she certainly wasn't starving herself. But her appetite, too, could easily be the result of just such a denied starvation.
"So then this is just friendly lunch," Carol said. "Just—you and me, once a day. And all Milton needs to know is that Alice recommends it."
"Twins?" Andrea asked, letting a tick and a half of silence fall between what Carol had said and when she asked her question to change the direction of their conversation.
Carol smiled to herself and nodded.
"Yeah," she said. "That's what Alice tells me. That's what the ultrasound showed. Twins. Two little jellybeans right now. That's what Alice calls them."
"You say that like you don't believe it," Andrea pointed out. Her tone raised slightly.
Carol shrugged her shoulders.
"I believe it," she said. "But I don't think it's sunk in for me. Not yet. I mean...I hardly even feel pregnant. It's not like it was with Sophia. When I was pregnant with Sophia? I was miserable. You'd think it would be worse with twins. I'm tired, but I'm doing a lot so there's a reason to be tired. I'm sick in the middle of the night, but it doesn't last long and it's not—it's not the sickest I've ever been."
Andrea laughed.
"This baby is trying to kill me," Andrea said. "It's exactly the opposite for me. I didn't know I was pregnant with Andrew until I was showing. I mean—really showing. Like I couldn't pretend that it wasn't there anymore. Then I realized there were little things here and there, but I just hadn't paid attention to them."
"You didn't have time to pay attention to them," Carol said. Andrea nodded her head. Pregnancy out there would be, Carol imagined, very different than pregnancy before the turn, and certainly different than what they were experiencing in Woodbury. "Now you have all the time in the world to notice everything. You don't even have the distractions that I have."
Andrea hummed.
"Still, I don't believe he's real sometimes. Sometimes? I convince myself that it's all an elaborate trick. The sonogram. The morning sickness. It's all some kind of psychological game with smoke and mirrors. I think I'm pregnant because they've convinced me to think I'm pregnant."
"I've seen your tests," Carol said. "And your sonograms. And I can see you're starting to show a little. It's not a trick, Andrea."
"I need him to move," Andrea said. "I keep focusing on it. I just—sit and wait for it. But he isn't moving yet."
"He's moving," Carol said. "We all saw it. You just can't feel it yet."
"You know Milton is determined that there has to be another," Andrea said. "There has to be two. And—sometimes it's like he doesn't understand that I can't start on the second one until this one is born. It would be easier if I had gotten lucky like you and just had the two to start with."
Carol swallowed. As far as she knew, she was the only one that was carrying twins. It was making her something of a celebrity in Woodbury. She hadn't thought that it might actually be the kind of thing that could make some people at least a little jealous. It was hard for her to imagine it might because she was staying awake some nights worrying about the difficulties that might come, later in the pregnancy, as a result of trying to carry two instead of one.
"I had a little help," Carol said. Andrea looked at her and Carol nodded her head gently. "Daryl and I were...we were having some problems. Some complication. Alice helped."
"You mean drugs?" Andrea asked, leaning closer to Carol. Carol nodded her head in response.
"But you can't say anything," Carol said. "Not to anyone. Not until Alice goes public with it."
Andrea laughed to herself.
"Who the hell am I going to tell?" Andrea asked. "Milton hardly talks to me. Michonne's so exhausted that she just wants to sleep when she gets home and she leaves for work in the morning while I'm still dying on the bathroom floor. I can tell the baby but—if he exists? He already knows now." She shrugged her shoulders. "I wish she'd offered it to me. Get the two done at once. That's the way to go."
Carol reached her hand across the table and caught Andrea's. She squeezed it and Andrea turned her hand to return the squeeze.
"You will get through this," Carol said. "Even if it looks to you like you won't? You'll get through this. We all will."
Even if Carol had her doubts at times, she realized this wasn't the time or the place to air them. Not right now. Maybe, in the future, she could come bringing her problems, but first she needed to get Andrea back on solid ground. Andrea might help her eventually, but Carol had to be the one who was a leaning post for now.
Andrea shook her head, some tears starting to show around the lower lids of her eyes.
"Wild A committed suicide," Andrea said. "Whatever they did to her? It was bad enough that she committed suicide."
"You're not Wild A," Carol offered. "You're Andrea. Former Civil Rights lawyer. Former big sister and daughter. Partner to Michonne. Friend to anyone who ever needed one in Region Thirty Three. Former and current mother. You are not Wild A."
"But I'm supposed to be," Andrea said. "And I just keep thinking...what else are they going to do to me? What else are they going to do to make everything repeat itself? To make me kill myself?"
Carol sat back in her chair and considered it a moment. It wasn't the first time that she'd thought about it, of course. She'd overheard more than she was probably supposed to overhear about the project. About Wild A. About Wave Thirty Three and the government. In reality, she was privy to a number of conversations that she was sure that, from the other room in the clinic, she wasn't supposed to overhear.
And she was just holding onto all of it, slowly processing it, and trying to figure it all out for herself. She was trying to figure out where it all came in handy for her.
Maybe some of it was important now.
"Maybe the goal isn't to make everything repeat itself," Carol said. "Maybe the goal is the exact opposite of that. Maybe the whole idea of Woodbury—the whole idea of Wave Thirty Three—is that things don't repeat. Maybe it's that—they were wrong before." Carol sat forward. Andrea was looking at her, food finished, with a furrowed brow. "The government? The Governor? The man who is running the country and, maybe, the whole world? Maybe he doesn't want things to repeat themselves. Maybe he wants proof that they won't. The people out there? The non-wilds? They're not reproducing, Andrea. They're scared of everything. They're terrified of their own shadows. They're not reproducing because—because they're scared. They're raising what they dare to raise of the wild-born children that get adopted out. But—I don't know how many of those actually find homes. We're population control. If we make it out of here? We're making it out of here with babies. Children. We come out of here the majority. We come out literally rebuilding the world. The future. Maybe the goal isn't to make everything repeat itself."
"Or maybe it's that we have babies and they take them for all the assholes that won't have them," Andrea said.
Carol sighed and sat back, crossing her arms across her chest.
"I've thought of that," Carol said. "Believe me. I've thought of that."
"And you don't think so?" Andrea asked.
"I don't know," Carol admitted. "But I don't feel like that's what's happening here. I just—don't. I don't have any reason not to, but I don't."
"I hope you're right," Andrea said.
Carol nodded her head in agreement. She hoped she was right too. Her confidence in everything ebbed and flowed like the tide. One day she was sure they were going to get through this and they'd end up on top. Other days she expected them to show up and tell them all that they were being executed in mass.
"They called us Wilds because we existed out there," Carol said. "We existed in a world that they couldn't imagine surviving in. We survived when so many people didn't. They called us Wilds because we did whatever we had to do to stay alive and to keep our people alive. Our children alive. Our friends and family alive. Out there. They called us Wilds because we didn't trust a government that was dropping bombs on Atlanta and probably every other major city in the country. We didn't trust a government that probably killed as many people as it saved. But..."
"But?" Andrea pressed when Carol broke off to think about her own words.
Carol shrugged and shook her head.
"But the government is different now," Carol said. "From what I've heard? The government's been through a lot of changes since then."
"We don't know they're good changes," Andrea said.
"And we don't know they're bad," Carol said quickly. "We just know things are different. So maybe that's what the Governor wants. Maybe he wants different. Maybe we're here to show him that we're different. That Wilds are different. From anything that he's ever thought before."
"We know that," Andrea said. "We know we're here to debunk the idea of Wild and non-Wild."
"So that's what we do," Carol said. "You're not Wild A. And that's the whole point. You're not Wild A, so you've got to be the opposite of Wild A. You lived through that out there. You can live through this in here. You just need to focus your mind. They won't give you anything to focus on, so you create it yourself."
Andrea laughed to herself.
"That's a lot easier said than done when you're trying to fill silence day in and day out without nothing to distract you," Andrea said. "They even limit how many books I can read."
"Ask for a notebook," Carol said. "A notebook and a pen. And you focus all your attention on him. On your baby. Obsessively. Write down how much you eat. Request scales. Request a tape measure. Every day you record how much you weigh. How much he's grown. How many ounces. How many inches. Down to tenths. You record every feeling. Every possible kick or hiccup."
"Drive myself crazy?" Andrea asked.
"Driving yourself crazy with something you love is better than going crazy with something else," Carol said.
"Have you been visited?" Andrea asked. "By Melodye and Maggie? Have they tortured you with the questions about losing Sophia? About how you'd react to losing—to losing your babies?"
Carol shook her head.
"No," she said. "But they will. My time is coming. Eventually they'll talk to all of us. They're just talking to you more. Whatever it is? You've got to answer more questions than we do. You've got to be watched. You've got to be isolated and denied any escape that you don't find yourself, here, in this home. That's where the obsessive journaling can help."
"It makes you feel like the shoe is always about to drop," Andrea said, almost seeming to ignore Carol for a moment. "It makes you feel like something terrible is coming. Something terrible is just around the corner. You can't see it, but you know it's there."
"Something's hiding in the dark," Carol offered.
Andrea nodded.
"Sophia was afraid of the dark," Carol said. "Out there? She was terrified of the dark. The monsters were in the dark. And I couldn't even tell her that they weren't because they were. I'd sleep with her in sheds and old houses and we could hear the monsters out there. Waiting to get in."
Andrea swallowed and nodded her head.
"I could see those," Andrea said. "I knew I could handle those."
"And you can handle these," Carol said. "Whenever Sophia got scared? Really scared? I made her tell me about things that she liked. Things she enjoyed. I made her think about something else. That's what you have to do. You have to think about something you love. And any time they make you think that—he doesn't exist or that something horrible is happening? You focus on what you know. You think about—how many inches have you put on. How many pounds have you put on—because that's how much he's growing. It's how much bigger he's getting and how much stronger. It's how much closer you are to having him in your arms and being in control. You don't think about the rest." She shook her head at Andrea. "There's always time to think about the rest later. When we know more. When he's here."
Andrea offered Carol a half-smile and nodded her head. Carol thought she sat up a little straighter in her chair, though.
"I can do that," Andrea said.
"You'll do that?" Carol asked.
Andrea nodded her head.
"If they'll give me all that? I'll do it," Andrea said.
Carol smiled at her.
"I'll put the order in when I get back to Alice's office. Doctor's orders. We need you to keep track of things," Carol said. She winked at Andrea. "Strictly for medical reasons."
Andrea laughed to herself and shook her head.
"How are you remaining so positive through all of this?" Andrea asked.
Carol thought about it a moment. She could say that she was a positive person. She could say that she was just skilled in seeing the silver lining or that she was simply able to believe that everything would always turn out right. She could say that she had confidence in everything she said and that she believed in the good that was in everyone and every situation.
Each of those statements would invalidate Andrea's experiences to some degree. They would make her feel—and seem—somehow lesser than Carol.
And they would all be untrue.
Carol sighed.
"I have an incredible support system," Carol said. "And—I've got enough that I can pass it on at least a little."
Andrea raised her eyebrows at Carol.
"I'll owe you one," she said.
Carol smiled.
"It'll all come out in the wash," Carol assured her.
