AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

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

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"Y'all are the fuckin' animals!" Daryl yelled. "Every fuckin' one of you! Don't deserve shit! Don't deserve to live! You scared to death we gonna kill you when there ain't nobody made a move for ya! Know that's what the hell you deserve! That's why you so scared! Where you think she's gonna go? Where you think I'ma go?"

He was growing hoarse. Alice had let him know that making noise and rattling his chains, so to speak, were the best things that he could do to support the project. He was doing the best he could to show them that anyone, in his position, would be hysterical. Any man who was handcuffed, with his feet bound together, and forced to watch as his partner was bound and forced to give birth like an animal, would be hysterical.

But he controlled himself from physically lashing out because, for that, he would be punished. For that, Carol would be killed for good measure. Their babies would be cut from her lifeless body and they'd be handed over to the authorities to do with what they pleased—they'd be turned into experiments. They would likely never know love or tenderness.

And then they would go for Sophia.

Daryl was resolute. He would remain as calm as he possibly could. He would remain in control of himself and his reactions. And his ability to keep from physically lashing out at them would work in his favor. It would prove that he couldn't be entirely an animal. An animal, after all, wouldn't practice self-restraint when so overcome with the desire to rip out the throats of his enemies.

His throat hurt, but yelling at them, at least, made him feel better. Very little else was making him feel better at the moment.

"I just wanna hold her hand," he offered desperately, dropping the anger for a moment in favor of the other emotion that was choking off his air. "I just wanna—hold her fuckin' hand. That's all I'm askin'. Chain me up if you gotta. Chain me twice—three times. But just—let me hold her hand."

The officer that had handcuffed Daryl back at the community had handcuffed his hands behind his back. His hands were supposed to be handcuffed in front so that he could hold Carol's hand. He'd been promised that much before this had all begun, but the man who had handcuffed him at Woodbury had cuffed him behind his back. Nobody had corrected the error, even as they'd handcuffed him to the bedrail. The most he could do, really, to touch Carol was to bump his body against the bed and allow her to reach for him. If he tried to reach her, he had to bend into her space and, for the time being, she seemed to need that space to breathe and move under the desire of her body to seek whatever relief it could find.

They were never entirely left alone. There were always two male orderlies left in the room when the doctors and nurses left. Their presence wasn't for the benefit of Daryl and Carol. They were there to make sure that Daryl and Carol didn't try anything—that they didn't conspire in any way against the people who worked there. An armed guard, as well, kept watch from the corner.

They were being treated as though they were great security risks and not a woman who was in labor and a man who desperately wanted to comfort her in her time of need.

"Come on," Daryl pleaded to the orderly. "Just—switch 'em to the front. That's all I'm askin' you. Let me touch her. Let me hold her hand. You got my word. I swear it to you. I ain't gonna fuckin' lay a hand on you. Won't move except to move 'em from the front to the back. You got Barney Fife back here with a gun pointed at me. If I was to do anything, he'd blow my fuckin' brains out. I wanna see my kids. Wanna hold 'em. Ain't gonna do nothin' to mess that up. Just wanna—hold their mama's hand while they comin' into the world." He shook his head at the man who was watching him like he was surprised that Daryl even spoke English. "If you can't understand that," Daryl said, "then it ain't me that ain't human. It ain't me that's a fuckin' animal."

"Please," Carol chimed in, adding her voice to the mix.

It was the first thing that she'd said that had come out as clearly formed words. Most of her sounds had been spat curses, whimpers, and cries.

"Please," she repeated.

Daryl was almost certain that they'd been there for days. They'd called as soon as Carol was sure that she was in labor and Samirah had come to sit with Sophia and keep the girl calm. She'd come promising her ice cream and a walk around Woodbury, and a game or two to pass the time. She'd come looking happy and excited and not at all like someone who would worry Sophia as she tried to truly understand what was taking place and why they were taking her mother away—why they were taking her family away.

When they left, all of them holding strong for Sophia's benefit, the girl seemed to truly be comfortable in the knowledge that they would return and they'd be bringing with them a source of great excitement. Sophia would finally be meeting her brother and sister.

Daryl's feet ached from standing on the hard floor of the hospital room, so he knew that they'd been there a long time. Carol had been in labor for what seemed like days. Daryl had lost all track of actual time, though. It passed, outside the hospital, in an entirely different way than it passed in the hospital. There were no windows in the room. There was no way of knowing how the outside world trudged on.

The contractions were getting faster. They were close together and there seemed to be no relief for Carol. She would lie there, suffering, until someone came to check on her—until they came to read the machines that beeped and buzzed with information that Daryl couldn't interpret.

Carol's pleas got the attention of the orderly that Daryl had been making eye contact with and he got to his feet. He walked around, keeping a great distance between the bed and himself like he feared that Carol might leap out of it to attack him, and he made his way around to Daryl. He held up a key so that Daryl could see it, and he adopted the same tone of voice that one might have used while talking to a rather unpredictable dog that one wished to train.

"I'm gonna let you put your hands up front," the orderly said. "But that's it. You try anything—and—and he's gonna shoot you. Dead."

Daryl laughed to himself.

"Yeah," he said. "I got the memo. This ain't the first time I've heard them terms." He shook his head. "You got my word. I won't move a muscle except to move my hands around front."

The orderly walked around Daryl and unfastened one side of the handcuffs. Daryl wanted to rub his sore wrists, but he didn't dare. Too much movement at this moment may very well cause him to lose his life. He brought his hand around slowly and steadily and offered the two of them out for the orderly to snap the cuffs closed again.

"Thank you," Daryl offered to the orderly as he immediately reached for Carol's hand and, feeling it in his, bent so that he could bring it to his face and he could brush his lips across her fingers. "I got'cha," he offered. "For what it's worth…I got'cha."

Carol looked at him, tears in her eyes, and smiled over nothing more than the simple gesture of finding her hand wrapped in his.

"It hurts," she panted.

"I know it does," Daryl said. "I know it does. If I could change it…" He broke off and laughed to himself. "Prob'ly die 'cause you a thousand times tougher than I am, woman." He kissed her fingers again, because she seemed to enjoy the gesture, and she closed her eyes. Despite the fact that he knew she was only moments from the next round of contractions, she looked like she might go to sleep—and all because he could finally hold her hand. "You doin' fine—just…just great."

"Don't go anywhere," Carol said.

"Couldn't if I wanted to," Daryl said. "But—I'm right here. Not goin' nowhere." He looked up and made eye contact with the orderly who had given him the use of his hands. "Not to be demandin'," Daryl offered, "but—you might see if there's somebody with some authority around here that wants to take a look at things. Been a while since they come to check on things an' these contractions is getting pretty close together."

He felt when Carol's fingers clamped tight around his and she practically raised herself up out of the bed as she struggled to find some comfort in her position. The gasp and growl that escaped her was all that she would give him, for the moment, to say that another contraction was starting.

He gently squeezed her hand in his, to remind her that he was there, and leaned toward her.

"You got it," he said. "You just—hold onto me. Squeeze as hard as you want. Think about them babies—'cause they comin' an' you the one that's doin' it. So good—you doin' it…"

It seemed like a million years ago. It seemed like another lifetime. Daryl remembered being in a dark cell. He remembered the cold, hard floor and the smell of fear and human excrement. He remembered the sounds of screams echoing off of stone walls and the sound of sobbing thumping like a heartbeat in his ears.

And he remembered holding her hand and talking to her. He remembered that his words hadn't mattered—it had only been hearing them that had mattered to her. He'd kept speaking for her comfort. He kept speaking now.

And he kept holding her hand.

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Daryl had hoped that Alice would deliver their babies. He'd hoped she'd offer kindness and encouragement as Carol brought them into the world. Instead, the man that delivered the babies was a man that Daryl had never seen before. He was as cold as the room and every bit as sterile. It was immediately evident that he saw Carol as little more than a vessel required to carry the babies and deliver them into the world. His instructions to her were short and sharp and without feeling.

Daryl had never been in a delivery room and he still knew that the man that took his place between Carol's spread legs was unnecessarily rough. Daryl protested loudly at first, and cursed the parentage of everyone in the room. He increased his protests when the doctor in question took a blade and declared that, for Carol's own good, he would make things easier, just before he'd sliced into her to theoretically make more room for the babies to pass through—even though they had yet to even begin their attempts to escape her body. His only response to Daryl's spat demands for an explanation had been that she would tear anyway—and this would simply make things better.

Carol had clung to Daryl, practically peeling the skin from his arm and hand with her fingertips, as the doctor—seemingly deaf to Carol's cries and Daryl's pleas from that point forward—roughly ripped the first of their children from its mother's body after Carol had barely pushed its head free. Daryl was only able to glance at it before the doctor passed it over to a nurse who removed it from their sight.

"Is it OK?" Carol had cried out. The sound of the baby's crying carried as the room's door closed behind the nurse. "Is it OK…please?!"

"Where the hell you takin' it?" Daryl asked. "We ain't even get to see it! Where the hell you takin' it?"

In the chaos that surrounded them, they got no answers to anything. Carol's demands to know about the fate of her child were swallowed up quickly by the need of the next child to be born. It didn't take long before the doctor—seeming as though he were entirely outside of the scene around him—freed the second baby from its mother and, much the same as he'd done with the first, passed it over to the waiting arms of a nurse.

Daryl and Carol's cries for information, though, were no more answered this time than they had been before.

As though they couldn't hear them at all, the doctor and nurses present set about cleaning Carol up without a word to her about the fate of her children. They cleaned and stitched and bandaged without acknowledging her cries. As her voice went hoarse from pleas to know something of her children, they remained unmoved.

Daryl's threats were heard by no one. His accusations that he knew who the real animals were got ignored. His promises that they would, some way and somehow, get what was coming to them for their cruelty, rolled off the backs of everyone present like water off a duck's back.

And Daryl held onto Carol's hand, quietly seeking comfort in the fact that they both knew, deep down, that they would see their babies again—whenever their captors decided they had been tortured enough and the babies needed to be cared for.

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AN: I still don't have names. Twin boy and girl—what would Caryl call them?

I hope you enjoyed! Don't forget to let me know what you think (and to offer name suggestions if you've got them)!