AN: Here we are, another chapter here and the rest of this story plotted out to the finish. Hopefully I can get this done!
I hope you enjoy! Please don't forget to let me know what you think!
111
Daryl couldn't say that he'd been wholly prepared for being the father of newborn twins and a child, like Sophia, that, despite her physical appearance, was very much a "young" child at times. The children were demanding. One twin, it seemed, always needed something. They were never both satisfied at the same time except for a small stretch of time, here and there, where their sleeping patterns seemed to overlap. Sophia needed a great many things, too, especially since Daryl and Carol were doing their best to work with Melodye and her suggestions for how to help Sophia make as much progress as possible after all the trauma that she'd been through in her life.
Carol was, in Daryl's opinion, nothing short of a rockstar. She seemed to have some impossible ability to always know what each and every child needed, all the time, and how to provide it all so that nobody ever did without anything they needed.
Daryl had basically come to a place of recognizing that his greatest contribution to their home and family was making sure that Carol always had what she needed, and to follow her lead with their children. If he cared for her, and made sure that she had everything she needed—emotionally and physically—then she would make sure that he and everyone else thrived as much as they possibly could within the walls of their home and the community.
Daryl passed this knowledge on to his brother, along with every other piece of knowledge that he'd collected about how the project handled children. He wanted Merle and Sadie to be prepared, especially as they got closer to the birth of their first child. The baby would be the first child born to the wildest of the Wilds, and Daryl didn't want anyone doing anything that would put lives in jeopardy.
Nothing mattered, Daryl made sure to reiterate to his brother, except getting Sadie and the baby home. Any hurt that they suffered in the accomplishing of that could be healed. They both simply had to remember that rattling their chains was allowed, but that was it. No matter how they were threatened, they had to swallow it down and endure it for the good of their little family.
It would be worth it in the end.
All of this would be worth it in the end. Daryl believed that. He had to for the sake of his family—all of it.
111
"Jesus—don't fucking sneak up on me! Especially when I can't even get my hands on a stake or a silver bullet or anything," Alice said. She turned back to cleaning up the few things she'd been straightening up when the sound of someone entering her office, unannounced in any way, had caught her off guard.
"I come in peace, Alice," Maggie said.
"That would be something new," Alice said. "Still—there's a first time for everything, right?"
"I just need someone to talk to," Maggie said.
"And you chose me? I'm flattered—or frightened."
Maggie didn't look like she was there to antagonize Alice, really. She honestly looked like she was seeking someone to talk to. Alice reminded herself that Maggie had very little in the way of family and, sometimes, that might be a bit of a burden.
"Our observation schedules are growing," Maggie said.
"Yeah—so I've heard," Alice said. "If you've forgotten, my partner's also doing observations around Woodbury."
"Samira Lafram is pregnant," Maggie said. Alice smiled to herself at the news. It was hardly news to her, of course.
"I know," she said. "I'm her doctor."
"The father is…"
"Milton Mamet," Alice said. "A successful case of artificial insemination. Their child will be the perfect example of non-Wilds breeding. The first non-Wild baby born…well…since the start of it all. From what we know, at least." Alice turned around, finally fully facing Maggie. "Does it make you angry, Maggie?"
Admittedly, Maggie didn't look angry at all. She looked—haggard. Tired. Exhausted. She looked any number of adjectives that Alice could string together, but angry wasn't among them.
Maggie's already heavy shoulders slumped a little more and she walked across the office and pulled a chair out, inviting herself to sit. At the moment, Alice didn't feel like arguing with her about something as simple as a chair. For as much as Maggie irritated her, she was a human being, and Alice had always been one of those doctors who had meant the promise she'd made to do no harm—or, at the very least, to purposefully do no harm. She'd meant it when it came to Wilds, and she meant it when it came to Maggie—even though there had been times that she'd been sure that, of the two, the world had been confused about which was more of a dangerous animal.
"Have you seen Milton with Arabella and Andrew?"
Alice raised her eyebrows.
"You mean—we're referring to them by their names and not numbers or other dehumanizing identifiers?" Alice asked.
"Outside of his official reporting," Maggie said, "he never even refers to Andrea as anything like Wild A."
"Because he doesn't think of her as anything like Wild A outside of being Milton the scientist," Alice said. "A very strange thing happens when we realize that people are people. Andrea isn't a wild animal to Milton any longer. She's Andrea—the mother of his child. And isn't Arabella a pretty little thing?"
"The boy barely talks," Maggie said.
"The boy has been traumatized," Alice said. "He's always been treated as other. We don't even have an accurate record of everywhere he's been and every strange expectation he's been expected to live up to—but he's doing better. Michonne says he sleeps almost all night now, and he'll sit at the table to eat. And the people he loves? Including Bella? He asks for them by name…or, as close as he can get. That includes Milton. But you know that, because you've been going to observe them, just like Melodye has."
Maggie slowly nodded her head like she was suddenly feeling the full weight of it as it rested on her neck.
"Sophia…"
"Is absolutely blooming, don't you think?" Alice commented when Maggie's voice trailed off without finishing even half a thought. "Her vocabulary is up like a hundred words in something like two weeks. She's making sentences. If she keeps up with this progress, Samirah thinks that she could be ready for some kind of little job or something around the community. As it is, Willomen stays with her sometimes and she watches the babies in little spurts for Carol and Andrea."
"She was so wild that she could hardly speak…" Maggie said.
"She was just like any other child would be if they'd been traumatized by being violently removed from their mother's loving care. If they'd been forced to live in places where they were treated like an animal—probably worse, in some cases. Where they weren't taught how to act or what to do. Maggie—this shit isn't new. We've seen it before throughout history. If children aren't loved and nurtured—if they're left to their own devices, you never know what you're going to get. But Sophia is learning and growing. Andrew is growing and healing, too."
"With nothing but Wilds to teach them," Maggie said.
It was clear to Alice that Maggie was going through something. If she'd had a beer or twelve tucked away in her office, she might have offered the woman a drink. As it was, she had nothing to offer beyond bottled water. She did offer Maggie one of those, though, and she took one for herself from the office refrigerator.
"Maggie—at the risk of pissing you off and losing your company, which has always brought me such warmth on cold ass days, I feel like I have to remind you that being wild isn't an actual fucking thing. I mean—animals are wild, but people aren't. And even if they were…it's not a disease. It's not the virus."
"Wilds killed my family," Maggie said.
"Bad fucking people killed your family, Maggie," Alice said. "Bad people killed your family. They happened to be bad people who hadn't gone to safe zones, but that's all. They didn't go to safe zones because they were assholes that wanted to take advantage of, and hurt, kind people, Maggie, not because they were Wilds. They had a reason not to go to safe zones. Everyone who didn't go had a reason not to go. That didn't mean they were Wilds or anything else. It usually just meant they had a distrust of the government that, given every damn thing we know about it now, turned out to be at least a little bit on the spot. Even you have to admit that. Look what the government's done to them. And for some people, like the assholes that hurt you and your family? They didn't go to safe zones because they liked the idea of being outside of government control and being free to do whatever the hell they wanted. Bad people existed before the virus, Maggie, and they exist now—even within safe zones. Even within the government."
"It comes from the virus…a mutation," Maggie said.
"That's never medically been proven," Alice said. "In fact, it was pretty quickly debunked after Kreegan's initial findings. They have the virus cells, but so does everyone. So do you—it's in our blood. Dormant. It's dormant in them, too."
"It's…possible that it's semi-active," Maggie said.
Alice laughed in response.
"Listen to you. You sound like a recording of Kreegan's speeches breaking down. Deteriorating. Do you even believe this? If those people you call Wilds had never taken advantage of your family and done the horrible things that they did, would you sit on the side that you sit on now and tell me that you believe that these people—and I did say people—that you've been observing daily are animals?"
"Wilds are animals," Maggie said.
"And they aren't Wilds," Alice said. "Because Wilds is just something that someone made up. It's something that someone made up to create the us and the them, Maggie, as though there wasn't already enough of that in the world. We need those differences to make ourselves feel superior. Important. Better than someone else. But when we face those differences, we find out they aren't there. It's a game of smoke and mirrors. These people are just fucking people, Maggie. They are afraid. They're afraid for their lives. They're afraid for the lives of the few loved ones they have left—for their children. That's a strong fear. They're being treated like animals. Some of them have been beaten, raped, tortured—all in the name of being "different" because they didn't trust the government blindly. They are hurt and scared, but they aren't animals. You're holding instinct against them. Everyone is. You terrify them, torture them, hurt them—and then, when they respond out of hurt or fear, you hold a mirror up to them and you say 'see—you're an animal, not like me' when you know damn good and well that you would respond the same. And I know you would because look, Maggie, at what being hurt did to you."
Maggie was somewhat red-eyed when she looked at Alice. Their eyes met. She held Alice's eyes a moment and shook her head, flicking her eyes away.
"I'm not a Wild," Maggie said.
"No, but you used to be a good person," Alice said. "You used to be a—a really good person, I think. You wanted to believe in the good in people. You wanted to believe that there was hope for everyone. I think, deep down, you're still a good person. But they took your family. They hurt you. And look what it made you into. You would have had a pregnant woman beaten to death for nothing more than the fear that maybe…maybe…she would hurt you with a bottle of juice. You'd have had that same woman killed because, in trying to save her child while still bleeding from giving birth, she might've hit someone that believed themselves to be superior to her in some arbitrary way."
"That's not true…" Maggie protested. She seemed tired, though, and not interested in even expressing which part of "that" wasn't true at all.
"Human beings are animals," Alice said. "Every one of us. And the instincts we have are hardwired into us from the dawn of time. We'll never be rid of those. But there's no such thing as Wilds or non-Wilds. There's no such thing as…one being more of an animal than the other. Not by some societal classification. Still—if I was trying to define things, based solely on what I've seen and experienced, I know which ones I'd call the more dangerous animals; at least these days."
Maggie frowned and looked back at Alice, catching her eyes again. This time, she didn't break eye contact with her.
"I think I'm starting to see that, Al…" she offered.
