AN: Here we go, another little chapter here.

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

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Daryl leaned against the wall just inside the entrance of the part of the prison that they all resided in. He, Merle, and Michonne, had barely slipped inside the door, nobody having missed them and nobody asking where they'd come from…not caring at all in the commotion…and had found spots to blend in with the brick wall.

But as soon as Daryl saw who it was that Rick had been manhandling in the yard, he thought that things just got a little more interesting and either a little more complicated, or a little less complicated.

Because the ghost that they'd been discussing, Andrea, was standing in front of them. She was dirty, probably from her rolling about on the ground, but otherwise she seemed as healthy and whole as she'd ever been.

And she was very much alive. It was very much the opposite of what they'd all expected. And Daryl could tell he wasn't the only one a little shaken by the news.

Even Andrea appeared to be shaking slightly in the face of so many people she'd probably counted as long gone from her life.

"What do you want?" Rick asked.

"It's nice to see you too!" Andrea shot back. "Do I get to know why I'm being treated like Judas?"

"We're real careful these days about who we let in here and who we don't," Rick said.

Daryl bumped Michonne, leaning close enough to her to speak without being heard.

"Rick know about Andrea and the Governor?" He asked.

"I might have mentioned it," Michonne said. "Among other things when he was threatening to kill me."

Daryl bit the inside of his mouth not to laugh at the fact that Rick was starting to develop something of a reputation. And he certainly hadn't treated Michonne with a great deal of kindness when she'd first appeared at the prison.

"I thought we were friends," Andrea responded, unaware entirely of their conversation. "You're friends who left me behind, alone, on a farm overrun with Walkers…but I didn't realize that made me a bad guy."

"You've been living in Woodbury?" Hershel asked, apparently feeling he should get involved in the conversation. "With that man? The Governor?"

Andrea looked around at everyone.

"Yeah," she said. "I mean…I was in Woodbury. But I wasn't alone there."

"You're with the Governor?" Rick asked, though it was clearly a rhetorical question. "What do you want here? Because you're with us or you're with him."

Daryl almost felt sorry for the blonde. There was probably a lot to take in here, depending on how much she knew from her own "companions" in Woodbury.

"I don't understand why there's a him and an us," Andrea said. "I don't understand what's going on. I came here on my own. I came to find out what's going on."

"He don't know you here?" Merle asked, his voice booming out in the small space.

Andrea shook her head.

"What happened?" Andrea asked.

"He tortured Glenn and Maggie," Hershel said. "There's another woman here, in the prison, that he tortured almost to death. He's killing people and he'll kill more."

Andrea shook her head at his words.

"Phillip is trying to help people," Andrea said. "He's trying to build a better…"

"He tried to kill me," Michonne said. "Or he tried to have me killed. He wants me dead. He wants Merle dead. He wants the woman we've got dead. It's just a matter of time, Andrea, he's going to want you dead too."

Daryl didn't expect Michonne to leave as abruptly as she did, but the words barely escaped her mouth before she left the room and headed back out into the courtyard. Daryl watched Andrea follow after her with her eyes, her mouth open slightly.

"I don't understand…" she stuttered out.

Merle chuckled.

"Ain't the first time that shit's happened," Merle said. "You ridin' the devil's dick, that make it better?"

"What's going on? Is everything OK?"

Daryl heard Sophia's voice calling out. She was "trapped" in the part of the prison that they all shared under strict orders not to come out. Carol wasn't strong enough to be on her feet for long periods of time yet and Daryl had ordered the girl to stay with her so that she wouldn't end up interacting with anyone who might not be too kind to her, especially while they were in another part of the prison planning their own secret attack on Woodbury.

As soon as he heard her calling, he abandoned the scene, figuring one way or another it would work itself out. Regardless of what happened, though, he already knew that they'd be making their attempt on the Governor's life.

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"It don't matter one damn bit if she stays or she goes," Merle said in response to Rick's overreaction to Michonne's insistence that Andrea not return to Woodbury at the present.

"You're the reason that he's coming here! You and Michonne…Daryl and that woman! I don't even know what happened in that place, but he would have left us alone. He wouldn't have even known we were here if it hadn't been for you kidnapping Maggie and Glenn!" Rick yelled back into his face.

"First off," Merle said, "back the fuck outta my face. I done what I done to try and find my brother. I wouldn'ta never had to do a single damn thing…wouldn'ta had ta know shit about the damn Governor if your ass hadn't left me handcuffed to a fuckin' roof!"

Rick stared at him, pointed a finger in his face like he was going to really tell him something, and then he turned sharply and stormed off, his boots crunching on the ground. He turned back, once, like he was going to say something, and Merle stood there casually and waited on whatever it might be.

"We came back for you," Rick offered, his voice low enough that the sound barely travelled to Merle's ears.

"Too little, too damn late," Merle said. "I 'magine Blondie feels the same damn way about it…"

Rick's only response to that was to continue the trip he'd started before.

Merle knew the man was pissed. What he found humorous, though, was that he suspected Rick's real problem was that he felt he was losing control. And losing control? That was enough to piss any man off. But Rick wasn't even concerned about the fact that, to anyone with eyes, he seemed to be losing control of his senses…no. Rick was concerned because he felt like he was losing control of his "group". He felt like he was losing control of his merry gang of misfits that would follow him to the face of the Earth.

And Merle felt like he was one of the only ones who realized that Rick had never had the control that he thought he'd had and that, for the ones that really did follow him, there was no way to lose them because they were too weak or too stupid to function on their own.

"You didn't have to do that," Michonne said, her shoes crunching as well as she walked up behind Merle from where she'd been standing, Andrea behind her like she intended to block Rick's ability to reach the blonde. "I could have handled it."

Merle turned and hummed at her.

"We're even," Merle said.

Michonne narrowed her eyes at him and licked her teeth when she smiled in a manner that Merle would have said was a way of saying she wanted a little something more from him than "support" in their half-baked plans…he would have said that, but he had long since figured out that her interest in Andrea went far beyond that of a buddy.

He chuckled to himself at the fleeting thought that crossed his mind, a statement that he bit back for the moment, because he figured the two of them going at it? Might be a sight to see.

"You think we're even for your ass trying to kill me?" Michonne asked. "Just because you got Rick to leave us the hell alone when I could have done it anyway?"

Merle considered a moment and then shook his head at her.

"No," he said. "We're even. Just that. Even. We're the same. And in Rick's eyes? We both brought hell to his front door in one way or another. Governor ain't gonna rest until we're dead, or he is. Rick ain't gonna rest 'til he runs us both outta here on a rail…and whoever else might question his shaky fuckin' authority."

"What's happened here?" Andrea asked, stepping forward from where she'd been standing in a rush. "What's going on? Rick? Is he alright?"

Merle shifted his eyes toward her.

"He weren't never alright," Merle said. "An' he ain't sorry he cut'cha fuckin' ass loose. You too, An-drea. You're on the damn choppin' block. We goin' back. Tomorrow night. Gonna kill ya boyfriend."

"He's not my boyfriend!" Andrea protested.

Merle chuckled.

"Gonna kill him just the damn same," Merle said. "You with us or you with him? 'Cause you better know where the fuck you fall…I ain't savin' ya damn ass you go with him."

Merle sucked his teeth and glanced back toward Michonne. She was watching him like a hawk. She was watching like she was waiting to attack him the moment he so much as put a toe in the wrong place. He smirked at her again.

She was a bitch…and he liked that about her.

"And…just so ya know? He's gonna kill ya if you go back to Woodbury. An' he's gonna do it so you spend a helluva lot more time wishin' you was dead than you gonna actually get to spend gettin' there," Merle said.

Andrea looked, behind the confusion she'd been wearing the whole time she'd been at the prison, a little terrified. She looked at Michonne and shook her head slightly. It was clearly more an act of not knowing what to do rather than actual negation.

It was always a shock to people when they got their bubble busted…no matter how many times it happened.

"What is happening?" Andrea asked Michonne.

"Merle's right," Michonne said. She swallowed and Merle thought it looked a little more difficult for her than usual. Maybe it was simply admitting he was right that was hard for her to stomach. Or maybe it was the fact that she was standing face to face with Andrea after whatever dyke drama had gone down between the two of them…the version he knew was skewed by the Governor's perspective of things so he didn't fully believe any of it. "You have to decide. You're with us and you stay, or you're with him and you go now."

Michonne shook her head at Andrea.

"I won't tell you anything else…not until you've made your choice," Michonne said.

She glanced away from Andrea for a moment and then brought her eyes back to the woman. She swallowed again and Merle knew now that the swallowing problem had nothing to do with him. It was about the blonde.

"If you stay? I won't mention…it…again," Michonne said. She glanced toward Merle as if to gauge how much he knew. He kept his face set. "If you go? You won't see me again."

Merle hummed to himself, even accidentally, because he hadn't expected her to say it.

"Your call," Merle offered, quieter than before.

Andrea looked between them, the furrow of confusion between her brows almost permanent now. And then she turned her eyes to Michonne.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm staying."

Merle saw Michonne's chest heave slightly…relief or something else coming over her.

"Take a bath," Merle said. "Eat some shit. Get some damn rest and fill her ass in."

He directed his words toward Michonne but glanced back and forth between her and Andrea from time to time while he spoke.

"Tomorrow? Ladies? We're goin' on us a lil' damn trip," Merle said.

And then he started back toward the prison, cutting his eyes down toward the fence where the nutcase, Rick, was doing his own version of dancing through the damn tulips, to see if he couldn't harass the little blonde girl out of enough of the gruel they called food for he and Sophia both to have enough to get full for a night.