AN: Here we are, another chapter here.

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

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Anxiety hung in the air. Merle and Daryl had explained the plan and Glenn had quickly signed on along with Maggie and T-Dog. Big Tiny wasn't difficult to convince, either, and, though Rick said he would have preferred a violence-free resolution to the problem, he was satisfied with the fact that the fight was taking place away from the prison and away from his family.

Together, most of the group had gathered together the supplies that they'd needed, and they'd left to take care of the problem at hand. They'd agreed that it was better to handle it quickly. The incident that Michonne reported having with the Governor meant that he might be more driven to come looking for her—and he might stumble upon the prison and remember that he wanted it, too. Merle thought it was best not to give him the opportunity to think about things too long.

The Governor had to die, and the sooner the better.

Carol had been left behind with only a handful of people—most of them were preferred not to fight for one reason or another—and she was starting to feel like it was her job to keep them all busy and entertained to chase away some of the anxiety that was hanging heavy around them.

Sophia was mad. It was the middle of the day and her Daddy had left along with several of her family members. What was worse, of course, was that her mother had things to attend to and wasn't going to let her go traipsing off to the animal pens alone.

And her Papa Hershel, though he was usually quite easily persuaded to give her his undivided attention, was working in his vegetables rather than playing with her like she wanted. And Beth, her other personal playmate, was occupying herself with Judith rather than taking time to attend to Sophia's every whim.

Sophia was making it known to anyone and everyone that she was unhappy with everything about her life. The only condolence that she'd accepted was a little of the milk that Carol offered her—accepted only because it came with the comfort of being cuddled while she nursed—and the small corner of a chocolate bar that Andrea had produced from the bag she'd brought with her from Woodbury.

Accepting that she wasn't likely to get more than that, though, until her Papa Hershel had finished tending their future food, she gone to sit in the dirt near where Carol worked and to begin digging a hole that, from what she told Carol, was going to take her all the way to a garbled place whose proper title apparently couldn't be understood by anyone who didn't fluently speak grumpy toddler.

It was easy to forgive Sophia the way she was acting. She was a small child and she had fewer coping skills than the adults around her. When things in her life didn't go according to plan, she had a difficult time finding ways to express her disappointment that weren't throwing some kind of tantrum or pouting with her bottom firmly planted in the dirt.

Unfortunately, though, Carol was finding her small child to be one of the better behaved members of the group.

To keep busy, Carol had made sure that there was a very large assortment of absolutely necessary and suddenly urgent chores that had to be attended to.

Among those chores, she'd recruited Axel and Carl's help to find a bed in the storage cells for Andrea and Merle. She'd given them the job of removing the bed that was already in the cell and setting the new one up in the cell that Andrea and Merle would be calling home. As long as they had a bed, Carol could also put people to work washing sheets that could dry in the sun. And, of course, as long as there were sheets to be washed, they could also wash up some of the other laundry that always seemed ready to overtake the prison.

It was just laundry and, really, it shouldn't have caused a problem, but the anxiety that hung in the air was also putting people on edge.

It was the way that Lori handled something from the laundry pile after Andrea identified it as hers that led Andrea to say something.

"It's not like I have the plague," Andrea said. Carol heard her tone and recognized that she was attempting to make it sound like she was joking, but there was certainly an element of offense to her tone.

"Who knows what you have? You are sleeping with Merle Dixon," Lori commented. Lori's response was half under her breath, and she pretended that it was meant as a joke, but Carol could easily hear that it wasn't meant as a joke. Andrea could hear it as well.

Andrea and Lori had had problems in the past. They'd butted heads more than once before Andrea had been lost to the group.

It appeared that they might have problems again.

At the moment, Carol was on Andrea's side for a few reasons. Andrea was, in reality, a better worker while they were doing chores. Lori would complain that Andrea didn't do her share, but Carol thought that Andrea did a reasonable amount of work and, what was more important to Carol than that, she did it without bitching about it every single moment. Carol also felt that, maybe, they ought to cut Andrea some slack. She'd been left behind and they'd been the ones to leave her behind. She'd made her way the best she could, and she'd survived the best she could. She was clearly feeling a little out of place now that she'd found them again and it was only right that be kind to her and let her settle in just a bit.

The main reason, though, that Carol was on Andrea's side was because she felt a strange kinship with the woman that went even beyond the friendship that they shared.

Andrea was sleeping with Merle Dixon according to Lori. Carol preferred to paint the same idea a little differently and say that Andrea was in a relationship with Merle Dixon. Andrea had chosen to be part of a relationship with a man whom she found honorable—despite his past shortcomings—and she was dealing with the fact that there would be some who didn't think highly of Merle, or of her for being with him.

And she wasn't apologizing about it.

Carol felt a kinship to her because she, too, was in a relationship with a Dixon. She was in a relationship with Merle's own brother. She'd seen, firsthand, how judgmental some people could be. They were happy to have Daryl, and they were happy to use him for things, but that didn't mean that some of them hadn't judged him—and they'd done so without even bothering to get to know him beyond the parts of him that could serve them.

Lori was one of the worst. And Carol had mostly always let things slide because of the fact that Lori was something like the queen bee in the group, and Carol would have been facing her mostly on her own. And, in reality, she needed to get along with Lori because they were two of the only women of relatively the same age left in the world.

But, suddenly, Carol found herself with something of an ally—and a formidable one at that. She'd only briefly told her story in passing, but it was a fairly impressive one, at least in Carol's opinion.

Andrea had survived out there when they'd left her behind. She'd been alone until she'd found Michonne. She'd survived with Michonne until she'd fallen ill. She'd survived whatever the illness had been. She'd found Merle Dixon and she'd found something good in him—but she'd also had the strength to stand up to him and demand his sobriety in exchange for her affections. And, now, she had the strength to return to the group and to hold her head up high even when she was sure that they might be judging her for the path she'd chosen to walk and the choices that she'd made.

Carol wondered if that might be one reason that she'd even clashed with Lori in the past. Carol had wondered, though she'd never said it out loud before, if that might be a reason that Lori had clashed with several of the personalities with which she'd collided before.

Lori had never really faced any kind of adversity. She'd always been protected and pampered—even at the worst of times for their group.

And, even in the darkest times when she might have been found guilty for some of her behaviors, she'd been an expert at shifting the focus and blame.

Lori was, possibly, threatened by those who had stood up to a bit more than she had in life. She was used to people letting things slide and letting her have her way.

When Andrea came for her now, though, she came with fangs practically bared and Lori physically backed up and moved away as Andrea hit her feet and entered what would have been Lori's personal space before she'd taken the few quick steps of retreat.

"I am sleeping with Merle Dixon," Andrea said. "And I don't think I was trying to keep that a secret at all."

"You weren't," Lori said. "In fact, you tortured all of us last night. The prison isn't soundproof, you know."

"Neither were the woods at the rock quarry," Andrea said. "Or the showers at the CDC. Or that hayloft in the horse barn on Hershel's farm." She smirked at the look on Lori's face when her cheeks ran red. "All of us knew. At least I'm doing what I'm doing in the open. I'm not ashamed of Merle."

"He's an addict," Lori said.

"He's recovering," Andrea said. "He's clean. And he's saving your ass right now so that the Governor doesn't come with his henchmen and snatch this safe haven out from under you. So you and your kids don't go back on the road again—because it's a hard life out there. Believe me. I know."

"He might be getting people killed!" Lori snarled. "That plan was—it was ridiculous. It has half a chance to work."

"And yet it was still better than Rick's kumbaya plan," Andrea said. "Maybe we should ask Shane what he'd like to do...but I forgot to ask. What happened to Shane? Did you leave him somewhere, too? When you got tired of him? Or did you finally drive him to—what was it that Daryl called it? Opt out? Drive him to leave the group to save himself?"

Lori look like Andrea had reached out a hand and slapped her across the face. Carol started toward the two women at this point to start to break up the fight before it blossomed into something worse.

"Shane is dead," Lori said, her voice dropping. The blood ran out of her face.

Andrea seemed to lose a little of her fight, too, suddenly. Carol slowed her steps. There wasn't quite the emergency that she'd feared. It seemed the fight was already ready to fizzle out. Maybe there was just a need to spit and snarl at each other a little before they settled in.

"Dead—like you thought I was dead?" Andrea asked. "Or did you actually wait to see? Did you—actually care enough about him to make sure?"

Carol swallowed. Her chest tightened suddenly and violently. For a split second, it felt like her heart seized up and missed a beat or two.

Lori's shoulders sagged forward just a bit more.

"Shane is dead," Lori said. "Rick—killed him."

Andrea stopped. She looked toward Carol like she was seeking confirmation. Carol simply nodded her head. She hadn't witnessed anything that had happened, but the story had been told that Shane had been set on killing Rick. In self-defense, Rick had killed him and Carl had put him down.

"I'm sorry," Andrea said.

"Shane wasn't well," Carol said. "But—that's a story for another time."

"I didn't know," Andrea said. She tossed the words, along with an honestly sympathetic look, in the direction of Lori.

"Now you do," Lori said. "We don't—we don't talk about it. What's in the past..."

"Isn't always in the past," Andrea said.

"It has to be," Lori said.

Carol felt the tension between the two women dissolving entirely. It was being replaced with something else. She could almost taste the fatigue that followed a fight. The sinking exhaustion was palpable. They'd be calm and still for most of the rest of the day simply because their bodies had put more than was necessary into the quick and fruitless clash.

"I just hope Merle doesn't get Rick killed," Lori said. She wiped her hand quickly across her nose and looked around like she had heard a noise. "I have to check on Carl. I've got—some things I need to do."

She walked off, quickly, without saying anything else.

Andrea looked back toward Carol.

"I should apologize," Andrea said.

"For what?" Carol asked. "Not knowing something you weren't around to know? The story we've been told was that Shane tried to kill Rick. Rick killed him. Carl put him down. Since then—things have been...tense between Rick and Lori. To say the least."

Andrea laughed nervously to herself.

"I could see how that could—cause some tension," Andrea said. "If Rick ever knew that..."

"He knew," Carol said. "They're having a lot of problems but...she's still his wife and they haven't quite worked out how separation works in the prison. Rick's been back and forth dealing with things. Every day is a bit of a surprise when it comes to those two. But—Lori's still Rick's wife and something of the unofficial first lady around here."

"Shit," Andrea said. "I didn't mean to come back and start trouble from the beginning."

Carol laughed to herself.

"I have a feeling that Merle won't be pissed to hear about it," Carol said. "Daryl, either. To be honest—he's had his share of problems with Lori. We all have. You just acted on your feelings. You're tired." Carol could see the emotion on Andrea's face. Andrea sighed and nodded. "You need to rest."

"I'll rest when they're all back," Andrea said.

"I understand that, too," Carol assured. "They'll be back. For the record, Andrea—we wanted to go back for you. Daryl and I—we talked about it. But..."

Andrea shook her head.

"It doesn't matter," she said.

"It does," Carol assured her.

Andrea shook her head again.

"I don't need your apology," Andrea said.

Carol nodded her acceptance. Maybe later, and maybe in some other form, the woman would accept an apology that Carol truly meant.

"Well, at any rate, you're home now," Carol said. "And it's good to have you home."

Andrea smiled at her.

"I appreciate that," she said. "I just—hope that Lori doesn't have a right to be upset. I hope that everything works out and Merle doesn't—get anyone killed."

"Merle isn't responsible for everyone out there any more than you're responsible for everyone in here," Carol said. "They'll come back. We just have to believe that. In the meantime—help me convince Sophia to take a nap. Then we'll get your cell ready. Give Merle something nice to come home to."