A/N All characters belong to the writers and creators of The Walking Dead. Except those that arose from my own twisted imagination.

Chapter Fifteen-First Blood

Michonne sat patiently, waiting for the Governor to return. She stared at the front door, willing him to walk in so she could finish this and move on. She wasn't sure if she would return to the prison or not at this point. Michonne hoped that with the Governor dead, Andrea would come to her senses and leave Woodbury. Suddenly, a noise from the other room caught her attention. She rose quickly, her katana drawn, and walked towards the door. She carefully walked into the room and immediately saw a greenish glow coming from one wall. Michonne turned and stared in shock. The wall was comprised of aquariums filled with heads. Most were walker but a number were obviously human. She approached the aquariums, staring in fascination and horror, when she heard a bump against a wall. Turning, she saw a cage door. She could hear someone or something moving around behind it. Michonne opened the door and saw a little girl, bound in a straight jacket, head covered in a bag and obviously chained.

The aquariums had shocked Michonne but this disgusted her. What the hell was going on that this man would keep a little girl as his prisoner? Michonne softly called to the girl and she stumbled forward. Michonne knelt down in front of her and reached up to unhook the chain tethering her to the room. The girl struggled and Michonne pulled the sack off of her head. She jumped back as the girl snarled and snapped at her. She was a walker. Michonne hadn't seen a child walker before. She'd assumed that if a child got attacked by walkers, they would just consume the body. The girl walked towards her and Michonne drew her katana.

"No!" Michonne turned and saw the Governor standing in the doorway. His hand was extended and his face was terrified, pleading. She saw his eye was bandaged, probably from where Danielle had shot him the other night. "Please, don't kill my little girl." Michonne stared at him, dumbfounded. He was keeping his dead daughter chained up in a cage? She kept her hand on the girl's shoulder, keeping the girl between herself and the Governor. He pulled his gun out of his holster and set it on the floor. He walked towards them, his hands still in the air.

"Please. Do what you want to me but don't kill my Penny." Penny. The name that was in that crazy notebook she had found not long after arriving in Woodbury.

"She's your daughter." It wasn't a question. The Governor nodded, his eyes hopeful.

"Yes. We're working on a cure. She's getting better. Just please, don't hurt her." Michonne looked down at the poor girl struggling in her grasp and back up to the Governor. Her face hardened. She raised her katana and drove it through the back of Penny's head.

"NO!" The pain and anguish in the Governor's voice brought Michonne no form of satisfaction. She had just put a poor, tortured little girl out of her misery. She let Penny's body drop to the floor. The Governor stared at his daughter's lifeless body, his hands shaking, and then screamed like a caged animal. He lunged at Michonne. They both crashed against the wall of aquariums which shattered, spilling water and heads onto the floor. His hands closed around her neck and she dropped her katana. They fell to the floor and Michonne barely avoided being bitten by the head of a walker. Those things were still trying to bite, trying to feed. Coming dangerously close to losing consciousness, Michonne saw a piece of glass by her hand. She reached for it, struggling under the Governor's death grip. Her hands closed around the glass shard and she drove it into his injured eye.

The Governor screamed and let go of her. Michonne gasped for air and quickly got to her feet. She picked up her sword and raised it when she heard a gun cock behind her. Michonne spun around and came face to face with Andrea.

Andrea's face went from anger to shock. She looked from Michonne, to the Governor on the floor, crying and cradling the body of a dead walker. Then she saw the aquariums…and the heads…she lowered her gun.

"Michonne what did you do?" Her voice was barely over a whisper. Michonne stared at her but did not answer. Andrea stared once more at the Governor and the heads then looked back at Michonne, her face twisted in confusion.

"My god! What have you done?" Michonne waited until Andrea knelt by the Governor and then quickly left the house through the open window.

Allen sat outside Tyreese's cell, debating on whether or not to wake the man up. He needed to talk to him and caught his break when Maggie and Glenn got back from their run. While everyone was gathered outside, Allen had snuck back in to the cellblock to look for Tyreese.

Allen wanted to get out of the prison. He didn't want to stay there, not with these people. They let convicts live with them, for crying out loud. He knew that the redneck was dangerous and he had his doubts about the guy who claimed to have been a sheriff. Making them all sleep in the prison cells, eating a rationed diet of canned food. His son was getting close to the younger girl and that bothered him. Even Sasha was getting close to Oscar and Carol. They were forming relationships, like they planned on making a life here. That wasn't for him. As soon as he had heard about that town, Woodbury, he wanted to go there. Stability, not having to scrounge for scraps, being part of a community again…he wanted that for himself and his son.

Allen stood and looked into the cell and was surprised to see Tyreese looking back at him.

"I was wondering when you were just gonna drag your sorry ass in here." Allen looked downstairs, saw that no one else had come back in yet and then walked into the cell.

"Tyreese, how long are you planning on staying with these people?" Tyreese sat up and frowned.

"I wasn't aware that we were in an all fired hurry to leave." Allen looked away nervously. He was always intimidated by Tyreese.

"Look, this has been a great place to regroup and recover, especially after losing Donna but Tyreese, these aren't our people." Tyreese got to his feet.

"What people? We don't have "people" anymore Allen! These are good people and they've done right by us. They brought us in when they could have just sent us on our way…" Allen interrupted him.

"We had to swear allegiance to that sheriff and that redneck Tyreese! We had to promise that we'd defend these people, people that we know nothing about. What the hell was that about? Why should we stick our necks out and get in the middle of this dispute with that Woodbury?" He swallowed hard before continuing. "Honestly, Tyreese, that's where I want to go." Tyreese got in his face.

"Were you even listening to Rick and Daryl when they told us what those people did? You want your boy hanging out with rapists and child killers? People who torture people just because they feel threatened and want what these people earned? And why are you so down on Rick and Daryl? These guys kept a group of people alive for months, just like we did. Why are they any different than us? Just because they weren't as rich as you and I were? You sold real estate. I played for the Falcons. So what? What does any of that matter now?" Allen looked away. He knew he wasn't going to convince Tyreese. He was going to have to find another way to get out, to get his son out. He decided to back off, let Tyreese think he was staying.

"Maybe you're right Tyreese. Look, I just miss Donna, alright man?" Tyreese patted him on the shoulder.

"Don't worry about it. Just don't let any of them hear you talk like that, you hear me?" Allen nodded and walked downstairs.

Dani went outside after dinner. The sun going down over the trees was so pretty, a reddish orange ball of fire. It almost looked like it did back in California, when it went down over the ocean. Sitting by herself, she could think, about Abigail, her life before all of this, her family and also about Daryl. She loved being at the prison, around these people but she still wished that she could have made it west. Danielle knew her cousins, backwoods swamp rednecks that they were, would have made it through all of this. They were probably holed up with their families in a bunker somewhere. She hadn't lied when she'd told Maggie her biggest attraction to Daryl was that he was familiar. He was exactly the kind of guy that she'd lived around until she left home. The kind of guy her ex-husband definitely had not been.

Greg hadn't even been able to change the oil in his car, let alone know how to handle a gun. When they'd moved to Atlanta after he got the chief of emergency medicine position at the hospital, he'd been ecstatic about the pay but lamented living in "The South". He was the reason she'd lost her accent. He'd treated her like Eliza Doolittle, correcting her pronunciation and flipping out if she so much slipped in a "y'all" from the time that they started dating. She should have moved back home, gone to LSU, been there to take care of Granddad and MeeMaw and married one of the good ol' boys from the neighborhood. But no, she'd had to run as far away from her mother as possible. She was lost in her thoughts and didn't hear Daryl until he was sitting next to her.

"Hey." That one word was all it took to make her stomach clench in a very good way.

"Hey. What are you doin' out here?" Dani didn't take her eyes off the darkening sky but could feel he was watching her.

"Was lookin' for you. Are you on watch tonight with Maggie?" Dani shook her head.

"Glenn's on duty with Maggie tonight." Daryl chuckled. Dani glanced over at him.

"Well, I don't blame them for wanting some alone time." The smirk left his face.

"Dani, what do you want? I'm tryin'. I kiss you. I hold you when you sleep. I've let you get closer to me than anyone. Just what else do you want from me?" Suddenly, a conversation with Maggie flashed in her head:

"...that's only because he probably wouldn't figure it out unless you jumped in his lap naked."

It was dusk now, and the light was fading fast. No one was around. No one was watching. Without even thinking, she was straddling his lap. His body tensed and she briefly realized that she was probably pushing it but she didn't care anymore.

Without saying a word, Dani kissed him hard. Daryl didn't respond at first, his body was too tense. Then his hand was holding the back of her neck, his other hand on her hip and he was kissing her harder than he had before. She quickly unbuttoned his shirt, wanting to hurry before he changed his mind. His hands shook when he untucked her shirt from her jeans and she helped him pull it off over her head. She pushed him on his back and leaned over to kiss him.

"I'm gonna show you what I want." Her hand was on his cheek and she felt him nod.

"Alright." Daryl kissed her again as she reached between them to unbutton his pants.

Once Michonne left, Andrea tried to figure out what had happened. The aquariums, the heads, the dead little walker that Andrea realized, to her horror, was Phillip's daughter Penny. She recognized her from her picture. Phillip was crying, holding his daughter. Blood was running down his face from the glass shard protruding from his eye.

"Phillip, we need to get you to the infirmary." He ignored her and continued to rock his little girl's body back and forth. Andrea heard the front door open and looked up as Cash ran in.

"What the hell happened?" Andrea glared at him.

"Go get the doctor!" When Cash hesitated, she glared at him. "Go get the doctor now!" Cash turned and left the room. Andrea tried to look at the Governor's eye but he kept his face focused on his daughter, stroking her hair.

"Penny honey." Andrea could barely make out his words. "Penny. Daddy still loves you baby." Andrea put her hand on his shoulder.

"Phillip, you need to see the doctor. If you want I'll stay with Penny, ok?" Just then the Doctor came in, followed by Cash and Tripp with a stretcher. Prying his hands from his daughter's body, Andrea took Penny from him.

"Phillip, I'll stay with her. We'll be right here." The Governor allowed the doctor to help him onto the stretcher. Just as they were wheeling him out, he stopped them and looked at Andrea.

"Please don't leave her alone. She hates being alone." Andrea nodded and the boys wheeled the Governor out of the house. When he was gone, she looked around the room. She took in the cage door, the chains, the heads…Andrea jumped as one walker head got too close to her leg. She jumped up and quickly crushed it's skull beneath her foot.

That annoying voice in Andrea's head was getting louder. Who was this man? What was he doing in this town? Michonne had always said that the town was not what it seemed and Andrea had dismissed her but what if Michonne was right? What if there was more going on here than just survival? She knew one thing: she had to go back to the prison and talk to the group. Find out what was going on from their side. Pushing those thoughts out of her mind for a moment, Andrea picked Penny up, laid her on the couch and covered her little body with a blanket. Andrea then sat in the chair, her mind racing again, and began to cry.

Daryl and Dani snuck back into the cellblock like two teenagers coming home after curfew. They didn't touch, didn't even look at each other, until they were safely back up on their perch. Daryl saw that Carol was still up but he couldn't look at her. The image of Dani's silhouette in the moonlight, the softness of her skin was still fresh in his mind and it embarrassed him to think that Carol, or anyone for that matter, would find out what he and Dani had just done.

On the landing, Dani came to him in the dark, her body curling against his. He felt her breath on his ear just before she whispered to him.

"Thank you."