A/N: Holy crap the season finale was AWESOME! I nearly had a heart attack when-mmph. … Anyways, I wasn't very satisfied with how chapter three of this story came out despite writing it over and over again so I decided to write chapter four and hope it turned out better. Tell me when you think.

Chapter 4

Shane had always picture the day that Rick returned as a day of rekindled brotherhood and hope, full of happiness and love. Even more so after the apocalypse began. He'd hoped with all his heart that Rick would somehow survive despite being a coma and he had. However, now as he watched Rick and Carl speak beside the fire in soft heated tones he couldn't help but be slightly bewildered. He couldn't believe that these were the same people he'd known for years, not with the darkness in their eyes and the wariness in their gait.

Rick wasn't the gentle, slightly too caring man he remembered. He was colder, harshened by the world they now lived in. Not to mention that for him the world had been this way for almost a decade. He'd had to harden himself to protect his family, which was something Shane could understand.

"I killed you." Those words, so softly spoken, so cold, had nearly broken Shane's heart and it had taken everything in him not to beg Rick for a different explanation, to plead that he would never do something like that.

"Dad, She doesn't know where the farm is!" Carl snapped, drawing him from his thoughts and he watched as Rick sighed softly.

"Carl… we don't even know where she was at this time."

"Who?" Shane asked quietly and his friend glanced at him.

"Our swordsman and Daryl's second."

Lori frowned, still angry about the fact that her husband and son seemed closer to the redneck archer than they'd ever been to her. Even though they had tried to explain that she'd been dead in their time for a long time, she still couldn't believe that they'd dishonored her memory by making her babies call someone else mom and allowing someone else to marry her man. Then there was the fact that Carl had barely acknowledged her existence since he'd returned from watch with his little sister, almost twenty minutes earlier. Instead he'd spent the first five minutes trying to convince the younger Dixon brother to rest (and failing as the man was still atop the RV) and the other fifteen arguing with Rick about some woman named Michonne.

Having had enough she cut into the argument.

"Why does Dixon need a second? I thought you were the leader." She sneered. As if her weak willed husband could be the leader of anything.

He spared her a cold look and Carl glared at her.

"Dad is the leader, then its Daryl, then Michonne. We also have a council to help out in important decisions. The council consists of Dad, Daryl, Michonne, Glenn, Carol, Maggie, and Hershel. Hopefully they got sent back to. I really don't wanna have to get shot again to get us an invite to the farm."

"You were shot?!" Lori shrieked and Carl nodded.

"Yea, when I was twelve. It wasn't that long from now actually. Only about a month or so."

The woman rounded on Rick furious, her green eyes blazing.

"You let my son get shot?!"

The other people in the quarry turned their gaze onto the angry woman, then to Rick in shock. The ex-cop seemed to care for his children more thaan anything in the world so they couldn't imagine him letting one of them get hurt. Surprisingly, the man remained calm. It was as if the reaction was expected, and from the way Lori normally acted it probably was.

"It was a hunting accident. We were searching for Sophia when we came across a deer. Before we could leave, someone shot it. The bullet went straight through and hit Carl in the abdomen. Hershel owned a farm near by and was the closest thing there was to a doctor so he fixed him up and gave him a blood transfusion." He explained and everyone nodded.

"Rick." Greeted a calm, unfamiliar voice and Carl spun around, grinning widely.

"Michonne!" He cried tackling the newcomer, a tall dark-skinned woman with long elbow length dreads and a beautifully crafted Katana.

She smiled and hugged the teen back, ruffling his hair gently.

"You shrunk, Kid."

He scowled at her. "I know. Judy did too."

She snorted, then turned her gaze back to Rick who clasped her on the shoulder in greeting.

"How'd you find us?"

Michonne shrugged. "Remembered you guys talking about this place. Woke up in my old home in Atlanta and found my son eating my husband's corpse and headed to the first place I could think of. Where's Daryl? Did he make it back?"

Rick nodded his head in the direction of the RV, where Daryl sat with his keen gaze focused on the forest. Michonne sighed, then gazed at all the others.

"So this is your original group, huh?" She said, fighting to keep her gaze moving when she noticed Andrea and Merle among them. She had never gotten over Andrea's death, especially since she had been in love with the other woman at the time, and she still felt partially responsible for Merle's death, especially when she found out that Daryl had been the one to put him down after he became a walker. It had nearly shattered the archer and it was only his strong will and Judith that had kept him moving past the pain of losing the man that had been his world before everything.

"Yep. This is Amy, Andrea, Dale, Jim, ED, Morales, Shane, Lori, Maria, Emily, Merle, and Sophia. And of course you know Glenn and Carol having lived with them for almost a decade. Everyone this is Michonne."

Merle frowned at her, his steel grey eyes inspecting her carefully.

He had seen the guilt that flashed in her eyes when she'd looked at him. It was the same as the guilt he'd seen in Daryl's eyes when he looked at him, just not as strong. It made him wonder if she'd had anything to do with his death like he suspected Daryl did. He looked up at his baby brother, who had yet to have moved from atop the RV, where he'd hours earlier. The little girl, Judith was up there with him, her head lying in his lap. He noticed that every once in a while, the younger man would glance down at the camp with unease clear in his eyes, then turn his gaze back onto the forest, his entire body wrought with tension.

It made him wonder, what, exactly was going through his brother's mind.

What was making Daryl so uneasy?

He pursed his lips. He didn't know, but as the other campers headed into their tents to rest he vowed to himself that he would find out.

TBC…