Hello readers! I apologize sincerely for my absence but I've been SO worried about where I'm taking this now the season has ended that, well, I've written and rewritten it six times. I'm still not 100% sure, but this is what my brain finally came up with! I've made a promise to fit my usual amount of fluff into the next chapter and I can't wait to write it so stay tuned! Please read, review and more importantly ENJOY! :]

Chapter Five; I Will Always Find You.

(She's the voice I love to hear
Someday when I'm ninety
She's that wooden rocking chair
I want rocking right beside me
Every day that passes
I only love her more
Yeah, she's the one
That I'd lay down my own life for)

It took Andrea several looks to feel certain she was the right woman. Her hair had been left to grow slightly longer and now fell in short frail streams across her brow, which was coagulated in a thin layer of sweat, blood and grime. Her body was bloody and bruised with several infected cuts dotting her fair skin as though she had fallen through a particularly belligerent thorn bush. Her eyes were closed and the lids flickered feverishly but the distinctive oval shape was still there. Of all people she was the one she never anticipated would survive so long.

"Carol?" She received no response; her old companion was passed out from the suffering. She put a hand to her head which was sweltering hot and she steadily recommended to Doc Stevens that restraints had better be fastened to her, for security. Of course, she was already bound; she was a prisoner after all. But the Doctor made a show of binding her up while Andrea paced, trying to articulate a reasonable succession of questions to better comprehend the situation without putting her fist through a wall in fury.

He arrived just in time, his feet hammering down the hallway and his whole body bursting through the hospital door. Close to putting her fist in Stevens' eye as he babbled trying to find an explanation, Andrea span around at the sight of her lover and she almost ran towards him. "You've got to see!" She barked, brasher than she intended to. "He's got one of the people from Atlanta here!"

"Yes." The Governor replied gently. "He sure has." He shot a deathly look first at Stevens then at Carol's wilted body. A small smile formed across his thin lips, it would be easier to lie if his delirious victim was unconscious, unable to provide the actuality of her gruesome encounter. "We found her, out in No-Man's-Land. Merle was out scouting and there she was." That was it, the entire, unabridged thing. Not a lie, but not the whole of it. She frowned, blinked and frowned some more, her lips moving a little as she worked it out. She had no discernible motivation to distrust him after all.

"I don't… Why are you keeping her here? Why was she screaming?"

"I was treating her wounds, Andrea." The Doctor interrupted, not deceitful, a bottle of rubbing alcohol in his hand. "She was in a lot of pain."

The Governor silenced her with a hand to her shoulder. She looked up at him. Those beautiful, charming brown eyes dappled with spots of gold and emerald beat themselves down into her own sweet blues and she found herself almost immediately convinced. Regardless she turned to look at Carol and frowned. There was an undoubtedly haggard look on her face, her bones were more visible than ever on her exposed hips and cheeks, giving her a skeletal look. It looked like she was on the verge of death. How could Daryl and Rick have let her get lost and starve? She grimaced. Things must have changed. Her eyes followed a trail down from her bony neck, to her starved bare chest and finally rested on a distended stomach. If she had turned, she wouldn't look much different. Yet still she bore those saintly features, her divine face comfortable in a peaceful slumber, away from the strain of her torrid state.

"I think I'll stay and keep an eye on her. Then she can tell me all about it when she wakes up." Andrea pouted her lips girlishly in resistance, started to put her bags and effects down in the chair beside her bed but she was stopped by his hand. He was firmer now, more authoritative and beginning to grow weary of her tenacity.

"No." He replied snappishly. The sound was enough to make her jump a little. "You won't be needed here." She shook her head and stomped one foot but found herself suddenly being drawn into his arms, the smell of him leaking into her senses and the warmth of his skin bleeding into her body. She smiled a little. It was intoxicating, he was usually completely intoxicating. She looked up at him, still confused. "She needs rest. Why don't you return to my apartment and we'll discuss this there?" She nodded. He worked like a snake charmer, gazing into her eyes and drawing them in with his own. She found herself drifting out of the room, unsure why she went in in the first place, eager for the deliciousness that usually followed a visit to Phillip's apartment. She would return and make sure Carol was ok, but why not let her lover do his thing and perhaps she'd become a member of the Woodbury masses soon? She smiled, confident he would do only good for Carol.

The moment Andrea left, his hands were across Carol's chest pinning her to the bed whilst attempting to shake her from sleep. When she was finally roused he smacked her in the face and pushed her into the bed, his hands on her collar bone pinning her with such force he threatened to break it. Her eyes were wide, tortuous and her cracked lips twisted, struggling for freedom in speech, the unexpected compression on her lungs rending her inaudible.

"If I find you've screamed like that again, and if she's ever seen in here again, I will make sure you never make another sound in your life." He cuffed his free hand across her face with such force it sent her spiralling back into unconsciousness. Stevens frowned in disgust. If only the world could see this savagery.

She rolled over as he left, his heavy booted feet thrashing across the floor and out of the room. Both hands flew to her chest and she forced herself to breathe through tears and fear. She wasn't sure if she had imagined Andrea or if she simply didn't care, either way the dapples of weak sunlight flooding the cold cell room did nothing to relieve the pain that somehow she knew her old comrade would never be just that again. Her gaze drifted around the trees outside, their emerald crowns plainly visible from her position on the bed. She could almost make out a figure in the tall trees beyond the boundaries of those great barricades, meant to keep zombies out and remind the mindless prisoners within that they are in his full possession. Carol blinked, squirmed and tried to focus her eyes, oblivious to whatever the good doctor muttered softly in her ears. Was there a figure lurking out there, barely hidden in the thick branches?

Their search for Carol had led them through the hastily stomped out brush to a pair of tire tracks and numerous other footprints, his only clue a couple of head-shot Walkers and the small patch of blood which could've denoted a nosebleed, scratch or other minor injury. There were no more of Carol's footprints for Daryl to follow after that, only the large male footprints belonging to however many owners of the car (prints which immediately set off a warning in his head). They had decided to continue their assault by cautiously following the tire tracks, which had led them directly to the other survivor camp. They had seen the manned barricade and were carefully tiptoeing around it, unsure who or how many had assembled within and what their policy with guests was… Until he heard the scream.

Only one man needed to hear that cry and, like a wild cat, he sprung into motion unsure if it was the thick muscles in his powerful legs or the sheer force of urgency driving him forwards like a freight train. Either way, there was to be no denying whose scream that was echoing faintly from what seemed like a million miles away; she was in deep trouble. Rick and Glenn battled through the undergrowth to keep up, both surprised he didn't drop to all fours and spring forwards like a cheetah, his entire body reflecting determination and thinly veiled terror.

It wasn't long until they stopped and found themselves gawking upwards from the base of a tall fern tree. High in the branches, like a frightened house cat he dug his way up the bark with nothing but his fingers, fighting to find higher ground. Once perched on a substantial branch, he scoped out the land around them and could hardly hold back the gasp of surprise as his jaw fell open.

"Well I'll be…"

The people of Woodbury bustled around busily in the near distance. Many of them hurried between the shop fronts, equally surprised by the screams and attempting to act completely natural. Around the town was assembled a vast, daunting barricade atop which sat numerous heavily built men and women with several massive weapons. The scream was from the nearer side of the compound in which sat a great building reminiscent of a warehouse through the windows of which he could make out hospital beds but couldn't quite make out their occupants. The majority of the armed guards faced in the opposite direction, addressing a small crowd of Walkers drawn by the noise which seemed to have reverberated around the emptiness and gladly providing Daryl with a distraction as he investigated from his treetop perch. He shimmied down the tree's thick trunk and into the waiting gaze of both of the men.

"Rick… There's a hell'uv'a town. And they don't look like friendlies... I know that sound though, she's in there." The other two men exchanged glances, attempting needlessly to disguise their doubt. Daryl shook his head, hardly caring any more whether they were with him. All that mattered was she was somewhere inside. He had to find her. It seemed like an age before they began to move, gently padding around the boundaries of town. Again he felt his mind winding, snaking and faltering into something not quite stable. She was his last hope of happiness, everything had been taken from him and he couldn't seem to shake off the feeling that perhaps those had been the screams of her death throws. Then again, perhaps she was already left somewhere, overwhelmed into death and the noise was a fabrication of his imagination? Perhaps he was conjuring the idea of her endurance out of smoke and warm air, its likelihood as dubious as snow in summer. He twitched, his sanity and patience wearing thin, and he decided he needed to pace the town boundaries and establish an entry point.

It seemed she too was skirting the borders indecisively.

Within the fence, a tall slender black woman with fierce eyes and a pace comparable to that of a panther shadowed around, trailing them. At first she had assumed the small band of men were members of the Woodbury masses, sent outside their borders to trot in circles doing whatever mysterious things they had been ordered to do in whispered voices behind locked doors. But Michonne saw, she observed every little thing, every sign. Her eyes didn't look into another's eyes and see nothing but emotion, she looked straight through them and saw their souls within. When she had looked into the Governor's eyes… She saw no soul; only a fake, perverse blackness hardening itself and twisting into the shape of humanity, excellent in its facsimile of lucidity until his decency was taken into question. She had to find out about him, but she needed a distraction. Besides which it was unquestionable who they had come for. She had only briefly glimpsed the crushed woman upon her first appearance in Woodbury, but she could tell a damsel in distress from a mile away and usually a Prince Charming was hot on her tail.

Those men creeping around behind the borders were silent, organised, sane-looking and ultimately visibly faithful. One of them looked oddly familiar and yet entirely different. She followed them for some time before revealing herself by coughing loudly. The entire group whipped around and within seconds beyond the fence she made out the perfect image of a crossbow pointed directly where her head would be, were there nothing between them.

"I can show you how to get in." It was all she needed to say to establish an alliance with the fragile, tortured Daryl. He smiled. Rick and Glenn cautiously glared into the deep dark eyes gazing at them between the wooden planks supporting the particular section of fence they spoke amid. "But you must trust me. You've come for the woman held captive here, I believe?"

It took more than closed doors and whispers to deny her the truth.

She peeked once again between the gaps in the fence and found herself staring into hard, frightened eyes. Daryl gazed at her, their eyes locked and fixated, both trying to comprehend the other whilst struggling to trust and earn trust in the briefest of moments. There was grief, Michonne observed, in this stranger's eyes. But also hope.

"The name's Michonne." She whispered anxiously.

"Call me Daryl. The woman's name is Carol. I will trust you for now Michonne, we'll return at nightfall to this spot and meet you. Please, go inside and just pass the message along that I'm here." His eyes lit up as though a torch had been set alight and began to burn deep within behind layers of pupil and skin and flesh and humanity. Something deeply inhuman erupted in his soul and for the first time he thought he might understand the wonder of something more amazing than survival and necessity, the possibility that despite all the odds, love can still wind itself down an unusually prevailing path, a guiding light, leading you to your inmost need. "Tell her I found her…

I will always find her."