The general consensus was that you guys want a season four AU set at the prison so here it is. I've decided to tie it in with Shelter, to tell the story of how Rick and Andrea moved past their respective issues and got together.

Chapter 1.

She was unconscious when they found her, curled on the floor, a pair of bloody pliers clutched in her hand. There was blood on her clothes, her skin, pooling on the concrete beneath her… Though whether it belonged to her or the dead walker beside her was anyone's guess.

Rick kept his gun trained on her forehead while he crouched beside her, pressing his fingers into the hollow beneath her jaw. Her pulse was thready, but persistent, although something told him that it wouldn't be for much longer if they didn't do something fast.

"Is she…?" Michonne asked, her voice soft and fearful, looking visibly shaken for the first time since Rick had met her.

"She's alive," he assured her. To Daryl, he added: "We need to get her to Hershel. He'll know what to do."

"You sure it's a good idea to bring her back to the prison?" Daryl asked him, eying Andrea's motionless form warily, as though he half expected her to rise up and attack them. "What if she's been bit?"

Michonne shoved past Rick impatiently, unceremoniously tearing open Andrea's vest.

The three men – including Tyreese, who had been watching silently from outside the door – averted their eyes as she began shoving aside her friend's clothing, examining her body for the damning teeth marks.

"She hasn't," she announced finally, letting Andrea's shirt fall back over the pale, unblemished skin of her stomach. "Most of this blood isn't hers."

Rick's gaze wandered from Andrea back to the still walker. The evidence suggested that she had managed to hold it off long enough to stab it through the eye with the pliers before passing out herself.

Must've been one hell of a fight, he thought.

But then the Andrea he knew was a scrapper. It was one of the things he had always admired about her.

"If she ain't bit, then what're we waiting for?" Daryl asked, calling Rick's mind back to the present. "Let's get her the hell out of this shithole."

Daryl ducked back out into the hall, returning a moment later with a weathered tarp like the kind usually found on construction sites. He and Rick shifted Andrea onto it, the four of them each taking one corner so that it formed a kind of makeshift stretcher.

When they reached the car, Rick and Michonne stepped back, allowing Daryl and Tyreese to transfer Andrea into backseat.

Michonne climbed in after her, cradling her head in her lap with a tenderness that surprised Rick. It was clear from her actions that she cared deeply for Andrea. He just hoped that it wasn't too late for them to mend whatever rift had caused them to turn their backs on each other.

"I'll drive," he offered, closing the door and walking around to the front of the vehicle.

It was true that he wanted to check on Carl and Judith, but there was also a part of him that felt it was his duty to make sure Andrea got to safety. After all, he was the one who had cast her out of his little kingdom without a second thought. He knew what the Governor was and he'd sent her back to him. Twice.

In his old life, he'd sworn an oath to protect women from situations like hers. She wasn't exactly an innocent, but she wasn't a dictator like the Governor, or a killer like Rick; if she died now, murdered at the hands of her psychotic boyfriend, Rick would have to live with the knowledge that he hadn't done anything to prevent it for the rest of his days.

"There's no telling if or when the Governor will come back here," he reminded Daryl. "I need you to stay here and help Tyreese round up everyone who's left and try to convince them to come with you to the prison. Let them know our door is open to anyone who's willing to defect. Tell them that as of now, we're calling an armistice."

"You got it, Hoss," Daryl agreed, and confident that he had the situation well in hand, Rick slid behind the wheel and started up the engine.

Back at the prison, Glenn and Maggie came down, still dressed in their riot gear, to open the gates for them. When Rick filled them in on what had happened at Woodbury, they ran ahead to warn Hershel while he brought the car up to the main building.

Rick didn't bother with a stretcher this time, lifting Andrea out of the backseat and carrying her into the cellblock himself.

By the time he got her to Hershel's cell, the old veterinarian had all of his medical supplies laid out on the desk ready.

"She's been like this since we found her," Rick explained, lowering Andrea onto the cot. "All we know is that she wasn't bitten."

He faded back into the doorway with Michonne while Hershel checked Andrea's vitals, recording them in a small notebook he took from his breast pocket.

Her already pallid face had taken on a greyish hue since they had rescued her from what Rick could only describe as the Governor's torture chamber.

"What's wrong with her?" he asked anxiously.

She was going to be all right. She had to be. She fought too hard to overcome the loss of her sister, to survive just to die on them now.

Hershel dabbed at Andrea's hairline with a wet rag, wiping the dried blood from her forehead so that he could examine the injury underneath.

Rick watched the water turn a murky pink as he dipped it back into the bowl.

"From the looks of this head wound, I'd say she has a concussion. My guess is that someone was trying to knock her out and keep her out."

That's how he got her into that room, Rick realised, a sick feeling creeping into the pit of his stomach.

When she figured out what that monster had planned for her, she would have struggled; in order to subdue her, he would have to hit her hard enough to make her black out. And if she happened to come to before they got to where they were going… A man like that, he would have no qualms about slugging her again.

"Those bruises are too dark to be fresh," Michonne pointed out. "And the walker we found couldn't have been killed more than a few hours ago. That means she was awake today."

"This wasn't just caused by a concussion," Hershel agreed. "She's also suffering the effects of dehydration, starvation, infection… Her body is in shock."

"Infection?" Rick repeated, wondering if the old man had uncovered something Michonne had missed.

Hershel lifted Andrea's wrist, still encircled by the remains of a bloody metal handcuff like a macabre bracelet. The places where the cuff bit into her skin were marked with painful-looking abrasions, rubbed raw by her attempts to free herself.

"See how inflamed these wounds are?" he explained.

Rick let out the breath he was holding. So she hadn't been bitten.

The old man glanced from him to Michonne and back again. "Where did you say you found her?"

"She was locked up in the same building where they kept Glenn and Maggie," Rick told him. "It looked like she'd been handcuffed to a chair."

"You forgot to mention the walker," Michonne said, her eyes burning with cold fury. "He wasn't just holding her prisoner – he was trying to kill her."

"You don't think he succeeded, do you?" Rick asked Hershel.

He tried to imagine what might very well have been Andrea's final days, locked up, starved, and beaten like some kind of animal. Nobody deserved to die like that, especially not a woman whose biggest crime was falling in love with the wrong guy.

"She's in a bad way," Hershel agreed, "but Andrea's a fighter. She's going to need a little help, though."

"What can we do?" Michonne asked him.

"She needs water. The problem is, the only way I can give it to her while she's unconscious like this is through an IV."

"I bet there's one in the infirmary," Rick told him.

From what he'd seen, it seemed to be pretty well stocked. If they'd had access to all those supplies when Judith was born, that day might have ended differently.

What was past was past, though. Rick couldn't turn back the clock, any more than he could sprout wings and fly. It was too late to do anything for Lori now, but today, with Andrea, they still had some time.

"Bring it to me," Hershel said, "and we just might have a shot at saving her life."