I had this chapter about done a few days ago and then I lost it. I lost a lot of words for a lot of stories and I am just now writing them all again. Sorry about the wait. Just a few more chapters and this will be finished. I love those of you that are still sticking with this! I hope everyone enjoys the Holidays and thanks for reading!

Worlds Realigned

Daryl picked the people to have present while Sophia made her announcement. Merle and Andrea were present but he could tell by the look on Merle's face that he already knew what Sophia was about to say. Rick and Lori were there with Carl but they didn't stand close. Michonne, Tyreese and Sasha. Hershel, Maggie Glenn. They were all there. Sophia didn't look like she was looking forward to telling them what she was about to tell them and this made him nervous. It meant that someone was going to have to do something dangerous.

Sophia cleared her throat and then pressed further into his side. "So, Merle seems to think that this isn't a good idea and most of you will probably agree with him."

Merle nodded, his eyes narrowed on the girl.

"But it has to be done. Somehow, it's important. We have to go to the prison. Oscar has to get out," she said firmly.

The group glanced around, some looking confused and others looking worried. Daryl felt his stomach sink and he was shaking his head before Sophia could open her mouth to say anything more. "No. we can't go back there."

Sophia sighed. "This is it, Daryl. The prison is the last piece of the puzzle. Somehow this all works as long as we get those guys out."

Carol spoke up. "I thought you said we only need Oscar?"

Sophia shrugged. "No one here would be willing to let the other two men die. They aren't bad men."

"But there's bad men there," Rick said, his eyes moving over Carl's head and locking onto Lori's for a heartbeat. "What about them?"

Sophia bit her lip. "I don't know. You can't bring them here. I can't tell you to kill them though." She made a face. "But somehow this only works if all of us are here. There's always a reason behind the things I see. What I saw... was an end. This can all be over, somehow."

"So the future of civilization is on the shoulders of three convicts?" Glenn asked.

Daryl felt a slight flash of anger. "If you recall, one of those convicts died savin' your ass. Woodbury ring a bell there short stack?"

Glenn's face flushed but he didn't say anything else.

Daryl wanted this to be over. He was done worrying about her all the time. He just wanted to be able to move on with their lives and not have to wonder what sort of messed up visions may or may not be bouncing around in her head. "And that's the last thing we have to do? After that, everything is smooth sailing?"

Sophia shook her head. "Probably not smooth but we all live. That's been the point this whole time. It never stopped before because we were always messing up. But I could just tell, these last few times, that we were finally getting closer to getting it right. After this, we get it right. This is the end."

With those ominous words hanging in the air the tension in the room was high. Merle spoke up, his voice rough. "We need to get a group together. The more the merrier."

Daryl glanced up and even Rick was giving Merle a doubtful look, and that was saying something. Daryl shook his head. "You won't be goin'."

Merle looked incredulous. "The fuck I ain't!"

"You barely survived that shot, Merle. You'd be insane to go out there," Daryl barked, glaring at his idiot brother.

Andrea leaned in then, whispering something into Merle's ear. He made a face, like he was about to argue but then he finally shook his head and walked out of the room.

~H~

By the time Merle made it back to his room he was ready to fall over. He would never admit that, though. He didn't handle being told what to do every well. Especially when the people trying to tell him what to do was his little brother and nit picking Andrea. He slammed his door as hard as he could but it opened up just a few seconds later and Andrea slipped in. He looked up, scowling deeply. "What the fuck do you want? Go plan your little trip with Daryl and let me have some goddamn peace," he snapped.

She put her hands on her hips and glared. "You don't get to throw a fit and get your way, Merle. You aren't half as scary when you can barely breath just from walking up the stairs."

He snorted and eased back down on the bed, his chest pulling and sending shooting pains through his torso. Getting shot was a real mother fucker. "Is that why you followed me up here? So you could stand around and bitch at me because I can't get up and toss your ass out of my room?"

She sat down on the edge of the bed and gave him a look that made him wish that he really could get up and throw her ass out into the hall. "We care about you. You had us all scared to death. We thought you were going to die so the least you could do is cut us some slack. We both know you wouldn't be able to make a bit of difference if you went to the prison. You would slow the others down."

He glared at her. "But let me guess, you're goin'? Probably Lori too. Hell, why not just send the whole damn group, so long as Merle stays his ass in the bed."

She rolled her eyes. "I'm staying with you. They can handle it."

He blinked, actually surprised that she wasn't jumping at a chance to join the others that would be going. "What'd they do, force you to stay here to play nurse maid?" He grumbled.

She moved quickly but carefully. One second she was sitting on the edge of the bed and the next she was straddling his hips, sitting up and eying him with an annoyed expression on her face. "Would you just stop? Stop with the grumbling crap and just accept the fact that people care about you here. You've come a long way from who you were in that other life. Stop trying to hold on to him. Let it go."

It was hard to concentrate on telling her to go to hell while she was sitting on him like that. He decided to drop it for now. He was too damn tired to fight it anyway. "You always climb up on a man's junk to give him hell or is this a special case?"

She actually smiled then and leaned down, kissing him. "You're a special case," she said once she moved off and made herself comfortable next to him.

He sighed but didn't comment on her proximity. If he opened his mouth now he would just end up saying something to piss her off and make her leave and as much as he hated to admit it, he kind of liked her right where she was. He'd never tell her that, of course, but he felt it all the same.

~H~

"I'm sitting this one out. You don't even have to tell me," Sophia said when Daryl and her mom found her on the back porch with Penny.

Daryl nodded but her mom looked at her skeptically. Sophia rolled her eyes. "I'm serious. No tricks," Carol said sternly.

Sophia shook her head. "None."

Daryl glanced around the yard before his narrowed eyes found hers. "And you stay the hell away from Carl. I got eyes all over this place, you best be rememberin' that."

She sighed. "I know."

He gave her a swift nod and then walked back inside. She waited until the door was closed before she said anything. Her eyes lingering on the door. "You know, you would think they would trust me more than they do."

Penny giggled. "You're right. It isn't like you never do anything sneaky. So, are you really staying here or are you going to figure out a way to go with them to the prison?"

Sophia chewed her lip in thought. "I think I'm really going to sit this one out. I'm kind of tired."

Penny nodded sagely. "You should be. You've had a hard job to do."

Sophia frowned, squinting out into the yard as Carl and a few of the other boys rounded the barn. "You know what? You're right. I've busted my ass and managed to save the world. I'm taking a break."

Penny grinned. "How are you gonna do that?"

Sophia stood up, grabbing Penny's hand and pulling her up from the step. "Race me to the barn?"

Penny shrugged. "Sure, but why?"

"Because I'm a kid and it's high time I started acting like it. Losers it for the most epic game of tag this side of the apocalypse." She winked and then they took off. She let Penny win, since the girl had shorter legs and she wasn't the most active out of the group. If she was "it" then she would be it all day since it was unlikely she would catch the other kids. The older ones anyway.

She didn't think about what would happen at the prison or what they may all face between now and the last vision that she had witnessed, and she wasn't planning on it. She had done everything she could and she had sacrificed a lot to do it. Her innocence was damaged and her very soul was scarred from the things she had been forced to witness. But she was just a girl and she was going to be just a girl for a little while longer.

~H~

Carol let the curtain fall back in place, a smile on her face. She still felt drained from the emotional ride she had been living on since Merle had been shot but she at least felt relieved that they were both okay.

"You need to stay with her," Daryl said in a gruff voice. He had an arsenal laid out on their bed and he didn't look up at her when she approached him. She picked up one of the knives and tested the edge with the pad of her thumb. She wasn't surprised to see a small drop of blood well up from the tiny cut, even though she used no pressure. He had worked on every blade they had until it was razor sharp.

"I'm not going to do that and you know it," she said quietly.

He finally glanced up, his eyes hard and a muscle twitching in his jaw. "We can handle this one on our own. We just got her back. You really gonna run off?"

She gave him a steady look. "What about you? You're the only real father she's ever known. You just got her back. Why don't you just stay here and let the rest of us handle it?" She countered, crossing her arms.

He tossed a rifle onto the bed and leveled a look at her that would have made a weaker version of herself shudder. "You think I won't?"

She blinked stupidly. "What?" Surely he wouldn't sit this one out.

"Do you think I don't care enough about her that I wouldn't stay if she needed me to stay?"

She frowned. "Daryl, where in the hell is this coming from? You know I didn't mean that. I just want you to understand that I want this to end just as badly as you do and I just don't trust anyone else to get it done. What if we send someone else and then they mess up?"

He looked back down at the bed and then back up at her. "I don't wanna risk somethin' happening to you," he said in a tired voice.

She took another step towards him but didn't touch him. "All we have to do is get inside the prison and get them back out. We've done it before."

"That was in our heads," he growled, like she was simply being stubborn.

"That was reality. Maybe not exactly ours but we know enough now to know that all of that was real. Everything that happened to us was real. And there's a pattern to it."

"What's that? Besides all of it being one big confusing cluster fuck?"

She finally moved close enough so they were only a breath away. She could feel the tension rolling off of him in waves. "We're together. We have to stick together. Do you really think that all of this insanity is about Sophia and Merle?"

He shook his head, meeting her eyes. "What else can it be about if it ain't about them?"

"It's about us. All of us but me and you especially. I don't know if it's God or fate or intelligent design, but something needed us to be together. To be together and to be alive. The only constant in those visions of hers was the fact that every time something happened to us, to me and you, she was able to see it and she was able to fix it."

He studied her for a long time. "You think that's why me and you saw things so clear when everybody else was just getting little bits and pieces?"

She nodded.

"But Merle was always with her. Everywhere. Every time. No matter what place they were seeing, it was Sophia and Merle. You can't tell me that fate or God or intelligent design needs them to be together all the time. Merle's a grown man that's got his own life to live, even if it's here."

Carol had thought long and hard about that too. "Merle and Sophia never chose that. Before you came along I was the only safe constant thing in Sophia's life. I'm her mom and there isn't anyone on earth that she loves more than me."

"And Merle's the only family I got. Regardless of how big of a burn out asshole he is, he don't care about nobody else. Me and him were all each other ever had."

She nodded again. "Merle ends up taking care of her because of his love for you and she clings to him because he's the only family she has left. It's never been about her and Merle. It's only ever really been about me and you."

"And what about the Jenners? What about everybody else? She ain't just savin' us. She's savin' everyone. So how could all of this just be about me and you?" He asked, his voice quiet.

"I thought of that too. I remembered what Jenner had said about his wife saving the world. When I thought of him it changed things. Sophia zoned out that day too, remember?"

"I'm getting a headache," he muttered.

She sighed and sat down on the side of the bed, pushing guns aside like that was the most normal thing in the world. "Me too. And don't think I'm trying to make up a sweet little fantasy about how we were so destined to be together that the worlds realigned themselves to make it happen. As amazing as that would be, I don't really think of it like that. But for all of this to happen. For the ending to finally be what it was always meant to be, we had to find each other before it fell. We had to do everything just right. It's so hard to explain."

He shrugged and knelt down in front of her, his hands sliding up the outside of her thighs until he made it to her hips. When he looked up there seemed to be a million questions in his eyes. "We're gonna go bust them jack asses out of prison and then this is over. We just live our fuckin' life the way we want and eventually the nightmare that the world turned into is gonna be fixed."

She reached down, cupping his face and pulling it closer to hers. "God, I hope so," she whispered.