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[handleyourshit]

  


This is Rosita.  I'll hit you back when I can.

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[handleyourshit]

"He was a hot damn mess," she sniffs, shaking her head again, gathering her knees up.

"Smart, and... not fearless, he was terrified a lot of the time, but it didn't stop him. Fast. And he always tried. Every damn thought and feeling he had was right there on his sleeve, and when he was aimed in a direction, he went as hard as he could."

[hippie_ninja]

"I'm sorry you lost him," he says, and thinks Rosita has probably never had anyone say that to her about Glenn. Maybe not even about Abraham. But she clearly loved them both.

"I just wish he'd been able to meet Hershel. He was such a good baby. I bet Glenn would've been a great dad."

[handleyourshit]

No one ever talks to her about that day. Those who were there don't want to, and those who weren't can't.

She sits very still, and doesn't respond, at least not to the first part.

She smiles instead, and says, "Yeah."

[hippie_ninja]

He'd had Sasha and Maggie suddenly at his door with two corpses. Two corpses with heads so badly bashed in they'd basically been decapitated. He'd helped Sasha bury them.

And he'd decided he'd do whatever he could to put them back together. Flowers and food and a place to stay, that was all he could offer, but God, he'd fought hard to offer it.

"Rosita, did anyone...ever check on you after that night?"

[handleyourshit]

She does not want to talk about this. She does not want to talk about this.

She never wanted to talk about this.

Her hands are already in her lap, hidden by her tented knees, and she twists her fingers into the fabric of her pants.

"What was there to check on?" she says, toneless. "We had to gather for the Saviors. Daryl was gone. Abraham and Glenn were gone. Maggie and Sasha went to Hilltop. Rick and Michonne almost lost Carl. We didn't have many scouts left on their feet."

[hippie_ninja]

"I wish I had."

He didn't really know her then. He loves her now. That's all that matters in his sense of algebra: he loves her now and he wishes he'd been there for her then. Even if she might not have let him.

cw: suicidal ideation, grief

[handleyourshit]

And indeed: "We didn't know each other then."

She remembers being angry enough to tear someone apart with her fingernails if she had to, remembers being unable to sleep and just needing to go, and go, and go.

We don't stop. We never stop.

And she remembers the all consuming guilt. How she'd have done anything to give Glenn back to Maggie, to trade herself for Abraham. She remembers knowing with conviction that she should have been the one Negan chose, and she should have done something to make him choose her.

"It worked out."

[hippie_ninja]

"I guess it did," he says, but with a touch of doubt. "I think it's more that we made the most of a horrible situation. Things could have been so much better."

If not for Negan.

Whatever Jesus's thoughts about how Rick handled things, or how Maggie ultimately did, that remains true. Things were better without Negan around.

"Why didn't you come to the Hilltop, too?"

[handleyourshit]

She shakes her head, slowly, like if she moves too quickly she'll get dizzy.

"What was there for me there?" What could she possibly have accomplished besides putting herself through more pain, and alone in a strange place? "Abraham was with Sasha then. Alexandria needed me, and I needed someplace I could lock a door."

[hippie_ninja]

There were no locked doors at Hilltop, none available anyway. Sasha and Maggie shared a space until Sasha died. And after that, well, Maggie had her own space but Rosita would have been staying with Jesus.

"I'm glad I know you now," he tells her, hand on hers.

[handleyourshit]

Her nails are dug into her clothes still, and that's what his hand over hers covers first. She looks down, tells herself to breathe, to let it go, it's over.

No one who was there that day wants to talk about it. Those who weren't, can't. She forces herself to leave it where it is in the past, and join Jesus here in the present.

"Yeah," she finally manages, relaxing her grip at least. "Yeah. I'm glad, too."

[hippie_ninja]

"Are you okay?" He asks, because no he hasn't missed how tense she is. He hasn't missed how rigid her fingers are under his even when she relaxes.

[handleyourshit]

"Should I be?" she asks, her eyes raising to his.

[hippie_ninja]

He pulls her to him, holds her, chin tucked over her head. "No. Not after that. Not if you aren't."

[handleyourshit]

Usually - for Jesus anyway - Rosita is deceptively easy to hold. She craves closeness, soaks up human contact like it's sunlight, keeps it stored close to her heart against the likelihood that it won't happen again.

Now, though, she doesn't actually resist but she doesn't relax into him either. It's difficult to hold onto her, joints at angles and muscles tense, but she doesn't resist.

She just also doesn't know how to even begin to let this go - and she is, maybe, just a bit afraid of what would happen if she tried.

"I get by," she finally says, softly, eyes open but unfocused over his shoulder, dry despite the tightness in her throat. "I have to. I'm the one still here."

[hippie_ninja]

"I'm here now," he points out. She doesn't resist so he holds her, will keep holding her while she allows it. "You're allowed to hurt a little right now. I'll keep us safe."

[handleyourshit]

"I don't -" She stops, swallows, but she does twist her fingers around to find his instead.

"I don't think this is the kind of hurt that stops once it starts."

[hippie_ninja]

"Grief might not stop." Losing someone doesn't ever fully stop as far as he's seen. "But it won't destroy you. You'll come through it stronger if you can make sense of it."

[handleyourshit]

It's not just grief. Not by now, not years later when she still doesn't let herself think about it too much. The surface points, sure - she can gloss over the majority of it and even talk about some of it with people, but she can't dig into it like she knows a therapist would have told her to do.

She can't. So she tucks her chin into him a bit more, closes her eyes, and says, "Some things you just know you'll die with."

[hippie_ninja]

"...Yeah. Some things you do." There are things he didn't tell Jean. There are things he'll never talk about, too. He gets it.

So he just holds onto her because that's all he can offer. He knows she's been through hell, and he wants her here anyway.

[handleyourshit]

It's not something she has any faith in them ever being able to say to normal people and just have it dropped. People who have, by and large, not had to confront the darkest parts of themselves, and don't know which way they'll jump in a situation that could kill them or someone they love.

But it's valuable to her now. That he can say that, and still hug her to him, and still be glad she's here, glad they know each other now. Glad they're close.

"I want better for you though," she says after a long few moments of steadying herself. "I want to help. You deserve better."

[hippie_ninja]

"You make it sound like you don't deserve better. And you do." She deserves better than what Abraham did when he left her. She deserves better than what Negan did when he took Abraham from her. She deserves better than she's had here.

[handleyourshit]

"Yeah, I do," she agrees, because that's part of what she's learned in the interim years. What she's been learning over her entire life.

The problem is, she doesn't see what she can do differently to get that at this point.

"But you're willing to put your neck out and work for it."

[hippie_ninja]

This is hard for him. It always has been. He suspects it always will be. "I'm trying. I don't know if it's working. You'd have to ask K or Drake or Vrenille. I still don't know what I'm doing, Ro."

[handleyourshit]

"Hey."

She leans back a bit so she can meet his eyes, so she can reach up with the hand he doesn't have hold of and smooth back some hair from his face.

"I don't think they'd all three still be coming around if you weren't doing something right."