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[handleyourshit]

  


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

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[handleyourshit]

"Yeah?"

If she still sounds skeptical, it's because she is. She has no idea how they're supposed to come to terms with bullshit like this, and anyone who's asking her to can get fucked.

Except it's Jesus asking her to. "There a chapter on the cannibalistic, undead end of society as we know it in your books?"

[hippie_ninja]

"The brain is sophisticated except where it isn't. Trauma is trauma to the brain. It's worth a shot." He gives her a tiny shrug; he's uncertain. He's afraid. But he's trying. "Some of the things that helped me seem to help Carver. He liked it, anyway."

[handleyourshit]

She gives him a look. Don't try to leverage Carver with her.

But she also sees that timid movement, from a man who is many, many things - some of them at odds with the things she is - he is not timid. Something around her eyes softens.

"What are you worried about?" she asks, not qualitative, but quantitative.

[hippie_ninja]

He hesitates, but it's just Rosita. It's safe here. "What if I can't find real help here? It's all so sexualized... I don't want to be this way forever."

[handleyourshit]

"Then we'll make it," she says immediately, firmly. The way they always do if something can't be scavenged: take the pieces they do have, fill in the gaps.

It's what she's best at, although she knows this isn't the same.

"Trained therapists just have access to information. That's the difference. A lot of information, yes, and internship hours and all that, I know. But they started out as people. If we have to figure it out the same way they did, we will."

[hippie_ninja]

"When I was a kid, the first time I ran away they had me talk to a therapist. I liked her so much I wanted to be a therapist when I grew up for a while." He laughs softly. "Didn't pan out. But maybe I can learn now. For myself if not for actually doing therapy for other people."

[handleyourshit]

"It's what we do, J," she points out, more gently than she'd said the rest. "If there's no one left to do for us, we do for ourselves."

[hippie_ninja]

"Does that mean you're going to help?" Help find the books, if nothing else.

[handleyourshit]

She tips her head, watching him.

"Always. Unless you don't want me to," she answers, "And honestly probably even then too."

[hippie_ninja]

Probably even then too earns her a little smile.

"I'm glad. Thank you." He breathes out slow, relaxing slightly. "We're more than the things that went wrong."

[handleyourshit]

"Yeah. We are."

She still has her head tilted, watching him, but she smiles too.

"You would've made a good therapist." She's never been to one herself, but even without the training Jesus manages to get people to trust him, to tell him things. She can only imagine what he would do with a bit more knowledge.

"Tell me some things you've learned. From your book, or from Jean."

[hippie_ninja]

"Reframing some things has helped. Finding reasons to be glad I came through something bad. That's...been hard for me. It's harder to reframe parts of my childhood than it is to reframe things I've done since the world fell apart. Maybe because after I was an adult I had choices, and it still feels like I didn't when I was a kid." He shakes his head slightly. It's hard to even talk about being a kid, but he's trying to do it anyway in places where it's safe.

"And breathing. But you know that trick already."

[handleyourshit]

Rosita doesn't believe in this the way Jesus does. It's not the first time this has happened between them, but it is the first time that to her practical mind, there's relatively little on the line. No one dies if they fuck this up, unless they really fuck it up. It's just the two of them, and there's already trust here.

She doesn't believe in it, but he does, and he needs her. She listens, and when he starts to trail off, she folds her hands in her lap where she's cross legged on the counter now.

"I don't know about you, but I would think it's also - for me, just to keep moving forward, I had to write everything before the virus off. It's like it happened to a different person, someone who died with that world. That makes it hard to connect to the things that happened back then, too."

[hippie_ninja]

"There were things I kept. I had to." It's a choice, being the way he is. It didn't just happen.

"If I let go of everything about myself I wasn't sure what would be left. I knew I wanted to see the new world that emerged. I knew I wanted to help it be better and to do that I couldn't let go of the things that really mattered to me. But maybe that would have been different if I'd had family. If I'd had anyone counting on me, anyone I was afraid of losing."

[handleyourshit]

"You've always been strong that way," she says, quiet, respectful. She can never trace this piece of him back to its root, partially she knows because it just is him.

"But I mean - I had to make myself believe it was all gone. Every place I'd ever been or lived, every person I'd ever talked to or loved, every goal I'd ever tried for. I had to cut it out and focus on staying alive. I only came back to any of it later."

[hippie_ninja]

"And now you're getting some of that back. But you're not who you were when you let it all go." It has to feel on some level like dragging open an old wound.

[handleyourshit]

"No. And I don't want to be."

It's not a conversation that she's ever had to have, not with the way people are back home; and she doesn't owe an explanation to anyone here.

"I like who I am now. I know I can take care of myself now."

[hippie_ninja]

"And you can let yourself enjoy some of the things you used to like. Spa days for one," he says with a little wink.

"Can you let yourself be happy?"

[handleyourshit]

"Spa days for one," she agrees, chuckling. Then he asks that and she drops her eyes down to her lap.

"For a long time? No," she answers, honestly. "I mean I wasn't unhappy or anything, but I didn't get too comfortable either. Not until -"

Well. It doesn't bear talking about. She picks at one fingernail with the others.

"That was a new one. I didn't think I could anymore."

[hippie_ninja]

"Me, either," he admits. People view him as a generally happy person but it's all down to how his perspective. "I viewed happiness as happening in small moments. Little...tastes, almost. Nothing that lasted, but I enjoyed it while I had it. That way it didn't hurt to lose it. But coming here those moments are longer. And they help pull me through the bad moments."

[handleyourshit]

"Yeah. They are."

She'll give him that much: she recognizes the bits and pieces of happy moments, things it does no good to try too hard to hold onto, except in the ways that they're all trying to hang onto them here.

"Does it ever feel too easy to you here? Like. At home, you could protect people by scavenging or harvesting or patrolling harder. But here if I want to make sure we have food for the night, I just swing by a store or restaurant on the way home." It feels like cheating. Feels like love should be harder to prove.

[hippie_ninja]

A breath that's almost a cynical laugh. As close to cynical as Jesus ever comes. "All the time. It's why I was so glad to move out of the city. Broken Hollow is easy, but the windows keep me sharp. And when I want to have someone over for dinner, I have to plan ahead. I still just go to the store but I can get some things out of my own garden. It feels more...real that way."

[handleyourshit]

"Sometimes I think -"

She shrugs, trying to work out how to put what she's thinking into words. How to make this emotion make sense when it's outside her own head.

"Sometimes I think that's part of what was wrong with the old world. What I don't trust here. It's too easy to pretend to care about someone. There's no effort in it, not like there is back home."

[hippie_ninja]

He nods quickly. "No, I get that. I don't work for the relationships I have. They're there, they're easy--most of the time. And it scares me. I've had to work to be good at the things I can do. I've suffered to learn some of the things I know. But here it's not painful."

[handleyourshit]

"I earned Rick's trust at a word," she says, remembering the first time she laid eyes on Rick Grimes: in the sweltering, sun-heated, choking dark of that railway car, Eugene cornered behind her and Abraham in front of them both

They're our friends, Maggie Rhee said, looking back at them. They helped save us.

Now they're friends of ours, Daryl agreed, smiling in that rough-edged, warmbrittle way he has.

"But to do that, we had to scrape Tara and Glenn up off the road, we had to put him back together and backtrack to find Maggie and Sasha and Bob, we had to keep everyone in one piece and get them to Terminus. For Maggie to speak for us, to be accepted into that group just like that, we had almost a month of hard work behind us. We earned it."