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

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"I'm not mad." He's not sure what he's feeling. "I'm wondering how much you trust me."

"Why, because I think shit is weird around here and that we need to allow for that?" she asks, but there's none of the challenge that had lashed out of her before.

He shakes his head. "Because the risk I took in trusting him is no greater a risk than the one you took in trusting Grayson."

"I don't trust Grayson," she reminds him, shaking her head.

"And I told you that."

She did, though, at least in that situation where she was vulnerable. "You let him work magic on you. Vampires need only a drop of blood to control people, Ro. Maybe some need even less than that."

"Because there had to be some kind of test, and I certainly wasn't about to ask you to do it," she answers, unblinking and unhesitating.

He looks at her. Starts to say something, then shakes his head. "What?"

"What what?" she asks, genuinely confused about how they keep missing each other on this. What piece she's missing in turn that lets them talk past each other.

"Which part of that isn't clear?"

"That's not okay, Rosita." The thought that something actually could have happened to her and she would have just put her neck in the noose to see is somehow very different than what he'd been picturing. "You're not expendable."

Expendable hits her in a weird way, like it always does; of course she is, some part of her offers immediately. She's the weakest fighter they have.

Of course not, a newer, quieter, but harsher part of her says. That's not what it was about.

She taps her fingers again, then shakes her head. "I took a risk to get information, to test a possible ally. How is that any different from anything we've been doing so far?"

There are only three of them. She asks Carver for nothing, and even if she didn't have a dozen other reasons she did what she did, she wasn't interested in risking Jesus.

"It's just that it's usually my job." As the scout. As the one with no ties that can be painfully severed if he fails.

"What? To be expendable?" she asks, a muscle in her jaw jumping.

Not expendable.

But yes.

"We need you, Rosita." And softer, "I need you."

Why is she such a sucker for that tone and that sentiment?

She flattens her palms on the bartop, pulls her hands back to tuck under her elbows.

"I need you too, Jesus. Whole. Healthy."

"I am." Somehow, he's not dead. And she isn't a vampire's slave, and Drake isn't a zombie. "And I mean to stay that way."

She presses her lips together, drops her eyes. Packs herself up behind her ribs, her fists, her teeth, as safe as she can make herself.

"You think I don't see what you've been doing, J? That I don't know?"

He looks up as the last of the rest of the staff leave. He has a key; he'll lock up. It's just them now.

"What do you mean?"

"We're less than a month out from having property, from having a place to start over, but you've been building it already for months." Which isn't unexpected. It's what Jesus does, what he's always done, it's who he is.

But: "And sometimes you run things past me, and sometimes you run behind me - and you send me people, and send me at people." Which doesn't make for any specific pattern, unless you've seen it before.

"I was there when Maggie took Hilltop. Remember?" She saw Jesus just behind and at her friend's side.

He studies her, and he looks down at their drinks and he lets himself think. "We need you, Rosita. This little group we have works because of you."

Rosita stands for his scrutiny, her eyes ticking back up when he speaks.

She already knew, she's known for a while now even if she's been keeping too busy to think on it too much. But she's always avoided being the leader for a reason; she and Jesus fill many of the same roles, for many of the same reasons, and they've never been leadership material.

She doesn't answer.

He swirls the amber liquid in his glass, drinks it back. "What are you thinking?"

"That it's not very fair," she offers, reaching up to rub at one of her eyes. She's tired most of the time now, stress and being on edge eating at her in a way the physical work of walking and walking and walking and walking never did.

"I can't keep us all safe like this."

"What you're doing is enough." But he sees the edges of her fraying, sees that it's happening in much the same way it's happening to him, too.

"No it's not."

Alexandria has a reputation for being home to fighters, but they're more than that; their standards are higher than that, and she helped establish those. Hunting parties, scouting parties, patrols, councils, structure, resources.

She feels caught out here again, feels like she's starting from scratch and she doesn't know what's expected of her.

"If it was, two out of three of us wouldn't feel blindsided by something we felt we should have known, two out of three of us wouldn't be sitting here talking about what we don't know about the third, and you and I wouldn't be talking about trust. Just to name a few things."