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

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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."

He saw some of this in Maggie, too. It doesn't shake his faith in Rosita.

"My mistake isn't your fault, Rosita." He tops off her drink as apology.

She will absolutely take that apology, which is enough to get her to reach and down a mouthful of it. She shakes her head.

"We need to have a better start to this conversation. We need to actually have a conversation," she decides through the face she pulls as the alcohol burns its bitter way down her throat.

"We do," he nods, and he hasn't had trouble with these sort of conversations before. It's not going to change now.

"I felt like you were saying you don't trust me," he says, deciding it's the core of his issue so it's as good a place to start as any. "I try to befriend people but I'd never do anything to endanger the group."

Okay.

Okay.

"I do trust you," she says, clearly, emphatically. "I trust that you would never knowingly do something that would harm the group. My concern is that we're all still finding our feet here, and the threats are different."

"They are. And if I wasn't sure, absolutely positive, that Drake was safe, I would never have contracted with him. It felt like a double standard because you were willing to risk us by going to a vampire because you trust that Carver vetted him thoroughly." He exhales. "You say you were taking all the risk on yourself, but you couldn't have known it would stop with you. What if he turned you? What if he controlled you?"

"I didn't know when you found out though. And I was here when you first contracted - you didn't want to. You were worried about something, but there was a deadline and the zoo. It wasn't exactly purely a long, thought out, carefully decided process."

There's room to doubt, is what she means.

"If he did something to me, you'd do what we always do when someone isn't themselves anymore. Heart instead of brain is the only difference."

He would. They both know he would. Just like she would to him. It's an act of love as much as it is an act of self defense.

"But you'd also come back, here. And then I'd be pissed at you."

"And then we'd know more than we did before." She'd accept his anger. She'd be furious in his place, too.

But there's another sticking point if this is the track Jesus is going to take: "Do you trust Carver?"

"It depends on the setting," he admits. "But yes. I trust he wouldn't put himself in danger with Grayson. I trust he'd look out for you."

And that's fair. Rosita's own trust in Carver is not without its reservations.

"So you're operating on a double standard too: Carver's been healed by Grayson multiple times. And he's let him do something to him, long before we got here. Carver is also more willing to break himself apart for an advantage than I am, and he's not completely sane." She cares about the man, but some truths hold.

"But he was right there. I asked him multiple times before we went anywhere. I didn't just decide on a whim, and if it works we have a huge advantage. If we want it."

"I guess I am," he admits. "Or was. I just... Don't want you to think it wouldn't matter if something happened to you. You're-"

But she's probably had this talk before. "It matters. So we all three need to be careful."

She watches him, the quiet taper where words fail him or he changes his mind about what he was going to say. About what needs to be said.

She already loved him. She lets herself feel it, lets it bleed into her expression, something tender and visceral and achingly loyal.

"We're badasses, J. We're the best our communities have to offer. But we're both used to being the front line, and making snap decisions for ourselves because people are depending on us." And that was necessary. That was what it took to survive back home: the willingness to trust a group of strangers without anyone's permission, or to pick their way alone amongst walkers to get to a building that might have nothing or might have everything they need for the next month.

"We all need to reassess."

He can feel that same feeling echoed in his own expression, a simple but vibrant kind of love he'd never really been able to have in the old world.

"What do you think that looks like? We check in with each other more?"

"We don't fuck around with... Well, any nonhumans, but especially anything that has to do with the virus. A virus." She makes sure to keep her voice calm because this isn't an attack on Drake specifically or Jesus's decision to trust him. It's much less rational and much more deep seated than that:

"Even if one of us doesn't think it's important. We've all suffered too much because of it. We're not reasonable about it. It's easier to think straight if we're not surprised by it, even if there's genuinely no risk. Does that sound like something we can agree on?"

"Vampires count," he says, a fervent note in his voice surprising him. "They may not be as contagious as the virus but they're just as dangerous in other ways. So we stay in contact when we mess around with them. Okay?"

Edited Date: 2023-02-25 05:35 pm (UTC)

"Okay," she agrees, even though she could argue that both she and Carver have been up front about dealing with vampires - it won't get them anywhere because they were all behaving the same way and anyway she can hear that this is along the same vein for Jesus that she's talking about for all of them. Something fear and defense based that triggers fight or flight regardless of need. Something merciless and decisive.

If they're aware of it though, they can plan around it. "What else?"

He thinks, but he's always been a scout, always been second in command even when he was forced to lead.

"I think that's the main thing for me. We communicate. I'll be better about it."