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

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"I'll help." Which is what she's good at.

"I've just been trying to decide on where, and how."

It makes her feel better, if nothing else. She's never been one to lay down to die, even when dying was all she wanted.

He nods and starts mixing them some drinks.

"If any part of you thinks this might be your chance to go home easy though, don't give that up for me. All right?"

"I'm also only staying here if you stop trying to get me to give up." She follows after him, more than ready for her first round.

"And I'll take my booze with me."

"Don't take the booze," he teases, and hands her a glass.

"All right. So let's plan. I have places in the city to hide but..."

The nightmare from last night creeps in. A whisper against his ear, a knife in his chest. "We should get out of the city."

She nods agreement. Definitely. Nothing good happens in cities when there's widespread tragedy or panic.

"I've been considering the caverns and the woods. Normally I'd say fuck the caverns but. They're better for hiding than the woods." But the woods are the woods, and they are who they are.

"We don't know everything in the caverns. I think the woods are to our advantage." Even at this time of year, they're equipped.

"We need to get people together."

"I don't know if we should go to the property," she hedges. "I turned in the application. They'll know to look there, and we haven't had time to do much out there."

She is completely unsurprised by Jesus's first priority.

"Which people?"

He nods. That makes sense. They'll find another camp if they have to.

"K, Drake, Vrenille, Carver." He can list them easily.

She nods, having expected all of those names and then some honestly, but she frowns.

"You think they'll all come? We have to get out quietly, and no contact once we're dug in."

"I don't know." He really doesn't. He wishes he had a better idea, a better way to streamline this process. "But I think we can make a good case for getting out of reach as soon as possible. They might want to say goodbye to their other people if they do come."

"I don't dare trust that these fuckers will wait a full two days," she cautions, downing half her drink without even tasting it.

"Tomorrow night at the latest, no exceptions. Earlier if we can."

"Earlier the better," he says, unaware of his hand reaching up to touch the space on his chest where the walker's blade had almost protruded.

"We'll go out tomorrow while it's still light out. They're not used to the woods, they'll need that."

She catches it, but it takes her a moment to understand. She stares at the spot while she finishes her first drink, slides the empty glass over for a second.

"I just need to check in with a few people, see where they're at. It shouldn't take long. I'm sure they've got their own people." But she accepted responsibility for - and offered support to - Jacob and Dinah. It means something to her, even if she doesn't to them in coming days.

"Me, too." Just people he likes, people he wants to be safe even if they have their own plans.

He fills her glass, empties his, fills it again. "I have a go bag ready, but it'll probably take them time to pack."

"Me too." They never quite leave the trauma behind and she wonders if they would even if they really were in a world that didn't keep dropping them back in it unexpectedly.

At least back home it was constant, it was known.

"I dreamed the Reapers killed us all," she says and doesn't know she's started until it's done.

He looks up at her, studies her quietly for a moment. "Even Carver?"

She hesitates a moment, then nods.

"He didn't know who I was. They have these masks - his is a skull. I could remember it but not why, and when I tried to get in his way it - it just didn't matter."

"You're getting closer to him. It makes sense that part of your mind is..." Afraid? That's maybe a too strong word for it. Or maybe too accurate. "... Wondering if he's getting closer to you, too."

"Or it's just the truth."

None of them would remember anything here if they got to go back. If somehow Jesus and Carver were to be anything other than what they are, the Reapers and the Alexandrians would never be able to inhabit the same world with the same scarce resources.

"They killed us all, and moved into our houses."

"It's a truth for a different world. Here, the only Reaper is Carver. And he wouldn't do that to us." He has a steady, quiet confidence in that. Carver is loyal when he lets people in, rare as it is.

"I know."

It was only a dream. It happens to them all the time, sometimes more and sometimes less, but it's just something that happens.

She takes another drink, and looks at him. "I miss home, but I'm not ready to go yet."

He shouldn't say this. But his mouth twitches, not a smile and not a wince. "I'm not ready for you to go, either."

If this works and he gets to stay, he isn't ready for a world without her.

"You make everything here better."

It is bad luck to say goodbyes, to say just in case, to simply hand over a neatly tied ending to the story of two people living in the same world. They all know it. They always have.

There's so, so much they don't know here. About how any of this works.

"That's all I've ever wanted to do." Make the world just a little bit better. Leave it just a little better.

"I know. Me, too." And when the world suddenly got so much smaller he'd been sure he was doing that: bringing people together, going out into the world to shoulder danger so people could live quietly behind the walls with their families.

They're not saying goodbye, he tells himself.

"You did. You gave us hope again."

Different from the kind Rick fostered, something delicate and bright where Rick's was bloody and grim. They needed one out on the road to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

They needed the other to know what to do without the road.

"Ask me one thing you've always wanted to know," she says abruptly. "Anything. I won't lie."