handleyourshit | Duplicity Inbox

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

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"Those are yours whenever you want - just try to stop me." As if anyone could.

She picks up her pencil again, and starts sketching on the paper she's supposed to be painting on.

"What's the problem?"

"I don't know how to run it and neither does M. We're both sort of waiting for someone to tell us what to do with it only I don't know if he'll accept anyone else taking charge. Maybe me, but..." He doesn't want to be in charge.

"It'll be okay. I know mostly what Scott intended with it."

"What do you mean, you don't know how to run it?" she echoes, not derogatory, but confused.

"It's just like a community. Bring resources in, inventory them, distribute them back out."

He sighs, fondly. "You make it sound so easy. You and Maggie and Rick always made it look so easy to run things."

He's seen Rosita run training groups.

"I never ran the community," she reminds him. "Just my little piece of it."

Whatever her mission was, whatever she was assigned to, Michonne left her alone to run it and that's how she liked it.

"We'll go by sometime if you want, and I can see if anything jumps out at me."

"I'd like that. It's got a good start, I just feel like it could do more. Reach more people." That, of course, is what he's good at: reaching people.

"Well that's not running it. That's expanding it," she points out, but she's not surprised. That's what Jesus always does.

But she sighs: "You know your friend told me I should consider thinking of us more like a guild than a community?" Not in so many words, but it was the point he was trying to get through to her.

"He's here talking to you without me, I think he qualifies as our friend now," Jesus smirks. He's pleased they get along, relieved they've bonded even if the reason that happened was the cruel joke the Creator pulled.

"What's the difference between a community and a guild?"

"Apparently a guild can have a guild house, but mostly everyone is off doing their own thing towards a common goal," is what she took away from it, mostly.

She ignores the our friend part.

"He also suggested I was the de facto leader."

"That might be what we have here," he admits. He's not sure how he feels about it, though. He likes having his own space; it's one reason he doesn't live with Drake. But he also misses the Hilltop sometimes.

And he knows how badly Rosita misses Alexandria.

"Why don't you call Vrenille a friend?"

She sighs.

"He is. We are." She's not trying to deny that part and she wouldn't. They went through something together.

He did his best to help Jesus. She won't ever forget that. "I'm just still working out what to even do with that."

He gives her a curious look. "Why do you have to do something with it? Why can't it just be?"

It earns him a confused look in return.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

He shakes his head. "What do you need to figure out in order to be his friend?"

"How to act," she answers, like it should be obvious.

"And don't look at me like that. I know, alright? I'm just... still working shit out here."

"He already likes you," Jesus says, but with a certain warmth. "And Carver. And me. He likes survivors, no matter how hard it is for us sometimes."

"I know. I like him too."

She tips her head, looking around them.

"He told me he feels more comfortable here than he does at the Manor in some ways. Says it feels more like home to him, even like this. Especially like this."

"That doesn't surprise me." But it does make him smile, make him feel a little relieved. "I don't think I could get attached to anyone who doesn't understand all...this, on some level."

"I think you're doing just fine," she says, firmly, even a little proudly. She told Vrenille once that Jesus is nothing short of a miracle where they're from.

She meant it. "Are you?"

"Yeah. I'm good." He smiles slightly. "Better than. Things have been really good lately. Having Broken Hollow and Creekside to go to has helped a lot."

The city gets to be too much for him sometimes. He hasn't had a panicked moment like he did on that rooftop, but he has smaller moments where he has to just go.

"Are you?"

"I'm good," she says too, almost automatically, and in the context of how they used to mean it regularly, she is. She's functional. She's here. She's physically in one piece.

But then she catches herself, shading in the long rail of a fence taking shape on her page.

"Mostly I'm good. Sometimes I'm not. I don't know what to expect here, you know?"

"Yeah," he agrees with a soft exhale, like letting go of something heavy. "Mostly I'm good, too. Sometimes it's hard to take the train. Sometimes... Sometimes I can't make myself get on it."

"...yeah."

It makes her wonder, then, if Carver said something - but she's sure she would have heard by now if he had. Jesus's strength is not being circumspect, not about that. About her.

It's not really a surprise they have similar hangups. "Crowds. I hated the looting. I kept waiting for it to turn bloody, to get messier than it was."

"I kept wanting to find you during that. But I couldn't stop myself from looting." He grimaces slightly. "I have new caches set up through the city now."