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

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"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."

"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.

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."

"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."

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."

"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."

"The first time I really saw Maggie, Rick thought I was taking them into a trap. But he's such a good man he was going to check it out anyway. Some of my people were in a crash, they holed up in a building to escape the walkers. I asked Rick to help. He told Maggie to shoot me if he gave the order." He smiles, warm by the memory. "She said, I will. Somehow, though, she let me go from that moment to listening to me argue with her about how to treat prisoners."

God he misses her sometimes. Misses all of them.

He'll never see any of them again, but maybe Rosita will.

"Why did you decide to help Glenn? Weren't you trying to get Eugene to Georgia then?"

"That's how she is. Tougher than nails, but she pays attention."

It feels like an infected wound somewhere in her chest to think about the others, to think back to that time when half - more than - the people who she traveled with back then are gone.

She wouldn't, normally. Not for long anyway. Jesus is asking her to, though, and she doesn't have a good enough reason besides that she doesn't want to, and when has that ever flown?

"You find some strong, like-minded comrades, and you stay stuck together like wet on water," she quotes, even letting a bit of a drawl creep into her voice before returning to fully herself. "That's what Abraham used to say. Glenn had a concussion when we found them, but he was wearing body armor and carrying a rifle, and Tara was fighting walkers off them. First thing she did was call us a bunch of assholes. There were three of us, two of them, and plenty of room in the truck, so we took a chance."

That sounds just like Tara, he thinks, missing her acutely. "I'm surprised Abraham was willing to take the break from the mission."

Knowing what the mission was back then, that they didn't know it was all a ruse yet.

"It was just down to the two of us to protect Eugene," she answers, quiet.

"We had almost two dozen at one point. Moving at the clip we were, trying to make the distance we were? It ate people alive, and we were running out of fuel." She hates how that sounds, but for all that Abraham was protective and could be warm when he wanted to be, she knew how his mind worked too.

"He knew if we ran into one more decent sized herd, we'd either get overtaken or have to detour who knows how long. Glenn and Tara were strong, you could see that at a glance. He wanted them to join us."

"So better to pick up two more strong people and maybe a wife, than to go on alone," he says, nodding slightly. It makes sense.

"What did you think of the detour?"

"No, he tried not to pick up the wife," she chuckles, shaking her head.

"But Glenn wouldn't stay, and while they were arguing about it, a bunch of walkers came out of the cornfield next to us. Eugene tried to shoot some of them and shot the truck in the process, so after that, sticking together meant going with Glenn to find Maggie instead. I -"

She hesitates a moment, because she isn't a woman that has spent a lot of time reflecting on the past, but she's had reason to think this one over. A pivotal moment, one of many, that shaped the trajectory of her entire life - sent her away from Washington for the first time in over a year, and put her with the group they'd end up staying with in place instead.

She's thought about it before, which is why she can admit fairly quickly now, "Eugene shot the damn truck on purpose. So we'd have to go with them. He lied, but he was never good in a fight so we believed he'd panicked and misfired."

What did she think? Not much that she actually said, but: "I was just trying to keep the peace. Keep us moving forward. That's how we'd gotten that far. That was our mantra then: We don't stop. We never stop."

"But he did for a while. To find Maggie. That was going backwards for just one person." Which surprises him, knowing the Abraham he did, however briefly. "Glenn must have been something else, to convince you all to go along with him."

"It got framed as having to stick together on foot for as long as our paths went the same direction," she says. She shrugs.

"You met Glenn. You saw how much he and Maggie loved each other. He had absolutely no intention of leaving her behind anywhere, and I just -"

Okay. She wasn't expecting that to hurt, but she gives it a moment, lets herself breathe through it while it does. She swallows and shakes her head again.

"It was nice to see that. It was nice to see it still in the world."

Edited Date: 2023-07-29 10:36 pm (UTC)

"I got to see them pass around Hershel's ultrasound picture," he says with a soft smile.

Like all close, warmhearted moments in the Alexandrians' group, Jesus was outside of it. He was not passed the picture. He never saw it. But he saw their faces, just like he saw them embrace when they were all reunited, when he brought Daryl back to them. That was enough.

"I wish I'd known Glenn better. I never really talked to him."

"He was a hot damn mess," she sniffs, shaking her head again, gathering her knees up.

"Smart, and... not fearless, he was terrified a lot of the time, but it didn't stop him. Fast. And he always tried. Every damn thought and feeling he had was right there on his sleeve, and when he was aimed in a direction, he went as hard as he could."

"I'm sorry you lost him," he says, and thinks Rosita has probably never had anyone say that to her about Glenn. Maybe not even about Abraham. But she clearly loved them both.

"I just wish he'd been able to meet Hershel. He was such a good baby. I bet Glenn would've been a great dad."

No one ever talks to her about that day. Those who were there don't want to, and those who weren't can't.

She sits very still, and doesn't respond, at least not to the first part.

She smiles instead, and says, "Yeah."

He'd had Sasha and Maggie suddenly at his door with two corpses. Two corpses with heads so badly bashed in they'd basically been decapitated. He'd helped Sasha bury them.

And he'd decided he'd do whatever he could to put them back together. Flowers and food and a place to stay, that was all he could offer, but God, he'd fought hard to offer it.

"Rosita, did anyone...ever check on you after that night?"

She does not want to talk about this. She does not want to talk about this.

She never wanted to talk about this.

Her hands are already in her lap, hidden by her tented knees, and she twists her fingers into the fabric of her pants.

"What was there to check on?" she says, toneless. "We had to gather for the Saviors. Daryl was gone. Abraham and Glenn were gone. Maggie and Sasha went to Hilltop. Rick and Michonne almost lost Carl. We didn't have many scouts left on their feet."

"I wish I had."

He didn't really know her then. He loves her now. That's all that matters in his sense of algebra: he loves her now and he wishes he'd been there for her then. Even if she might not have let him.

And indeed: "We didn't know each other then."

She remembers being angry enough to tear someone apart with her fingernails if she had to, remembers being unable to sleep and just needing to go, and go, and go.

We don't stop. We never stop.

And she remembers the all consuming guilt. How she'd have done anything to give Glenn back to Maggie, to trade herself for Abraham. She remembers knowing with conviction that she should have been the one Negan chose, and she should have done something to make him choose her.

"It worked out."

"I guess it did," he says, but with a touch of doubt. "I think it's more that we made the most of a horrible situation. Things could have been so much better."

If not for Negan.

Whatever Jesus's thoughts about how Rick handled things, or how Maggie ultimately did, that remains true. Things were better without Negan around.

"Why didn't you come to the Hilltop, too?"

She shakes her head, slowly, like if she moves too quickly she'll get dizzy.

"What was there for me there?" What could she possibly have accomplished besides putting herself through more pain, and alone in a strange place? "Abraham was with Sasha then. Alexandria needed me, and I needed someplace I could lock a door."

There were no locked doors at Hilltop, none available anyway. Sasha and Maggie shared a space until Sasha died. And after that, well, Maggie had her own space but Rosita would have been staying with Jesus.

"I'm glad I know you now," he tells her, hand on hers.