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

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"Rosita, it was not your fault. I chose to go." Because he'd hated life behind the walls. Because he'd wanted to help Eugene, too, yes. He'd wanted to solve the mystery of that strange walker herd. But mostly it had been his own dissatisfaction with his life that led him out there so fast. "I don't blame you for getting hurt. No one does."

"I do," she says immediately, firmly.

"And I'll live with it. I'll handle it. But I won't ever forget that I cost all of us a good, good man."

"You didn't. You were hurt, Rosita. I'd never been seriously hurt before then, either." He wasn't careless. No more than usual. It only takes one bad day, and they all know it.

He swallows hard, his voice softer. "You're my family, and I'm glad we get to be together here. We never would have had this otherwise."

"We will always have this. No one can ever take it."

Rosita never talks this way; well. That's not true. She did once before, and she flinches now to think of it, combined with that undertone of sincerity in Jesus's voice. Forgiving her, loving her like he doesn't know better, like Hilltop doesn't need him more than Alexandria needs her.

She knows it won't bring any of them back. She knows that. She opens her mouth to say that, and closes it again without saying anything.

Steadies herself with a deep breath and feels her heart jackhammering like she's just run for two days straight ahead of a herd again and makes herself say it anyway, calm, certain, and small: "It should have been me."

He shakes his head; that's not true. It's just that the way she says it, it isn't a new idea for her. It's one she's held close a while.

"Why would you say that?"

"Hilltop needs its leader. They chose you, they voted for you, they wanted you."

She's seen enough by now to know that doesn't sit right with him; she spoke to Tara. She can put puzzle pieces together.

"And the people in our world need someone like you to build the next one. Someone that actually believes they can be better. Not me. Not the girl who's always someone else's plus one."

"They voted for Maggie. They only chose me because I knew her plans," he says, has believed this from day one. Tara is the better leader: more organized, more involved.

But that's not where his focus lands. "Rosita, without you we never would have won the war. Without the things you know how to do--you, not whoever you're with--the Saviors would have won. You're going to keep our people safe so the next generation can grow."

We need you. She remembers Gabriel trying his best to get through to her in his church all those years ago; she can see it sometimes still when he looks at her. And she knows she can do things others can't, she's seen it; others have made similar comments and on a day to day basis she gets on with it because what else can she do? Bitching about it won't change anything. Crying over it won't bring anyone back, won't allow her to get a better second chance than this one with Jesus.

She doesn't want to talk about this, doesn't want anyone outside of the fucking church to know; but whatever there is in her that would normally shrug it off, redirect them, or simply refuse to comment on it any further is just gone along with the crisp, artificial smell of fresh linen from the diffuser.

"I'd better make it count somehow, right?" is what she says anyway. If she's the one left standing, she'd better make sure she's worth something.

"You already do." He gives her a small smile, wanting to soothe her hurt and knowing it goes deeper than he can reach. So he asks, because whatever they've given him has loosened up questions he might not otherwise ask in a setting like this. "Do you doubt that?"

"I just want people to be okay," she says after a moment of searching, of grasping; it's such a childish statement, such a naive wish, but she aches with how much she wants that.

"I'm a little good at a lot of things, but I can't do what the people I learned those things from can do. I can't train people to fight like you can. I can't move people forward like Abraham could, can't make them feel safe. I can't bring Maggie peace, or be Hershel's father. We don't need switchblade. We need a set of weapons."

She shakes her head, looks down at where her grip is white-knuckled on the chairback. "Doesn't matter."

"Ro, if you were a weapon you'd be a Swiss Army knife. One of the big ones with four different blades and a magnifying glass. You're good at a lot of things and it makes people feel safe working with you, but that has nothing to do with this." A little gesture between them. "I don't tell you all my secrets because you know how to handle dynamite."

He leans closer, voice softer. "No one can replace Glenn or Abraham or anyone else who's been lost. No one will ever replace the space you fill in my life, either."

She knows, is what she means when she says it doesn't matter. She knows. She knows this is pathetic, which is why she doesn't give in to it in her daily life; she can't figure out how to get rid of this festering, embedded hook in her that is the certainty she is forgettable in a moment. Unnoteworthy.

She nods, pressing her lips together, sniffing softly. She nods again. "I know," she says, quietly. "I don't usually do this. I do know. I'm amazing." She says it so off handed most of the time, so confident that most people don't even look or think twice about her. This time it sounds like nothing so much as one of those daily affirmations that died with the kind of world that needed such things to fill the minutes of its day.

"Yeah," she is. He smiles slightly, knowing that it's possible to believe it and also believe you don't deserve the things you have.

"What role do you see yourself in, in my life?"

"We're..." An array of things hits her when she thinks of Jesus and in this moment, her thoughts and inhibitions clouded and muddied, she can't decide which of them to lead with.

"Family," she hits on first, foremost, like he's told her over the past few weeks. When they've been talking more in the past few months than they have the rest of the time they've known each other. "Friends, but the kind of friends we are, not like there used to be. If you need something, anything, I'm the first person you can expect to step up. I hope, anyway."

He nods, wondering if she has any idea what a word like 'family' means to him, when he's never had it and thought he never would.

"Nothing can replace that."

She starts to reach across for his hand, stops herself and takes that hand through her hair instead.

"I'm sorry, I don't know what's wrong with me. I haven't done this in a long time. I don't do this, I promised myself not to anymore."

He reaches for her instead and just rests his hand there, palm up. "Why? We're not at home anymore. Maybe the one good thing that comes from this place is we get to experience all of life again. The parts we locked away."

The anger that had simmered in the center of every one of Rosita's bones when she got here isn't gone, it wasn't false in any way, but it's the part of her locked away now. Part of that is because it's Jesus across from her, who knows her, who she does not doubt cares about her.

She promised to follow his lead. She has reasons for why not, for being the way she is, and she likes who she is. But she looks at his upturned hand and remembers her promise and sighs.

"I don't like this part of life," she huffs, but she reaches to tangle their fingers together. "But I'll try."

"Which part? The part where we're forced to talk about our feelings?" He jokes, but it is a real question, too. Everything he's saying here is real. "Or the part where we aren't fighting for our lives?"

"Because everyone super loves being forced." There's a spark of that anger, but she sets it aside fairly easily.

"I like having feelings. I just also like being busy enough I don't get bogged down in them. So both."

"You and me both." Most of their friends run as hard as they can from their emotions. That or they pick the strongest ones they can and cling to them--usually this is anger, because the other one is despair and no one lasts long once they let that one in. "But there's a lot we've been too busy to deal with."

"I like being busy," she repeats, plaintive, but she doesn't switch back on herself to anger. She doesn't contradict him.

"You start. I already did."

Hoo boy. He breathes out a little sigh and nods, that's fair.

"Well, every issue I thought I'd dealt with around family has started to come back up on me. Like...do you remember the day you were all back in the Hilltop? The day Rick decided to fight Negan?"

"The day he finally got on fucking board?" she asks, because even though she has come to peace with it, even though she agrees with how Rick handled it in the end, turns out there's still some residual frustration.

Largely because she was still deep, deep in the claws of blind rage at the time, and her worst nights, and grief so sharp she could taste it every time she saw Sasha or thought about Hilltop. She can't say more without admitting to any of that though, so she swallows and nods.

He sees it. He doesn't ask because he knows the pain that group went through, and this isn't about deflecting from himself and back onto her.

"I had just brough Daryl back from the Sanctuary. And I remember watching you all and seeing how you all love each other, and I was happy just to witness it." A soft sound. It's not a laugh, it's sort of helpless sounding. "It's as close to a family as I wanted to be."

Which is to say, not in one at all. A bystander. A helpful neighbor at best.

"But I learned better. I came to care about you all." To love some of them. Like Rosita. "Because of everything we went through together, everything I know you'd do for me. I don't know how to relate to people on 'old world' terms anymore. And the contracts... I told someone not very long ago that the way I feel when I think about contracts is the same way I always felt when I was being carted off to another foster home."