"Hell ya doin' lyin' on the ground?" Daryl asked, glancing down at Rosie as he dropped a pile of wood on the floor next to her.

"Hopin' the clouds will give a better idea of what to draw than you," Rosie replied, keeping her eyes up at the clouds. One of the clouds looked sort of like a hippopotamus, but she wasn't quite sure how to draw a hippopotamus. Not a good one, at least. Anything was better than Daryl's suggestions, though. He always either said to draw him, a squirrel, or a rabbit. He never had any other ideas.

"Well, get up. We got some visitors," Daryl said. He took his poncho off and tossed it on the rack he built for drying clothes.

Upon hearing this, Rosie sat up instantly. It wasn't often that people came to visit. Carol came every once in a while, and sometimes Rosie went to the Kingdom to visit Ian and Henry, but other than that, she spent most of her time with just Daryl and Dog. You'd think she'd get bored, but she didn't really mind. It wasn't like the woods were a boring place, after all. There were plenty of things to do, and Rosie simply didn't mind doing them on her own. Daryl was the one to always make comments about how she should really be hangin' out with other kids.

Every time he mentioned that, though, it always ended with them being irritated with each other. You just want me to leave so ya don't gotta feel bad when ya go to see Leah, Rosie would say. And Daryl would respond with, Ya know that ain't true. You know she ain't around no more. Then Rosie would say something along the lines of, Maybe if you'd ever let me meet her, ya wouldn't've had to send me off to the Kingdom whenever ya wanted to see her. I knew why the hell you were sendin' me there. It's bullshit. And it would finish with Daryl saying, You best watch the way you're talkin' to me, Rosie Starling. And then they wouldn't talk to each other for a few hours. It just never ended well.

But this time, Rosie didn't have to go to the Kingdom to see Ian and Henry, because when she sat up, she saw them walking towards Daryl and Rosie's little camp with Carol leading the way.

"Hey, Rosie," Ian said, giving a small wave.

"Hi," Rosie said, giving them a tight-lipped smile as she stood up to her feet.

"You really just live out here with Daryl?" Henry asked, raising his eyebrows a bit as he looked around at the camp. This was the first time either of the boys had been out here. It was always Rosie going to visit them- never them coming to visit Rosie. She didn't mind, though. It was nice to get a break from the woods sometimes, she supposed. It was nice to see everyone.

"Yeah. Why?" Rosie asked.

"Don't you get bored?" Ian replied, raising his eyebrows.

"Sometimes. Don't you get bored at the Kingdom?" Rosie asked, raising her eyebrows, too.

"Well, yeah, sometimes, but-"

"See? Ain't that different," Rosie said. She took one of the bags out of Ian's hands and placed it down next to the tent. "You can put your stuff there," she said, and Henry and Ian did so.

"You didn't fix the boat since last time?" Carol asked Daryl, trying not to sound too disappointed. Rosie could tell by her face that she was disappointed, though. It wasn't hard to tell. Carol looked a lot different than she used to. The first time she came to visit with her hair grown out, Rosie was very, very confused. But after a while, she got used to it.

Anyway, Daryl didn't bother responding to Carol's question. He just washed his hands off in the water as Dog came running towards him with a walker hand in his mouth. "Good dog," Daryl said, taking the hand from Dog and tossing it into the fire.

"He didn't fix it," Rosie answered for Daryl, seeing as Daryl wasn't going to answer for himself. He was a bit more grumpy than he used to be, especially when Carol came around. Rosie knew that he was glad to see Carol. It was just that, whenever Carol came to visit, she would try to take care of him and help him, and Daryl didn't want to be taken care of or helped. He liked being secluded, apparently. So when Carol tried to help him, he kind of pushed her away.

"I think she figured that out, Rosie," Ian said quietly.

"Oh," Rosie murmured, pressing her lips together.

"When was the last time you ate?" Carol asked next, her eyebrows pinched together.

"Rose and Dog ate yesterday," Daryl answered, walking right past her. Rosie chewed on her lip, looking down at her shoes. She didn't like that Daryl always put her needs over his, but it wasn't like she could ever tell him what to do. He didn't listen to her, even if she said she wasn't hungry, he could always tell if she was lying. It was annoying. Rosie knew that he needed to care for himself, too, but Daryl didn't seem to worry about himself, no matter what she said.

"I was asking about you," Carol said with a sigh.

"Ro, go check the snares. I'mma find the walker Dog got that hand from," Daryl said, slinging his crossbow over his shoulder. Rosie nodded, even though she knew that the reason Daryl was telling her to go check the snares was so that he could talk to Carol without any of the kids there. She wasn't exactly sure what they were going to talk about, but she hoped it wasn't something along the lines of, Hey, do you think I should make Rosie go back to the Kingdom with you? He often went back and forth on whether or not he wanted Rosie living out there, but for whatever reason, he didn't seem to care what Rosie wanted. She wanted to stay out there. For a lot of reasons.

"Go with her, boys. I'm gonna go talk to Daryl," Carol said to Ian and Henry. As she was looking at Ian and Henry, there were some eye words going on between them, but Rosie couldn't quite tell what words they were. She'd been trying to get better at eye words, but she supposed that being away from most people had stunted her ability to read eye language.

As Carol went to follow Daryl one way, Ian and Henry went to follow Rosie the other way. "So, why're you guys out here in the first place?" Rosie asked, crouching down next to a tree to begin freeing a dead squirrel from a snare.

"We're going to Hilltop, so I can learn blacksmithing," Henry answered, somewhat proudly. Rosie freed the squirrel and held it out to Ian, who begrudgingly grabbed it by the tail with a grossed-out expression on his face. Rosie began to reset the snare.

"Sucks that Maggie's not gonna be there," Rosie murmured. She hadn't been to the Hilltop since Maggie left. She didn't see a reason to visit, if Maggie wasn't there. Sure, there were some people who she missed from Hilltop, but they were around. She saw them every once in a while, whether it was just them passing by, them visiting the Kingdom, or anything else. It just made Rosie anxious to visit places by herself, and Daryl didn't seem to want to go anywhere. So she only visited the Kingdom, comforted by the knowledge that both Ian and Henry were always there. "Were ya ever mad at her for leavin'? I was kinda mad," Rosie asked Ian, glancing back at him as she finished resetting the snare.

"Not really. It wasn't like she just left me. She asked if I wanted to come with," Ian said, shrugging his shoulders a bit.

"Really? Why didn't ya go?" Rosie asked, raising her eyebrows. She stood back up and began walking to where she knew the next snare was.

"I didn't wanna be away from you or Henry, I guess. Plus, I hated being on the road. Like, before we got to Alexandria? That sucked ass," Ian said. To be fair, he had lost a lot of people between the prison and Alexandria. His mom, especially. Rosie never really asked about his mom. He had lost her at the prison, Rosie knew that, but Ian never talked about it. "You liked being on the road, though, didn't you?" Ian asked her.

Rosie crouched down next to the next snare and began the whole process of resetting it again. "Not really. I just didn't like Alexandria at first. It was weird. Ya just don't get it," Rosie murmured. She didn't really want to talk about it. That was another good thing about being in the woods. Daryl knew what she did and didn't want to talk about, which meant that she almost never had to talk about things she didn't want to talk about, unless it was important and Daryl decided she'd have to talk about it whether or not she wanted to. With other people, though, they couldn't always know what she avoided talking about.

"Hey, is Daryl always like that?" Henry asked with an expression that Rosie couldn't make out the emotion behind. She finished resetting the snare and stood up with a second squirrel in her hand. She was hoping there'd be some rabbits, but so far there were none. She only had two more snares to check. Maybe there'd be one there.

"Like what?" Rosie asked, moving on to where she knew the next snare was. She'd gone to check these snares every single day. She was sure she could do it in her sleep- but not really.

"Like, I don't know, grumpy?" Henry asked, looking back as if he'd see Daryl right there behind him.

"I don't know. Just, like, when we don't- I don't know. Sometimes it's just harder than other times. I get like that, too. It's normal," Rosie said. She found herself getting defensive over it, even if she knew Henry wasn't trying to be rude. Sometimes she felt like she was too sensitive or over dramatic about some things, and this was one of those times. "You do, too. I know ya do. Like, when-" Rosie suddenly cut herself off. She was about to say something rude- something about Henry's brother- but she caught herself before she could. She knew better than that. She bit down on her lip. "Nevermind. He's just like that sometimes. So am I. Last two snares didn't catch nothin'. Let's go back," she said, taking the two squirrels out of Ian's hands, which Ian was very grateful for.

•

"Your dog always do that?" Henry asked, eyeing the walker foot that Dog dropped at Daryl's feet warily.

"Well, he's got his reasons," Daryl said, grabbing the foot and dropping it into the fire. Ian and Henry made meaningful eye contact, and Rosie could tell that their eye words were nothing good. They both seemed grossed out, but she just thought they were being dramatic. Maybe it was gross, though. Maybe she'd just been desensitized to it, having been out there with Dog for so long.

When Daryl sat back down, Rosie could see that he had picked up a dead snake that he must've caught when he was out with Carol. Rosie glared at him. "Why?" she asked monotonously. She liked snakes a lot, but not as food. One time, when she was thirteen, she found a cool-looking snake and brought it to Daryl to show him it. But he only killed it and cooked it up for dinner. Rosie refused to eat it and wouldn't talk to him for the next three days.

"Never said ya have to eat it," Daryl grumbled, beginning to peel back the skin on the snake.

"We have other food," Rosie said, gesturing over to the two squirrels she got from the snares.

"Ain't enough for five people, Rosie," Daryl said, his tone tense.

"Ya could've-"

"Well, I'm impressed," Carol interrupted their arguing. Rosie wanted to continue arguing about it, but she decided against it, for the sake of Henry, Ian, and Carol. Carol cleared her throat. "This is really nice- you cooking for us. You-" Carol stuttered for a moment as Daryl began to skin the snake.

"Jesus, that's disgustin', Daryl. You even said it's like-"

"Rosie," Daryl interrupted before Rosie could add in a certain analogy about skinning snakes. He'd come up with this analogy the first time he had to skin a snake, forgetting that Rosie- who was 13 at the time- could hear him muttering to himself even when she was busy drawing inside the tent. He wasn't sure if she was going to repeat the words again, but she'd done it before and he wasn't taking that chance. Rosie quoting him by saying It's like peelin' a condom off a limp dick would only be proof to Carol that Daryl had failed at censoring himself around Rosie, because it wasn't like she could have heard something like that from one of the birds.

"You said it first," Rosie said, knowing that Daryl had figured out what she was going to say before she could say it.

"That don't mean it's-"

Carol cleared her throat again, stopping them from bickering any longer. "You're good at this, Daryl. Cooking, and all," she said, switching the subject back to the food.

Daryl sighed and gave Rosie a stern look, which meant you're pissin' me off. So Rosie fought the urge to roll her eyes and looked down at her shoes, counting the eyelets. She had grown out of the blue Converse and moved on to a pair of purple ones that she found in an old Foot Locker store.

"I'm sure there's people at Hilltop who know how to cook," Daryl said, finishing skinning the snake. Rosie made sure not to look up until he was done with it, because it was probably the grossest thing she'd ever witnessed, living out in the woods with Daryl. Once he was done skinning the snake, he dropped it down in front of him and got up to go clean off his hands. "Rose," Daryl said to get her attention. Rosie glanced up at him and he nodded his head, telling her to come with him.

After sighing, Rosie got up to follow him over to the river. She already knew she was pissin' him off; she didn't need him to tell her out loud. Daryl crouched down next to the river and began to rinse his hands and Rosie did the same, because she still had some dirt on her hands and she figured it'd be polite to clean her hands off if she was going to be helping dish up the food for Ian, Henry, and Carol.

"I'll shut up. Sorry," Rosie said, thinking that Daryl had told her to come with him so he could scold her.

"You were pissin' me off, but that ain't what I wanted to ask you 'bout," Daryl said.

"Oh," Rosie murmured.

"Carol wants us to go to Hilltop with Henry and Ian. Wants me to babysit 'em or somethin'," Daryl explained. Rosie furrowed her eyebrows. Ian and Henry were both at least 17. Rosie wasn't sure if she was 16 or if she had just recently turned 17, but she was sure that it was one of the two. But, either way, none of them really needed babysitting. "You wanna go to Hilltop?" Daryl asked.

"Um," Rosie took a moment to think about it as she finished rinsing off her hands. When she was done, she wiped them dry on her pants. "I don't know. It'd be cool to see Tara and Enid and all a' them," Rosie thought out loud, "but Rodney and Gage are there, too."

"Who're Rodney and Gage?" Daryl asked.

Rosie knew Rodney from before Maggie even left Hilltop. But the last time Rosie went to visit Ian and Henry at the Kingdom, Rodney and Gage were there to visit Ian. Henry was busy helping Ezekiel with something all day, so Rosie ended up having to hang out with Ian, Rodney, and Gage. Turned out that Rodney had become a lot more annoying since he was 12. Gage was even worse. They both pissed Rosie off, but she tried to get used to them. Maybe they were just normal 17-year-olds, she thought. Maybe she was the weird one.

"They're douchebags. But maybe I'm just dramatic. Don't know," Rosie murmured.

"So, you wanna go or not?" Daryl asked for clarification.

"Don't care, I guess. If Carol wants ya there to keep an eye on Ian and Henry, then I guess we prob'ly should go," Rosie said, shrugging her shoulders. She wasn't sure how she felt about it, but she was sure that Carol had a way of convincing Daryl to do anything. So they probably would be going to Hilltop.

"A'right. I'mma talk to Carol 'bout it some more. Go grab those dishes for me," Daryl said, gesturing over to a pile of dishes on a nearby table. Rosie nodded and went to grab the dishes while Daryl went back over to the fire. "'Bout 30 minutes, and the food will be ready," Daryl said as he sat down. Rosie sat down next to him just a few moments later. She noticed almost immediately that Henry and Ian both seemed a bit more tense than they did before. Henry was rubbing his eyes while Ian was cracking his knuckles over and over again.

Weird, Rosie thought.

"Oh, good. That's just enough time," Carol said, a small smile on her face.

"Time for what?" Daryl asked.

"A haircut," Carol answered, raising her eyebrows.

While Carol gave Daryl a much-needed haircut, Henry and Ian were told to stay by the fire to keep Rosie company while she made sure the food didn't overcook. She didn't know why Carol thought she needed to be kept company, but after a moment of thinking about it, she realized that it was really because she wanted to talk to Daryl without Ian or Henry listening in on them. So, at the fire, Rosie, Ian, and Henry sat in silence, unsure of what to talk about. After a few moments, Henry elbowed Ian in the side and nodded his head toward Rosie with wide eyes. Rosie wasn't sure why they were acting weird. They knew she could see them.

"Uh," Ian cleared his throat and Henry bit back a laugh. "Did you draw anything cool recently?" Ian asked. It was clear that he was struggling to find something to make conversation with.

"Depends on what you think is cool," Rosie answered, shrugging her shoulders.

"Pretty much all your drawings are cool," Ian replied, giving a tight-lipped smile.

"Cool. Thanks," Rosie said, confused as to why they were both acting so strangely. Sometimes Ian acted weird, and Rosie didn't know why, but this time both Ian and Henry were acting weird. Maybe they were just antsy to get to Hilltop.

"You wanna show us some of them?" Ian asked, raising his eyebrows.

"Not really. Not right now," Rosie said, gesturing towards the pot of food in front of her. Ian pressed his lips together and nodded. Rosie opened the lid on the pot, just to check and see how much longer she needed to sit in this awkward atmosphere. It was almost done. "I found a cool-lookin' beetle yesterday. It was dead, though. Left it over there on that fence, if ya actually wanna see somethin' cool. Unless you're only askin' 'bout my drawings 'cause you're tryin' to be nice or somethin'," Rosie said, hoping they'd both walk away to look at the beetle rather than sitting there awkwardly.

"Oh, uh, I kinda just wanted to see your art. It's cool- more creative, y'know?" Ian said, dismissing the idea of looking at the beetle.

"Well, I'll show ya some of it later if ya stop bein' so fuckin' weird," Rosie murmured, checking the pot once again. Henry laughed at that while Ian's face just got all red. Rosie rolled her eyes and then looked over to Daryl and Carol. "Food's done," she called over to them.

When Carol and Daryl came over to join them, it only got even more quiet. Both of the boys seemed to tense whenever Daryl was around. Ian got extra quiet while Henry just seemed to be annoyed. It was weird. They were all weird and Rosie didn't like it. It wasn't like how it used to be. Rosie wanted to be eleven years old again, when none of this shit mattered. But instead, she was 16, maybe 17, and everyone was weird. It really sucked.

"How'd you get the scar, anyway?" Henry asked out of the blue, turning the awkward silence into an even more awkward silence. Even Rosie knew better than to ask about someone else's scars. Daryl didn't answer Henry's question, and everyone seemed about ten times more tense than before.

"Where's Dog?" Rosie asked in order to change the subject. Everyone was being so weird that it was starting to make her feel more anxious than confused. As she'd gotten older, she'd come to realize that what she used to excuse as stomachaches and headaches were often actually feelings of anxiety in disguise. Of course, sometimes it really was a stomachache, though. Like when she ate dairy. Turned out that there was something called lactose intolerance, and Rosie had it. Only took her fourteen years to figure that out.

"I'mma go find him," Daryl grumbled, standing up with Dog's plate of food.

"Can I come?" Rosie asked, wanting an escape from the two boys.

"No. Finish your food and go to bed," Daryl said as he began to walk into the woods. Rosie huffed, put down her plate of food, and got up to follow him. Daryl could hear her following behind him, but he didn't say anything about it until they were far enough away from camp for it to be impossible for any of the others to hear them. "What?" Daryl asked, turning to her. His tone was a bit harsher than he meant for it to be, but he was feeling a little overwhelmed.

"I don't wanna sit back there with them anymore. They're bein' real fuckin' weird, especially Ian, and it's makin' my stomach hurt. I don't know what the hell's goin' on with 'em, but I don't wa-"

"You serious?" Daryl interrupted Rosie's rant. Rosie raised her eyebrows and widened her eyes, trying to say what the hell do you mean 'am I serious'? without actually saying it out loud. "They're bein' weird 'cause Ian likes you," Daryl said. He had honestly thought that Rosie would have figured that out by now, but maybe being away from almost everyone for just a little under six years set her back a bit.

"So what?" Rosie asked, scrunching her face up to express her confusion. "I don't act weird aro-"

"Ian likes you like how the King likes Carol," Daryl clarified. It wasn't an exact comparison, but he hoped Rosie would get the picture.

Rosie scrunched up her face even more upon hearing that. "What? Like how you liked Leah?" she asked.

"Christ. How long are you gonna keep bringin' that up for?" Daryl asked, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"You're serious, though? About Ian?" Rosie asked, looking down at her shoes. Daryl nodded and Rosie groaned, tossing her head back in complaint. What was she supposed to do with that information? She sure as hell didn't like Ian the way Carol liked the King. She wasn't sure why she didn't like him that way, but she was sure that she didn't. Knowing the reason behind their weird behavior only made Rosie's anxiety worse. She didn't want to hurt Ian's feelings by having to tell him that she didn't like him that way, but she didn't like him that way. There was nothing she could do to change that. Maybe there was just something wrong with her. She should have liked him back. He was nice and he liked her drawings. Those are good things, right? So why didn't she like him back?

Daryl watched her for a moment, unsure of what to do. She obviously didn't understand this type of thing like other people did. She'd never expressed any interest in anyone that way, but he had just assumed she kept it to herself. Maybe she just didn't like anyone yet, though. Maybe she never would. He didn't give a shit, as long as if she did like someone, it was someone good. But now she was making it pretty obvious that Ian was not someone she liked, and Daryl didn't know what to tell her.

"You don't gotta say nothin' about it. Just go back and go to the tent. Doesn't matter," Daryl said, unsure whether or not what he was saying was the right thing to say. He wasn't sure if he was parenting her right at first, either, but he figured it out. Hopefully, he'd figure this out over time, too. "It's fine. You don't gotta like him back. It doesn't matter," he said. Now he wished he hadn't told her in the first place.

"I don't want him to get mad at me," Rosie muttered and began fidgeting with her velociraptor tooth necklace.

"I don't think he's gonna be mad at you, 'cause he's not an asshole. But if he does, then he can go to Hell," Daryl said.

"He's weird," Rosie murmured, thinking about it some more. Did this mean that Ian wanted to kiss her? God, that'd be so gross. Probably even grosser than skinning a snake. No offense to Ian, though.

"Yeah. Just go to bed," Daryl said, putting his hand on her back and pushing her back in the direction of the camp.

"It ain't even that late. I'm not tired. I'll go with you," Rosie said, making her eyes extra wide.

"That trick doesn't work on me no more. You ain't little," Daryl said, scoffing at the attempt.

She still seemed little in some ways. Sometimes she'd be very focused, like when she was drawing something, and she'd furrow her eyebrows and look little again, just for a moment. Or she'd put on that leather jacket that was still, and forever would be, a few sizes too big for her, and she'd ask for him to cuff the sleeves, and suddenly she'd be eleven again, her sleeves falling long past her hands as she asked for him braid her hair. Or she'd start telling him about a dinosaur or a bug that she'd already told him about a hundred times, but she'd get so enthusiastic about it and he couldn't possibly tell her that she'd already told him this. And even when she did make her eyes wide like that, trying to do the trick that Daryl would only let work on him on purpose, she'd look little again.

But now Rosie was older than her brother had ever gotten, and she was bigger than she'd ever been before, and it made Daryl want to go back in time. It made him feel that feeling in his chest that would make him want to roll his eyes at himself. It'd make him wish he'd had her before, so he could have held her when she was a baby and for all those other nine years that he'd missed. But, Jesus, that was so cheesy. He felt like the father in some sappy coming-of-age film.

"I'mma find Dog," Daryl said, pulling Rosie into his side to give her a half-hug. He kissed her temple before pushing her back towards the camp again. "I love you, Rose. I'll be back in a little bit," he said.

"I love you, too. G'night," Rosie said, turning to walk back to the camp.

"You ain't gonna be asleep by the time I get back there," Daryl scoffed.

"Good night anyway," Rosie said, rolling her eyes.

"Good night, Ro," Daryl replied. Rosie gave him a tight-lipped smile before making her way back to the camp.