Ten people dead. 

Ozzy, Alek, and Jeremy- three of the Highwaymen out protecting travelers. Frankie- a woman from Alexandria. Tammy Rose- Earl's wife, a new baby's adoptive mother. Addy and Rodney- two kids from Hilltop. Tara, Enid, and Henry. People- no- family Rosie had known since she was just a little girl.

Rosie had watched them die, one by one, and she thought she'd join them in death. She'd see Fraser again. Carl. Rick. Hershel. Dale. Beth. Glenn. Abraham. Tyreese. She'd see the dead again. But Alpha didn't cut off Rosie's head and display it at the tip of a pike. No, she put a cloth around Rosie's mouth, a dead person's skin on her head, and made her walk with the dead until morning time came and Rosie was left tied to a tree. To show them.

Sometimes, Rosie couldn't hear or see or feel anything. Sometimes she'd be stuck. Sometimes she couldn't breathe. Things were getting worse. But she tried to pretend that she was getting better.

They fought like hell but it was pointless, useless. Meaningless, not so much. They fought like hell and it inspired others to fight like hell, but they were still losing, anyway. And they would keep losing. 

Pipes burst and winter plowed through, stronger and angrier than ever before. The Kingdom was done and Ezekiel decided upon an immediate evacuation. They'd get to Hilltop and seek shelter there until the weather calmed down. 

Shaking hands shoved into the pockets of her jacket, Rosie walked alongside Lydia. A deafening silence surrounded them. Rosie's ears burned and ached from the cold wind blowing against them, but she wouldn't complain. There was no point in complaining about something no one could fix. So silently they all walked, angry and defeated. 

Henry only wanted to help. Rosie shouldn't have been so hard on him. He did his best and fought his best and he was good. He was a good person and now he was dead and Rosie had been so mean to him before. She left a bruise under his eye and said words that probably stung his heart. He only wanted to help.

An elbow bumped into Rosie's arm, making her jump. She looked up from the ground and to her right. There was Daryl. "What're you thinkin' 'bout?" he asked.

"Snow," Rosie lied. She'd gotten better at lying as of lately. It was almost habit by now. "Did you know that at least one septillion snowflakes fall each year?" 

"How much is a septillion?" Daryl asked.

"It has 24 zeros," Rosie answered. 

"Where'd you learn that?"

"Eugene," Rosie told him. 

He probably could have guessed that. He just wanted to keep her talking because, sometimes, she'd go quiet and he could practically read her mind. He'd become more and more worried about her since what happened with Alpha. He worried not only about what was going on inside her head, but also about the fact that Alpha had made it clear that she was a target. You took my daughter, I'll take yours always seemed to be some sort of looming, unsaid threat. 

Horses began to whinny upon seeing walkers stumbling along in the fields. Everyone went quiet as they all gazed over at the walkers, watching for any unusual behavior. Walkers weren't just walkers anymore. They could be anyone. They could be Whisperers, watching and waiting for an excuse to send in their horde and kill every last one of their enemies.

"Is that them?" Alden asked from up on his horse. He turned to look at Lydia, who had been walking quietly, minding her own business. "People watching us now, huh?" he said, as if Lydia would know. She stayed quiet, but Alden kept going. "Well, we followed their rules. Haven't they done enough to us?"

Before Rosie got the chance to say, fuck off, Alden, Daryl spoke up. "Hey," he shouted, his tone tense. Alden turned to look at him. "Why don't you lay off?" he warned. Alden got quiet, looked at Lydia, then continued walking. 

"You don't have to protect me," Lydia murmured, walking alongside Rosie and Daryl. She had been struggling, too. Everyone had been struggling. But people weren't exactly sympathetic towards Lydia. "I know how they feel about me," she said.

"No. Don't mean they get to talk to you like that," Daryl said, his eyebrows furrowed. He had become even more understanding towards Lydia, ever since it all happened. He felt bad for her. Everyone blamed her, but it wasn't her fault. Not many people seemed to understand that. Maybe they did, but they wanted someone to take their anger out on. 

Lydia bowed her head and shoved her hands deeper into her jacket pockets. "Just- I don't wanna cause any more problems," she said.

"You're not causing any problems," Rosie murmured, obviously irritated. She felt angry quite often, nowadays. She tried to ignore it. 

"It's their problem, not yours," Daryl agreed.

After that, it was quiet again. They continued their march through the freezing cold, pretending that their fingers weren't numb and their noses weren't running. It seemed the longer they walked, the colder it got, but that might've just been their bits of stamina wearing down. Everyone had a coat, most had hats and gloves and scarves, and almost everyone had boots. But none of it could block out all the cold. It was harsh, being out there, but they didn't have any other choice. 

The longer they walked, it seemed more and more walkers were stumbling out of the woods, onto the road. It was weird seeing all the frozen walkers. Rosie would stab one in the head and its skull would break into little shards of bone and ice and fall to the ground singing a little song like a wind chime. 

When a few more walkers than usual started walking from the woods, Daryl and Ezekiel went off to kill them, saying that they'd catch up in a minute. Rosie kept on walking, as she was told, but she paused when she noticed that Lydia wasn't following along anymore. 

It didn't take Rosie long to find Lydia's footprints, veering off of the path. Without a moment of hesitation, Rosie began to follow her tracks. She worried about Lydia. It was easy to tell that Lydia blamed herself for what her mother did. The people around her constantly pinning the blame on her didn't help, either. It was tearing her apart on the inside. 

Only a little ways off from the road, Rosie began to hear snarling and snapping teeth. She followed the sound until she involuntarily froze in her spot, her eyes wide. She had found Lydia. Buried in snow and ice with nothing but its head above ground, a walker snapped its jaw open and shut, open and shut, open and shut. 

Only centimeters away from the walker's teeth was Lydia's bare wrist. She was knelt down in the snow with her eyes closed. One lone tear slid its way down her face as her hand got closer and closer to the walker's mouth. 

Rosie took a step forward and the snow crunched beneath her feet, alerting Lydia of her presence. Lydia's head snapped in her direction and she immediately pulled her arm away. Not a word was spoken between the two as Lydia slowly put her glove back on and stood up. Rosie stepped closer and stuck her knife into the walker's head.

Silently, they walked back to the road. 

"Weather's already kicking in. Even if we hauled ass overnight, we'd never make it," Jerry was announcing as they joined the rest of the group. He was right. Little puffs of snow were already falling from the sky, slow and steady, quiet but fierce.

"We need to get off the roads. Find shelter between here and the next way station," Aaron said, nodding along with Jerry's words.

"You have a place in mind?" Ezekiel asked. 

"Yeah," Michonne said.

The next thing Rosie knew, she was walking into the Sanctuary with an awful feeling of anxiety twisting and twirling around in her gut. 

"People actually lived here?" Magna asked with disbelief in her tone. The place was empty and messy. It looked like what it was; an abandoned factory. Except this particular abandoned factory made Rosie want to tear out the part of her brain that stored each and every memory she had. 

"Welcome to the Sanctuary," Michonne breathed out, looking around with furrowed eyebrows.

It didn't take long for everyone to split off into little groups and sit around tiny fires, absorbing the little bits of warmth the shelter provided. Rosie, however, split off from the group to go up to the rooms that had been used as mini apartments before. She figured there might still be some things worth seeing. Maybe she still had drawings on the walls. She wasn't sure. 

She also just wanted to get away from everyone for a little while. People worried about her- not just Daryl, but everyone. And she could see it in their eyes when they looked at her. It made her want to shrink down into the dirt, never to be seen again. 

So, up the stairs, she went. The hallways were just as dark and lonely as they had always been, except now there was this frozen dryness that burned Rosie's throat every time she took a shaky, little breath. The first door she saw was on her left, so that was the first room she went into. She was pretty sure that this had been the room Eugene stayed in. There was nothing left in it but a knocked-over desk and an empty refrigerator. Boring. 

The next room over had once belonged to one of the ex-Saviors. Rosie wasn't sure which ex-Savior it was, but she was sure it was one of them. When she lived there with Daryl, she memorized which doors belonged to which people, so she knew what hallways to avoid. Now, no one was there to scare her or decide which halls she should and shouldn't go into, so she got to go wherever she wanted.

This room had a lot more stuff in it than the last. There was a mattress in the corner, soaked with water that trickled in from a broken window. To the left of the mattress was a nightstand with a broken lamp on top of it. Rosie pulled open the drawer on the nightstand only to find that it was empty. 

She moved on to look through the dresser that was pressed up against the corner. There were old, tattered shirts in one of the drawers, and some raggedy socks in another. The rest of the drawers were empty. 

Both rooms had been a bust, so Rosie decided that she'd just go to her own room. Hers was at the very end of a different hallway, so she made her way over to it. When she pulled open the door, she wasn't surprised by what she saw. The bed frame and mattress were still tucked into the corner, but the bedding was gone. 

In the corner of the room, her desk was still up against the wall. Her old sketchbook was lying open on top of it. The pages weren't soaked anymore, obviously, since they had six years to dry. The drawings were almost all ruined, but Rosie could still get the idea of what the drawings had once been. She flipped through the pages. A triceratops, a flower, Daryl's old motorcycle, a chrysalis. 

Then, on the fifth page, a drawing of four people in a row. From left to right, the people were labeled with their names. Liam, Rosie, Ian, Henry. 

Rosie's eyes began to burn. She slammed the notebook shut and turned away, biting down hard on her bottom lip. She closed her eyes for a moment, breathing in and out, in and out, in and out. She could see it again. She couldn't breathe.

As quickly as she could, Rosie left her old room and went into the room next to it. This was once Daryl's room. There wasn't much left in this room, either, but Rosie was desperate to find something that would allow her to stop thinking about Henry and Enid and Tara and Adeline and- 

She began open and closing his dresser drawers in a wreckless fashion. Each one was empty. Why would he have a bunch of clothes? He wouldn't. He practically wore the same thing every single day. Rosie moved on to the nightstand. There was no lamp on top. Only an unplugged digital clock. There were two drawers on this nightstand. Rosie opened the lower one first.

It wasn't empty. A small stack of papers was left in the lower drawer. Rosie pulled them out quickly and sat on the bed. The paper on top was another one of her old drawings. She was pretty sure it was supposed to be a crossbow- Daryl's crossbow- but she wasn't 100% sure, because it was a pretty bad drawing. The next paper was another drawing of Daryl's old motorcycle. And the next was a drawing of Daryl himself. 

Jeez, I was bad at drawing, Rosie thought to herself as she stared down at the drawing. 

The paper below that was a drawing of herself and Daryl, and the next was yet another drawing of his motorcycle. And then one of him holding his crossbow. There were about six more papers in the stack and they were all drawings of Daryl, a crossbow, a motorcycle, or some combination of those three things. 

Did he really keep every single one?

Rosie remembered drawing things for Daryl when he was in a bad mood and giving them to him in an attempt to make him less grumpy. He was grumpy a lot when they were living at the Sanctuary. He hated it there, and Rosie did, too. So she ended up drawing him a lot of pictures. She didn't think he kept all of them, though. 

After looking at each one, Rosie slid them back into the lower drawer and opened the next drawer, which was above it. The upper drawer was almost completely empty. Inside, there was a pack of cigarettes. Newports. Rosie flipped open the pack and counted how many were left inside. There were nine left. 

Her stomach churned with that nasty, anxious feeling again. She wanted to smoke one. 

For only a few moments, Rosie stared down at the pack. Then, she flipped the lid shut and shoved the box into her pocket. 

When Rosie got downstairs, she found Lydia standing in the corner, leaning up against the wall with her arms crossed. Rosie went over and leaned up against the wall next to her. "Hi," she greeted quietly. Neither of them had said anything to each other since what Rosie saw her doing in the woods. 

"Hey," Lydia responded, just as quietly. She was staring into a doorway that led to a smaller separate room. 

Rosie looked into the doorway, too. She could see Carol and Michonne, along with a few other silhouettes she assumed belonged to other important people, like Daryl and Ezekiel. They were having some sort of meeting. "What're they talkin' about?" Rosie asked. 

"Carol wants us to cross into my mom's land to get to Hilltop faster. Ezekiel thinks it'll spark a war. They're trying to decide what to do," Lydia explained. Rosie could hear the guilt in her voice. She wanted to scream at her. It's not your fault! It's not your fault! It's not your fault! But she stayed quiet instead. "Where did you go?" Lydia asked, changing the subject. 

"My old room," Rosie answered, shoving her hands into her pockets. She let her fingers dance around the box of cigarettes in her right pocket, and around the lighter that Daryl had once given her in her left pocket. 

Lydia furrowed her eyebrows with confusion. "You used to live here?" she asked. Rosie forgot that she hadn't heard that story.

"Yeah. You've, uh, heard about Negan, right?" Rosie asked. Hesitantly, Lydia nodded. Rosie took a breath. She didn't really want to talk or think about this. "This was the Sanctuary. He was in charge here. He took me, locked me in a room. Tortured Daryl. Then Rick- Judith and RJ's dad- beat Negan and put Daryl in charge of runnin' the Sanctuary. Me and Daryl only lived here for a little while, though. Few months, I guess," Rosie explained. 

"Is there anything left? In your room, I mean," Lydia asked. 

"Not really. Just a bunch a' shitty drawings I made when I was, like, eleven. Maybe twelve. I don't know. Doesn't matter, though," Rosie answered, opting out of mentioning the drawing of Henry. Henry, who was now dead. Henry, who was killed by Lydia's mother. Henry, who Rosie watched die. 

And Liam. Whatever happened to him? Rosie wasn't sure. She didn't really care, either, to be quite honest. She probably should have gotten over that grudge by now, but it still tore her heart apart to think about what he did. 

That was Fraser's hoodie. His favorite hoodie. His favorite. He wore it almost every day. Rosie was older than he'd ever been. She was seventeen now, and he was still fifteen. How old would he be now? In his twenties. Late twenties, probably. Would he forgive Negan?

God, why couldn't Rosie stop thinking about Negan and Alpha and Fraser and all of the dead people- all of the dead people she watched die? Why couldn't she just think of everything else? There were endless possibilities of what any person could think about, but Rosie's mind always seemed to wander back to the things she hated thinking about. 

Rosie's fingers were still on the pack of cigarettes and the lighter. She needed to get rid of the cigarettes. 

Daryl was walking out of the separate room he had been talking to and planning with the others in. Unsure of how else to get the cigarettes out of her thoughts, Rosie quickly left Lydia's side and walked over to Daryl. 

"Take these please," Rosie muttered as she shoved the pack of cigarettes into his hand. She walked away without another word, pressing the heels of her palms into her eyes.

As he watched her walk away, Daryl flipped open the lid of the pack to see how many cigarettes were left. He counted eight.