Things were tense. Really, super tense with Maggie being back and Negan being allowed to roam free in Alexandria. Maggie had come back with a few new people, who also hated Negan simply because of what Maggie had told them about him. Not only that, but Alexandria was struggling. With Hilltop burnt to the ground, more people were in Alexandria, which meant more demand for food. The problem with that was that there was almost no food. Not enough to last.

In fact, "One week," Gabriel announced to the room. One week of food for three communities in one.

"That's it? From that last run, just a week?" Daryl asked, his eyebrows furrowed.

"We can make it work," Aaron said. He seemed sure of it, but Rosie wasn't.

"Make what work? We run outta food, we starve to death. How do we make that work?" she asked. She didn't mean to sound annoyed, but it was pretty hard not to when you have just been told that you and everyone you love will be out of food in just seven days.

"We just took in two new communities. We have no crops, no backstock," Carol reminded them all. It was in moments like this that Rosie really, really missed Hershel. And the old Hershel, not the young one. The young Hershel was good, too, but the old Hershel knew farming like it was the back of his hand. They could've really used that at that point.

"We can get there," Aaron insisted. Rosie wasn't so sure about it. They needed another plan. One that would work quickly. "We got people out there right now, scavenging houses for materials." The problem with scavenging houses for materials was that houses didn't just restock every night. You take from a house, everything from that house is gone for good. They were bound to run out eventually.

"And they're slowing down," Gabriel added solemnly. Exactly what Rosie was thinking. "It's a little hard to put up a wall with broken tools and an empty stomach."

"Our people are good hunters," a woman spoke up from the corner. Rosie looked over to see one of the new people who had come with Maggie. She wasn't sure what the woman's name was, though. Rosie glanced over to Maggie to see what she was thinking. Whatever she was thinking didn't seem happy, from what Rosie could see on Maggie's face. The woman went on, anyway, though. "Frost and I could take a group out," she offered.

"Our ground's all spent. That last big horde scared all the animals away," Daryl pointed out. Even though the Whisperers were gone, their effects still persisted. They were still managing to fuck up Alexandria from the grave. "We can find new territory."

"We don't have time. We need food. Lots of it. Now," Gabriel said. And he was right. They just didn't have time. A week. That was it.

The room was quiet for a few moments. At least, until Maggie hesitantly spoke up. "I know one more place," revealed. A few of her people glanced over at her. Some looked nervous. Anxious. But she went on. "The place I lived before this. Where we lived. Meridian. It's got plenty of food, water, crops, and animals."

"Yeah, and now it's gone," a boy in the corner said. Rosie had heard Maggie call him Elijah before.

Maggie sighed and looked down at the floor. "So, what happened out there?" Rosita asked.

Everyone was eerily quiet and it made Rosie's stomach hurt. Something had gone wrong out there. Something bad. But, God, things go wrong everywhere, all the time.

After a moment, Maggie decided that she would tell the story. She pressed her lips together, taking a deep breath. "We were on a mission. Leading walkers away. Duncan, Agatha, and Frost took the last shift at the front of the herd. Going miles out. I circled back with Elijah and Cole. On the way back home, things kept going sideways and we got stuck out on the road. Looking back now, I don't think that was an accident. All of a sudden, we heard these screams in the distance. We raced back home. But it was too late. Most of our people had been slaughtered. And the rest of us barely got away with our lives."

Had humans always been so cruel or did the apocalypse make them that way? It was confusing because, in some ways, Rosie felt like she had more faith in the goodness of humanity only after the world ended. Because after the world ended, she found some of the greatest people that had ever walked the Earth- in her opinion at least. But there was still that darkness in the world. The bad. The people who slaughtered innocents. So did the end of the world make humans worse, or were they always so evil?

"The people that attacked us," Maggie went on to explain, "we only knew two things about them. They come at night, and by the time you see them, you're already dead. That was before we caught one. Daryl was with me. He came after us alone. Why? 'Cause there aren't that many of them. They're at Meridian now. There's plenty of food to feed Alexandria until we get this place back up and running again. That's why they took it. We just need to take it back."

"So, you're leaving to fight ghosts. That's the plan?" Aaron asked, unconvinced.

Rosie, however, had all the faith in the world that Maggie knew what she was doing. So, "I'll go with. I'll help," she offered.

"No," Rosita interjected, shaking her head. She turned to look at Maggie, and she seemed sympathetic, but just like Aaron, unconvinced. "Maggie, this sounds like a suicide mission."

Suicide. Rosie would never stop hating that word.

Especially in the phrase suicide mission. Because suicide was when people gave up. It was when they had nothing left they felt they had to fight for, so they gave up. And this mission wasn't because they were giving up. They had things to fight for; people to fight for. So it wasn't a suicide mission. Maybe a sacrificial mission, if they knew for a fact that they were going to die on said mission. But Maggie seemed convinced that they could beat these people, and if Maggie was convinced, then so was Rosie.

Daryl sighed, leaning back in his chair. "Well, if we don't have food, it's not gonna matter, anyway," he said. Rosie was glad that he agreed. She only hoped he wouldn't stop her from trying to help, too. "I'll go," Daryl said, standing up from his chair. And that only sealed the deal for Rosie. If Daryl and Maggie were going, there was no way she was staying back. "Anybody else?"

"I'll go," Ian offered, speaking for the first time in the meeting. A few others raised their hands, too. Gabriel and some of Maggie's people. Aaron, Rosita, and Carol, however, disagreed completely. They weren't going with.

"You're really gonna let these two go?" Aaron asked, gesturing to Ian and Rosie, who were heading outside. They paused, looking back at the mentions of them.

After chewing his lip for a moment, Daryl glanced at Rosie and Ian, and then back at Aaron. "They ain't kids no more. I can't make their choices for them," Daryl said.

Jesus, would he have liked to. He would have loved to tell Rosie and Ian to sit their asses down and play a card game or something instead. But they were stronger than they used to be. Hell, Rosie could shoot a crossbow just as well as he could. They were fighters, even if they weren't meant to be. And above everything else, they were do-gooders. They were good people who wanted to help, which should have been a fantastic thing. A parent whose child is both confident and kind has done their job well. But Ian and Rosie were both confident and kind, and it still felt awful to let them go out and do good things for people. Because their want to help people put themselves at risk and Daryl wasn't sure what he'd do if he lost Rosie.

Rick Grimes was one strong man, continuing on living after the death of his child. The death of his baby. Carl was, what, 15, maybe 16 when he died? Rosie thought about that a lot. She was now older than both of her big brothers.

But that was beside the point. The point was that they were going out to help people. Yes. Rosie had to find food. She would help them get food and they would come back and everything would be ok again. She was sure of it.

The group- Maggie more than anyone else- decided that they needed Negan to go with them on this journey. Negan knew DC, and they had to make it through DC. So while Maggie went off with a few other people to convince Negan to join them, Rosie went to say goodbye to Lydia.

"Hey," Lydia said, pulling her sweatshirt tighter around her body.

"Hi," Rosie responded, shoving her hands into her pockets.

"You're going with them?" Lydia asked.

"Yeah. We need food, so," Rosie shrugged her shoulders, "might as well help."

"Yeah," Lydia said. It was quiet between them. Not a good kind of quiet. The I know you thought I was going to walk off the side of a cliff and you broke down about it kind of quiet. Lydia couldn't stop thinking about it. She felt the need to apologize for scaring Rosie like that.

Rosie, on the other hand, felt like she needed to apologize for even suggesting that type of thing. That Lydia would kill herself. That Lydia would commit suicide. There was that word again.

"I... ok, uh, just- look, I know you know what happened. I'm sorry for freakin' out, even though you weren't there," Rosie said quickly, muttering that last part.

"You don't need to say sorry. I shouldn't have scared you like that. It was inconsiderate," Lydia said, shaking her head.

"No, it wasn't inconsiderate. I just..." Rosie stopped and ran her tongue across her teeth, looking everywhere but at Lydia's eyes. She itched her cheek and popped her knuckles. Almost every knuckle popped, except for the one on her left pinky. "Whenever somethin' like that is even, like, mentioned or somethin', I always think the worst. My brother, when I was a kid, he, uh... he killed himself and I didn't know he was even hurtin' in the first place. So now, I guess, I'm always scared someone else is gonna do it, too, and I won't see it coming again, even though I should. I'm workin' on gettin' better and sometimes it's just too much, I guess."

"I get it. It's ok," Lydia said sympathetically. She gently grabbed Rosie's wrist to pull her hand out of her pocket. Once it was out of the pocket, Lydia squeezed Rosie's hand in hers. "I know you saw when I was gonna let that walker bite me," she said. Rosie hated thinking about that. She nodded, but wouldn't make any eye contact. "I just hope you know that I wouldn't ever do that again. I have family now. I have you. And I'd never want to give that up. Ever," Lydia explained.

Again, Rosie nodded. "Yeah. I'm workin' on it; tryin' not to think like that. Tryin' to be better about a lot of things," she said.

"Good. No rush. We'll figure it out as we go," Lydia said. She was still figuring things out, too.

"I gotta go. Maggie's gonna need my help convincin' Negan to help us. He thinks she's gonna kill him," Rosie said, releasing a tense breath.

"Is she?"

Rosie shrugged. "She'll probably think about it," she said.

Lydia let out a small laugh. "He deserves it, sometimes."

"Yeah, I know," Rosie muttered, rolling her eyes. They both wished Negan were less of an asshole. "I gotta go. For real."

"Ok, ok. Bye," Lydia said. She kissed Rosie's cheek, and Rosie blushed like a child. She turned away and went to find Maggie.

Rosie found Maggie pacing the sidewalk with her fingers pressed into her eyes. She wasn't keen on Negan coming with or on having to speak to him at all. Ideally, for Maggie at least, Negan would be dead and gone. But, of course, he was alive and well. As well as a man like Negan could be, anyway.

"Are we ready to go...?" Rosie murmured carefully. She was sure that Maggie was frustrated already. She gave off a tense air without even trying. Or maybe that tense air was coming from the dark storm cloud rolling in as the sun began to sink below the horizon. It would storm soon, without a doubt, but that was not going to stop a single person from leaving on this mission. Rosie liked the rain, anyway.

Whenever it rained and stormed, Rosie would think about a lot of good things. She would think about how she was scared of thunder when she was really little, and how Fraser would let her sleep in his room on stormy nights. She would think about the times when baseball practices or games would be interrupted by lightning and thunder, and how the teams would have to wait it out in the dugouts until there wasn't a lightning strike for a full thirty minutes. She would think about stormy days at her and Daryl's camp. How she would run out into the rain and Daryl would yell at her to get back in the tent before she died of pneumonia.

"I can't," Maggie huffed. She took in a deep breath. "Will you ask him?"

"You're gonna have to talk to him on this trip," Rosie said hesitantly. She didn't want to piss Maggie off, but it was true. Maggie was going to be in charge and if Negan was coming with, she would have to speak to him, whether or not she wanted to.

"I don't have to yet. Just ask him, Rosie. Please," Maggie said, her voice tense. Rosie nodded, chewing her lip for a moment. She wanted to say more. She wanted to say that Negan was sorry for what he did and that he was becoming a better person again, but she stopped herself. Maggie would have to hear that from Negan himself for it to mean anything if it even could at all. "I can't forget it and I can't forgive him. You might be able to, but I can't," Maggie said. She didn't mean to sound angry at Rosie, but it sort of came out that way.

It made Rosie's heart stop for a moment. You might be able to. To forget? To forgive? "I didn't forget it, Maggie. I ain't ever gonna forget that. Glenn meant the world to me. So did Abraham. Just because I'm movin' on doesn't mean I'm forgivin' him or forgettin' what he did," Rosie tried to explain. She understood why Maggie would assume that she had either forgotten or forgiven him, but it wasn't true. "Negan was there for me my whole life. Before I met Daryl. Before I met you. Before I met anyone. And he's kept helpin' me my whole life, and he's here now, and he wants to be good, so I say we let him. He's done what he's done, and now he's tryin' to be better."

"You weren't supposed to see him again. Ever. That was our agreement when I left and you went to stay with Daryl," Maggie said.

Rosie let out a scoff. "That was you and Daryl makin' a choice for me. It was fine then 'cause I was twelve years old, but I'm not twelve anymore, Maggie," she said.

Everyone- literally everyone- seemed to have trouble with treating Rosie like an adult. Rosie tried to understand why. Her childhood was pretty shitty up until she met Daryl, and ever after that, things were still shitty, just in a different way. So maybe they were trying to make up for it. Or maybe they had seen her go through many awful things, and now they felt like they had to protect her from any other awful things that could potentially happen. Or maybe it was because most of them hadn't seen her for a full six years and they still thought about her like she was a twelve-year-old. Or maybe it was a combination of all of those things.

Nothing stopped it from being endlessly frustrating, though.

Daryl was starting to understand. He was starting to loosen up about things. Negan, too, sometimes. It was just hard. For Daryl, especially, because he didn't get to be there for the first nine years of her life. He didn't get to be there when she really was a baby. When she was a baby, she didn't get to be his baby, and that stung. But he had to keep moving with Rosie. He didn't want to hold her back.

"I'm changin'. Negan's changin'. Everything's changin'. Can't stay still when everyone and everything else is movin'," Rosie said.

Maggie took a deep breath, nodding her head in understanding. "I get it, Rosie. I do. I am doing the best I can. I'm just not ready yet," she explained.

"I know. I just don't want you thinkin' I forgot about it. Any of it. 'Cause I didn't and I won't," Rosie promised.

Taking Rosie's hand in hers, Maggie squeezed. She knew Rosie could never forget it. She knew that no one could ever forget it. But sometimes it felt like she was the only one who remembered because everyone else seemed to have moved on. They let Negan out of his cell and they let him walk around freely, just like he was any other person. Not the man who killed Glenn. Not the man who killed Abraham. Just a man.

"I'll go ask him. Or tell him. He ain't got a choice," Rosie said, giving a small smile.

"Thank you, Rosie."