Rosie was sitting on the top step of the steep, metal stairs when Rick and T-Dog returned with food. "Canned beef, canned corn, canned cans. There's a lot more where this came from," T-Dog announced as he carried two large boxes into the cell block.

"Any change?" Rick asked, referring to the state Hershel was in. Rosie was very worried about Hershel, but she knew it would be best if she stayed out of the way. That was why she sat herself on the stairs rather than right next to Hershel's cell; so she could hear what was happening while not getting in the way.

"Bleeding is under control and no fever, but his breath is labored and his pulse is way down and he hasn't opened his eyes yet," Lori explained, holding onto the cell door with blood-coated hands.

Seeing Carl and T-Dog start to unpack the food, Rosie went down the stairs to help. She was sure that there was more food in their hands in that moment than they ever had with them in the last 7 months. "Are these from the prisoners?" she asked, taking a bag from Carl's hands.

"Yeah, they were locked up in the cafeteria," T-Dog replied as he set a box down onto the cement flooring.

"They gave ya food? I thought Daryl said they were assholes," Rosie said, scrunching her face up a little.

"They didn't give it to us. We made a deal," T-Dog said.

"We're gonna help them clear out their own cell block, and then they'll be there and we'll be here," Rick explained from his spot next to Lori.

Lori didn't seem to like the idea, as she stood there with her hands on her hips. "Living beside each other?" she asked.

"I'm not giving up this prison," Rick said. He then started talking to Lori a bit more quietly, so Rosie stopped listening and focused more on helping T-Dog and Carl.

"Where's Daryl?" Rosie asked T-Dog as she glanced back at the door to the cellblock. Daryl wasn't out there and he wasn't in there with her either.

"With the prisoners. I gotta go back out there, too, to help them clear a cellblock," T-Dog explained. He gestured to all the boxes on the floor. "Can you two handle unpacking and organizing the rest of this?"

"Sure," Carl said.

"Yes sir," Rosie said. That was something that she couldn't quite get out of the habit of. Saying yes sir and yes ma'am was just so engraved into her brain that she couldn't shake it, even when Daryl told her that it was annoying or when Lori said she didn't like to be called ma'am because it made her feel like a drill sergeant. Rosie couldn't break the habit.

"Awesome. Thank you guys," T-Dog said, smiling a little before walking away with Rick.

The two kids worked together to unpack the rest of the boxes, but when Rosie went to start organizing them into piles, Carl got up and started to walk away. Rosie furrowed her eyebrows with confusion.

"Where're you goin'?" she asked.

Carl stopped and sighed, turning back around. He unclipped the set of keys his father gave him from his belt and dangled them in front of Rosie's face. "I'm going to the infirmary to get stuff to help Hershel. Take these keys. You're in charge of them now," he explained.

Hesitantly, Rosie took the set of keys from his hands. "I thought the others were goin' to the infirmary later," she said.

"Hershel needs the stuff now. So I have to go. You stay here and don't tell anyone unless I'm not back in an hour," Carl said. He started walking away again.

"I don't know how long an hour is!" Rosie called out to him.

"Just count to sixty, sixty times," Carl called back before leaving the cellblock. Rosie huffed and looked down at all the food she now had to organize on her own.

1... 2... 3... 4...

•

15-55... 16-55... 17-55... 18-55...

The door to the cellblock creaked open and Carl walked through with a large duffel bag. Rosie was instantly relieved at the sight of him. Not only because he was alive, but also because she no longer had to count. Counting to sixty, sixty times was much harder than she thought it would be.

"I thought you were organizing the food," Glenn commented from the door to Hershel's cell.

"Rosie was," Carl said as he carried the duffel bag into Hershel's cell. "I was doing something even better. Check it out."

He dropped the bag onto the ground by Carol's feet and she gasped. "Where did you get this?" she asked, immediately digging through the bag.

"From the infirmary. Wasn't much left, but I cleared it out," Carl said somewhat proudly. Rosie now stood next to Glenn in the doorway, watching as Carol wrapped up Hershel's leg. The sight of it might her stomach churn.

"You went by yourself?" Lori asked.

"Yeah."

"Are you crazy?!" Lori breathed out, staring at her son with wide eyes.

"No big deal. I killed two walkers," Carl said.

Lori looked appalled, her mouth wide open as she stared at her son in shock. She looked at Hershel. "You- alright, do you see this? This was with the whole group."

"We needed supplies, so I got them," Carl argued, raising his voice a little.

"I appreciate that, but-" Lori began shouting. Rosie took a few steps backwards, out of the cell. Her stomach churned with anxiety.

"Then get off my back!" Carl yelled at his mother.

"Carl!" Beth shouted at the boy. "She's your mother. You can't talk to her like that."

"Listen, I think it's great that you wanna help-" Lori began, but Carl quickly ran out of the cell, almost bumping into Rosie on the way out.

Rosie couldn't believe that he got away with that. If she would have said anything remotely similar to what Carl just said, she would have been beaten black and blue. She understood- somewhat- that her dad wasn't a good man and that the way he treated her was wrong, but yelling at him? She couldn't even imagine doing that if she tried.

•

Rosie was back in her spot on the stairs, listening to hear what was going on with Hershel. Carl told her that he stopped breathing at one point, but Lori saved him. Now they were just waiting for him to wake up. That was when Rick, T-Dog, and Daryl finally returned to the cellblock. Rosie got up and climbed down the stairs at the sight of them. She wanted to ask what happened to the prisoners, but she didn't because she could tell they were all more worried about what was happening to Hershel.

They all gathered around his cell. Carl and Rosie stood side by side, watching from the doorway, while Daryl stood behind them and everyone else stood inside of the cell.

Hershel's eyes fluttered for a moment and Maggie rushed closer to his side, Beth following right after. His eyes closed again, making them think that he wasn't going to wake up just yet, but then they started to flutter again. And his eyes fully opened, looking at his daughters with love.

"Daddy?" Maggie said, her voice shaky.

"Daddy," Beth said, a large smile on her face.

Rick took off the handcuffs on Hershel's wrist- which were there just in case he didn't make it. Rosie looked over at Carl. He was smiling widely. Rosie looked up at Daryl. Even he was smiling a little. It wasn't a wide smile, it was just barely there. Rosie figured it was ok to let herself smile this time, so she did, only a little.

•

Three days later, Rosie was sitting on the ground near the basketball hoops. She had figured out that scraping a sharp rock on the ground worked the same as white chalk did, so she was drawing. She wasn't great at drawing, she knew that, but she was running out of pages in her coloring books. She had her toy stegosaurus with her, so she was trying to draw that. It looked less like a stegosaurus and more like a dog with a small head and spikes, though.

When she was done drawing her spikey dog that was supposed to be a stegosaurus, she decided to sign her name. She didn't usually sign her name in any of her coloring books, but just thinking about it made her want to do it. She hadn't written down her name in a long, long time.

Using the rock, she wrote out in big letters, Rosie. This was where she would usually write the name Banks, but for some reason, she didn't really feel like writing it there. At school, she always had to write out Rosie Banks, so that her teacher would know that the paper didn't belong to some other Rosie. But there were no other Rosie's at the prison, at least none that Rosie knew of. So, she figured she didn't have to write Banks if she didn't want to.

She didn't want to.

So she wrote Rosie and left it at that.

"Hey there, little darlin'," an unfamiliar voice said. Rosie turned around and quickly stood up to her feet, her hand hovering over the knife on her belt. It was the man with the large mustache. He was standing in front of a larger man, but it wasn't the tallest out of the ones Rosie had seen just the other day.

These two prisoners must have been the ones that were supposed to be in their own cellblock. Daryl had explained to her what happened to the prisoners before she went to bed on the night it happened. He told her that the largest man, who was called Big Tiny, had been bit. The smallest man, Andrew, had run off and was good as dead. The asshole, as Daryl called him, was dead. He tried to kill Rick, so Rick killed him. Rosie had asked what the asshole's name was, but Daryl told her that it didn't matter because he was dead and she'd never see him again. Daryl had also told her that the remaining two prisoners were called Oscar and Axel, but that if they ever came near her, she wasn't supposed to talk to them. She was supposed to get someone, preferably him or Rick.

The problem in this situation was that Oscar and Axel were standing in her way. Rosie was standing near a corner and the prisoners were standing in front of her, while both Daryl and Rick were out in the yard. Rosie was quite literally cornered.

"That's an interesting... dog," the man with the mustache said, eyeing Rosie's drawing. Rosie wasn't sure if he was Axel or Oscar yet, but what she did know was that she didn't like his mustache. It was long and curled at the ends. She thought about what it would be like to drink of a glass of water with that mustache and came to the conclusion that it would be annoying.

"Axel, Rick said not to talk to any of them, especially the kids," the other man said. Rosie now knew that the mustache man was Axel and the other man was Oscar.

"I'm not doing anythin' wrong," Axel said, smiling a little. "Do you know where Rick is at," he paused and looked down at the drawing on the cement, reading the name, "Rosie?"

Rosie didn't say anything. She wasn't supposed to talk to them. She wished she hadn't written her name because she didn't like Axel saying it.

"You gonna answer? I ain't gonna hurt ya, sweet thing," Axel said.

"She's not gonna talk to you, man. Let's just find Rick ourselves," Oscar said, taking a few steps backwards. Axel, however, took a step forward. Rosie took two steps backward, but then her back was against the wall.

"Didn't I say I'd kill you if I saw you near her?" Daryl's voice shouted out. Looking past Axel, Rosie could see Daryl taking long, quick strides towards them, followed by Rick and T-Dog.

"We don't mean no harm, we were just lookin' for Rick," Axel said, turning to look at Daryl. "We're not like Tomas. We didn't say anythin' about your girl. We're not like that."

Tomas? Is that the asshole's name?

As Daryl moved to stand between Rosie and the prisoners, he shoved Axel's shoulder roughly, making him stumble back a little. Rick and T-Dog stood on the other side of the prisoners, their hands on their guns.

"We had an agreement," Rick said, glaring at the two men.

"Please, mister. We know that. We made a deal. But you gotta understand... we can't live in that place another minute. You follow me? All the bodies- people we knew. Blood, brains everywhere. There's ghosts," Axel said, crossing his arms across his chest. Carol, Glenn, and Maggie appeared behind T-Dog and Rick.

"Ghosts ain't real," Rosie said, trying to look past Daryl to give the man a mean glare. Daryl looked back at her, giving her a scolding sort of look, so she shut her mouth.

The dead people are trying to tear you apart and you're afraid of ghosts? Rosie wanted to say, but didn't.

"Why don't you move the bodies out?" Daryl asked, glaring at the two men.

"You should be burning them," T-Dog added.

"We tried. We did," Axel said.

"The fence is down on the far side of the prison. Every time we drag a body out, those things just line up. Dropping the body and just running back inside," Oscar explained.

"Look, we had nothin' to do with Tomas and Andrew. Nothin'. If you're tryin' to prove a point, you proved it, bro. We'll do whatever it takes to be part of your group. Just please, please," Axel pleaded, stepping closer to Rick. "Don't make us live in that place."

No one said anything for a moment, and Rosie almost thought that Rick was going to cave, but he didn't. "Our deal is not negotiable. You either live in your cellblock, or you leave," he said.

Axel and Oscar shook their heads disappointedly. "I told you this was a waste of time," Oscar grumbled to Axel. He looked over at Rick. "They ain't no different from the pricks who shot up our boys. You know how many friends' corpses we had to drag out this week? Just threw 'em out, like.... These were good guys! Good guys who had our backs against the really bad dudes in the joint, like Tomas and Andrew. Now, we've all made mistakes to get in here, chief. And I'm not gonna pretend to be a saint, but believe me... we've paid our due. Enough that we would rather hit that road than to go back into that shithole."

Rick looked past Axel and Oscar to silently ask for Daryl's opinion. Daryl just shook his head. What those men were saying wasn't any worse than anything their own group went through. Their story wasn't convincing him enough to trust them in the same cellblock as Rosie, as Carl, as Beth.

"Our deal is not negotiable," Rick said again. Axel and Oscar sighed sadly, looking down at the ground with disappointment clear in their faces.

Daryl grabbed onto Rosie's upper arm and pulled her in front of him before leading her past the prisoners. He didn't let go until Rosie was behind Rick, standing in between Glenn and Maggie. Then he went back to lock Axel and Oscar on the other side of the fence.

Glenn, Maggie, and Rosie followed Rick and T-Dog behind a tipped over bus and started having a quiet conversation about the whole thing. Rosie leaned on the car next to Maggie, crossing her arms to mimic Maggie's stance.

"You really don't think we should give 'em a chance?" T-Dog asked Rick.

"Are you serious?" Rick asked, raising his eyebrows. "You want them living in a cell next to you? They'll just be waiting for a chance to grab our weapons. You wanna go back to sleeping with one eye open?"

"I never stopped," T-Dog said, looking back at Rick with the same raised eyebrows. "Bring them into the fold. If we send them off packing, we might as well execute them ourselves."

"I don't know. Axel seems a little unstable," Glenn commented.

"I don't like his mustache," Rosie added. Everyone looked at her for a moment, but then looked away without saying anything.

"After all we've been through? We fought so hard for all this, what if they decide to take it?" Carol said. She was wearing some sort of scarf on her head that Rosie had never seen before. It was strange.

"It's just been us for so long. They're strangers. I don't- it feels weird all of a sudden to have these other people around," Maggie said.

"You brought us in," T-Dog reasoned.

"Yeah, but you turned up with a shot girl in your arms. Didn't give us a choice," Maggie said. Carol looked down at her shoes for a moment, but didn't say anything about the comment.

"They can't even kill walkers," Glenn said.

"They're convicts, bottom line."

"Those two might actually have less blood on their hands than we do," T-Dog argued.

"You heard what they were saying before. You were there. You really want them in the same cellblock as Rosie? Beth?" Rick asked, his voice low.

T-Dog glanced over at Rosie and she looked down at her boots. "Like they said, that was Tomas. We can't just group them together just because they were locked up together."

"I get guys like this. Hell, I grew up with 'em," Daryl said. Rosie looked up from her shoes, listening to what he was saying. She didn't know much about Daryl's life before the fall because he never wanted to talk about it, so she'd take any hints she could get. "They're degenerates, but they ain't psychos. I could have been in there with them just as easy as I'm out here with you guys."

For whatever reason, Rosie didn't like thinking about the idea of Daryl being grouped in with the prisoners, so she tried not to, busying herself with kicking her right foot into the side of her left. 

"So are you with me?" T-Dog asked him.

"Hell no," Daryl quickly denied the idea. "Let 'em take their chances out on the road just like we did."

"What I'm saying, Daryl-"

"When I was a rookie, I arrested this kid. Nineteen years old, wanted for stabbing his girlfriend. The kid blubbered like a baby during the interrogation, during the trial- suckered the jury. He was acquitted due to insufficient evidence and then, two weeks later, shot another girl," Rick said. Rosie just wanted this conversation to be over. She wanted to leave the prisoners be, mind their own business, and move on with life. If the prisoners made it, then they made it. It wasn't anyone's responsibility to keep them alive except for their own. "We've been through too much," Rick continued, "Our deal with them stands."

With that, Rick walked away, followed by Glenn, Maggie, and Carol. Daryl hung back for a moment to walk with Rosie. "Thought I told ya not to talk to them," he said.

"I didn't. They were talkin' to me," Rosie insisted.

"How come I heard words come outta your mouth then, huh?" Daryl grumbled.

Rosie resisted rolling her eyes. "You were there then," she reasoned.

"That doesn't change shit. You don't talk to them."

"Then how come I can talk to you?" Rosie asked, looking up at him.

Daryl furrowed his eyebrows, glancing down at Rosie. "What're you talkin' 'bout?"

"You said you coulda been in there with them. So how come I can't talk to them but I can talk to you?" Rosie asked. Daryl sighed, looking away. He now wished he hadn't brought that up.

"It's different," he said.

"How?"

"Just is. I coulda been in there before because I was an asshole before. Might not have been as much as an asshole as some of them, but I was an asshole," Daryl explained.

"You weren't an asshole to me," Rosie said, shrugging her shoulders a little. "Ya never are."

Daryl didn't say anything to that. What he thought was, yes I was, but he didn't say it out loud. The only thing he could think about was how when he thought- when he knew- that David was hurting Rosie, he didn't want to do anything about it.

He couldn't stop wondering what would be different if Merle hadn't decided to kill David. What if Merle wasn't there and Daryl just let David do what he did? Would Rosie even still be alive? Would David have left the group and taken Rosie with him?

The truth was, in Daryl's mind, he was an asshole when he met Rosie. He was an asshole because he didn't care enough to stop her own father from hurting her. He knew it was happening and he didn't want to do anything about it.

The person he was now couldn't imagine making that choice again. Just the thought of what David did to Rosie made him want to kill the man. And if anyone were to hurt her like that again, he'd want to kill them too.

"Things change," was all Daryl said.

"Do ya think the prisoners could change?"

"Maybe. But I ain't takin' that chance."

"Why not?"

"Got too much to lose."