TW: implied SA
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There are no descriptions of it happening or anything like that, but it is implied that it happened.

I know and completely understand that this topic can be triggering for some readers, but I wanted to include it because I think it's an important aspect of the story. In an earlier chapter, someone commented saying that it was important to tell kids about the bad intentions that people might have, in order to keep them safe, and I replied by saying YES, that is an important thing and it WILL be coming back. This is where it comes back. It's an important topic and I haven't always liked how TWD has dealt with SA in their show, so I hope to do better.

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If you are someone who might not want to read this chapter- or any chapter with a TW at the top- there will be a summary at the bottom of the chapter in case you want to know what happened to continue reading. ****

However, if you choose not to continue reading, I completely understand and do not blame you at all.

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Rosie hated the Claimers. That is all she had learned since she woke up on that bed. She hated them and she wanted to go home. She didn't know where home would be anymore, but she wanted Daryl.

The Claimers said they would take care of her. Joe sat her down at the counter in the house they were staying in and placed a can of corn on the surface in front of her. Rosie ate it, appreciative. She was then given water, too. But they still wouldn't give her her knife back and they told her that she would not be leaving. Rosie wanted to leave very badly. Especially after learning that these men were, in fact, bad men.

"He touch you?" Rosie remembered Daryl asking her when he wanted to talk about what the Governor did.

"Well, he grabbed me and brought me ta Glenn and Maggie. He was touchin' me then," Rosie had said, shrugging a little as if it didn't matter.

"No, that's not..." Daryl had stopped and sighed before continuing. "He touch you anywhere I ain't ever touched you?" he had asked with an uncomfortable sounding quality to his voice.

Rosie had taken a moment to remember each detail before answering his question. "No," she had said quietly, feeling confused. Daryl had let out a somewhat relieved breath upon hearing her words, but Rosie didn't understand why back then. She did now. She understood what he was afraid of.

She felt wrong. Something was gone now. Part of her was missing. There was an empty feeling in her stomach that didn't used to be empty. It used to be there, but now it was gone. She didn't know what it was, but she knew that she wanted it back. Whatever piece of her that was taken, she wanted it back. But she knew there was no way of getting it back. Not even if she did manage to escape this house would she be able to get it back. It was gone.

Of course, Rosie had tried getting away. That night, in that house, after the longest day she had ever lived through, she had tried to run away. She waited until they stopped making noise- until she was confident that they were asleep- and then she pried open the window and climbed out. She had no weapon, and she knew that she had a very little chance of surviving on her own without a weapon, but she didn't care. She didn't want to be there anymore. She couldn't be there anymore.

What she hadn't accounted for was the person who was on watch. Of course they'd have someone on watch. Rosie couldn't believe that she hadn't thought of that. So she was stopped. And she was forced back into that house, back into that room. She hated that room. She didn't care if it had cool posters on the walls or LEGOs on the shelves, she hated it. Every square inch of it.

From then on, she was locked in that room. She no longer had the privilege of exploring the rest of the house. It was a nice house, from what she had seen when she was allowed out of the room before. It had a big kitchen with a large marble counter. It had a big front yard with a red mailbox. Rosie could imagine a garden in place of the dirt that was there now. She could imagine a girl running around in the front yard with her older brother- and maybe they'd have a dog, too.

Rosie imagined a lot of things while she was stuck in that room. She couldn't sleep- not anymore. She didn't have anything to do other than to pretend, so that was what she did. Rosie pretended that she was little again. Four years old, at the playground.

"Rosie, don't touch that!" Fraser's high-pitched, panicky voice said as he ran to his younger sister's side.

"Why?" Rosie asked, picking up the praying mantis anyway. "It's nice," she said, holding the bug close up to her face to look at it. Fraser was behind her, his hands in his hair as he took deep breaths. As someone was deeply afraid of almost all bugs, this was a nightmare scenario. "Look. See? It's nice," Rosie's small, innocent voice said, holding the bug up to her brother. Fraser took a fast step backwards, and then three more.

"Put it back," he said, cringing at the sight of the thing. Rosie giggled, holding it closer to him. "No! No, Rosie! Stop, stop, stop," Fraser shrieked, running away from his little sister with the bug in her hand.

Rosie wanted to go back there, to that playground. She had good memories there- memories with Fraser. Of course, it was the elementary school playground, too, so she also had not so fond memories there. Kids were mean sometimes. But that was nothing compared to this. She'd do anything to have mean McKenzie from Miss Lee's class pull her hair at recess again.

"Coach Smith," Rosie said for what felt like the millionth time that evening. She was sat on top of the bucket of baseballs, her chin rested in her hand as she drew in the sand with the toe of her baseball cleats.

"Yes, Rosie?" Coach Smith said exasperatedly, just like he had said every other time she said his name to ask him a question that night. They'd been waiting there for an hour. Practice had ended at six and now it was seven, and Fraser still hadn't shown up to walk Rosie home.

"Why do some spiders have hair and some don't?" Rosie asked him.

Coach Smith sighed dramatically, rubbing his hand across his face. "Why the hell would I know the answer to that question?" he said, his eyes squeezed shut. He was tired and he was pissed off. Not at Rosie, but at her dad. Fraser was a responsible kid- he was in Coach Smith's gym class at the local high school. Fraser wouldn't be late to pick up Rosie. Never. Rosie was his favorite person on the planet. He wouldn't just forget to pick her up. The only reason Coach Smith could think of that would make Fraser late was the Banks kids' asshole father. He was trying to keep his cool and wait it out with Rosie, but her unanswerable questions were exhausting.

"You're a teacher," Rosie said as if it were obvious.

"I'm a gym teacher, Banks. That doesn't mean I know things," Coach Smith said.

"Oh," Rosie sighed. She kicked around the sand, erasing her drawing of a star. It was quiet for a whole ten seconds before Rosie came up with a new question. "Coach Smith?"

"What, Rosie?" Coach Smith breathed out as he pinched the bridge of his noise.

"How come snails are so slow?" Rosie asked him.

"I don't know," Coach Smith replied. He stood up from the bench in the dugout. "Come on. I'll just take you home."

"Fraser prob'ly got in trouble," Rosie muttered out, standing up. As Rosie grabbed her glove off of the ground, Coach Smith picked up the bucket of baseballs and they began walking to his car.

"Yeah," Coach Smith sighed out, leading Rosie to his car with his hand on her back.

Rosie missed Coach Smith a lot. She didn't think of him as a very important person to her until he was gone. She couldn't help but wonder where he was now. She wondered if he was still alive and if he was still back in Virginia. She wondered if he wondered about her.

On the topic of Coach Smith, Rosie thought back to the few months before she left to go to Atlanta with her dad. Before everything changed.

"Coach Smith!" Rosie said, her eyes wide as she looked at her baseball coach. He was a sporting a fresh black eye on the left side of his face. "What happened?!" she asked him.

"Got in a fight," Coach Smith said as he started making his way around the baseball diamond to throw down the bases in the sand. "I'm fine."

"What for?" Rosie asked, raising her eyebrows as she followed him around the diamond.

"It doesn't matter, kid," Coach Smith said.

"Why not?"

"It just doesn't," Coach Smith sighed. He dropped third base onto the sand and started heading into the dugout, picking up a baseball. As he did so, another kid on the team came running towards the field, his glove in his hand. "Connor's here. Go play catch with him," Coach Smith said before tossing a ball in Rosie's direction.

Rosie remembered that day pretty clearly. She had gone to play catch with Connor and didn't ask Coach Smith anymore questions about his black eye. She didn't like it when anyone asked her about her own bruises, so she thought that he might have felt the same.

Sometimes, Rosie thought about her dad. That didn't bring her much comfort, though, so she would imagine a different life for herself and Fraser. A life where her dad was good. When she imagined her dad as a good man, she imagined him more like Daryl or Rick or Glenn. She imagined being able to sleep in on weekend mornings, not having to worry about her dad. She imagined Fraser there at the table to eat breakfast with her. She imagined a door on her bedroom and on her closet, and she imagined a frame around her mattress. She imagined a shelf in her bedroom with her dinosaurs displayed proudly on top. She imagined her drawings taped up to the wall. She imagined smiling.

"Girl," one of the men's voices said. Rosie had still refused to tell them her name. The door to the room finally came open again, for the first time in hours. "We're leaving," the man came in and Rosie could see that it was Dan. She really, really hated Dan. He always had this sick, sadistic smile.

"I ain't goin' nowhere with you," Rosie spat, pretending that she wasn't afraid despite the dried tears on her red cheeks.

Joe showed up in the doorway behind Dan. "That, my dear, is a lie. Now, I'll let you off the hook this time, because you don't know the rules yet, but you're better off keeping your mouth shut," Joe said. He passed Dan in the doorway and grabbed Rosie by her upper arm, pulling her up onto her feet from the floor- she wouldn't sit on the bed anymore, she didn't want to. Joe pulled Rosie through the house and out the front door, his grip not loosening at all. Rosie had stopped trying to fight back against the men- she'd already learned that it didn't work. "As for those rules I was talking about, there are three of them. You claim to mark your territory, you don't lie, and you don't steal. You don't follow those rules, we'll teach you a lesson. You understand that, girl?" Joe explained.

"Yes," Rosie replied. She had already come to terms with the fact that staying silent wasn't going to work with these men. It only made them angrier.

"'Yes', what?" Joe said tauntingly.

"Yes, sir," Rosie grumbled out, her eyebrows furrowed as she tried to keep her eyes focused on the pavement in front of her rather than the men around her.

As Rosie and the Claimers made their way through the neighborhood, Rosie pretended that she was just on a normal walk. She pretended that Joe was not holding onto her to prevent her from running free and finding her family- if they were even still breathing. She pretended that she was walking home from baseball practice. She pretended that this beautiful neighborhood with big, luxurious houses and pretty, dandelion-filled gardens were the ones she grew up walking past, when in reality, she never walked past houses this big. They were like mansions.

They walked along until they stumbled upon a huge house with a big, beautiful front porch.  "This one, boys," Joe called out the second he laid eyes on the mansion. His hold on Rosie's arm didn't let up until they were inside the house, when Rosie aggressively ripped her arm away. She expected him to just grab onto her again, but he didn't. He let her explore the house, like everyone else.

"Better not pull anything," Dan warned with that same sadistic smile. Rosie huffed in response and made her way into the kitchen. Looking around, she saw a bag of probably stale cereal and an empty bottle of water. It must have already been picked through, she guessed.

Next, Rosie moved on to the upstairs. She figured that if there were any dinosaur toys, they'd be in a kid's bedroom, and those were usually upstairs in big houses like these. As she was walking up the large set of stairs, she rolled her eyes as some of the men started fighting in the living room. When she got to the top of the stairs, another one of the men came bounding up the stairs after her.

"Where do you think you're goin', little girl?" the man asked, chuckling a little.

"Looking," Rosie replied, her tone monotonous. The man scoffed and started opening all of the doors in the upstairs. On the other side of one of them was exactly what Rosie was looking for: a kid's bedroom. She wandered in while the man went off into the master bedroom. Rosie hoped he'd just go to sleep and not bother her. Luckily, he did.

Rosie looked around the room, searching for any dinosaur books or toys. She just wanted one to make her feel like she was back home at the prison again- safe in her own cell, no one hurting her in any way. She thought maybe a dinosaur would make her feel safe again, like her velociraptor always did. The walls in this bedroom were green and there were posters hung up. Rosie loved the color green, so she tried to appreciate it.

However, when she heard the sound of another man coming up the stairs, she froze for a moment. She pressed her back up against the wall, hoping to go unnoticed. The man did end up seeing her as he looked around the bedrooms, but he didn't say or do anything, much to Rosie's relief. She listened as the man went into the master bedroom, too.

"Yo," the man said, knocking on the door to the master bedroom. Rosie was pretty sure that the voice belonged to the man named Len, but she wasn't positive. The other man's snoring stopped at that, meaning he had woken up. "Comfy?"

"You wakin' me up to see if I'm comfortable?" the man on the bed asked, clearly irritated.

"I wanna lie down," Len said.

"Two other bedrooms up here to choose."

"Them's kids' beds. I want this one," Len said, walking closer to the bed.

"It's claimed," the man on the bed said.

"I didn't hear it," Len argued. He chuckled a little before turning his head to the doorway. "Hey, girl! Did you hear him claim this bed?" he yelled out. Rosie bit down on her bottom lip, unsure of what to say in order to not get hurt.

"Um," she started, taking a deep breath. "No, sir," she decided on.

"Well, I'll be damned. I guess you'll just have to lay claim somewhere else," Len said tauntingly. It was quiet for a few more moments until Rosie could hear them fighting. Joe said that claiming kept the peace. It didn't seem very peaceful, in Rosie's opinion. She could hear the other man begging for Len to stop, but he didn't. And then everything went quiet again, and Len chuckled. "My bed now, jackoff," he said before dropping down onto the bed.

Then Rosie could hear Len snoring loudly, and someone throwing a ball up against a wall over and over and over again. The sound of the ball hitting the wall made her want to explode, but she tried to keep her cool. Exploding with these men present would only make everything worse, she knew that. So she took deep breaths and sat down on the ground, sitting crisscross as she buried her face in her hands. She was able to drown out the noise of the ball hitting the wall for a few minutes, but then a new noise made her panic all over again.

"Tony, Len, get your asses down here! And bring that girl!" Joe's voice called out. Rosie hated Joe, but she hated all of them, so that wasn't anything special. Being asleep, neither Tony nor Len answered. "Yo, you hear me?" Joe called out.

As Rosie was sitting there, her hands over her face, things were ok- just for a moment. But then someone grabbed her, pulling her up to her feet and pressing their hand over her mouth to prevent her from making noise. Rosie panicked, immediately fighting back as the person pulled her back up against their chest, backing further into the room.

"Rosie, Rosie, it's me," the person whispered out. Instant relief flooded Rosie's body and she immediately calmed. She turned herself around and threw her arms around Rick Grimes' torso, her eyes squeezed shut. Rosie couldn't believe that he was there. If she would have told her nine-year-old self, up on that roof, that she'd be hugging Rick Grimes with all of the strength she had in her body, she wouldn't believe it. But here she was, hugging the pussy ass cop.

The relief didn't last long, though, because soon, Joe was coming up the stairs. Rick pulled her back into a different room, pressing against the wall as Joe walked around on the other side. With her hand pressed over her mouth, Rosie watched with wide eyes as Joe stood in the doorway and threw that damn tennis ball against the wall. Somehow, he still hadn't noticed them. Joe started to walk away again and Rick instantly started checking the windows, but none of them would open.

It didn't take long for the men in the house to start arguing again, but Rosie was just grateful that they hadn't noticed her absence just yet. Rick kept Rosie behind him as he armed himself with a sports trophy, trying to find a way out. The men went down the stairs and Rick started to go to the master bedroom, but then another one of the men came back up the stairs, so he pulled the two of them backwards into the nearest room, which was the bathroom. Rick kept  his eyes on the door, but Rosie was behind him and she saw what he didn't.

"Rick," she whisper shouted. Rick turned and was met with one of the Claimers. Rosie recognized this Claimer to be the one named Lou. Without a moments hesitation, Rick threw himself forward and started fighting with Lou as Rosie pressed herself into the corner, trying to stay out of the way.

Rick managed to get ahold of Lou's gun, but he didn't shoot it because it would make too much noise. Instead, he used the strap to pull it tight around Lou's neck, blocking his airway. As Rick strangled Lou, Rosie could see Lou trying to reach for a pair of scissors on the counter, so she quickly grabbed them and pulled them away.

After just a few more seconds, Lou was dead on the ground. Rick took the gun and kept it pointed at the door as he took a moment to catch his breath. "Are you ok?" he whispered out to Rosie. Rosie didn't feel ok, but she nodded her head anyway, because she was ok now. Rick was there and she wouldn't ever have to see the Claimers again.

Once he caught his breath, Rick turned to the window and used the pair of scissors to cut through the paint that held it shut. He pulled it open and cracked the door a little bit so that the Claimers would think he was still in the house rather than out the window, and so that Lou would be able to get out of the bathroom once he turned. Before climbing out himself, Rick helped Rosie get up and over the windowsill.

Rick pulled his jacket on before slowly lowering himself down onto the back porch. "You gotta jump. I'm right here, I'll catch you if you fall," Rick whisper-shouted up to her. After taking a deep breath, Rosie nodded and scooted herself closer to the edge of the roof. As quietly as she could, she lowered her legs down until she slid off. Rick helped to slow her fall down until her red cowboy boots were planted on the wooden porch.

Crouched down close to the ground, the two of them went down the stairs and made their way towards the front of the house. Just as they made it to the side of the front porch, the front door creaked open. And, of course, out walked Joe. Rick held Rosie close to his chest, making themselves as small as possible as Joe started bouncing the tennis ball against the wooden beams.

After a few moments, Joe sat himself down on the railing and started eating from a can that he must have found in the kitchen. Rosie thought they were just gonna wait it out, but then she could see Carl and Michonne walking towards the house from a distance. Rick moved her behind him again and held his gun out in front of him. Just as he was about to lift himself up to shoot and kill Joe, a loud yelling came from inside the house.

"The girl's gone!" Rosie could hear one of the men shouting out. It made her heart beat fast, but she took deep breaths, trying to keep calm.

"Son of a bitch," Joe complained before putting down his can and heading back into the house. Rick grabbed onto Rosie's arm and they started running towards Michonne and Carl.

"Go! Go!" Rick whisper-shouted to them. So that's what they did. They ran.

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Summary: While stuck in a house with the Claimers, Rosie thinks back to memories she had from before the apocalypse in order to distract herself from reality. Rosie and the Claimers leave the house and find a new one: the house that Rick was in. Rick finds Rosie and they just barely manage to escape, meeting up with Michonne and Carl outside.

Next chapter Daryl comes back 🫡