Future Ghosts • TWD

118. Breathin'.

"What happened?" Rosie asked, her eyebrows pinched together.

"It's ok, Rosie. It's being dealt with," Maggie assured her, giving a fake smile. Rosie wanted to say I didn't ask if it was being dealt with, but she didn't say that because maybe Maggie just didn't want to talk about it. "Why don't you go on inside? Ian's excited to see you and introduce you to his new friend," Maggie said.

His new friend? That intrigued Rosie. She looked back at Daryl to see what he thought. He nodded his head toward Barrington House. Go on, his eyes said. Rosie wanted to show Maggie her fossils, but she figured she could do that later. Maggie obviously had some very important stuff to talk to Rick, Michonne, and Daryl about, and apparently, Rosie wasn't supposed to be there for it. So she went inside, feeling a bit anxious. She spotted Ian sitting at a table, playing cards with a boy Rosie had never seen before.

"Rosie!" Ian said, waving her over. Hesitantly, Rosie went over to them. She always felt anxious when meeting new people, but she felt especially anxious when those people were around the same age as her and she was all on her own- no adult there to intervene if someone was being an asshole. She wanted to hide, but she couldn't, because that would be weird. Rosie sat down next to Ian at the table, avoiding eye contact with the other boy. "This is Rodney. He just joined Hilltop a couple weeks ago," Ian said.

"Hey," Rodney said, giving a smile.

"Hi," Rosie murmured, feeling awkward. She hoped she wasn't being rude. She didn't mean to be, if she was. It was weird. Before the fall of Negan, she was pretty sure she might not have even paid Rodney any mind. But it'd been so long since she had hung out with anyone around her own age that it just felt weird. At the Sanctuary, it was just her and a bunch of adults. She didn't mind it. She sort of liked being on her own. But sometimes she wished she could hang out with Ian and Henry more often. To change the subject and fill the awkward silence, Rosie pulled her bag off of her shoulder and got out the fossils, placing them on the table in front of her. "Look. Daryl went to a museum and he found velociraptor teeth fossils," she said. She grabbed her necklace and showed it to Ian. "And he got me a necklace one, too."

"That's awesome," Ian said, looking at the fossils.

"Those are actual dinosaur teeth, or are they, like, plastic?" Rodney asked, leaning in close to look at the bag of fossils.

"They ain't the teeth, but they're fossils of the teeth. The rocks. Minerals and stuff. But it's from 65 million years ago," Rosie said proudly, happy that they were impressed with her dinosaur fossils. But then Maggie, Rick, Michonne, and Daryl all walked inside and Rosie caught a glimpse of the bruise again. It made her stomach ache. She turned to Ian. "What happened to Maggie?" she asked him.

"Oh, Gregory tried to have her killed last night. 'Cause he doesn't want her to be in charge anymore," Ian said, his voice tense. He looked back at the adults, who had started talking across the room. Ian leaned in closer and spoke quietly. "I heard her talking to Jesus. She's gonna hang Gregory tonight," he revealed.

"Like, with a rope? Like execution?" Rodney asked, his eyes wide

All of a sudden, that aching in Rosie's stomach became much, much worse. She felt like throwing up. She stood up, making her chair screech on the floor. She grabbed her fossils and put them back in her bag before looking around the room. Rick and Maggie were heading up the stairs while Michonne and Daryl were still talking near the staircase. Rosie went straight to Daryl and grabbed onto his hand, pulling it to get his attention.

"Gimme a sec, Ro," Daryl murmured, keeping his attention on whatever Michonne was saying to him.

Rosie pulled on his hand again. "No. I wanna go back," she said. Daryl was still listening to Michonne talk. Maybe it was something important. Rosie didn't care. She wanted to go before she could start crying, before she wouldn't be able to breathe, before she'd want to curl up into a ball and hide from everyone and everything. She could already feel the lump there, in her throat, threatening to make her start crying and embarrass herself. "Daryl, I wanna go! I wanna go!" she said again.