Future Ghosts • TWD

124. Visitors.

"I think she figured that out, Rosie," Ian said quietly.

"Oh," Rosie murmured, pressing her lips together.

"When was the last time you ate?" Carol asked next, her eyebrows pinched together.

"Rose and Dog ate yesterday," Daryl answered, walking right past her. Rosie chewed on her lip, looking down at her shoes. She didn't like that Daryl always put her needs over his, but it wasn't like she could ever tell him what to do. He didn't listen to her, even if she said she wasn't hungry, he could always tell if she was lying. It was annoying. Rosie knew that he needed to care for himself, too, but Daryl didn't seem to worry about himself, no matter what she said.

"I was asking about you," Carol said with a sigh.

"Ro, go check the snares. I'mma find the walker Dog got that hand from," Daryl said, slinging his crossbow over his shoulder. Rosie nodded, even though she knew that the reason Daryl was telling her to go check the snares was so that he could talk to Carol without any of the kids there. She wasn't exactly sure what they were going to talk about, but she hoped it wasn't something along the lines of, Hey, do you think I should make Rosie go back to the Kingdom with you? He often went back and forth on whether or not he wanted Rosie living out there, but for whatever reason, he didn't seem to care what Rosie wanted. She wanted to stay out there. For a lot of reasons.

"Go with her, boys. I'm gonna go talk to Daryl," Carol said to Ian and Henry. As she was looking at Ian and Henry, there were some eye words going on between them, but Rosie couldn't quite tell what words they were. She'd been trying to get better at eye words, but she supposed that being away from most people had stunted her ability to read eye language.

As Carol went to follow Daryl one way, Ian and Henry went to follow Rosie the other way. "So, why're you guys out here in the first place?" Rosie asked, crouching down next to a tree to begin freeing a dead squirrel from a snare.

"We're going to Hilltop, so I can learn blacksmithing," Henry answered, somewhat proudly. Rosie freed the squirrel and held it out to Ian, who begrudgingly grabbed it by the tail with a grossed-out expression on his face. Rosie began to reset the snare.

"Sucks that Maggie's not gonna be there," Rosie murmured. She hadn't been to the Hilltop since Maggie left. She didn't see a reason to visit, if Maggie wasn't there. Sure, there were some people who she missed from Hilltop, but they were around. She saw them every once in a while, whether it was just them passing by, them visiting the Kingdom, or anything else. It just made Rosie anxious to visit places by herself, and Daryl didn't seem to want to go anywhere. So she only visited the Kingdom, comforted by the knowledge that both Ian and Henry were always there. "Were ya ever mad at her for leavin'? I was kinda mad," Rosie asked Ian, glancing back at him as she finished resetting the snare.

"Not really. It wasn't like she just left me. She asked if I wanted to come with," Ian said, shrugging his shoulders a bit.

"Really? Why didn't ya go?" Rosie asked, raising her eyebrows. She stood back up and began walking to where she knew the next snare was.

"I didn't wanna be away from you or Henry, I guess. Plus, I hated being on the road. Like, before we got to Alexandria? That sucked ass," Ian said. To be fair, he had lost a lot of people between the prison and Alexandria. His mom, especially. Rosie never really asked about his mom. He had lost her at the prison, Rosie knew that, but Ian never talked about it. "You liked being on the road, though, didn't you?" Ian asked her.

Rosie crouched down next to the next snare and began the whole process of resetting it again. "Not really. I just didn't like Alexandria at first. It was weird. Ya just don't get it," Rosie murmured. She didn't really want to talk about it. That was another good thing about being in the woods. Daryl knew what she did and didn't want to talk about, which meant that she almost never had to talk about things she didn't want to talk about, unless it was important and Daryl decided she'd have to talk about it whether or not she wanted to. With other people, though, they couldn't always know what she avoided talking about.