The small girl climbed out of her tent and immediately squinted her eyes, still adjusting to the light of day. She adjusted the shorts around her waist- they'd gotten twisted up while she was sleeping. She looked down at her red cowboy boots, as if to make sure they were still there. They fell off often, being a few sizes too big (hand-me-downs from Fraser). They were the only shoes Rosie had, though, so she just tucked rolled up pairs of socks into the toes and it did the job just fine.
She lifted her head and scanned over the camp. Most people were still in bed, like Lori and Carl, but there were some early risers.
For one, Dale was already on the roof of the RV, a book in his hands.
Officer Shane was heading towards his Jeep, probably to go and get water.
Amy was up too, sitting around the empty fire pit.
There were also the Dixon brothers. Their tent was further away from the others'. They often went hunting early in the morning.
The girl frowned. Her father was nowhere to be found.
Hey, Rosie, I'm going to be over here just so you know, she thought to herself mockingly. If only her dad cared enough to tell her where he would be.
She considered asking Officer Shane if he'd seen him, since he was in charge, but she figured that if her father told anyone where he was going, it would most definitely not be the police officer.
Then she thought of Dale, but he seemed too absorbed in his book. She thought back to when her father said that Dale was an annoying old man and talked too much. He probably wouldn't tell Dale where he was going either.
The Dixon brothers were intimidating, but if her dad talked to anyone, much to Rosie's dismay, it would've been them. He'd gotten along with the brothers well. They were pretty much the only two people in the camp that Rosie hadn't listened to her father talk shit about.
So, unfortunately, Rosie knew that if she wanted to figure out where her dad went, her best bet would be on the Dixons. But they scared her. Sure, she'd spent plenty of time around them, but they still scared her.
She usually stuck to her father's side, silently following him and doing whatever he asked of her. When her father would hang around the Dixons' camp, she would sit silently and pretend she wasn't there, until her father either gave her a task to do or eventually told her to beat it.
Rosie had barely spoken a word in front of either of the two brothers. But she was still there when they interacted with her father. And that's what made her fear them, while also finding some sort of comfort or familiarity in their presence.
When she was with her dad at the Dixons' camp, it was like when things were normal. When she'd sit in the living room with her dad and his friends, fetching them beers when they asked and putting out their cigarettes if they fell asleep. She was afraid of her dad's friends, they'd done bad things, and it only made sense for the Dixons to be the same.
The only difference Rosie found between the Dixons and her father's old friends was that they barely ever said anything to her. When her dad used to have friends over, they would say weird things that Rosie didn't understand because they thought it was funny, and they would order her around.
Merle Dixon had made some jokes and comments that Rosie didn't understand, and he would occasionally tell her to go grab something for him, but it wasn't nearly as much as any of her dad's old friends, and Merle's jokes were never about Rosie herself.
Daryl Dixon hadn't ever said anything to her. Rosie wasn't sure if that was good or bad, so it only added to her fears.
But if there was any time to get over your fears, the apocalypse was it. Rosie wasn't supposed to be afraid of anything in the first place, because her dad wouldn't raise no pussy, but she still had fears. She was just good at hiding them. But now that the dead were walking and trying to kill her, Rosie decided she couldn't be afraid of the living people anymore.
So, she took a breath and approached the Dixons' camp with caution. She held her hands behind her back, wringing them together nervously. She looked over at the camp as she was approaching, and saw that Daryl was sitting on a crate, fixing one of his arrows- or maybe bolts, Rosie couldn't tell the difference- while Merle was lounging in a portable fold-up chair, smoking a cigarette.
The cigarette in Merle's hand made her stomach churn, but she ignored it and kept walking. She stopped a few feet away and looked down at her shoes, kicking her right foot into the side of her left foot as she attempted to gather up the courage to talk to the two men.
Finally, she opened her mouth to talk and looked up, but when she saw both of the brothers staring at her, she closed her mouth again and looked back down.
The girl almost turned back around, thinking that maybe she'd just find her dad on her own, but she froze in her spot when one of them spoke.
"Need somethin'?" Daryl asked, looking up from the arrow- or maybe bolt- in his hands.
Rosie looked up at him and bit on the inside of her bottom lip as her stomach ached with anxiety. The inside of her lip was already raw from how much she'd been biting it lately. She just wasn't used to being with so many people. It made her nervous, constantly trying to figure out how to seem normal.
"Spit it out, girl," Merle said, the cigarette now pinched between his middle finger and ring finger. Rosie eyed the thing warily and chose to look at Daryl instead.
"Um," she began, already feeling stupid for saying um, "Do ya know where my daddy is?"
"Think he went huntin'," Daryl answered, going back to fixing whatever was wrong with his arrow- or maybe bolt.
"Oh," Rosie murmured, turning back around to leave.
Without me?
Usually he brought Rosie with him when he went hunting. He said she needed to know how to survive on her own and be independent. That meant being able to find your own food. So why didn't he take her with him?
Maybe he's just sick of me. Or maybe I'm in trouble.
Rosie decided to just go back to the tent and wait for him to come back. If she was in trouble, then it was better to just wait for him. He would be mad if he was looking for her and he couldn't find her. He got mad a lot, so it was better to do anything- even if it meant sitting in a tent alone for hours- to try and make him less mad.
That was something Rosie could never understand. If her father was so mad so often, then why did his friends like him? Why did Daryl and Merle Dixon like to spend time with him?
Maybe he's only angry at me, Rosie thought. But she had to like him either way, he was her dad.
So she sat in that tent for two hours until her dad came back. While she waited, her mind raced with thoughts. She couldn't figure out what she had done wrong. She wasn't even awake when he left, how could she have done something? Maybe she had a nightmare and woke him up without knowing. Or maybe he was just mad for no reason. That happened sometimes, but Rosie was never sure why.
When her dad came back to camp, Rosie could hear his voice calling for her.
"Rosie!" he shouted.
The girl immediately got up and climbed out of the tent, making sure to zip the flap up behind her. Her dad wasn't heading towards the tent like she thought he would be.
"Rosie!" she turned and saw him standing at the tree line, near the Dixons' camp. "Get yer ass over here! Caught us some rabbit."
Rosie grabbed a hunting knife from inside the tent and scrambled over to where her dad was calling her name. When she got over there, she could see that Merle and Daryl were in the same spots that she'd seen them in earlier, except now they were both skinning squirrels. Her dad was sitting on another crate, just like the one Daryl sat on, but he was skinning a rabbit.
Rosie went over and sat in the dirt by her father's side. He tossed a small rabbit into her lap and she immediately got to work. She wanted to ask him why he went without her, but she figured it was best to keep her mouth shut. If he wasn't mad already, might as well leave him be.
The blood from the rabbit was staining the ends of the sleeves on her flannel, so she slid it off, not wanting to ruin the only thing she had to wear to keep warm. She liked the flannel a lot. It was gray and dark green, and green was her favorite color. And it was another hand-me-down from Fraser. She wore it a lot, even if it wasn't nearly cold enough to be wearing it. It gave Rosie comfort for a reason she couldn't figure out herself.
Her black, knee-length jean shorts kept her cool enough, so she wore it as often as she could. If she did start to feel too hot, she could just take the flannel off for a little bit, just wearing the black and purple Black Sabbath shirt she'd gotten from her baseball coach for her birthday and had been wearing the day they left the house.
She hadn't brought any other clothes, so she was stuck with the Black Sabbath shirt, the green and gray flannel, the black denim shorts, and the red cowboy boots.
That and the lapis necklace that hung just below her collarbones.
As she skinned and gutted the rabbit, just like her dad had taught her, she listened to the men's conversation. Most of it didn't make much sense to her, but she figured it was just because they were grown ups.
Grown ups were always confusing. Especially teachers. When Rosie went to school, she'd get in trouble for being too quiet, so then she'd talk more, but then she'd get in trouble for talking too much and too fast. They could never make up their minds.
After awhile, she tuned the men out. It was no use listening to them if they were speaking in weird codes. What the hell was a bender? What did her dad mean when he started telling some funny story about a bad trip? Was is it a road trip? Did his car break down or something? Rosie could never figure it out.
Instead, she sat silently and thought up some stories in her head. She did that a lot when she was bored. She'd think up a character- usually a little blonde haired girl like herself- and give them a good life. Sometimes the girl would be a superhero and have the power to turn invisible, and sometimes the girl would be a normal girl, but she'd go to school every day and have lots of friends and a big family in a big house with a mom and a dad and lots of siblings. It was a good distraction from the skinning and gutting.
Rosie used to feel bad when she had to skin and gut animals.
The first time her dad made her kill an animal was when she was three, and she cried and cried for hours over that little squirrel. She got into big trouble for that, so she always tried not to cry from then on.
Sometimes when she would kill them, she'd still get a knot in her stomach, but she tried her best to ignore it. They needed food and animals were food. No use crying about it.
Her eyebrows furrowed as she thought about the first squirrel she killed. She could still see it clearly in her head. She had hit it with a rock with her slingshot, but when she went to get it, it wasn't dead yet. She'd only stunned it. Her father put a knife in her hands and told her to finish it. She looked up at him with wide eyes and shook her head quickly. That earned her a smack on the side of the head. Her father had wrapped his hand around her small one, and forced the knife into the squirrels head. Blood seeped out and Rosie felt queasy.
"Rosie," her father spat, smacking Rosie on the back of her head. She jumped and looked at him with wide eyes. "Hell's wrong with ya?" he asked. Rosie wasn't sure what he was on about.
"N-nothin'," she replied quietly, her eyes still wide as she looked at him.
"Ya goin' deaf? Told ya to go get my pack a' smokes from the tent," her dad said sternly, giving her a mean look.
"Sorry," Rosie said quickly, putting her knife down and dropping the cut meat into the bucket by her dad's feet before standing up.
"Whatever. Grab the lighter while you're at it," he grumbled, turning back to the rabbit he was slicing up into smaller pieces to cook.
"Yes sir," Rosie said with a nod. She wiped the blood from her hands on her black denim shorts and hurried to the tent.
She didn't like when her dad smoked cigarettes, it always made her nervous, but she did what he said anyway, because what other choice did she have?
After quickly finding her father's jacket, Rosie pulled the box of cigarettes out of the inside pocket and found the lighter in the right pocket. She ran back to the Dixons' camp and gave them both to her dad, and earned herself nothing but a grunt in return- not that she expected a thank you or anything.
She sat back down in her spot and leaned her chin in her hands, waiting for something else to do.
"Beat it," her father told her. She frowned, but got up and left.
Rosie decided that she'd go and wash her hands off at the quarry. When she got down to the water, she found Carl sitting there, throwing rocks in. She glanced at him for a moment, just to see that he was already looking at her. She looked away and focused on washing her hands.
"Are you bleeding?" Carl asked her. He had stood up from his spot a few feet away and made his way over to stand by Rosie's side. She ignored him. He always asked too many questions. "Did you get cut? Or did you see one of the walkers? Or-"
"No," Rosie said, stopping him before he could go on with his long list of guesses.
"Then why do you have blood all over you? Are you okay?" Carl asked. Rosie wished he would just mind his own business.
"Rabbit," Rosie said simply, trying to keep her words to a minimum.
Rosie had no interest in getting to know any of the kids in the camp. She knew it'd just be a few more days- maybe weeks- before her dad decided he hated every last one of them and left. There was no point in making any attachments. She looked at Carl and he was just staring at her with confusion.
"To eat. You're welcome," she added sassily.
"Oh," Carl said, dragging it out like he just realized what she was saying. "Your dad goes hunting for us. With those other guys Daryl and Merle, right?"
Rosie nodded and hummed a yes as she stood up and wiped her wet hands on her shorts. The blood wasn't all the way gone, but it was good enough.
"They look mean. Are they mean?" Carl asked. Rosie began walking away, shrugging her shoulders. Carl ran to catch up with her, walking by her side. "I mean, I know Merle is mean, but what about Daryl? He looks mean, but I've never even heard him talk to anyone."
Shrugging her shoulders once again, Rosie said, "I don't know. Stop askin' me things." She tried to walk faster, to get Carl to leave her alone, but he persisted.
"You look mean too, to be honest," Carl said. He was trying to make her laugh, but it didn't work.
"Okay," Rosie said simply and emotionlessly. She really just wanted to be left alone.
"What about your dad? I think he's definitely mean. He doesn't like Shane and-"
"My daddy ain't mean. Stop sayin' stuff," Rosie spat, furrowing her eyebrows with frustration.
Carl furrowed his eyebrows too, but with confusion rather than frustration. He'd seen her dad push her around and yell at her and be mean to her, so why didn't she think her dad was mean? It's not like he was saying her dad was the devil, he was just saying he wasn't exactly the nicest.
"You don't think your dad is mean?" he asked again.
"No," Rosie said, her teeth clenched. She was really getting fed up with his questions. She didn't like the way he was talking about her dad and she didn't like that he was following her. She just wanted to be left alone. She could feel her face starting to burn, even though she didn't get why so many questions bothered her so much, but didn't bother anyone else.
"But he yells at you all the time," Carl reasoned. His dad, Rick Grimes, was never the type of guy to ever raise his voice. Carl didn't think he'd ever heard his father yell at all. Sure, his mom, Lori, yelled sometimes, but not unless he did something really bad. Rosie's dad yelled all the time and seemingly for no reason.
"So?"
"That's mean."
"No it ain't," Rosie muttered. She took a deep breath, trying to control her emotions. She didn't like talking to people about her dad, especially when they were acting like he was a bad guy. He wasn't a bad guy, he was her dad.
"But what about just a minute ago? I saw him hit you-" Carl was cut off when Rosie punched him right in the nose.
"It ain't none a' your business!" Rosie shouted at him. She shook her hand a little, relieving the soreness. She hadn't gotten in a fight in a long time- it'd been a year and a half since her last one; a new record- so she kind of forgot about how much a punch could make your knuckles sting, especially when you're not used to it.
Carl was bent over, holding his hand over his nose. He looked up at her with wet, angry eyes. He looked down at his hands to see that they had blood on them; his nose was bleeding. His eyes widened.
"Mom!" Carl shouted, running towards Lori, who was sitting across from Shane around the fire pit. Lori's eyes widened when she saw Carl's bleeding face, and she stood up quickly to rush over to Carl. "Rosie hit me!" he yelled.
Shane got up too when he heard what Carl said. Rosie stood frozen, her eyebrows still furrowed as she looked down at her shoes, realizing the consequences of what she had just done.
Lori knelt down in front of Carl, holding his face and trying to get him to calm down while Shane marched over to Rosie. She jumped when he grabbed onto her upper arm tightly and began pulling her over to where she had just left her dad, Lori and Carl walking close behind.
"'M sorry! I'm sorry!" she kept saying, hoping Shane would let her go without telling her dad. It didn't work though.
Daryl and Merle were the first to see Shane practically dragging over an angry, yet panicked looking Rosie, as David- Rosie's dad- had his back to them.
Daryl furrowed his eyebrows while Merle smiled and let out a chuckle. "Got yerself inta trouble with the law now, huh, girlie?" he said with a laugh.
David turned around and stood up quickly once he saw the angry look on each person's face.
"You need to keep an eye on your kid," Shane said, letting Rosie's arm go and lightly pushing her towards David. He was more irritated with David than he was with Rosie, though. He'd noticed the way David parented her, ordering her around and yelling at her, but not bothering to make sure she wasn't wandering off or making sure that she had eaten something. He treated her more like a servant than a kid, and it didn't sit right with Shane.
When Shane pushed Rosie towards David, she backed a couple steps away from her dad and stared at her shoes, trying to hide her face with her hair.
"What'd she do?" David asked, crossing his arms and widening his stance. Shane did the same thing as Lori stepped closer. Carl stood in front of her, her hands on each of his shoulders. He looked angry. He had tears streaks on his face and dried blood around his nostrils.
"Your daughter just punched my son," Lori said in a stern voice, as if she couldn't believe that anyone would even dare coming near her son.
Rosie's stomach churned with anxiety when her dad turned to her and gave her a look. The look. She looked back down at her shoes and felt her face start to burn again.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.
"Rosie," David spoke slowly and sternly, "apologize. Now."
"'M sorry," Rosie muttered, still not looking up.
She flinched when she felt her dad grab her shoulder and roughly push her in front of Carl. "Look at him and say it. I don' wanna hear you mumblin'."
The girl lifted her eyes and looked at Carl. She wouldn't ever admit it, but she felt a little guilty looking at his teary eyes and bloody nose. She took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, Carl," she said again.
"It's okay," Carl replied, even though he was still a little bit angry.
"No, it's not okay. I thought I taught you some respect, girl," David said, pushing Rosie away again. She looked back down at her shoes. "I'll talk to 'er," David said to Lori.
Rosie knew what that meant. She began anxiously biting her lip and fiddling with the hem of her shirt.
"Won't happen again. Ain't that right, Rosie?"
"Yes sir," Rosie spoke quietly but firmly.
"Thank you," Lori said, satisfied with how the situation had been handled. She turned around and left to take care of Carl's bloody nose, Shane following behind.
As soon as they were out of earshot, David turned around and pushed Rosie back a bit, angrily. After stumbling back, she felt her back hit a tree lightly, and she was glad that it was there. The feeling of the bark on her back gave her some sort of feeling of security; an assurance that she was there and she was alive and she would keep moving on after whatever was about to happen.
"'M sorry, Daddy. I'm sorry," she said quickly, gripping the hem of her shirt tightly as she squeezed her eyes shut, preparing herself for a punch to her cheekbone. She wasn't sure if he would do that in front of the Dixons, but she wouldn't put it past him. He'd done it in front of his old friends- not all of them, but some. She never knew what made him decide whether or not he should hit his kid in front of which people. "He was sayin' stuff 'bout-"
"I don't give a shit what he was sayin', girl!" David shouted at her. He gripped the back of her shirt tightly and pulled her to his side. "You an' me are gon' have a lil' talk," he spat as he began violently pulling her towards their tent, Rosie stumbling along with him.
Daryl and Merle looked at each other, unsure of just about everything they just saw. The way David was just scolding Rosie reminded them of their own father, but they didn't think David was like that. He wasn't winning any father of the year awards, but he wouldn't hurt his daughter, would he? The girl followed him around and looked up to him like he was her hero. She wouldn't do that if he was bad to her, right?
Rosie stood outside the tent with her heart pumping hard in her chest as her dad unzipped the tent. "Go in," he ordered, undoing his belt buckle and pulling it out from the belt loops.
And so she did.