After noticing Daryl walk off with an angry expression on his face in the middle of Jesus's burial, Rosie decided to follow him. He would never tell her how he was feeling when it came to death or loss. He'd just get angry or he'd go off to deal with it on his own. Rosie didn't want him to do either of those things. She just wanted him to do the same thing that he always told her to do: to talk about it. He almost always made her feel better, but he never let her even try to do the same. Maybe she was a hypocrite, though, because she had all of these things that she wasn't telling him, too.
Rosie didn't initially see where he had disappeared to, but as she walked past the entrance to the cellar, she heard his voice. He was shouting at someone. "Get up! How many?!" he was yelling. She could hear a girl- the girl- crying and shrieking in fear and it made that weakness come back. She opened up the door to the cellar and hurried down the steps. When she got to the bottom, her stomach churned- not with anxiety, but with something else. She peeked around the corner, just barely out of sight from the two in the cell. Daryl was holding the girl up to the bars of the cell, his hand around her throat. "Why'd your people kill our people?" Daryl asked, his voice low and threatening. The girl was frozen with fear. Daryl pulled his knife out of its sheath and held it up in front of the girl's face. "Tell me!"
"We were always gonna kill you, ok?!" the girl admitted, her eyes wide and terrified as she stared at the tip of Daryl's knife. She was just a kid. She couldn't have been much older than Rosie, if that. "It's just what people do now. Everybody still alive's a threat. It's us or them," the girl explained, almost completely unable to keep herself together with how fear-stricken she was.
The knife remained pointed at the girl, but Rosie could see Daryl's hand shaking. Did he feel bad for doing this? Did he see what he was doing? How terrified the girl was? "How many people in your group?" he asked. She took a deep breath, but didn't say anything. "The truth!"
"It is the truth!" the girl shrieked.
Daryl pushed the knife closer to her. "Don't lie to me!" he shouted. He always hated when Rosie would lie to him.
"My mom!" the girl shouted, her eyes squeezed shut. "It's just my mom. She's a good person. Please don't go looking for her. Please. She's just one woman, out there alone."
"You said your people were never alone," Daryl reminded her.
"She- she was at the cemetery," the girl said, opening her eyes again. Rosie took a deep, shaky breath that matched the girl's. "She got separated, but just her."
For a moment- just a moment- Rosie thought that, since the girl was telling him what he wanted, Daryl would back off. But he didn't. He pulled his knife away and pulled the girl away from the bars. "Liar!" he shouted. He always hated when Rosie would lie to him, and she had been lying to him so much lately. She knew Daryl would never do to her what he was doing to this girl, but it still made her think about how angry Daryl would be if- or when, rather- he found out she had been lying.
"Please, I'm telling the truth!" the girl pleaded. Daryl grabbed her by the arm and began dragging her toward the door of the cell. The girl dropped to the ground and tried to pull away, but Daryl was strong- much stronger than her. "No! No, I told you the truth!" the girl cried.
"I told you what was gonna happen!" Daryl shouted. Rosie didn't understand. What was gonna happen? What was he going to do?
"Daryl!" Henry shouted from his and Ian's shared cell. The closer Daryl got to the door of the cell, the further Rosie backed away, trying to remain out of sight.
"Shut up!" Daryl shouted.
"That was everything! Please! Please! Let go of me!" the girl cried, gripping the bars of the cell like her life depended on it. Maybe it did. Rosie didn't know. All Rosie knew was that the girl's incessant begging of, Please! Please! Please! only reminded her of herself, when she was eleven years old, trapped in a cell at the Sanctuary. Of course, she hadn't been begging for her life then; she'd been begging for something else. She didn't really know what. All she knew was that she was terrified, and she knew how terrified the girl was feeling.
"Daryl, stop!" it was Ian's voice shouting this time. Rosie didn't know if she should've been shouting, too. She didn't know what to do.
"Please, Daryl, please don't kill me, please," the girl begged. She cried so hard it made Rosie's chest hurt. "Please. Please."
Before Rosie could think about what she was doing, she came forward and grabbed onto Daryl's arm, pulling it away from the girl's with all of her might. His grip must've already been loosening, or else Rosie wouldn't have been able to get him away from the girl, but when she did manage to pull Daryl away, the girl scrambled backward, hiding herself behind a chair. Daryl's attention was now turned towards Rosie. He looked so mad it made Rosie want to melt into the ground and disappear. He slammed the door to the cell shut and locked it before grabbing Rosie by the arm and starting to pull her up the stairs.
"Daryl stop! You're bein' an asshole!" Rosie said, her heart pounding as his grip on her arm tightened. She knew he would never hurt her- she knew that just as well as she knew her own name- but he could still be scary when he was angry. And right now he was fuming. He had already gotten himself worked up with the girl, and then Ian and Henry were shouting at him, and now Rosie was acting out. "You told me to call you out when you're bein' an asshole, and you're bein' an asshole! She's just a kid! She's scared!" Rosie shouted.
"That ain't your fuckin' problem! That girl ain't none a' your damn business!" Daryl shouted, releasing Rosie's arm and lightly shoving her backward. Rosie opened her mouth to argue, but Daryl wasn't having it. "What's your business is all the shit you been lyin' to me about! You think I can't tell when you're bullshittin' me, Rosie?!" he said.
"I'm not lyin' about anythin'!" Rosie yelled. But, God, it was lie after lie.
"You're full a' shit!" Daryl spat.
"Just 'cause you're pissed at me don't give you the right to go scare that girl like that!" Rosie said, trying to keep herself together. She felt like crying again, but she didn't want Daryl to know that. She wanted to be as tough as he was. "That's bullshit!"
Daryl huffed out a few heavy breaths, his glare as sharp as a dagger. "You don't know what the hell you're talkin' about, Rosie Dixon. I got other shit to deal with right now. You can come talk to me when you wanna start tellin' me the truth," he said before walking off, probably to go talk to Michonne and Tara about what the girl had told him.
Rosie down on her lip so hard that it drew blood. She wanted to scream at him, but she didn't. She swallowed back the lump in her throat and marched off to the gates of Hilltop. Since it was still daylight, the gates were open, which meant that Rosie was free to stay and go as she pleased. So that's what she did. She went out into the woods to take a walk. She wanted to calm herself down, because right now she felt almost every negative emotion she could think of. She was mad, sad, and scared all at once and was overwhelming.
When she got far enough away from Hilltop that she was sure no one was going to bother her, she leaned up against a tree and began to fiddle with the velociraptor toy in her pocket. It was way too hot to be wearing this jacket, but she didn't ever want to take it off. Of course, there were times when it got too hot and she had to take off, but she didn't want to if she had the option to keep it on. It made her feel braver and stronger, and just better in general. But right now it was making her feel stupid, because she could feel that box of cigarettes beneath her hand, shoved into that pocket, and she was thinking about smoking one. That was a stupid thought and she knew that, but she couldn't seem to get it to go away.
So she pulled the box out of her pocket and stared at it. Maybe staring at it for a moment would make her remember how stupid it was. The box looked the same as it always did, just a little bit more crushed than before. She flipped open the top and counted the cigarettes left inside. There were thirteen left, which meant that there were seven missing. Rosie pulled one out and twisted it around in her fingers. Then she took out her lighter that said D.D. on it and lit the cigarette. She stared at the little circle of orange and sighed. She didn't want to smoke it. She wanted to, but she didn't want to. It was stupid. Why'd she light it? It was just wasteful.
After a moment, Rosie decided to put it out. She thought about David again, and how he put his cigarettes out on her skin, beneath her shirt, where no one else could see the marks that were left behind. She thought about the mark Daryl had put on his own skin. She thought about making a mark of her own, too, but she put the cigarette out against the tree instead.
Now, she was unsure of what to do. She didn't want to go back to Hilltop just yet, but she didn't want to just sit around trying to ignore the temptation to take out another cigarette. So she decided she'd keep walking. There was a town not too far from there- she knew because it was where she had found her last sketchbook- and she thought that maybe they'd have a library there. She had read a plethora of books during her time in the woods, but she didn't like to reread the same books over and over again anymore. Maybe, if this town had a library, she could pick up a few new books to add to her collection. Then she'd have something other to do than hang out with the other kids at Hilltop.
So, after checking that she had enough ammo in her gun to save herself if she ended up needing to, Rosie began walking. She stumbled upon a few walkers as she went, but she was easily able to take them down with her knife. Killing walkers had gotten ten times easier after she got tall enough to stab them in the head without having to get them on the ground first. Rosie was just glad that all of the walkers she ended up running into were actual walkers and not people wearing walkers' skins as a mask. That was apparently what the girl's people were doing, which seemed insane to Rosie, but people did what they had to do to survive, even if it meant putting on a dead person's face.
When Rosie got to the town, she started hearing muffled barking. She hadn't seen a dog other than Dog in a long, long time. But it sounded like there were several dogs. She wondered what they were barking for. Maybe there was a walker. Maybe they needed help. Rosie quickly began to follow the sound of the dogs barking. It seemed to be coming from the inside of a clothing store. As Rosie neared the store, she saw a walker slamming against one of the doors over and over again. Maybe that was what they were barking at. Rosie began to walk up to the walker in order to kill it and quiet the dogs down, but just as she began walking towards it, the door swung open and a man grabbed the walker by its shirt and shoved it inside the building before slamming the door shut. Rosie's hand went to her gun, ready to pull it out and use it if this man wasn't a good one.
But then the man turned and slammed his back against the door, holding it shut as he caught his breath. That was when Rosie saw his face. What the fuck was Negan Smith doing outside of Alexandria? She kept her hand over her gun.
When Negan opened his eyes and they landed on Rosie, he seemed to be frozen in shock for a moment. "Rosie," he eventually breathed out. He had an expression on his face that Rosie couldn't figure out the emotion behind.
"What the fuck are you doin'?" Rosie asked, keeping her distance from the man. God, why did this all have to happen at once? She'd been out of the woods for only three goddamn days and she had already found herself a world of problems.
"You're... you're so big," Negan said, his eyebrows raised as a small smile found its way onto his face. Of course, Rosie was bigger than she had been before. The last time Negan saw her was when he told her that she wasn't supposed to be there and that he killed them, Rosie. And that was when she was only twelve. A lot of growing goes on between the ages of twelve and seventeen-maybe-sixteen. "You..." Negan seemed to be at a loss for words.
"Why aren't you at Alexandria?" Rosie asked, tense and nervous. She didn't want to see him. She was content being away from him, only remembering him. But now he was here, maybe fifteen feet away from her, and he was living and breathing. His hair was buzzed and- Jesus Christ- he was wearing a leather jacket.
"I see you've copied my style, huh?" Negan joked, gesturing to her leather jacket. Did he think that everything was just fine now? Did he not remember what he had said to her the last time they spoke?
"It was Fraser's," Rosie said. She wished Daryl was here, so he could tell her what to do and how to deal with this situation, but she also was so glad that Daryl wasn't there, because if he was, he probably would have shot Negan dead on the spot. "What are you doin'?" Rosie asked hesitantly, letting her hand move away from her gun.
"I could ask you the same thing, kiddo," Negan said, starting to walk down the cement steps that led up to the door he'd come out of. Rosie took two steps back, feeling anxious. "Is Daryl around or are you by yourself?" Negan asked, trying to be cautious. He didn't want to be killed and he was sure that if Daryl were here, he might've been dead already.
"I'm on my own," Rosie said, only because she knew that Negan wouldn't do anything to her and that, if he did try anything, she could just shoot him. Plus, maybe if she answered his questions, he'd start answering hers. "What are you doin'?" she repeated her original question.
"Moving on," Negan answered. He sounded genuine, but his words didn't check out.
"Then why're you wearin' that jacket?" Rosie asked, tilting her head to the side as she gestured to his own leather jacket.
Negan sort of scoffed, but it sounded a bit like a laugh. "I like the style. What can I say?" he answered. Rosie rolled her eyes and decided that she didn't want to do this. She was going to go to the library, find some books she wanted to read, then go back to Hilltop and tell Daryl everything she wanted to tell him. She began walking off to find the library, but Negan began to follow. "Where are you going?" he asked.
"Nowhere," Rosie said. She spotted a bookstore down the street. That would work.
"You've been living with Daryl, haven't you? Where is he?" Negan asked, still following along.
Rosie scoffed. "Why the hell would I tell ya that?" she asked, shaking her head.
"You shouldn't be out here on your own," Negan said. Rosie rolled her eyes, even though he couldn't see her face. She pulled open the door to the bookstore and walked inside, not bothering to hold the door open for Negan, who was only a few steps behind.
"And I shouldn't've had to watch you kill Abraham and Glenn in front of me when I was eleven, but ya didn't seem to care 'bout that back then," Rosie muttered. That seemed to shut him up. She went behind the checkout counter and grabbed a bag off of the ground before making her way over to the shelves. They were filled with neverending books and it made Rosie think of Dale. He would have loved it in there. She began to pull books with interesting titles off of the shelves and put them into the bag. The Catcher in the Rye, The Prophet, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.
"Banks, I-"
"That ain't my name and it hasn't been for a long ass time. You know that," Rosie stopped him, her stomach beginning to ache. She hated that name. She hated it more than anything. That name put scars on her back and monsters in her brain.
"I'm sorry, Rosie," Negan said, the emotion clear in his voice. Rosie hated that she believed him, but she did.
"I don't forgive you," Rosie said, swallowing back the lump in her throat. She put two more books in her bag before turning to go back to the door. She looked at her shoes as she walked, because Negan was standing at the door and she didn't want to look at his face. "And I don't need a babysitter, so you can fuck off," she said as she neared the door.
When she got to the door, she felt him put his hand on her shoulder. "I know, kid," he said, his voice tender. Rosie took a deep, shaky breath as Negan squeezed her shoulder. After a moment, she shrugged his hand off of her and left, heading back toward Hilltop.
As she walked, she took out another cigarette. This time, though, when she lit it, she actually smoked it. Not the whole thing, but just a little less than half of it. She felt like crying again, but she wouldn't let herself. Negan didn't deserve to be something she cried over. He should have been the one to feel this way. Not her. It wasn't her fault. It was his. Why did she have to feel this way? It should have been him. It was all bullshit.