Future Ghosts • TWD

130. Secrets.

"Ro," Daryl said, coming up to the picnic table Rosie was sitting at. She was drawing one of the people who were eating lunch at another table. She wasn't great at drawing people, so she was trying to get better. Anyway, when Daryl came up to her, she closed her sketchbook and looked up at him. "C'mon. I need your help with somethin'," Daryl said. 

After shoving her sketchbook and pencil into her backpack, Rosie stood up and followed Daryl as he began walking. "With what?" she asked as they walked. 

"You were talkin' with that girl last night, right?" Daryl asked. For a moment, Rosie thought about lying and saying no, but look where that led her last time. Nowhere good. Either way, Daryl obviously already knew that she had been talking to Lydia, so Rosie nodded. "I need you to talk to her again. She's been talkin' to Henry, but Henry's too damn stupid to know what not to tell her," Daryl explained.

"What about Ian? He's still in there, ain't he?" Rosie asked. She wasn't sure how she felt about tricking Lydia into giving her information. It felt wrong, but at the same time, her people killed Jesus, and probably had something to do with Alden and Luke's disappearances. So maybe it was morally wrong to manipulate Lydia into giving up the truth, but it was definitely morally wrong to kidnap and kill people for no good reason. 

"I let him out last night," Daryl said, shaking his head. 

"Why?" Rosie asked, furrowing her eyebrows. That meant that she was going to have to talk to him about... everything. 

"What, you want me to lock him in there forever just so ya don't gotta see him?" Daryl asked, raising his eyebrows. Rosie rolled her eyes and looked away, not wanting to think about it anymore. "He wasn't talkin' or nothin'. He wasn't as wasted as Henry was, either. No point keepin' him in there any longer," Daryl explained. 

"I'm not gonna do what you and Michonne and Tara were doin'," Rosie told him.

"I'm not askin' you to. I'm just askin' you to talk to her," Daryl said. Rosie could do that. That's what she had been doing last night. She wasn't looking for any answers about anything last night, though. She was just trying to be nice. "You've got some in common. I'm thinkin' she might talk to you 'cause of it," Daryl added.

"What, 'cause we're both teenage girls who had shitty dads?" Rosie asked, giving Daryl a look that said really? 

Daryl shrugged. "Yeah," he murmured.

"Great," Rosie muttered. 

"Ya don't gotta do it if you don't wanna," Daryl reminded her.

"Nah, it's fine. I'll do it," Rosie said, shoving her hands into her pockets. Now the only two things in her pockets were Daryl's lighter and her velociraptor toy. It felt a lot better that way. More normal. Less tense. 

"Thank you," Daryl said ruffling Rosie's hair as they got to the door to the cellar. As Rosie smoothed out what Daryl had messed up with her hair, he pulled something out of his shirt pocket and put it in Rosie's jacket pocket. It was an orange bottle with a few pills in it. "Give her this. She keeps tuggin' on her ear like it hurts. Think she's got an ear infection or somethin'," Daryl said.

"'Kay," Rosie said, nodding her head. Daryl gave her shoulder a squeeze before she went down the stairs. She was happy to have a job. It gave her some sense of normalcy. At camp, she had plenty of jobs. Checking and resetting the snares, of course, but also gathering firewood and hanging up clothes to dry after Daryl washed them as best he could in the river. She liked those jobs a lot better than this one, though. This one sort of made her feel bad for Lydia. But she tried to remind herself of what Lydia's people had done. "Hi," Rosie said as she leaned up against the wall across from the bars.