Future Ghosts • TWD

160. Liam Johnson.

Rosie recognized that voice, somehow. It was familiar but distant. In her mind, somewhere, she knew it.

But Ian's eyes were wide. He knew it, too. He knew the face staring right back at him. He knew the shaggy head of hair, the dark and angry eyes, and the hand holding a knife to Rosie's throat. He'd been one of Ian's first friends in Alexandria, after all.

"Let her go," Ian said, his voice hoarse. The other boy was practically a stranger at this point. With the way he left; with why he left, Ian had no idea whether or not he would make that split-second decision to slice open Rosie's throat and let her bleed and choke to death right then and there.

"I let you go, one of them kills you both. They'll find you and they won't give you the chance I'm giving you," the boy explained to the two of them, his grip on Rosie unwavering.

And then it hit Rosie, just who had a knife to her throat. Liam fucking Johnson.

"I'm saving your life," Liam insisted.

"You ran away because you felt guilty for doing what you did. You think you're gonna make up for that by kidnapping us?" Ian asked with a scoff, his hand hovering over the knife on his belt. Every second felt like a century.

Liam didn't like that assumption. He scoffed, his grip on his knife tightening with his anger. "I ran away because I knew, with my mom gone, no one there gave a shit about me. She was gone and I had no one," he said, his voice loud, though he wasn't quite yelling.

"That didn't give you any right to destroy the thing that was most important to her!" Ian argued. Rosie had her eyes closed and she was just trying to keep herself calm. She focused on her breathing. The last thing she needed right now was to freak out and get herself killed. Ian was already freaking out enough for the both of them.

"I was twelve years old! I was a little kid! I was mad and I was hurting, and, yeah, I did something shitty, but I was a fucking kid! I didn't know what I was doing," Liam argued, his voice breaking a bit as he thought about that day. How angry he was after he lost his mother. Nothing compared to that kind of pain. "Rosie's done shitty things when she was hurting, too, but when I do it, it's suddenly so unforgivable? Where the hell is the logic in that? You hate me because you want to hate me. You don't hate Rosie because you don't want to hate her," Liam insisted.

"Rosie had a shitty life. That wasn't her fault," Ian said, shaking his head.

"Yeah? And what makes you think my life wasn't so shitty? Why the hell do you think I was in first grade, beating up kids on the playground? Because my dad was just so loving and supportive at home? Yeah," Liam muttered. He never really talked to anyone about this kind of stuff before. He didn't think anyone would care or understand.

It was silent for a few moments, until Rosie broke that silence. "We know we have nowhere else to go, now, so why don't you get your hands off a' me and we can get goin' to wherever the hell you're takin' us," she suggested, eager to get out of Liam's grasp. She had never really thought about why he did what he did in elementary school, or what he did to the hoodie. She just knew that he did it and she hated him for it.

Hesitantly, Liam let go of Rosie, but he kept his knife at the ready in case either one of them tried anything. "Alright, drop your weapons," Liam said, gesturing to the knives on each of their belts. Rosie let her knife drop to the ground, and then her gun.

Ian looked at Rosie like she was crazy. He would never have expected this from her. He expected her to kill or hurt Liam about five minutes ago, not to give up in a two-against-one situation. But there she was, dropping her weapons. "Are you crazy?" Ian asked, an incredulous look on his face.