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“Let me go first.” Tara draws her knife slowly, casting a wary glance around the trees surrounding them. “I think I heard something.”
Rosita frowns, pulling her machete from its sheath. “Really? A walker, or…?”
“Not sure,” Tara murmurs, taking a hesitant step forward, still scanning the woods cautiously. “Like a twig snap. Could have just been a squirrel or something, could have been a walker, could have been...something else.”
Rosita swallows hard, pressing a protective hand to her stomach. She’d insisted that she was fine to go out on a run in search of supplies for the upcoming winter, and despite her obvious pregnancy, Michonne had known better to argue with her. But she regrets it now, for herself and for Tara. Like it or not, she’s slowing down, losing some of her touch in combat, leaving Tara to pick up the slack. “Let’s hope for a squirrel.”
Tara huffs a laugh, edging forwards. Her back stiffens noticeably as another twig cracks, and this time, Rosita hears it too. “Walker or…?”
“I don’t know,” Tara breathes, drawing back slightly. “But I don’t like it.”
“You shouldn’t.” The new voice is low, gravelly, and carries the weight of sharpened steel. Tara spins around with her knife up only to be met with the round black mouth of a gun barrel aimed at her forehead. The men melt out of the trees near soundlessly, all packing serious firepower.
“Okay.” Tara’s voice is remarkably even as she lets the knife fall from her grasp, putting her hands up slowly. “Okay. No one needs to get hurt here-”
“And no one will if you cooperate,” the leader growls coldly, his dark gaze falling upon Rosita. “Drop the machete, sweetheart.”
Teeth gritted, Rosita lets it drop with a soft crunch to the leaf-coated forest floor below, encouraged by Tara’s pleading face and the nudge of a gun barrel to the back of her head. “Now,” the leader says, taking a step towards Tara, “you’re going to tell me everything there is to know about your people. I wanna know how many, and where, and what you’ve got, and what kind of weapons you’ve got, to start.”
“Burn in hell,” Tara spits instantly, her gaze narrowing. The second the words leave her mouth, one of the black-clothed men clocks her hard in the jaw with a clenched fist, knocking her head hard to the right. She hisses in pain, but doesn’t cry out, cupping a hand over her jaw. Her silence speaks for itself, a mute show of defiance.
The leader sighed, and he almost sounded genuinely regretful. “Hold the friend still and do what needs to be done.”
Strong arms close around Rosita instantly like a cage, pinning her flat against a broad chest. Her squirming does her no good, her captor too strong for her to wiggle free. The same man who hit Tara strides up and punches her hard in the stomach with one swift blow, shoving her hard to the side as she crumples, wheezing for air. Tara falls hard, her body wracked with horrible gasping noises as she struggled to breathe. Rosita struggles frantically to get free, her heart fluttering in her chest like a trapped bird at the sight of Tara in pain.
At their leader’s signal, they’re on her, taking turns kicking and punching, leaving bruises and trickles of blood in the wake of their fists and heavy, black-soled boots. Tara tries to fight at first, but she hasn’t even gotten her breath back before they’re slamming thick boots into her ribs, and they’re all bigger, stronger, and better-armed. Rosita finds herself wailing at Tara’s muffled shrieks of pain, hot tears coursing down her cheeks despite her efforts to prevent them. “Stop, just stop! ”
“Happily. As soon as you tell us what we need to know,” the leader says coldly, staring down at Tara’s crumpled, bleeding body. She’s given up on self-defense and let herself curl into a ball, protecting her head as best she could. A hard punch had broken her nose, and deep scarlet blood gushes down into her mouth, staining her teeth an eerie red.
“‘S okay,” she manages, stifling a shriek at another hard kick to her ribs. “‘S okay, Ro, I can take it, don’t-” Someone kicks her in the stomach and she doubles over, gagging dryly, her voice cut off abruptly.
Rosita tries to close her eyes, at first, but can’t. She can’t leave Tara to suffer the beating alone. So she forces herself to watch, to keep eye contact with her friend despite how much harder it makes her cry, trying to silently will her encouragement. If enough calls on the walkie go unanswered, someone will come after them, probably a whole group, and then it’ll be over - Just hang on, Tara…
The leader flicks his gloved hand suddenly and his men fall back as if they were marionettes on strings, obeying every tug of their puppeteer’s fingers. Tara lies in a heap at their feet, smeared with deep purple bruises and crimson blood. The break in her nose is obvious, and from the way she clutches at her side, her breathing ragged and irregular, her ribs are probably broken too. She turns her head to the side and spits blood, her eyes fixed on Rosita as if she were a lifeline. She’s been beaten nearly to death, but she’s Tara, and at seeing the fear and pain and tears on Rosita’s face, she forces a weak smile that reveals her mouth to be full of blood. “‘S okay, Ro...I’m okay...”
“You’re tough,” the leader admits, and there’s a grudging respect in his voice as he stares down at her broken body, blood smearing the autumn leaves across the forest floor. “I’ll give you that. But I need something from you, and I’m going to get it. One way or another.”
The black gloves flicks through the air again, and then a blade flashes through the air before her, clutched in the fist of her captor. “Give ‘em thirty seconds to talk. Then put that knife through her stomach. If they won’t talk after that, cut her throat.”
The blade goes instantly to the swell of her stomach, cold even through her shirt. The edge of the blade burns like fire against her skin, her blood running cold at its touch. Rosita sucks in a deep breath, hot tears flowing silently down her face, clenching her jaw tight for the agony coming swiftly towards her. Tara’s face is twisted with anguish, her brown eyes wide with horror, and the knife presses ever so slightly against her skin.
“We’re from a community!” Tara cries out suddenly, her voice raspy from the pain and cracking with grief. “A group of communities. There’s three of us, we’ve got a couple hundred people together. We’ve got guns, food, trucks, horses, crops growing, a blacksmith, a doctor, we’ve got a whole farm’s worth of livestock at the Hilltop, we’ve got people growing ethanol fuel, all sorts of stuff. We’re spread out, but the closest is about two miles from here, it’s a straight shot. I can - I can draw you a map, for the others.”
For one moment, there’s only an ominous silence in the clearing, the knife pressing down on Rosita’s stomach. And then the glove comes down and her captor shoves her roughly to the ground beside Tara, the knife coming away. She crumples in a heap, crying harder than she’s ever cried in her life, tasting salt as clutches protectively at the swell of her belly. A square of paper hits the leaves by Tara’s face, a pen following soon after. Rosita flinches away from the sound, shivering with residual panic.
“Map. Now.” Tara bites her lip, reaching silently for the pen and paper. The only sound in the woods is the scratching of the tip against the paper, her brow furrowed in concentration. “And if I think you’re lying to us,” the leader drawls, resting his boot cruelly on Tara’s back, “I’ll kill your little girlfriend here and make you watch, and then I’ll cut your hands off and leave you to bleed out and turn. Are we clear?” The boot grinds down into her back, drawing a hiss of pain out of her, and she nods stiffly, the pen scratching hastily over the yellowed scrap of paper.
Finally, she pushes it over. Tara’s no cartographer, but the map is true, as best as Rosita can tell. The leader scoops it up, studying it for a moment in the fading sunlight. “See, ladies? How hard was that? I really do wish it hadn’t been this difficult, both of our days are wasted now...grab their shit and roll out.”
And then they’re gone, disappearing back into the woods as easily as they appeared, leaving Rosita futilely trying to stop crying and Tara biting her lip hard enough to draw blood, already crushing herself with guilt for giving in. “You okay?” she murmurs, hauling herself into a sitting position and ignoring the instant rush of dizziness, cupping a hand to Rosita’s cheek and gently brushing away her tears with her thumb. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
Rosita manages a shake of her head, turning her head into the warmth of Tara’s hand. “‘S you - Tara, you’re hurt, hurt bad-”
“I’ve had worse,” Tara mumbles, waving her free hand dismissively. “It’s you - you sure you’re okay?”
“He didn’t hurt me,” Rosita swears, reaching out to wipe a trickle of blood from Tara’s chin. “Hurt you, T - we need Siddiq, but he took the walkie-”
“Mm-mm.” Tara fishes into her pocket, pulling out the miraculously unharmed walkie. “Had a hunch I might need it. Took it out of the pack when I heard the first twig.”
Rosita blames pregnancy on the absolute hellhole state her emotions are in at the moment, because the sight of the walkie makes her cry even harder, hot tears pouring down her face. “Need to - need to get out of here - fresh blood - walkers-”
“Ro, breathe.” Tara holds the walkie to her mouth, wincing at the pain of moving her arm. “Rick, do you copy?”
“Tara?” His voice crackles through instantly and Tara blows out a breath of relief, managing a weak smile. “What is it?”
“Rick, we need help in grid six now.” Tara’s voice rasps slightly like she’s been smoking, and his sharp inhale reaches them even over the spotty speaker. “Rosita and I were attacked. They took our shit and beat info about the communities out of us. I’m out of commission, we need someone out here now.”
“Roger that,” Rick snaps, the sound of his boots pounding echoing in the background. “Jesus, Daryl, and I are on our way. Give us a few.”
“Got it. Over and out.” Tara lowers the walkie, propping herself awkwardly up against a nearby tree. Her eyes are half-closed, her breathing shallow, but she keeps her hand cupped comfortingly over Rosita’s cheek, stroking her hair gently with her thumb. “‘S okay, Ro...it’s over.”
She knows that, at least on one level, but it still happened, and Tara’s grotesque injuries are a living reminder that they both could have been killed. “Shouldn’t’ve - T, you shouldn’t’ve-”
“What? Shouldn’t’ve told him?” Tara shakes her head, reaching out to squeeze Rosita’s arm. “Should have just let him kill your baby and then you? Maybe - maybe I’m just stupid and soft and not anywhere near tough enough for this world, but I couldn’t just watch you die.”
“When are you going to learn that I don’t matter? ” Rosita gasps, the words clawing out of her painfully like jagged shards of broken glass, cutting her tongue on the way out. Tara looks absolutely stunned, shaking her head slightly in shock.
“You - you matter to me, Rosita Espinosa,” she says finally, tenderly brushing away the persistent tears.
“But the rest of-”
“To hell with the rest,” Tara murmurs, her cocoa-brown eyes, glazed as they are with pain, fixed on Rosita as if she were nothing less than the sun. “You matter the whole world to me, Ro. Trust me, I know all about losing people, and I can’t lose you.”
Tara’s eyes, as always, are bright and full of hope. In the pinkish glow of the sunset, she looks so beautiful, even bruised and bleeding, and before she even knows what she’s doing, Rosita is leaning in.
They move together to meet perfectly in the middle. Tara’s hand doesn’t stray from her cheek, her other hand coming to the curve of Rosita’s waist to draw her in. Rosita’s almost afraid to touch her, her hands brushing feather-soft over rapidly darkening bruises, until Tara finally breathes “just kiss me, dummy” into the mere centimetres of space between them.
So Rosita does, pressing her mouth hesitantly to Tara’s. “Not gonna bite,” she hums, pulling her in gently. It’s awkward, at first, but Rosita finds her way soon enough, weaving a hand through Tara’s hair because that’s what feels natural, and the way she gasps at Rosita’s light tugging is more than confirmation.
Stress and fear and panic and pent-up feelings they’ve both been fighting to deny only fuel the fire, and the kiss intensifies as the seconds slip away. Tara is remarkably intuitive, her hands soft and exploratory without going too far. Her fingers are just barely tugging at the hem of Rosita’s tank top when-
“Tara, Rosita, what happ-” Rick stops dead and they leap apart to see Daryl, Jesus, and Rick himself standing over them. Daryl turns a delicate shade of pink, looking deliberately at a pile of crunchy dead leaves on the ground about three feet from Rosita’s leg. Jesus smirks at Tara, giving her a sly thumbs-up that only deepens the redness in her face. Rick just looks stunned, his mouth hanging half-open as his eyes flick back and forth between them.
Tara clears her throat loudly, still extremely red in the face. “Um. Okay. Yes. Ro and I got ambushed over there. Six or seven, came out of the woods out of nowhere. They had guns, wanted to know about our setup. We told ‘em where they could shove it, and they...did this. Rick, I’m sorry, I - I told them, everything they wanted to know - everything there was to know. I’m sorry, just - they were gonna kill Rosita-”
“You did the right thing,” Rick says gruffly, patting Tara’s shoulder awkwardly. He’s been treating Tara as a daughter nearly since day one; Rosita doubts he’d be mad if she blew up the harvest barn. “What all do they know?”
“What we’ve got, how many people, where each community is...they made me draw a map.” Tara shakes her head, embarrassment giving away to crushing guilt. “I’m really sorry, Rick, I - I didn’t want to do it.”
“Tara, you listen to me,” Rick says tersily, his gaze scanning rapidly around the trees. “You get in a situation like that, where you gotta give them info or die, I want you to tell them what they want to know, got it? We can strengthen defenses easy. Putting up an extra guard, that we can do. Lose you or Rosita? We can’t. We can’t afford any losses that we can avoid.” His voice is stony, but the arm he rests on Tara’s shoulder is surprisingly gentle and he softens as he carries on, taking in the extent of her injuries. “Did they do this to you?”
Tara nods, her eyes still wide with guilt and worry. “When I wouldn’t tell them.”
“They’re gonna pay for it,” Rick swears, crouching down beside her. “Put your arms around my neck.”
“I’m okay-”
“Like hell you are. Put your arms around my neck.”
Tara sighs, but obeys, stifling a yelp of pain as Rick lifts her easily into his arms. As soon as she’s up, though, she visibly relaxes, resting her head on his shoulder, her eyelids fluttering with the swaying rhythm of his footsteps. “Jesus, with Rosita,” he orders over his shoulder, Tara cradled protectively in his arms. “Daryl, on guard.”
Jesus obeys immediately, offering a hand to help Rosita to her feet. Normally, she wouldn’t take it, but she’s still dazed from the memory of Tara’s lips and shaken from the attack, so she allows herself a little more weakness today and lets him help her up. He knows better than to offer her any more support than that - or, God forbid, try to carry her - but he stays close, ready to help if need be.
“So, you and Tara, hmm?” he murmurs, grinning broadly at the rush of pink that colors Rosita’s cheeks at his words.
“Shut up.”
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By the time they had reached Alexandria, Tara was sound asleep in Rick’s arms - and Rosita would never have said it out loud, but she heavily suspected he’d lulled her to sleep, at least somewhat deliberately. She managed to half-doze through Siddiq bandaging her broken ribs and nose and finally passed out again in her bed, ice packs layered over the worst of the deep purple bruises.
But she’s awake now, Rosita can tell by her breathing. She’s awake too, unable to forget the sensation of the cold knife blade against her stomach. She’d come so close to dying, maybe closer than she’s come since this whole thing started. She’d never claimed to be afraid to die; never thought she was either. But somewhere along this long path, that’s changed, and she almost misses the small comfort she had in being at least ready to die, if not willing.
“Ro?” Tara murmurs, her quiet whisper splitting the silence in the room. They’ve been practically living together for some time now, sharing one of the beautiful houses Alexandria had to offer. “You awake?”
“Yeah,” Rosita replied softly, pulling herself into a sitting position. No point in feigning sleep now. “Thinking.”
“‘Bout what?” Tara asks softly, turning over in bed. She hisses in pain with every move, and Rosita’s chest squeezes at hearing her in so much discomfort.
“You,” Rosita admits freely, resting a hand on the swell of her belly. “And what happened today...what could have happened today.”
“Would you...Ro, would you have just let him stab you?” Tara’s voice trembles slightly, perhaps frightened of the answer. Rosita swallows hard, running over the question in her head. Anyone else, and she wouldn’t bother answering, but it’s Tara, her oldest and closest friend who took a beating for her today, and she’s always made exceptions for Tara.
“I would have,” Rosita confesses, brushing a strand of her dark hair behind her ear as she turns to face Tara. “You almost died to keep that information safe. I would have done the same.”
“You’ve got to learn to take better care of yourself,” Tara scolds her lightly, too trapped in her memories to make any kind of a real threat. “We can’t afford to lose you, you heard Rick...I can’t afford to lose you.”
“You’ve got to learn that I’m just one person,” Rosita murmurs back, letting her legs dangle off the edge of the bed casually, debating joining Tara on the other side of the room. “You treat me like I’m worth the world, T, and I’m not. I’m just one person.”
“Not to me, you aren’t,” Tara corrects, and there’s a definite quiver to her voice now. “You’re a whole lot more to me than just another survivor.”
Rosita laughs without humor, edging off her own bed to settle on the side of Tara’s. “Sometimes I think you care more if I die than I do.”
“Of course I do,” Tara answers immediately. “If you die, that’s it, it’s over for you. Just a quick flash and you’re gone and I’m still here alone- ” She tries to pull herself up into a sitting position, instantly hissing with pain as her ribs protest. Rosita gently pushes her back down, skimming a hand over her cheek soothingly.
“You need your rest, Tara.” The full implications of her words sink in a moment later and she feels her stomach sink like a stone in a deep pond. She’s perhaps the only person left alive who knows about Tara’s life before - and everything she’s lost. Maybe she confided in Jesus or Rick, but as far as Rosita knows, it’s only her who knows about Tara’s mother whose car flipped off the road when she was sixteen and her father who died of lung cancer and her sister who was eaten by walkers and her niece who was bitten and her girlfriend who was shot and her other girlfriend whose eye was pierced with an arrow and it’s entirely possible that’s not even the entire list. “I’m so sorry, T...I really am, I don’t want to die…”
“But you’re ready to,” Tara interrupts, gripping Rosita’s wrist tightly. “You’re willing, you’ve just accepted it - I had to watch you almost die once already, the last time you decided you didn’t matter, Ro! If I can’t get you to stay alive for yourself, maybe you can stay alive for me, because I don’t have anyone else! I have no one, Ro!”
She sounds perilously close to tears, her grip almost painfully tight around Rosita’s wrist, and before she knows what she’s doing, she cups Tara’s face in her hands and kisses her, a soft, gentle brush of lips. She pulls back slowly, just inches from Tara, taking in her wide doe-eyes and soft lips, brushing a thumb softly over her cheek. “This isn’t like with Negan. I promise it’s not. I’m not going anywhere, not if I can help it. You know why?”
“Why…?” Tara breathes, slowly entangling her free hand in Rosita’s loose dark hair, gazing up at her as if she were an angel. Rosita offers her one of her rare smiles in return.
“I have something to stay for.”
This time Tara initiates the kiss, but Rosita doesn’t protest.