Visiting with Negan, falling back into a routine with Michonne, RJ, and Judith, the days slipped away. I moved into a smaller house, closer to the prison when RJ turned two, wanting Michonne to have the house and my siblings to herself more. She'd closed off, so much of our community and herself, that I needed to be able to breathe. Judith was an almost constant visitor, spending nights, learning to make my space as much hers and the house she shared with Mom.

We'd read, books that we salvaged from runs, or, once I'd come more permanently back to myself, ones that I wrote for her. Negan read them, along with any other books that I brought him, rabidly.

I heard about the Sanctuary being left to rot, Daryl and my experience there had been proven correct. The land wasn't fertile enough for crops, the people weren't ready to move past Negan's leadership, and so Carol gave it up for a loss and went back to the Kingdom. I couldn't tell him, it wasn't news I wanted to share, to see his face drop when he realized that the fruits of his leadership had crumbled in the hands of my dad's allies would be one too many strikes against them for him to take. His people had gone off on their own, and there were rumors that they'd become bandit like, but nothing was confirmed.

Judith grew, and as she grew older Michonne and I split up her education. I took up the task of helping teach my little sister the things she would normally have learned in school, which we had a version of in our community, but my tutoring helped her through the hiccups. Michonne taught her the katana and other defensive tactics. Since math wasn't my strong suit, I learned that Judith had taken to sitting on the steps outside Negan's now opened, but still barred, window to ask him for his help.

I found them there, my eight year old sister wearing my dad's sheriff hat and her well worn boots with her math book cradled in her lap, listening as the man I loved argued that her math problem didn't matter because there weren't any airplanes anymore to make a difference.

"I don't think that's going to help her solve the problem, Negan." Judith's face split into a smile at my appearance and so did his from the window that he was leaning beside. "Since I'm useless at math, I'd ask Mom if I were you." I tapped the brim of her hat.

"I hear that our little girl here found some survivors," Negan offered, smiling up at me and I was sure wondering if I planned on giving the guards the night off to keep him company as I had made routine since the first time I slept in his cell.

I sighed. She had, and it was causing a LOT of upheaval, not only because Mom was feeling stressed that Judith had wandered off on her own during the scavenging that she hadn't really wanted her to go on. "She did," I shook my head as Judith looked up to see if I heard the verdict. "I don't know what the council is going to decide, you know I stay out of it." It was easier, and less stressful to keep my opinions to myself during council meetings concerning new people. Everything I said had to run through my people's filter for how it might be of an advantage to Negan.

"Why does Mom worry so much?" Judith asked, for what seemed like the millionth time. I knew, because she talked about Wren and that day that she saw me lying in a puddle of blood in the street that she remembered her abduction by Jocelyn and her people, so she had to remember what Daryl and Michonne had done to free her, but there was a naive hope that people weren't all bad still inside of her. She sighed and shut her book. "Negan told me a story about dogs," I glanced at him and he shrugged. "Just because ONE bad one hurts someone doesn't mean that all of them are bad. Look at Dog." I chuckled, thinking about how seldom Daryl visited, but how much Judith had loved the hound that he brought with him.

"Jude, you have to try to see it from Mom's point of view." I sat down beside her, knowing that Negan's eyes and ears were trained on me. "Keeping you, and RJ safe is something she can't let slide. And she trusted Jocelyn, she trusted who she had been before-" I closed my eyes, knowing that my little sister couldn't understand the idea of before, since she was born after. "When we still had planes," I smiled and opened my eyes to meet hers. "When every day wasn't a fight for food, or shelter," I looked around at our rebuilt Alexandria. "People now see what we have, see the prosperity and the safety, and they covet it. Like Gabe talks about when-"

"When you bother showing up for his sermons?" She smiled up at me and I shook my head at the truth of her words. "Not everyone wants it all, Jessi." I thought about Dad, Daryl, and Negan and felt like she had no idea of how many people that loved her DID want it all. "Some just want to share it."

"Out of the mouths of babes," I whispered, and tilted her hat back to kiss her on the forehead. "I don't know whether to keep trying to show you the truth of the world, or to celebrate the fact that you're not cynical like the rest of us." Judith shook her head at me. "I love you, you know that?"

"Yep," she hopped up, and kissed my cheek before rushing off. "I love you, too, Jessi! Bye Negan!" She was down the street heading back toward Mom's house before I had a chance to respond.

"She's still innocent, Jessi." Negan offered, while I watched her get smaller and smaller. "Let her have it, that naivety for now."

"It won't keep her safe," I offered, turning to face him. "And I won't fucking survive if something happens to her, Negan."

The group that Judith found, I learned, weren't going to be allowed refuge with us. Michonne, however, the next morning let me know that she planned on taking them to the Hilltop. Tasked with keeping RJ and Judith safe while she was gone, I moved back into the family home, at least for the time being. Walking the same halls that I'd heard Judith's tiny feet trod, seeing the blue handprints of her and Carl hanging on the wall, I could almost hear Dad's voice calling out to me. I could almost pretend that he would be coming down the hallway, smiling at me as he told me how proud he was that I was home. That I could feel Daryl's presence in the room we'd shared, his weight, his strength. And I knew, as I settled into my bed, with Judith on one side and RJ on the other, that I had made the right choice in making my own home in the smaller house. Because ghosts of the past would never help me move forward and prepare for whatever future lay ahead.