Reviews:

SlumberingVoid — Michonne was definitely valid in her coldness — but, in terms of this story, we don't yet know the full story of what went down. But soon we shall!

Mariiiiiie001 — Thank you!

CW: Sexual references

—Paul "Jesus" Rovia—

—Co-founder and Leader of The Hilltop Colony—

—Friend. Leader. Mentor—

—Rest in peace—

Marco had stayed up all night helping Earl carve Jesus' coffin from a great oak that fell outside the walls last week. It was ornately carved and nothing short of beautiful — just what Jesus deserved. He would have hated it. But that's the funny thing about being dead — you don't get a say. You're dead. It's just about what makes everyone else feel good after. Treating you in ways they know you would have hated because they know you should of had it. Rhys helped them add the finishing touches. Marco had already made a headstone, but Rhys took to carving an inscription into the coffin with his knife. Even if no one would ever read it again after it was buried under crumbs of earth... it felt right.

Rhys paid a visit to the infirmary before the funeral. Most of the people who went out looking for them the day before had returned early today or late last night, with the exception of Alden and Luke. Rhys could see from the chew marks on her nails how nervous Enid was getting, but Tara wasn't ready to send out a search party yet. Since the same problem might occur again. Despite having seen them around for hours now, he hadn't actually spoken much to Rosita or Eugene. The latter's knee was healing well after Siddiq set it back in place last night, and Rosita was kind enough not to try and hug Rhys when he walked in. Eugene thanked Rhys in his own words for the other night, and Rhys got this funny nostalgic feeling in his belly.

"I heard you're with Gabriel now," Rhys said to Rosita after she suggested leaving the trailer to talk. Rhys heard about it from Mikey and Aaron when he'd asked after her in their secret meetings.

No matter how long it had been, Rosita was still Rosita, and she saw through Rhys' attempt to small-talk his way to a point.

"Michonne kicking you out like she did was bullshit," she told him. "I argued with her about it. I would have gone with you..."

"Why didn't you?" Rhys asked. He hadn't let himself get emotional with any of the Alexandrians so far, and he hadn't planned on bringing this up because not knowing the answer to that question actually did still hurt. He swallowed the shudder in his voice and waited.

"I wish I did."

"But you didn't."

"...I didn't."

Rhys realised that despite wanting one, Rosita didn't have a good answer that would help it make sense. It was probably a lot of things. The idea of living with Sasha in the walls holding Abraham's grave. Leaving behind her home. Leaving behind the rest of her family. Rhys understood that sometimes people just let you down, and that's how it is. He could hate her and let the feeling of betrayal she left him with bubble over for even longer then it already had, or he could bury it with the rest of the disappointment the years had sewn into him.

Rhys nodded. "It's good to see you."

"You too, Manito," she whispered.

Rosita accompanied Rhys to Jesus' funeral. The rest of Hilltop was there already, and the smell of morning dew and wood smoke from a fire someone had lit to keep the early chill away made the atmosphere calm and comforting. There was no singing like there had been when Ken died. Alden was still missing, and Rhys couldn't bear to do it alone. Everyone took turns knocking a nail into the coffin, the sound of each hammer falling was the only comfort scavenged against the tears and mutterings of masked murderers. Sasha said a few words, then Tara said the rest. It was nice in a way that was sobering from all the sadness. After people started to disperse, and Daryl disappeared into the cellar, Michonne threw Rosita an impatient look, and Rhys accompanied her to the wagon outbound for Alexandria.

Rhys decided to hug Rosita before Siddiq helped her up onto the wagon, and the way she squeezed him so tightly and breathed deeply again the top of his head made it feel like the right choice. He hugged Eugene, too, shook Siddiq's hand when the doc offered it and nodded goodbye to DJ. Michonne waited for Rhys to say something, but he didn't owe her anything, so he just told them all to travel safely and watch out for the masks.

Tara said her goodbyes, as did Carl and Sasha. Carl was the only one of us not to pick favourites. After they watched the gates close on the wagon and Carl wandered off towards Barrington house, Tara informed Rhys and Sasha that she told Michonne she would let the people they brought in stay.

"They did help us save everyone at the graveyard," Rhys said.

"You think we should, then?" Tara asked.

"I thought you'd already made up your mind," Sasha said.

"You think it should be my choice to make?"

"Jesus trusted you more than anyone," Sasha said firmly. "People don't need another election. They need someone to tell them it's gonna be fine."

Tara grimaced. "Will it be?"

Sasha stayed quiet, glancing towards the cells where that girl was waiting.

"I can't do this on my own, guys," Tara sighed at them, a crooked frown on her face like she was trying to work out if she could do it at all.

"You won't have to," Sasha told her.

There was a sand school across the path from Hilltop's stables. Rhys loved watching the horses ride there. He loved the way that their hooves dipped and kicked, and the sand would fold and spray but somehow look the same after each lap of thundering feet. This is where he and Carl had agreed to meet just after the moon became visible over Hilltop's tall timber walls.

From his balcony, Rhys could see how soon this was.

He'd spent the day burying his head in duties and thoughts of the creeps in their masks. But all of it was just to burn away the butterflies in his stomach that he hadn't felt since Downy Beardy got sick with mud fever last year, and Rhys chose to sleep in the stables for two nights with him until Jesus ordered him to use a real bed. But these butterflies flew differently. They fluttered to his throat and made his heart beat a million miles an hour in time to their wings.

Rhys changed into his black jeans with the big hole above the knee from where Dog tried to bite a bee that had landed on his leg and tore the fabric. He used an electric razor to shorten the hair sticking out on the sides of his head, but even then, his wavy hair refused to un-floof on the top, and stuck up a little at the back no matter how many times he wetted it in the bowl of water on his dresser he had fetched from the well. He tugged off his denim work shirt after remembering that he had noticed Michonne wearing one of Rick's old ones. Instead, Rhys threw a burgundy t-shirt on and a blue sweatshirt two sizes too big over that. Glenn's dusty brown jacket was hanging from the back of his desk chair, and Rhys pulled it on, not bothered by the heat.

Carl was waiting by the sand school when Rhys turned up a cleverly planned minute or so late. He was leaning against the wooden fence, watching the empty arena from under his hat, wearing the same clothes he had been in this morning.

Rhys suddenly felt very overdressed, hovering a few feet behind Carl and considering going back inside when Carl spotted him and waved.

Rhys breathed in deep and walked over, not letting the breath go until Carl said hello, making his exhale into words that matched.

"You look nice," Carl said. His gaze scanned up and down after he said it, like taking him in was an afterthought of saying something nice. Carl's eye lingered, and Rhys realised he was checking him out, snapping his head away when he noticed he was doing the same.

Rhys felt like they both looked the same as they had, even if it wasn't true. Carl was still taller by enough inches to notice. Both of them had shaved faces and trimmed hair. Rhys' hair had been shorter on the sides since he got comfortable with the idea of people looking at his ear — that, and the truth that they met so few new faces nowadays that it didn't really bother him anymore. Carl's seemed to be cut out of necessity. It used to be so long back during the war. Rhys remembered him cutting it once, after the war ended, and he was living between the wilderness of his and Daryl's camps and Alexandria. Back then, for a while, it was shorter than Rhys had ever seen it, more so even than when they first met at the prison — all above the ears and his fringe showing his often bruised forehead. Now though, it felt more like him. Like when they lived on the road before Alexandria, only less sweat and dirt — falling a couple inches above his shoulders, which were hunched up right now.

"So..." Rhys looked back at him. "Want to walk?"

Carl nodded and waited for Rhys to take the lead, following by his side as they looped the dusty gravel trail that went past the stables and around the big house until they finally stopped under the water tower behind one of Earl's tool sheds, sitting on a log bench someone had moved here at some point.

"Did you mention weed?" Carl asked, smiling and letting all his freckles rise with his cheeks.

Rhys nodded quickly, reaching into the jacket pockets to pull out a small plastic bag.

"Jenny?" Carl asked.

"Didn't get the chance to get any more last time I was there." Rhys nodded again. "This is the last of my stash."

"Wow... I'm honoured."

"Shut your trap."

Carl chuckled and watched Rhys roll the herbs not too tightly and not too loosely between the thin paper.

"I heard Tara let Magna's group stay," Carl said.

"It's what Jesus would have done," Rhys told him.

"They're good people," Carl said, taking a puff of the joint when Rhys passed it to him with a crackling red coil at its tip.

"I was talking to Kelly," Rhys smirked. "Painted a real interesting picture of you."

"Oh yeah?"

"She said you only put that bandage on a mile or so before you all got here. Told me you barely spoke a word, and when you did, it wasn't exactly friendly."

Carl's smile was a little bitter as they passed the joint between them for the third or fourth time. "I wouldn't have gone with them if Jude hadn't convinced me. We didn't know who they were. Showing the eye is normally a good way to find out."

Rhys snorted. "Yeah, my scabby ear doesn't have that power."

Carl looked at him intently, reaching out to touch his ear only to pull back and take the smoke instead. "It's not scabby."

Rhys' stomach started acting up again, and his face felt hot.

Carl laughed suddenly, shaking his head.

Rhys frowned. "What?"

"It's funny," Carl said.

"What is?"

"I should hate this," Carl said. "There're so many things I haven't thought about in so long, but seeing you again— it's just..."

Rhys finished the last of the joint when Carl passed it with his thought. "Things?"

"What that claimer almost did to me on the tracks to Terminus." Carl shrugged, noticing Rhys tense up at the mention. Carl didn't seem to. "How I felt when you went to the slaughterhouse the night we started fighting. Everything that happened before you left Alexandria."

Rhys watched Carl pick at a cut on the back of his hand, a little blood sticking under his nails.

"I remind you of all the bad things?" Rhys asked quietly, a little nervous as to the answer.

"The good things, too. They all just... happen." Carl smiled. "They come back when you're here."

"Why are you smiling?" Rhys whispered.

"Because I've forgotten what it's like to kiss you."

"That makes you smile?"

"No," Carl sighed, inching closer, his low voice little more than a breath infused with scent of the weed and a hint of this morning's toothpaste. "But the thought of remembering does."

And then they remembered what it was like together. They kissed under the scruffy rim of Carl's brown stetson, and his breath tasted sweet like Hilltop's homebrew moonshine. Rhys leaned all the way into him until their shoulders pressed and knees knocked. Carl's hand found its way to his cheek and squeezed gently against the warm skin.

They pulled away, doe-eyed and searching the other quickly to make sure this was okay.

Rhys leaned back in then, hesitantly, and Carl met him halfway. It slowly drifted from calm and gentle to something more needy. Something they both realised they needed. Rhys gasped when Carl caught a lip between his teeth.

"My room," Rhys gulped as they pulled apart.

Those two words were enough. Enough for both of them to be whisked across the courtyard and to the upstairs landing of Barrington House, where they stopped to take the the other in again, their hands wandering under clothes and brushing across skin until they were both inside Rhys' room. Carl kicked the door shut, tugging Rhys' jacket from his shoulders and wrapping his arms around his middle to pull his shirt and sweatshirt over his head.

Rhys fell back onto the bed from a light push, sitting shirtless and nervous as he watched Carl stare at him with the intensity of someone who had survived this long painted across his face. Rhys kept his front-facing Carl — letting him see only the scars he knew. Carl reached out and gently took Rhys' palm and pressed it flat against his chest, letting his fingers curl into his shirt and pull Carl forward at his own pace. Rhys could smell the outside on him as he drew closer; the rain and the dirt of Hilltop caught to his skin.

Rhys' head still held old doubts. Small thoughts that told him he shouldn't deserve this anymore. Doubts that asked if he could want anything from anyone anymore. But they slowly melted away.

Rhys tugged Carl's top off, relieved by the unscarred skin beneath.

"It's still there," Rhys told him, running a hand down Carl's pale arm until their hands found each other. "You don't have to look at it."

"I want to."

Rhys stumbled out of his jeans, prompting Carl out of his clothes when he lingered to stare at Rhys' naked body for the first time in a long, long time. Rhys pulled Carl down to the bed by the back of his head, fingers tangled in his soft and familiar hair. Carl's hands moved against Rhys' skin as he leaned over him, sending hot and breathless gasps of air against his face as his hands began to wander. A short whine escaped from Rhys' parted lips, and Carl's hand seemed to instinctively move to cover it. They stared at each other. Rhys' eyes were wide above the fingers that held tight to the rest of his face. Carl had always been like this before. Rhys remembered it. Always the one to take the lead. It felt more mature now, more demanding. Rhys flipped them over, pushing Carl down to the sheets to sit on top of him. Carl gave a frustrated sigh, and it won Rhys' smirk. Carl chuckled at how concentrated Rhys' face was as he eased himself down, and they both felt amazing... even if it only lasted for a few moments.

Rhys rolled off of Carl and fell beside him, both of them glistening with sweat and panting. Neither of them expected it to go on for very long, which was made apparent when they started laughing at themselves.

"Christ," Carl groaned, covering his face.

"It's okay," Rhys chuckled.

"I'm sorry—"

"Don't be, man," Rhys said, pushing damp hair out of his eyes. "I would have lasted about the same."

Carl smiled for a flicker of a moment before his face relaxed into something more comfortable. "Has it been just as long for you?"

"I haven't—" Rhys paused, rolling onto his side to put a hand against Carl's damp chest. "I haven't been with anyone since I left."

Carl went to his side, too, facing him. He ran a finger down Rhys' side, resting his hand against his hip. "Me neither."

"Want to try again in a minute?"

Carl's face shone in the dancing candlelight. His hand slid off Rhys' hip and fell to his lower back where the X scar waited quietly, running his thumb along it. He nodded.

A/N

Sorry about the little delay on this chapter!

Told you it wouldn't take too long to get them back together!

I love writing all the characters after the time jump... but Rosita and Rhys' relationship being so affected by it honestly hits me the hardest. I truly think that apart from the obvious people, Rosita has had the biggest impact on Rhys' life. The reason he got his confidence back after Terminus, the first adult to take him seriously, and his best friend for a long stretch. It's so brutal that they lost out on so much time together.