⌜ chapter seventeen ⌟

Daryl and MJ are in the barn with Randall, they're trying to get information out of him about his group. So far, it's not going over very well. His eye is now swollen shut, and he's got blood on his face. He's crying.

Daryl punches him again, and Randall grunts when he hits the ground. He hits him two more times and Randall spits blood out of his mouth.

"I told you—"

"You told me shit!" Daryl grabs him and makes him sit upright.

"I barely knew those guys. I met 'em on the road, just like those two men and the woman." He insists. "Ask them!"

"I did." MJ says. "They were only with your group for a couple of hours — the smaller group that was scouting in town. They never saw the whole group. Don't try to pull shit with me."

"How many in your group?" Daryl questions.

The blonde kneels down in front of Randall and grabs his face, under his chin. "He asks, you answer." She tells him. "How many?"

He just looks at her, so she pushes his head to the side and stands up straight. Randall looks up at them again and he sees Daryl pull a knife out of a sheath on his belt.

"Uh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Come on, man."

Daryl raises the knife and then slams it into the ground next to his leg. "How many?!"

"Uh, thirty. Thirty. Thirty guys." He tells him.

"Where?" MJ asks.

"Uh..."

Daryl presses the blade against the healing wound in his leg, and he screams out in fear. "I don't know. I swear. We were never anyplace more than a night." He tells him, his eyes on the knife that Daryl still has against his leg.

"Scouting?" Daryl asks. "Planning on staying local?"

"I-I don't know. They— They left me behind."

"Did you ever pick off a scab?" He's trying to scare him, make him give them more information.

"Come on, man!" He's panicking. "I'm— I'm trying to cooperate."

"Start real slow at first. Sooner or later, you just gotta rip it off."

MJ's not looking at them anymore. She's trying to push back the memories of when she was in hell. The torture and the pain, begging them to stop while they laughed at her. It was the only time she felt completely and utterly weak. She'd been scared and felt hopeless before, but this was different.

"Okay. Okay. They— They—" Randall stutters as MJ turns back to them. "They have weapons — heavy stuff. Automatics. But I didn't do anything."

"Your friend Tony said that he'd kill Rick and the others." MJ steps toward them. "Said he'd take me and the farm." She says, and Daryl pushes the knife harder against Randall's leg after hearing that bit about her, causing him to squirm. "Then your people shot at us. And, what, you just went along for the ride? You're trying to tell me that you're innocent in all this?" She questions.

"Yes!" He yells as he looks between the two of them. "These— These people took me in. Not just guys — a whole group of 'em." He starts, and Daryl stands up. "Men and women, kids too — just like you people. Thought I'd have a better chance with them, you know? But..."

MJ walks forward until she's standing next to Daryl. They both look down at him as he explains his side of the story.

"We go out, scavenge — just the men." Randall continues. "One night we— We found this little campsite. A man and his two daughters — teenagers, you know? Real young, real cute..."

MJ's jaw tightens as Daryl turns back to face him, he'd started to pace. But now Randall has their undivided attention.

"Their daddy had to watch while these guys— They... And they didn't even kill him afterwards. They just— They just made him watch as his daughters... They just— Just left him there."

MJ lunges at Randall, but Daryl grabs her and wraps his arm around her waist.

"No, but I-I didn't touch those girls!" He yells, trying to get her to stop. "No, I swear I didn't do anything to them!"

MJ pushes back, slamming Daryl into the wall behind them. He lets go of her, and she rushes forward. She kicks Randall in the ribs and then starts punching him in the face as hard as she can.

Daryl gets ahold of the angry blonde again and pulls her away from Randall. He's crying as MJ fights against Daryl's grip around her waist.

"Please." Randall begs. "Please, you gotta believe me. I'm not like that. I ain't like that."

"Out." Daryl carries her toward the door and makes her leave the shed. "Let's go."

He goes back in to make sure that Randall's restraints are secure before walking back out. He looks at MJ, who's examining her hand. Her knuckles are all bloody.

"You alright?" He asks, and she looks at him.

"No." She turns around and walks away from him, headed toward the others.

"You're torturing people now?" John questions when he sees the blood on her hand as well as on Daryl's.

"Shut up." She says, they can all tell she's pissed. "Jack, will you take Ellie, Carl, and Sophia up to the house for me please?"

"Is everything okay?" Jack asks.

"Yeah, sweetie, everything's alright." She nods. "Matt mentioned wanting to teach you and the kids a few things. Basic stuff for bandaging minor injuries. You still want to learn, don't you?"

"Yeah."

"Go on." She nods toward the house, and he takes the three kids with him.

Once they're out of earshot, the others turn to Daryl and MJ. "Boy there's got a gang — thirty men." He tells them. "They have heavy artillery and they ain't looking to make friends. They roll through here, our boys are dead. And our women, they're gonna— They're gonna wish they were."

"What did you do?" Carol asks, looking at their hands as well.

"Had a little chat." He says, and she walks away.

"No one goes near this guy." MJ tells them.

"Can I talk to you for a minute?" John asks his daughter, and she reluctantly walks a few feet away from them. "I thought we agreed you weren't gonna touch him."

"No, you barked orders. I chose to think for myself." She argues. "You should really learn to keep better company." She starts to walk away, but he grabs her arm.

"You killed two men from his group and now you're torturing him."

"I killed a man who asked if we had any cooze in our camp because hadn't gotten any ass in weeks, then he asked me if I wanted to have sex with him. After that, he threatened to kill Rick, Glenn, and Hershel, then take me and our camp. I shot him after he and his friend tried to pull guns on me and Rick." She tells him, and his jaw tightens as he looks down at her. "Then I went into that shed and found out that that jerk's men found a camp awhile back. They forced a man to watch as they raped his two teenage daughters. So, yeah, I snapped and punched him a few times. I didn't do anything you wouldn't have done in my position."

"That's the problem." He says. "You're supposed to be better than me."

"You don't like the way I am, you should've raised me differently." She says. "Simple as that."

"So, what are you gonna do?" Lori asks as she looks between her husband and MJ. The group heard hers and John's conversation.

"We have no choice." Rick tells her. "He's a threat. We have to eliminate the threat."

"You're just gonna kill him?" Dale questions as he steps forward.

"It's settled. I'll do it today." He says and then walks away from the group. Dale goes after him.

"M—"

"Leave me alone, Dean." She says as she starts to walk away from them.

—

"What are you doin' up here?" Daryl asks as he walks up to where he has his stuff set up, away from the rest of the camp.

"No one else is up here." MJ says. "I'm avoiding my brother and my parents."

"Shouldn't you be glad to have your mom?"

"I am, it's just... She died when I was two. I hardly even remember her." She shrugs. "Honestly, I'm still struggling with how to be a mom. I don't really know how to have one... But I guess that probably sounds stupid."

"I ain't judging." He says, and she smirks.

"That's another reason I'm up here. You're probably the least judgmental person in the entire group." She says. "And I like that."

She just sits leaning against a nearby tree as he does whatever. She's not really paying attention to him much, but she does notice whenever his gaze flickers over to her.

"You can ask." The blonde eventually says. "I won't break if you do."

"What?" He stops and looks at her.

"What you've been wanting to ask since I snapped in the shed. Go ahead."

"I don't know what you're talkin' about."

"Right." She looks out at the blue sky, there's hardly any clouds to be seen. "You know, the worst of our hunts... The monster was human."

"What do you mean?" Daryl asks as he turns to her again.

"With the supernatural, there's a pattern that they follow. There's a reason for what they do — werewolves are more animal than human when they turn, vampires need blood to survive, demons don't feel what we do, spirits die violently and they can't help what they become; but people... People are just crazy. Sick, twisted individuals.

"A few years ago, my brothers and I were on a hunt. A guy was kidnapped from a parking lot and there was only one witness, a kid in the apartment complex nearby — he saw the man get grabbed and dragged under a van, then he was just gone. We thought it was a monster...

"Then Sam was kidnapped from outside of the bar we were at. Dean and I were looking for him, got help from a local police officer. I went off on my own — stupid mistake." She scoffs as she shakes her head. "I got grabbed too. Someone came up behind me, knocked me out.

"I woke up tied to a bed in a room I didn't recognize. Turns out the monster we were hunting was a family of humans. The father — he was a hunter. Not like me — he hunted animals. Deer, bear, a cougar. But he said... He said that there was no hunt like hunting man.

"They'd kidnap people, hold them in these cages, feed them once a day, and then set them loose into the woods. They gave them a weapon — a fighting chance, he said. Then he and his two sons would hunt the person that they'd taken, and they'd kill them. They had little trophies in the house — pictures with their dead victims, a jar full of their teeth.

"That's why they took Sam... That's not why they took me. One of the sons had seen me in town, thought that I was pretty. He had his own ideas in mind for me.

"He talked a lot about what he wanted to do, got way handsier than I care to remember... But Dean showed up before things could go from bad to worse. He and the cop found me and Sam less than a day after I was taken. He'd have killed the son except that I had a concussion and couldn't walk on my own. He wanted to take care of me, make sure that I was gonna be okay.

"I yelled a lot, called the guy names he didn't care for. I pissed him off, so he'd beat me. I remember how angry I was more than anything. I don't really remember what he said, not exactly, or the way it felt when he hit me or... I remember what I felt, my feelings. Fear, disgust, hatred, but mostly the anger. It was the strongest emotion."

Her eyes are still on the sky as she speaks and she's been completely calm throughout the entirety of her story. Her expression is more detached than anything else, like she's disassociated herself from the memory. It's just another story now. She's been through worse since that day.

Daryl doesn't say anything. He's still holding the ax that he was using to chop the wood before, his knuckles ghostly white. He hates the idea of someone causing her that kind of pain, of her being in that situation.

"A couple years later, we heard about these deaths at a house. It was on a large plot of land and people were dying. We did some digging, found out about a woman who had committed suicide there. We thought it was a vengeful spirit.

"There was a family that was supposed to move in there, and they didn't listen to our BS reason about why they had to leave. So we stayed to keep watch, make sure that nothing hurt them until we could figure out how to kill what was there.

"Turned out...it wasn't a ghost at all. The man who had lived there before had a daughter, the girl who killed herself. Sam found the girl's diary and read that her father had raped her. She had two kids as a result.

"Her father called her nasty things, he locked the kids away in the walls. When we saw them, they were filthy, and their eyes were... It was like they had never seen the light of day before.

"They were the ones killing anybody who tried to move in. It was their home, their territory — they were just defending it. They were more like animals than people. But it wasn't their fault, you know? They were victims of human cruelty and abuse — turned them into monsters."

She blinks a few times as she looks around, like she's coming out of a daze. She clears her throat as she glances over at Daryl.

"Anyway, that's why I snapped in the shed. I hate anyone who causes that kind of pain and damage to another human being. Or someone who just stands idly by and allows someone else to do it." She tells him.

"Well, ain't you a ray of sunshine?" Daryl says as he sets the ax aside.

"Yeah, I guess that's why hunters tend to keep to themselves. We don't usually talk about the things we see on the job." She says. "Sorry."

"Ain't got nothing to be sorry for." He tells her. "But if you don't talk about it... How do you deal with it?"

"Sam runs — he's always exercising and working out. Keeps himself moving." She starts picking at a weed in the dirt next to her. "Dean and I... We drink. And we hunt some more — find some other evil son of a bitch to kill. The job's never done."

Before he can say anything else, they both see Dale walking toward them. And that's the end of that conversation.