"Again!"

Evan launched a barrage of kicks at James as they waited for lunch to be cooked, the medic feeling the force behind her blows even through the thick padding of his sparring gloves. He blocked a shin aimed at his head before she set in with her hands, breathing hard as he continuously took the fists from where they were aimed at his body. One of her hands slipped by and Evan caught him in the ribs, the tough man wincing in pain as she jumped back.

"That was good," James wheezed, moving back until he could sit in one of the lawn chairs. "You've got fast hands, that's for sure. Take five."

"Yeah, I'll take five while you sit there and nurse that rib, love."

She laughed before pressing a kiss to his temple and walking past him, catching a bottle of water Daryl tossed to her. The hunter braced his hands on the hood of the RV, looking at her and sniffing self-consciously. "Ya feel warm yet?" Evan nodded and passed him the last half on the bottle, reaching up to drag her forearm across her face, "I'm ready, just give me a second to let the girls know I'll be gone for a little while."

The former soldier ducked down into her daughter's tent, seeing Lincoln and Carl sitting with them. "Hey, Daryl and I have to go out for awhile to talk to that boy who came to the farm. I need the two of you to look after your little sister and stay where Lori can see you. Actually, you too Lincoln," she said, bracing her hands on her knees as she talked to them. Carter and Kennedy nodded, Jude toddling forward for a kiss as she called out for her mother. "Lincoln, have you heard anything from Jimmy about Beth?" He shook his head and Evan sighed, raising a hand, "Don't worry about it then, kiddo. I'll go up to see about them after I come back. See you Carl."

Evan passed by Rick as she moved back to Daryl's side, the hunter swinging a backpack over his shoulder and tightening his grip on his crossbow. The both of them paused for a second to hold his gaze before trotting off towards the slaughter shed, discussing their plan of action.

"I figure that fast, hard head shots will hurt the worst and it might just be enough to beat it out of him, but if Randall proves difficult, we can try other things. Breaking fingers always works, as does fire- that leg is probably the next place I'll go after getting his face, though," Evan murmured, reaching up to tie her hair up into a ponytail. Daryl shrugged and thought about the effectiveness of her plan, providing some constructive criticism, "No, don't do that. His pain threshold ain't high enough for that- he has been going in an out for a few days now with the pain despite the pills James gave him. I'm thinking as soon as ya set whatever nerve is damaged in that leg off, he's out again and we're gonna get nothing out of him. Ya best prime his face up when we get there and then step back to ask yer question while I work."

"You're a cocky son of a bitch Daryl…"

Randall looked up at the first daylight he had seen in almost two days, seeing the two bodies that moved to stand in the doorway. Daryl paused for a moment before moving to sit down on the stool beside a butcher's table, emptying the contents of his backpack.

She could hear the knife set being laid out on the table, hearing Randall start to breathe hard at the sight of them.

"Hey, what are those for? What are those for?"

He looked at Evan, remembering her face from the bar and immediately becoming afraid. "You said that you weren't gonna cut off my leg! You said that you weren't gonna kill me! If y'all just let me go, I promise that I won't say nothing to nobody- I don't even know your name," Randall pleaded, the woman moving to look down into his face. She pointed to her own and shook her head, scoffing, "But you know my fucking face and the faces of my friends; that's reason enough for me to kill you."

"But we ain't. Because we need something from ya first, Randall," Daryl said, standing as he took his vest and shirt off.

"Anything!"

The former soldier caught the gauze and tape that Daryl threw across the room, moving to rip strips off of the rolls with her teeth. She began to wrap her hands to protect her knuckles, speaking calmly and demandingly. "I want to know everything about you and your group- how you met them, how many people there are, if there are women and children. I want to know where they are, how they live, what your camp looks like. Where you eat, sleep, shit, drink, laugh, fuck: I want names, faces, strengths and weaknesses. I want to know how to get in and out, and I want to know who the fuck is in charge. I want every man's name that shot at me and the men I was with at that bar! And I am thoroughly prepared to beat you to death to get that information. Do not test me," Evan said menacingly, moving to stand in front of him.

Daryl settled back and crossed his arms over his chest, looking at Randall, "Tell us what ya know."

"I can't-"

He was silenced with a punishing backhand, Evan knocking the handcuffed young man over onto his side. Randall made an attempt to raise off of the floor before she put him back down again, her second blow drawing blood. She gave him three more punches before yanking him up into a sitting position, propping him up against the wall. "Do you really think that I'm kidding?" The hunter shook his head and knew that she was only going to get more brutal, repeating his request. When Randall refused again, Evan hit him until the left side of his face was swollen, pulling back to shake out her knuckles with a hiss.

The former soldier hit him with her left hand and dazed him, moving to pace the floor of the slaughter house. "You not talking is not gonna keep me from killing your dumbass- you're pissing me off and this is only going to get worse," Evan shouted, dragging him up by his hair and forcing him to look at Daryl. "That man right there, is going to cut it out of you if you keep stonewalling like this. Hedge your bets with me and you won't have to go through that."

"I can't talk to you," Randall sobbed, wanting desperately to protect his face. "If they find out, they'll kill me."

"And if you don't talk, we're gonna kill you so what difference does it make?"

The young man looked up at her and Evan sighed, standing and looking at Daryl, "You want the tape?" He stood, moving menacingly towards the bound prisoner and shaking his head. "No, I'll bare-knuckle it," Daryl replied before he punched Randall senseless, the boy's nose breaking underneath his fist.

He continued to beat him, growing increasingly bloodthirsty as he tried to break him.

"We have people who will keep nursing ya back to good health before we beat ya within an inch of yer worthless life, and we can do this again and again until ya tell us what we wanna know. Yer last days on this earth will be spent here, in the dark of a slaughter shed, while we keep ya in constant, unending pain. We're gonna break ya, one way or another," Daryl whispered as he dragged him into a sitting position, his hand coming around his throat.

Randall looked to Evan for some sort of mercy but found that her eyes were just as cold and hardened as the man before him, knowing that he had never seen a woman's eyes look like that.

"I didn't even know those guys- I met them on the road," he finally burst out, Daryl taking a step back to listen to him. Evan sat down on the stool and stared down at the young man, narrowing her eyes, "Bullshit." He shook his head and opened his uninjured eye to look at her, the taste of blood bitter in his mouth. Daryl just paced a moment before questioning him, his hand already balling into a fist. "How many in yer group?"

"Aw, man, come on…"

Daryl pulled out the hunting knife he always kept on his hip, not even glancing at the sharp and clean ones on the table. Randall looked at him and started to protest, trying to back away even as he pressed against the wall. Evan flinched as the blade came down between his legs, Daryl digging it into the floorboards as he repeated his question, "I said how many?" Randal shouted out his answer, only wishing he could get away from the two menacing figures in the shed. "Thirty! There's, uh, thirty guys," the prisoner answered, the woman moving to join Daryl on the floor as she took her own bowie knife and cut off the bandages from his knee. "Where?" She dug the tip into the slightly infected, but mostly healing wound, cutting through one of the sutures. Randall cried out in pain, becoming angry as he tried to defend himself, "I don't know, I swear! We never stayed one place more than two nights- its been over a week I've been in here! They're long gone!"

"I don't believe ya," Daryl said, telling Evan to continue with her assault on the knee.

She pushed the blade in and received a bloodcurdling scream in reply, knowing that they had probably heard it even back at the camp. "Alright- they have guns, heavy, military-grade stuff. Like automatics, machine guns and a flamethrower. But I- I didn't do anything; I swear!"

"So it was just the ones who shot at my boys and my woman, the ones who tried to take this farm: ya just went along for the goddamn ride, didn't ya Randall? Yer trying to tell me that even as the sniper, yer innocent?"

"Yes," Randall shouted, flinching away from the knife in his knee. "These people took me in, not just those guys but a whole group of them! Men and women- families, man, and kids, just like you people! I thought I'd have a better chance with them, you know? But we go out, and scavenge just the men… One night, we went out and found this campsite, just a man and his two daughters. Other- other teenagers, you know? Real young and really cute…"

Evan stood and backed away from the young man, feeling her stomach start to twist and turn. "Daddy had to watch as these guys… raped them, sometimes multiple guys at once. And they didn't even kill them afterwards, after they just made him watch," Randall said, Daryl standing as all the blood drained out of his face. He barely got a chance to step aside as Evan rushed forward and began to beat him, Daryl having to pull her off before she killed him.

"Get the fuck out of my way, Daryl," Evan said through her teeth, her eyes narrowed as she looked at the broken and beaten mass in front of her. She could imagine how it would feel to crush his windpipe underneath her hand, trying to get the images of her own daughters' faces out of her head.

The hunter only pushed her towards the door as Randall screamed at her, his voice thick with emotion, "But it wasn't me! I didn't touch neither one of them!" Daryl backed her towards the door and flung it open when he reached behind her, forcing her out of the shed before they lost control of the situation. "Get out of here, now. Go take a fucking walk and I'll find ya when I'm done. I mean it Evan," he said, breathing hard as he pulled the door shut behind him.

He turned back to the still shouting Randall, silencing him with a well-aimed kick to his injured knee, "I have half a mind to kill ya just for the sake of having… some piece of mind for my own daughters, ya piece of shit!" Daryl listened to him beg for his life for a few moments, debating on whether or not to go through with killing him before deciding that he was content to beating him for a while longer.

Evan looked up once it had finally gone silent inside of the slaughter shack, hearing a few things being moved before the door opened up and Daryl emerged. He was dressed again, his crossbow on his back as he held the backpack out for her to take, his eyes hard. "Let's go back to camp," he murmured, trying not to think about how badly his knuckles throbbed.

They walked back to the campsite with only half of their answers, Evan quiet as she tried to come back from her moment of murderous rage.

"Jesus."

Dale stood from his place sitting in the stage of the RV, seeing the blood that flecked Evan's face and dried on Daryl's hands. They looked at him ruefully before seeing the others staring at them, the hunter passing Evan his crossbow as he moved to talk to Rick, "Get me a washcloth."

The sheriff looked at him expectantly as Daryl walked up, looking at the bloodied and torn knuckles on his hands, holding a breath. "Well, did you kill him," Rick asked, knowing that is not what he and Evan had agreed on. Shane stood just over his shoulder, Daryl seeing the faint glimmer of hope and shaking his head. "No, but ya should have James go down there and fix him back up… Boy's got a gang of thirty men, with heavy artillery and they ain't looking to make any friends. They roll through and we're all dead."

"The men at least. The women and myself, gonna wish we were," Evan added as she came and tended to Daryl, the hunter allowing her to clean and bandage his aching knuckles. The rest of the group heard her thinly-veiled meaning, Lori seeming to look a little green for a moment. Rick looked at everyone standing before him and set down a rule he knew he didn't have to consult with Evan on, equally as threatened as she was, "Alright, no one goes near this guy-"

Lori stepped forward and eyed him, reaching out to run her hand over his scruff. "Rick, what are you gonna do?" He immediately looked at Evan, the woman standing to her full height and meeting his eye evenly. Her body language told him everything he needed to know, Evan very clear on her stance and what they should do.

She didn't miss the subtle way Shane shifted to stand at his side, the sheriff seeming not to notice. "We have no choice. He's a threat- and we have to eliminate the threat," Rick said heavily, Evan nodding in agreement.

"So you're just going to kill him," Dale asked, stepping into the debate as the voice of reason.

"It's settled," the former soldier replied firmly, meeting Dale's eye. She and Rick moved to talk, Dale moving after them as they did so, "The two of you can't do this."

Evan and Rick continued to walk, the sheriff feeling the badge in his pocket more keenly as he thought of what they were about to do. "No, we're doing it today. The sooner we get this done, the sooner we get on with our own shit, Dale. We're spending too much energy dealing with a… fucking criminal," Evan snapped in reply, striding away to the spot where they usually conducted business. "Rick, you don't want to do this. I know you don't want to do this," Dale said as he tried to switch up his angle, knowing that Evan had her heels dug in and that he wouldn't be the one to change her mind in the end. "I've thought about it all week and knowing what we know now, I don't see a way out of this. Before, when he was just a boy- maybe this conversation would be different. But he's not just a boy anymore Dale, he's become dangerous now and we are in dire straits as is."

"You can't just decide on your own to take someone's life, no matter what kind of situation we're in," Dale objected loudly, moving to stand in the way of the two individuals he knew would have the final say in whether or not Randall got to live if he didn't speak up. "There has to be a process-" Evan scoffed and shook her head, conflicted as to what due process even meant in their new world, "And what would that be without a penal system? We can't call witnesses, go before a judge- all we have is us knowing that this is what is right."

Dale looked at her evenly, trying to speak some sense into her- he had been shown glimpses of Evan beyond the confident, strong, overwhelmingly selfless woman she projected to the group, knowing that she understood reason well enough, even though reason was on her own terms. "And so because you are ready to show that you are in control and right when you make these tough decisions on behalf of the group, he's automatically guilty by association and sentenced to death?"

"As we would have been had be killed one or all of us that night at the bar! You weren't there Dale, hearing the gunshots pinging around you, having a gun held to your head," Rick shouted back, leaping to her defense at the flash of residual fear raced through him. He knew that their lives had intertwined the moment he made the decision to kill for her, remembering how frightened and angered he had been when their attackers had leveled a gun at Evan's head. "Georgia's a death penalty state anyway and he would have been getting this sentence even if it was in a time where a man in a fucking robe made the decision!"

"Look, give me- give me some time to talk to everyone."

Rick and Evan both shook their heads, the woman moving to fold her arms across her chest. "No, we can't drag this out! People are scared," the sheriff replied, thinking of the look in Lori's eyes when she had heard what the other survivors were capable of. Dale agreed with his assessment of the group, adjusting his rifle as he gestured towards the campsite, "Which is why they need time to discuss this. To make well-informed decisions on their own."

"No, they need to be safe. My girls, Lori and Carol, Andrea, those women in the house- they'll suffer most if we make the wrong decision here," Evan said, her voice thick with emotion as she turned her back on him. She still stood beside Rick, however, looking up towards the sky as she tried not to let her tears fall.

Dale looked at her back before turning towards the man still staring at him, trying to make his final appeals on Randall's behalf. "You think about your son, Rick, and you about your daughters, Evan! The message that y'all are giving him, 'shoot first think later'-" She cut him off loudly, her words sharp and full of anger as she thought of what they had had to do to survive post-apocalypse, trying to beat down the shame and remorse building inside of her, "Has kept them alive. And will continue to do so long after Randall is dead and gone!"

"But it won't keep people… people. People with a moral code and a sense of justice, their humanity for crying out loud! I'm asking for one day to talk to everybody, you can give me that. Think- think about Carl, and Carter and Kennedy, and Jude."

"I am," Rick murmured, visibly shaken by the thought of their children becoming hardened by the world through the decisions they made. "We'll meet back at sunset and whatever happens, happens."

Dale nodded and took Rick's permission, walking back to where the rest of the group was

The sheriff looked at Evan and sighed, eyeing her carefully, "Neither of us wanted to shoot Sophia, but we did because it had to be done, right?"

"Right."

He hesitated for a moment before resting his hand on the handle of his gun, looking back over the farm. "And there are things, very bad things that we are going to have to do in order to do what's right, Rick. Are you prepared to do that," Evan murmured, moving to look at him as she swallowed nervously.

"I'm ready if you are."

"I was born ready, Rick."