It was Adele's perfume that Tim recognized at first as he was waking up, and making sure that everything was still attached, and functional, even if it was extremely painful. Her perfume was a subtle and slightly old-fashioned scent. Until now, Tim had associated that scent with his maternal grandmother, but that was B.A. Before Adele. He was learning to associate things into two different groups. B.A. and A.A. After Adele.

A.A. things were crazy and chaotic and he was pretty certain that he was lying in the hospital bed largely due to a series of unfortunate events in which she was directly, indirectly or barely even tangentially involved.

What was unwaveringly certain, beyond any reasonable shadow of a doubt, was that without Adele, he, Raylan, Art and probably even Rachel would now be dead. Not to mention a large number of mostly blameless citizens of Harlan.

None of this crazy mess was Adele's fault.

Zoe Kenneth was dead.

At least, he hoped Zoe Kenneth was dead. He had shot her through the right eye with Adele's antique Remington 95 derringer. It was the only way to save his and Raylan's lives, but even that was touch and go. At that point the house was well and truly ablaze, and there was only one way out. The certain death kind of way out in which he and Raylan had an unenviable choice, they either burned or leapt to their deaths.

Except for the tree.

And the branch.

He was pretty sure that the branch accounted for the firm pressure of bandages running around his body from mid chest to just above his waist. He was pretty sure that Raylan had the cracked ribs too, from the encounter with the branch. They had run across the roof, and taken a flying leap out into the void, slamming hard into the branch.

Adele had very thoughtfully adjusted the bed so that he could see his partner without moving. Raylan looked like Tim felt. They both had the cracked ribs. Raylan also had the broken left wrist, the minor burns on the backs of his hands and his right forearm, duly dressed, and a body like Tim's all over cuts, bruises and other damage from hitting that branch like a bomb hitting a corrugated iron factory, the branch not welcoming his and Raylan's weight, and breaking off, dumping them on the ground some nine or ten feet below, but not before they struck several smaller branches on the way down. Tim had the broken nose, the sprained right ankle and the minor burn on his right thigh from the fire. And naturally, they were both coughing their lungs up from the smoke inhalation.

Lying on the ground, in agony, knowing that they were both looking at a lengthy hospital stay… but that they were alive against some pretty lousy odds, laughter had taken over. His beautiful Adele bent over him, holding his hand, whispering soothing things in her cute sexy voice, until he mercifully passed out again.

In between the sirens, and the ambulance, and Adele's timely arrival, and Rachel's fierce organizational skills which got them a nice private room before the doctors had even finished patching them up, Adele had actually explained the entire mess to AUSA David Vasquez' bewildered satisfaction.

It turned out that Tim's beautiful French-Candienne princess was a sergeant in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and that her uncle was something rather high up in the FBI, and at that point it became too complex for Tim to hold in his head.

Sergeant Adele Fournier of the RCMP had indubitably got her man. Tim loved being got. Every inch of his psyche wanted to drag her off to his lair, and do sweet and wicked things to her until they were both too tired to move a muscle.

In Tim's case, the spirit was more than willing, but the flesh was far too battered and broken to even plan such matters.

But she was there, she was by his side, and now that he could actually think again, all he had to do was dream up the right argument to get her to stay. Forever seemed a reasonable length of time.

[][][][][][][][]

Art finished up with Vasquez and headed back down the corridor to his two deputies. He was exhausted, and possibly not thinking all that clearly. The case had drained the life out of him and he had never been so terrified as in the moment that he realised the house was ablaze from end to end, and Tim and Raylan were still inside.

Then somehow they were out on the roof, making an impossible jump from the roof to the branch of the tree, and then they were falling, and somehow they weren't dead, and Art wasn't even going to pretend to be surprised or angry with Rachel as she flew to Raylan's side and Adele was there with Tim.

Their fugitive was dead, but his boys were alive and he couldn't have been happier about it.

What Art couldn't believe was how they had come to this.

[][][][][][][][]

Raylan Givens had been hurt a time or two in the line of duty, but this was different. He ached all over. He didn't care how minor the burns were, the backs of his hands and his right forearm stung like the devil. His chest felt as though an elephant in hobnail boots had been jumping on it, and he could barely feel the fingers of his left hand.

Raylan ignored the pain. He was trying to pick his way through the potential minefield. His growing relationship with Rachel. She was right there in the hard plastic chair next to his bed. There for him. And Raylan was doing his best to figure it out.

Even he knew that he sucked at relationships. They all left him in the end. Even when he was trying to be what they wanted him to be. He really wanted this to work out. He respected Rachel, she had stones, she bossed him around, she was smart and sassy and unafraid, and he figured that this was what he wanted her to be.

She challenged him, and Raylan actually loved that.

The L-word. He actually said the L-word. Okay, it was in his head, but it was still the L-word. Winona had pulled him up on that. Saying it wasn't good enough. Using it as a weapon, well that was out, meaning it was the thing.

The truth was that Raylan had a very limited nodding acquaintance with love. If he stopped to examine the situation, Raylan Givens was in very unfamiliar territory. He finally got why Winona had left, and she was still part of his life, and their daughter, but this… this was new and different and he was terrified he as going to mess it up.

She was dozing in the chair, head resting against the side of the bed. If he could have summoned up the strength to roll over just a little, he could have kissed her on the forehead, but that wasn't going to happen. He needed something else.

He glanced across at Tim and his lady. Adele had pushed the cot provided by the hospital flat up against the other side of Tim's bed, they were side by side, their hands entwined. Holding on to each other. To Raylan it looked like a promise.

Rachel's slim, delicate hand was under his relatively undamaged right hand. Gauze covered the burn on the back of his hand, minor but it hurt like the devil, very slowly he crooked his stiff, swollen fingers to get a grip on her hand.

[][][][][][][][]

Rachel felt Raylan's fingers move, at first she thought he was moving away, then she realised that he was trying to hold her hand. His fingers were sore and swollen, it must have really hurt to move them and this was the least sentimental man she had ever met, but he was trying to reach out to her.

She had his horseshoe ring in her pocket, as they waited for the ambulance, and Rachel sat on the ground with Raylan she had seen that his fingers were starting to swell, so she had pulled his ring off gently before they had to cut it off. The weight of it felt reassuring and she realised that this was how Raylan himself made her feel. Reassured.

Of course that didn't mean that most of the time she didn't know whether she wanted to kiss him or kill him. And sometimes she wasn't at all sure whose side he was really on. And that his daddy issues, and Boyd Crowder issues which seemed to be all mixed up together, weren't just plain weird as well as extremely fucked up.

She shifted her hand so that he could hold it more easily, looked up and he was watching her. "Hey." She said. He smiled. She couldn't help it, Raylan's trademark sheepish smile was all part of the Southern charm, and she found herself charmed by it even when she didn't intend to be.

"Hey." He whispered and settled again. She smiled at him fondly. She was done with the effort to hold him at arm's length.