A/N: This has been bouncing around in my head for a couple weeks. I wondered what was going on in Raylan's head through those couple of episodes when he had to deal with Winona leaving. I came up with this based on his overall character. My apologies if I got some details wrong. I'm going off of memory since FX doesn't post the episodes after they air.
Disclaimer: I do not own Justified. I just love to watch it.
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When he walked into that empty house, he felt in his bones that something wasn't right. Oh, there were no specific signs, no broken windows, no jimmied locks, no missing furniture. Not that there was much furniture to take in the first place. The air was cool and calm, assuring him that the thermostat was set on just the right temperature. He would have known if someone were lurking around a shadowy corner
– the sound of breathing or the impatient shuffling of feet tipped him off more often than he let on. Still, something was off in that barren, desolate house.
He trudged through the foyer after gently closing the front door. He didn't want to wake her before he figured exactly what was throwing him for a loop. In fact, he wasn't sure he wanted to wake her at all. The day had been taxing on his already overflowing mind, and there was without a doubt no way he could process any more information about babies or moving or finding another job. To be blunt, and he would've been quit blunt with anyone who cared to know, all he wanted was a stiff drink a twelve, maybe thirteen hour nap.
So he padded into the kitchen, silent as ever despite the heels of his boots, and went for the fridge. If anyone later asked him what he poured himself to drink, he wouldn't have been able to answer. As soon as he read the first words of the chicken scratch on that hastily scribbled note, the overflowing thoughts that had been plaguing him all day, all week, disappeared. Those precariously balanced ideas that had been storing themselves in a cup that was too full and too broken to hold them all spilled out and bled away into nothingness. Suddenly it didn't matter what he'd been injected with, or who he'd shot, or even what career he was considering after leaving the Marshal service. Hell, even if the drink he'd poured had been a handle of Beam with a chaser of Jack, his mind would have brushed the alcohol off without the slightest effort.
He'd begun to create a new life for them. His loneliness was replaced by a sense of purpose – she reminded him what it felt like to be needed, to do something that meant more to someone else than it meant to him. She reminded him why he'd run so hard and so far away from Kentucky, why he'd given up being Arlo's son and why he'd succeeded in becoming the (almost) antithesis of his old man. And the fact that she was willing to put up with him and willing to give him another chance to prove that he could be there for her? Well, that was enough to put him on the path to becoming a husband and a father instead of one more cop with a chip on his shoulder. For Christ's sake, he loved her so much that he was ready to put down his badge and his Glock – the two things that defined him for so many years – in order to be a better man for her. For the first time in a long time he wanted to be completely selfless and do something just for her.
And now all that mattered was that he'd come home a few hours too late.
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He put on a cool face for the office; nobody needed to be involved in his business. Everybody bought the act without much convincing because he was so smug and so collected that it wasn't a far stretch to think that tracking down his ex-wife-and-recently-but-now-ex-lover was just another twisted facet of his life. The hard-walking, tough-talking, straight-shooting cowboy from Harlan County could handle an upset woman without breaking a sweat.
Only Art, who had seen the many expressions of his fellow Marshal during their years of service together, saw the hot, searing pain that was eating away at his heart. And he acknowledged the horrors of the past few days to Art – sort of. At the very least he admitted what had happened between the two of them, sans her presence. He admitted that he needed some time off, some time to digest the crumbling pieces of his life and try to force them to fit together again. Art unhappily obliged, provided he tackle this last case before he took his leave.
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Then he found her. Or, more correctly, the local police found her, traced the plates on her car. To her sister's house. In Louisville. Lord, how he wished he'd thought of her sister's house as the first place she'd go. Still, all those bookmarked sites about some goddamn beach country were terribly incriminating and all that money was still missing from the locker in evidence. She was probably using her sister's house as a stopover until she could book a first-class ticket straight to some tropical hotspot. She knew that he'd never in a million years risk talking to her sister face to face if there was the smallest chance that he would be proven wrong. Well, he would show her. He could play games as well as anybody.
He rang the bell, and sure enough that overly dramatic harpy through open the door, perfectly content to send him home with his tail between his legs. But he suddenly wasn't in the mood for playing games anymore. Instead, he was ready to break his rule about entering uninvited, considering the woman carrying his unborn child was hiding from him like a timid mouse. Fortunately for her sister, she came to the door and agreed to speak with him, although he didn't feel so much like speaking as he did like biting her head off. Every ounce of restraint he could muster held his tongue (mostly) in check, and they stepped into her sister's living room.
They quickly resolved the issue of the stolen money and her possible flight to the beach, since that wasn't what he was really pissed off about anyway. He did enjoy feeding her a line about Kenny Chesney though, relishing in the brilliant, righteous fire that flickered in her eyes whenever she felt unduly offended. And then she was talking about how he hadn't changed, about how if he really meant for the two of them to be seriously involved, then he would have left his job behind and become a damn real estate agent. Not in so many words, but he could put two and two together. Gary's safe, boring career and previously engorged bank account had attracted her away from the danger and excitement of the Marshal service after all.
Even as words poured out of his mouth, asking her some bullshit question, all he could think was that he had changed. He had taken stock of himself, decided that his life and the mother of his child were more important than hunting federal fugitives that would end him in a second if they were given the opportunity. His love for her, his love for his child, had overridden every desire he had to be a lawman. Just because he hadn't said anything about it didn't mean it wasn't there, that it wasn't relevant.
She answered his question, told him that they still loved each other, that they would work around things somehow. And the anger that had been threatening to boil over, waiting just beneath the blanket of temporary sanity that she had woven, erupted and coated his being once again. He felt new again, fresh, like he had never been considering leaving the Marshals to begin with. He wanted to go out and drink and fight and be the best lawman he could be, if for no other reason than to prove to himself that he still could.
She had once told him that he was the angriest man she'd ever known. As he walked out of that house, climbed into his Town Car, and slid that old Stetson onto his head, he wondered how much of that anger was because of her.