Author's Note: This story is about Chris, Tim's dead love interest, mentioned briefly in A Long Climb Up. I was never going to write it, (in fact, I wasn't going to write another Justified story of any kind) though I had the back story roughly mapped out, how a forty-something Tim might be even more jaded than he already is when the Justified series takes place. He is twenty-nine in season one, episode one, according to the original screenplay anyway, and who knows how old by the end of season six - maybe thirty or thirty-one - so this is some gap-filler, some of what happens in the fifteen or so years between the end of the TV series and the beginning of the oneshot, A Long Climb Up. It jumps around a bit. Anyway, I'm packing and moving and I need a distraction.

Here be angst; ye be warned! (Well, at least as far as I'm willing to go.) And of course a good wallop of Raylan and Tim snarking and shooting. They're always good for that.

And thank you, thank you, Hallonim, again for a lovely photo. I own nothing, yada yada.


Up Looking Down; Down Looking Up – Chapter One

These are familiar feelings – the ground beneath you gives way, gaping wide, and that hole is deep and dark, and you teeter briefly, lost, knowing there's nothing ahead of you but the fall, knowing nothing or nobody can fill that hole stretching below you fast enough or full enough to stop the pain when you hit bottom. And the bottom is waiting, jagged and hard, no comfort there, no comfort anywhere.

You wonder as you teeter if it's going to be worse this time, or better because you've had experience pulling yourself out of this pit. Whatever, it's all just as pointless; you feel just as helpless. Maybe the first time is worse because you're unprepared for how hard you hit bottom. But right now, right this moment, that's not much comfort, being aware of what's ahead. There's a blessing in not knowing, you think, and the pain already seems sharper, so maybe this time is worse because you know what's waiting, you feel the pain before it even hits you, and you know before you start your descent how hard it's going to be to climb out. The despair settles in early, while you're still teetering.

Thinking back, you realize how numb you were the first time compared to this, but the circumstances were completely different. That time it was your best friend, a casualty of war, expected but unexpected, and you were right there with him, a part of the accident of fate, not told about it after the fact as if it had nothing to do with you, when it's everything to you. You were there the first time and you saw it, so it's more real in a way. You piece it together later, everything that happened, scraping it out from your memory, tell it like it's somebody else it happened to. He goes down, you say to yourself when you want to think about it, one unlucky fucking bullet, and you see it in your periphery and it registers dully. But the enemy is still looking to get lucky with another bullet, so you focus on that, fire superiority, control the engagement, and then when there's time, when it's safe, then you go to him and you focus on the training and you try to stop the bleeding. When his heart stops, goes cold before the helo can get to you, yours goes cold too, somewhere a long way from home, a long way from sympathy. So, maybe that makes it easier – no pitying looks tearing at you, keeping the wounds fresh. You don't feel it till later. It trickles in after the rush and then the sudden stop, after when the world starts turning again, on leave or drinking with the rest of the guys, well, the rest except one.

ASAP – Army Substance Abuse Program – that was the ladder out of that hole, that time. Your PL, your platoon leader, he comes to you and says, "Sergeant, they want you in the sniper platoon, but you've got to get your drinking under control. Can you do that? We'll give you one shot at it." And that's your motivation to climb out of the pit.

But where's my motivation now? The bottom is rushing up at me, past the teetering stage and falling fast. Where's my ladder this time? I can't get on my feet to start looking.


There's a man with a cowboy hat at my door. I haven't seen him in a couple of years. I can't imagine, even in my last night's alcohol binge, vapor-laden, hung-over condition, soul flayed, stomach and thoughts burning and unmanageable, that he's come to provide any kind of emotional support. He looks me up and down when I open the door. I didn't want to open it but with Raylan anything anybody else wants doesn't matter, so might as well get it over with quickly. He smirks, and I can see that he recognizes my condition, personal knowledge of a good drunk.

"I expected it would be bad," he says, doesn't wait for an invitation, just pushes his way in. "I talked to Rachel first, came up to see for myself. What're you drinking, Tim? I'll take a glass, thanks – bartender's choice. Shit, I hate flying."

He dips his head to take his hat off, keeps up his monologue while he does a quick look around the place from the door. It's changed since the last time he was here. Women will do that when they move in, change things subtly, a little more form with the function, please – that's what she'd say, Chris, and then she'd rearrange the room. I try to block those thoughts quickly, focus on Raylan's complaints, hope they'll distract me enough to keep me from sliding right now.

"I hate airports. Can't understand why it's so hard to get on a flight, why they're booked. Who wants to fly? I mean the whole thing is such a shitty experience, all of it. And I hate airplanes even more than the airports, screaming kids, ridiculous little drinks, no leg room, grumpy flight attendants. And they smell like stale farts – the cabins, I mean – have you ever noticed that? Got a nice rental, though." He does a half glance over his shoulder to the road. "Maybe I'll drive back to Miami."

I look out to the curb when he passes me. Of course he's driving a Cadillac. "A leopard don't change its spots," I say, mocking, but he's already in the kitchen – I can hear glass clinking on glass. I shut the door and follow him and wonder what the hell he's doing here now. I don't believe for a minute that he's here to console me.

People I didn't expect showed up for the funeral, including some buddies from the Regiment. It helped because they've been through this so they knew what to do, which whiskey to buy, what to say and what not to say, what not to bother me with. They know me. One of them offered to stay beyond the weekend – he said he could take some time off, hang out – but the guy's got a wife and kids, a job that's fitting him better than the uniform, and I do that pantomime thing well, sing and dance and laugh and can even watch myself do it and appreciate the talented acting, so I said to him, "No, I'm fine," and he left with the others. Then Rachel told me to take some time if I wanted to. I shouldn't have, I should've said no, but I wasn't really thinking clearly, and I said, "Sure, okay," and now I've been drunk for most of two weeks. I'd say it feels good, but truthfully, I don't feel anything when I get that stupid. That's kind of the point of it. I get up when I get up, and I make coffee and I drink the pot and bawl like a baby until I can't stand it anymore and then I start drinking. Thank fucking God Raylan showed up at the point in my day where I've stopped bawling because I can't stand it anymore and I'm about to start drinking. I don't trust him enough to see me hurting, but he's good for drinking with. He's good for that.

He's hunting through my fridge when I walk into the kitchen. "I'm out of beer," I say to him.

"I'm looking for something to eat."

"Oh. Good luck."

"Shit, Tim, when was the last time you opened the door on this appliance?" He slams it and goes to the phone and orders food for lunch, a bourbon already poured in one hand.

I have been eating, had a good dinner last night with Rachel. Chris's folks have had me over a few times, too, worried about me, I guess, and looking for some shared grief. It's easier in some respects being with them than being around other people since they don't try to cheer me up, and I'm sure they feel the same. They have a cook right now – they can afford it – which is a good thing because Chris's mom cries a lot, hasn't let up since the funeral, and I don't feel much like cooking, and neither does Mike. When she starts up with the tears, Mike, Chris's dad, he takes me out to the yard, and even though it's getting cold these nights we stay out there, not talking much, just a bourbon or two. I appreciate it because I can't take that much crying. Maybe Mike can't, either. They call me a cab because we drink more now, not like before. That's one of the things that made it so good, so easy – her dad trusts me. It's a simple but difficult thing to trust someone with your daughter, I think. He never has a problem offering me a bourbon, and it's always good bourbon. And when I say I'm good to drive, he believes me, except this week he doesn't even ask, the cab just appears at my door to pick me up and then he calls one to take me home. I'm supposed to be going there tonight. I look over at Raylan reading the number off of his credit card for the person on the phone, and I wonder how long he plans on staying.

"Sorry for your loss, Tim," Raylan says when he hangs up. He says it like he's added something to the order and that's all he says about it, and that's perfectly fine by me. He saunters back into the living room and I follow. I can't get up the energy to try and get him out of my house so I sink into my chair, me and a glass and a bottle and my unwelcome visitor and his glass sharing the room. He holds his out for me to refill so I do.

"What're you doing here, Raylan?" I am curious. That's probably a positive thing, some spark of interest in the world beyond memories, but maybe it's just phantom pains of the will that was amputated by a phone call on a stake-out on a rainy night, two weeks, six days, and thirteen hours ago. It seems like forever, or only a moment, depending. It's weird. I can't find myself – it's like I don't exist anymore except in some kind of useless pattern that's a habit of living, nothing more.

"I understand they've offered you Seattle. You accept yet?"

I shake my head no, think of the paperwork still sitting on my desk waiting for my signature. I have no interest in it now. I can't go there. I promised Rachel I'd stay in Kentucky as long as she needed when they moved her into the position of Bureau Chief, after Art officially retired, help her settle into the role. When I met Chris after, or I should say, when I got to know Chris, it was easy to stick around longer than I meant to, but sooner or later there'd be a transfer. Chris said, when we talked about it, that she'd move with me. I believed her, too. It was that simple, and easy. "Of course, I'll come with you," she said. "It'll be fun. A new city." She wanted to see the west coast so I put in for Portland or Seattle – I wasn't so keen on California – and it made sense that we get married before I transferred, makes it all smooth with the US Marshals Service administration.

"Did Rachel ask you to stick around longer in case she got the job in Memphis?"

"No. What job?"

"Doesn't matter. You can ask her about it. I got a different job offer for you. Well, it's not really mine to offer but I've been given the authority. I was just in Houston, drinking with some of the old gang, talking business, and someone asked who I'd recommend for this job since I used to be the firearms instructor at Glynco, and I said, 'No one I taught.'" He chuckles. "I enjoyed the look on their faces when I said that. I told them to call you. Didn't have to think too hard about it. I don't know anyone better qualified for what they're looking for. They said they'd check you out. I guess they did because they asked me to follow up, feel you out about it, get you on board if I could. I called but you weren't in the office. Rachel explained." He does an awkward hand gesture then takes a drink to cover over the space where he's supposed to say something else consoling, makes that face he always makes when he drinks bourbon, like it hurts, though I'm sure his tongue is deadened to the burn by now. Habit, maybe. "You still go to the range like most people go to the sofa and watch TV?"

"I haven't fired a weapon in almost three weeks. I'm out of practice."

"Then let's go shoot."

"Now?"

"Got anything better to do?"

Drink. Cry. "Nope."

We eat pizza then go shooting. I fall in line, fall into the routine easily. It's a part of me – trigger, front and rear sights, both eyes wide open, aware of everything in the room, put down the target. I watch the grouping grow downrange and wish everything was this easy. I wonder if I could just forget it all, just step back in time and erase the past few years, wonder if I want to, wonder if it's right to want to. Right now I would, I think, just so I can stop feeling this way, but I think, too, that's not fair to her. I think about what I'd have to give up to go back there. Fuck, I miss her. I replace the magazine with a fresh one and put fifteen rounds into a new target, fast, split them between the head and the torso, shred the middle of it.

Raylan stops and watches, raises an eyebrow at me. "Out of practice, huh?"

He actually buys me a beer after, then he tells me a buddy of his is heading up the Marshals end of a joint fugitive task force out of San Diego, with the DEA and the PFM involved, lots of work across the border in Mexico, hunting down fugitives from the US tied to the drug trade hiding in Baja and Sonora and further south in Sinaloa territory. They'd like a Marshal with experience in a shit storm; they're doing happy back flips thinking about getting someone with my kind of work history, my kind of skills with firearms. I'm ready to say yes before he finishes his sales pitch. San Diego is a long way from Kentucky, a long way from reminders. There's no place here safe from memories of Christine, no one here that I know who didn't know her. I can still smell her in the house, on my clothes. I hear her in the morning, look for her in the evening, feel her breath close at night. I've taken to sleeping on the couch so it doesn't hit so hard when I wake up. Everywhere there's an empty ragged space like something's been ripped out of my life. And that's exactly how it happened, now I think about it. I snatch at the job offer, grasping like it's the only piece of driftwood for miles and I'm barely afloat, drowning out at sea. But that's a lame analogy really – too fucking romantic. It's a rickety ladder I'm being offered, and Raylan's holding it for me. I crawl to the bottom rung.


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