Lexington is not in fact one of the circles of hell as Lena had feared it would be. After John's eighty thousand jokes about hill people, she had begun to question Kelsey's recommendation of hiding Sayeed in Kentucky.
But there are things to do. Food. Bars. There's even a gay club. Lena did not point out that last to Sayeed. She did point out a mosque and immediately felt guilty because she wasn't sure that the Marshals would approve of him attending prayer since it was a part of his old life.
Two days after they'd arrived in D.C. Lena had given him a compass with the direction of Mecca marked with a thin line of silver nail polish. It had been the start to a tentative… friendship wasn't the right word… he'd smile at her now and then. A year into his time in America Lena gave Sayeed a cellphone, and he'd been able to download an app to find Mecca and no longer needed the compass. But he kept it, and when they reached Kentucky he'd used the app to mark a new line, though he used a sharpie instead of nail polish.
Lena sits on the back porch sipping chocolate milk while she waits for Sayeed to finish the Isha'a prayer, the last of the day. Luckily the porch is behind him. It had taken time for Lena to get used to the frequent praying, and in the beginning there were plenty of times she'd absent-mindedly wandered in front of Sayeed. It had taken a month for him to become annoyed enough to say anything about it. That was another thing Lena had to get used to: the roundabout language and a different set of social cues following her home. Sayeed had to get used to seeing Lena's hair and to eye contact during their conversations. It was a bit of an adjustment for both of them. They made it work.
Lena doesn't need to be out here. There are two deputies on the back porch with them as well, but she's used to being around Sayeed. And Lexington is new. And she's waiting for the shift change before running out to get food. Though Tim's coming soon, which makes going out to get food now and missing him a tempting prospect, but that feels too much like running away, and Lena refuses to do that. For as long as she and Sayeed are in Lexington this is their house, not the Marshals'.
Lena catches her mood souring at thoughts of Tim. Every time he has a shift at the house he says as few words to her as possible. If it's raining, he sticks himself with porch duty. If it's nice out, then he chooses inside. Anywhere she's least likely to be. For her part, Lena doesn't try to talk to him. If he wants nothing to do with her, then she refuses to be pathetic enough to try. Lena stands. She also refuses to let him put her in a black mood. Eyes closed, deep breath. Open.
Sayeed is on the last surah. He tries to be discreet about his praying, which is unfortunate because he has a surprisingly good singing voice; it reminds her of clear, sun-warmed water. Sometimes she envies him – the voice and the faith. Sometimes he reminds her a bit of herself the way she was just after the attack, filled with relentless optimism, although his is calmer. 'As Allah, wills it.' Maybe less optimism and more acceptance. The line blurs sometimes.
Lena's phone vibrates on the chair arm. A text from unknown. Oona or John. She flips the phone open. Definitely Oona.
Hope you're enjoying American Wales.
Meet a lot of sheep-shaggers yet?
If the hill people haven't kidnapped you and eaten your livers, you should read this.
Lena taps the link to an article and starts skimming. Some pharmaceutical company recalling batches of morphine. The doorbell rings so she clicks off her phone. It can wait until after dinner.
o.O.o
"Well hot damn. Think we can find a reason to impound that?"
God dammit. He'd told her to keep the garage door closed. "No." Tim looks around, but the only other people outside are a few kids playing in the yard across the street.
"How fast do you think it goes?"
"Fast."
Raylan continues to admire Lena's car, running his hand covetously over the top. "I mean aren't witnesses not supposed to keep things from their previous lives?"
"It's not his."
"Really." Raylan smiles towards the house, and Tim strains to remember the most recent bits of conversation and gossip about the status of Raylan's relationship with his ex-wife.
Tim doesn't like the wide smile Lena offers Raylan when she opens the door to them. He likes it less when she holds out her hand to him to shake.
"Evenin' ma'am," he says, taking her hand.
"Nice to meet you, Deputy Givens."
"Oh, no need to rest on formality. Raylan's fine."
"Well then it's nice to meet you, Raylan. You can call me Lena." She won't fucking stop smiling.
Tim follows behind him with his own sarcastic, "Evenin' ma'am," and a smile that's all teeth and none of the sentiment. He immediately regrets the 'ma'am', remembering the way he used to tease her with it.
Her own smile drops, and she gives him a polite but distant, "Deputy."
"Close the garage door."
Instead Lena picks up her purse and gives Tim a look that dares him to give her another order. "I'm going to get food. I'll be back in a half hour." And she's out the door and down the front steps before he has a chance to object.
o.O.o
It's been longer than half an hour.
"Tim, stop lookin' out the window. Someone's going to think you're the new neighborhood pedophile. Dougherty and Waters got it covered."
"I don't like kids," says Tim distractedly, still peering out the curtain.
"Oh. Great. What a relief." A few moments later, "Tim, just call her."
"Nah, it's fine."
"Tim, either call her or stop lookin' out the damn window. I'm startin' to feel twitchy just lookin' at you."
Tim grits his teeth and steps back. Looking through the fridge doesn't offer much distraction. Neither does the TV.
Lena doesn't answer her phone. It's been an hour.
Jacket already on, Tim walks out the back door. "Where'd she go for food?" All he gets from Waters and Dougherty are shrugs of ignorance.
Tim stalks back into the house and finds Faheen. "Where'd she go?"
Faheen's expression shifts quickly to distrust and then just as quickly to blank. "She said she was going to bring back bar-beh-que from a place called Coh-lleen's." His words are heavily accented but well enunciated. The price of that is speed, and as soon as he finally gets to the name, Tim's already on his way back out the front door, Raylan on his heels.
The parking lot outside Colleen's, which looks like a complete hole-in-the-wall at one end of a less than classy strip mall, is mostly empty, and Lena's car is immediately visible just outside the door. The woman in question is not.
"Oh Jesus Christ." Tim takes his foot off the gas instinctively at Raylan's outburst, trying to find whatever it is that the other marshal already noticed.
As they near the restaurant Tim can see four figures through the windows.
"Fuck," he says in crude, wholehearted agreement of Raylan's earlier sentiment.
Three of the figures inside Colleen's stand on one side of a table, and on the other is a woman, gun drawn and pointed at the three across from her.
Raylan beats Tim in the door. Since Lena's the only one with a weapon in hand, his gun stays holstered. "Hey there, fellas, ma'am." He's laying on the country boy charm real thick.
"Fuck on outta here, asshole. This don't concern you." They look like the three little pigs if the three little pigs had been on steroids and failed a few IQ tests. Maybe they're related. All have pale, ruddy complexions and the common bad judgment of wearing cut-off flannel.
"Well," he sighs, turning back to look at Tim, "there are two kinds of people in this world." Then back at the three little pigs, "You really wanna be left alone with her? Seems to me that could be a mite bit dangerous for you."
Lena's eyes flick from Raylan to Tim and back to the three men standing in front of her and stay. She doesn't put the gun away.
"She's not dangerous. Can't shoot all three of us. Besides, that'd be murder now, wouldn't it honey?" Piggy #1 looks back to Lena, a nasty leer plastered across his face, "And now that you two are here, we got witnesses." At this point, Tim's more inclined to let Lena shoot them and make up a good excuse later.
"Well boys, my momma always said it's always best not to test a lady's anger. Sometimes they surprise you, and not in the good way. Hell hath no fury and all that." Raylan gives a good-natured shrug. "Tell you what, if you leave now, we can pretend this whole thing never happened."
"We ain't leavin' until she apologizes." There's stupid, and then there's special stupid.
There was one night back when Tim was still in boot camp when two of his platoon mates had fallen asleep on fire watch. When they were inevitably caught, instead of shutting up and taking whatever punishment was dealt like a smart person would have done, they had crawled over each other trying to make excuses. Sergeant Gatt, who had zero fucks to give, cut them off with, "IF YOU TWO DONT SHUT THE FUCK UP RIGHT NOW, IM GONNA STICK MY FOOT UP BOTH YOUR ASSES AND WEAR YOU AROUND LIKE A COUPLE OF AUTISTIC FLIP FLOPS!" Then he smoked them into the ground and gave them double duty firewatch for three weeks straight.
These three fuckers would have made great flip-flops. Flip-flop special.
Raylan, obviously of the same opinion, says, "Son, are you simple? The woman's got a gun. And you're not exactly a small target."
"Simple? Sounds like you also owe us an apology." Jesus Christ, what a fucking waste of time.
"Yo. Dumbass." The three little piggies focus their attention on Tim. "Unless you're planning on apologizing for being a waste of fucking oxygen, no one's getting a damn apology."
"Oh yeah, and what are you gonna do? Make us leave?" The guy is a head taller and looks to be half again Tim's weight.
Tim blinks, nonplussed, and rolls his eyes. "Holy shit, you're for real." He looks back at Raylan and gestures to the dumbass looming over him. "I think this guy's for real."
"Yeah, I think he's for real," Raylan agrees, equally impressed at the flip-flop special on display before them.
Tim has known fear. There has been plenty of fear in his life. Most of the fear has been of situations, not individuals per se, being shot at, watching other people shot, falling, nearly suffocating. But he's rarely afraid of an individual person, a specific face, a single voice. His father once, but that was over a decade ago, and towards the end it had been more of an angry, festering dread rather than pure fear.
Other than that, Tim has only ever feared one person. Staff Sergeant Mariano has a singular place of honor in Tim's nightmares. Drill instructors are possibly the only people besides serial murderers and Wall Street tycoons to take such gleeful, unbridled joy in abusing the absolute power they have over their victims, and they do it all without laying a single finger on you. And no other human being has ever had the same talent for mental torture that Sergeant Mariano had. Attracting his notice was enough to make Tim feel like someone had tied a brick around his stomach and tossed it over the side of a cliff.
Dealing with anyone else after that was cake. In fact, especially after leaving the Rangers, Tim had had to work particularly hard not to laugh in anyone's face when they tried to assert authority or dominance. Luckily for this moment no such restrictions apply.
Tim grins, lips slowly peeling back from his teeth in a way a smart person would find threatening and more than mildly creepy. "Alright, listen here, dipshit." Tim moves aside his jacket and points to his waist. "This badge." He moves the other side. "This gun." He sets his hand on the grip. "You get it?"
The piggies' demeanor does an instant one-eighty. "Aw, fuck. Seriously?"
"Look man, we didn't mean no harm."
"Hey, she's the one holdin' a gun on us!"
"Shut up." Tim looks past them. "Lena, let's go."
Lena starts to lower her gun, changes her mind, and edges around towards the two deputies, only lowering it when she gets to them.
"You can wait outside if you like," Raylan nods to her, "no need to stay."
After a minute Tim goes as well and finds Lena standing ten feet down from the door, back leaning against a stucco wall. She doesn't say anything when he approaches, not a 'hi' not a 'thanks.'
"What happened?"
When Lena speaks, it's flat, distant. "I wouldn't let them drive it. Then they started talking about taking me for a ride," she looks up at the underside of the sidewalk cover, "if you know what I mean." Her eyes and mouth pull in, and Tim feels a near overwhelming urge to walk right back in that door and make someone bleed. "They were nice at first, came on a little strong, but they liked the car and were just asking questions. I didn't want to be rude," Tim's jaw twitches, "so I talked to them. Then they got pushy. So I got rude. Then, like I said…" Lena waves a hand over her shoulder in explanation. "So much for southern gentlemen."
"Well your first mistake was being polite." He means it as a joke, something to diffuse the tension running in a clear, tight line between her shoulders.
But all he gets is a frown and a quiet, "Huh," before she's opening the car door, climbing in, and pulling away.
Shit.
Tim ducks his head back inside to make sure Raylan can handle the three piggies and goes after Lena.
He speeds a little more than is necessary and catches up to her on the front walk right outside the house.
"Lena, what the hell, I –"
"No, shut up." Her voice is harsh and low, like a snake rattle. Tim claps his mouth shut. "You don't know how it is. Polite is the best we've got. You tell anyone to just go away, and chances are that's only going to piss them off and make them do something stupid. Don't you dare tell me any bit of that was my fault."
"Jesus Christ, I wasn't saying it was your fault. It was just a joke."
"Do I look like I'm laughing? I'm so glad this is all so bleeding hilarious for you. Because for me the evening actually kind of sucked."
Tim starts again, taking more care in where he steps. "Hey, Raylan's gonna hand those assholes over to the locals, give 'em a good scare. It's fine now."
"No it's not." Lena takes a brief pause, thinking, and then launches forward. "You've killed people. Eighty-seven confirmed sniper kills, impressive by the way. You're probably not a dick, so you go for heads. Or hearts or… whatever. People die pretty fast. I'm sure you got a lot more than that under your belt though." She takes a breath since she's been talking too fast, too much momentum. "Well I don't. I got two. And those were real fucking clear. Just now wasn't clear. But I thought…" She's rambling, still a little out of breath, and her voice is vibrating a bit, the way an overactive child bounces their knee up and down instead of sitting still. "And since I'm not Mr. Big Bad Rangerman or Marshal or whatever, I don't know when to shoot. I mean they weren't trying to kill me, but…" Her breathing is too fast, and Tim gropes blindly for the first thing that'll slow it down.
"You said 'fuck.'" It's automatic, verbal muscle memory of another life.
Her face pinches inward for a split second before returning to its normal position. Then, without another word she turns on her heel and walks away.
"Lena."
"Here's another one for you: fuck off." There was a time when talking to her was easy.
"Lena." Tim jogs to catch up. He almost puts a hand on her arm to slow her down but common sense stops him. "Goddammit, it was a fucking joke!"
She comes to such an abrupt stop that Tim nearly trips into her and says in a tightly clipped voice that could freeze ice, "Is this supposed to make me feel better or something?"
"Yes."
The only parts of her face she isn't quite able to control are her eyes and the corners of her mouth. Her eyes squint and widen, brows pulling in, and the corners of her mouth twitch every now and then, and when that happens Lena looks away. Tim finds himself grasping again for a distraction, this time putting a little more thought into the words before he lets them out of his mouth.
"What are you carrying anyways?" He tries to say it nicely.
Lena doesn't say anything at all, just carefully takes out the gun, checks the safety, and passes it over grip first.
"Well at least you picked a decent weapon." He tries to say that nicely too. It's a Glock 19, effective but compact, good for someone her size.
"That's the one I learned on," she says after a moment.
"You mean…" Tim holds it up for a closer look. It's the one he'd given her back in Bagram. "You took it?" Then, hoping the ice under his feet holds, "Isn't stealing government property a crime?"
"Yeah, I guess it is." Then, "Don't tell anyone." Tim smiles for real for the first time that day.
"Gonna steal me some whiskey from a general to buy my silence?" He wonders if it's a good idea to be bringing up old jokes.
When it gets a small huff and something that could be construed as a smile out of her, he decides it couldn't have been too bad an idea.
"I don't know of any generals around here. And by the way," she continues, "you could have at least showed me how to clean one. Or told me that you had to clean it every time you used it. The girl at the gun shop gave me a terribly dirty look when I brought it in, like it was a puppy I was abusing. I'm pretty sure she charged me extra to fix it out of spite." He laughs for the first time that day too.
"I'm surprised you didn't just get a new one."
"I like this one," she says, affronted, taking it back from him. But there's a twitch of a smile, so he doesn't mind the bite. "Besides, I work for the government, so it's not technically stealing."
"So you do work for Uncle Sam."
"Yes." That's clearly all the answer he'll be getting this evening, so instead of trying to pry loose a tooth that's not ready to come out, he changes the subject. "So, we're having barbecue tonight?"
"Sayeed –" Lena looks down at her empty hands. "Gosh…dang it."
"I know a place that's pretty decent if you want to try it."
"Argh," Lena sighs, "yeah sure." She tucks her stolen Glock back in her purse and digs out her keys.
"Can I drive?" Tim had been looking at the car, and the comment slips out onto thin ice.
A well-arched brow arches further. "You gonna let me shoot your rifle?"
He stays silent, pondering.
"Yeah, that's what I thought. Get in. You're riding bitch."
"Hey, no swearing."
"Shut up, Deputy."
Note: That DI quote about flip-flops is something I would love to take credit for, but I can't (found it on reddit).