Tim awkwardly lifted his leg off its comfortable perch, a pillow on a small stack of boxes right next to his desk, positioned his crutches and heaved himself to his feet. Damn. Okay he was milking his injury a little, but that really hurt. Five days since Raylan had pulled him out of that bathtub, and he thought that his leg should be feeling better than it was.

After the big rescue, for the first day Tim slept, vaguely aware that there was someone there every time he surfaced but the someone said nothing, just patted his hand in a soothing manner, so Tim just drifted back under. The next day he woke, a bit fuzzy and bleary but otherwise functioning. The first thing his eyes focused on was a pair of cowboy boots, Tony Lama, long, lanky legs covered in skinny Levis. Tim turned his head, Raylan was sleeping, if you could call it that in a nasty looking plastic chair, elbow on the arm, chin on his hand, and his faithful hat slanted forward shielding the light from his eyes.

They were friends 'n' all, but bed-side vigils? It wasn't the work of genius to tell that Raylan had been there all night. Tim peered at the shirt, vague memories of the blue and magenta check up close and personal. Hmmmm. More than a night.

And that was just the beginning. By the time Tim was awake and ready to get out of there, it was obvious to him that Raylan Givens was on a serious guilt trip. The full tour, with added optional extras. He graciously accepted the ride home, although the self-invitation to stay to help Tim out seemed a bit over anxious, but one look at Raylan's expression and Tim accepted that too.

Two fried chicken dinners and a tub of vanilla ice-cream later, and Tim was no nearer working out what exactly the problem was.

Two days of Raylan's 'nursing' skills, and Tim was more than ready to go back to work, even with Givens perched at his shoulder like a disconsolate raven about to cry Nevermore. Tim could just about bear weight on his leg, but there was something curiously entertaining about spinning it out just a little. After all the crap that Raylan had pulled in the eighteen months or so that they had known each other, it seemed wholly justified.

So, having heaved himself upright, aware that Raylan had put the file down that he was pretending to be engrossed in and was practically quivering like a greyhound after a rabbit, Tim commenced the slow, painful and, he had to admit, slightly pitiful limp to the bathroom.

Rachel followed Tim's slow progress across the office floor, then turned her concerned gaze to his anxious partner. Art paused by her desk with a file, "Raylan does know that Tim isn't really that sick?"

Rachel nodded, "but there's knowing and then there's knowing, and Raylan… well…" she trailed off.

Art had that look on his face again, shrewd, assessing, and Rachel knew she was about to be in receipt of one of Art's homespun pieces of wisdom so she was surprised when Art said, "he's not shooting anybody, so these next few days should be mighty restful."

True. Raylan was not shooting anybody, but he was anxious and tense in a way that Rachel hadn't seen him before. She knew that couldn't be good. But getting Raylan to open up about anything, well, she'd seen clams with less clam than Raylan Givens.

Rachel opened the file that Art dropped in her in-tray and contemplated the twin problems of Mr Cody Teed, drug dealer and all round idiot, and Raylan Givens, Deputy Marshal and pain in the ass. This was Rachel's third dance with the pathetic Mr Teed, he repeated on her roughly every ten months or so.

Cody Teed was young, as dumb as a box of rocks, and didn't even appear to possess sufficient smarts to stay out of trouble for a year at a time. That Rachel had to go looking for his scrawny ass three times in the three years since they had first met irritated her. She raised her eyes from the file and stared across the bullpen to Raylan, she figured Tim was still in the bathroom because Raylan was fidgeting, flicking glances at the door which were anything but casual and looking as though he was about to throw up.

Rachel quietly buried her own ego. Now was not the time for pride, besides it would be good for Raylan to share her pain. Cody Teed on a Friday was just wrong. So Raylan was coming with her, call it misery loves company.

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Tim sat on the stool in the disabled toilet, and stared at his injured leg. Unable to get his regular pants on, he was wearing track warm-ups with the snaps undone to accommodate the heavy bandage which ran from above his knee to mid calf. The wound had been thoroughly cleaned, stitched and the doctor had said it would heal by itself. Six days since he stepped in the trap, and he would have expected the pain to have subsided more than it had. He looked at the bottle of pain pills in his hand, he really didn't want to pop another, they might kill the pain but they made him feel lethargic and depressed.

Damn. He shoved the pill bottle back into his pocket, set his crutches and heaved himself to his feet, the crutches were doing quite a lot for his upper body strength, good thing, since visiting the gym was out of the question.

Maybe he had been hamming it up a little for Raylan's benefit, but that didn't mean that the pain wasn't real. Tim forced himself to put his foot down. The pain that twanged his knee cap as he extended his leg was nothing to the jolt that came when he put weight on it. But Tim was tough, so he clamped down fiercely on the urge to scream and did it again. All the way back to his desk.

He was shaking, and his palms were slippery with sweat by the time he reached his seat. He sat down, glanced across and saw that Raylan was gone. Uncertain whether to be sorry or not, he looked down, the file he was working on had a small pink heart-shaped post it note that declared, in Rachel's handwriting, that she had gone out and taken Raylan with her and they would be back to take Tim home.

Tim had never really considered Rachel as the heart-shaped post it note kind of woman, but under the circumstances… He sat up a little straighter, damn… no idea where that thought was going but nowhere good. He could almost hear Raylan, just keep taking the tablets. Well taking the tablets was making him miserable, and not taking the tablets was apparently sending him loopy.

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Rachel was starting to wish that she hadn't felt sorry for Raylan Givens. Or at least sorry enough to drag him away from his rather disturbing vigil over Tim's injury. It was definitely past time to make him realize that what happened was never his fault.

"Y'do know that what happened to Tim, wasn't y'fault? Don't you?" She emphasized the don't you…

"huh." He had tilted his hat forward, and was now hiding under the brim, but the brief glimpse she got of his eyes, she had never seen Raylan actually miserable before. Like the weight of the world was on his shoulders.

"Raylan, it was just bad luck." She persisted. "You do know that."

"Rache…" he tilted his hat back, his eyes still downcast and miserable, "it was my fault that I wasn't there."

"And what would have happened if she had trapped both of you? Or you instead of Tim? How do you think that the outcome would have been any different?"

"You didn't see him." Raylan's unhappy sounding reply. "In that bathtub. I thought he was dead for a moment. And I had put him there, because I was pissed that the plan was a mess and we missed the idiot we were actually after."

"So we got him the next day. And Tim is going to be fine."

"It's the first time I've nearly killed one of my own." Raylan said doggedly.

Rachel sighed. Raylan didn't do this angst thing, there was something else at the back of it, and the chances of worming it out of him were almost zero at that point. She had to find another opening.

She changed the subject. "Mr Cody Teed…"