Chapter 19

He thought this was over. He thought he got away. He thought somehow that he'd prevailed, found a chance to escape. He's certain he remembers a hospital, the fingers healed, but he can feel them broken and throbbing. He knows there's no chance he could fight his way clear, not in the condition they've left him, not when they have him balled up tight, taped so securely to the chair and restricting his world to futile and minuscule and pathetic struggles, impotent growls. He lets one go and hears a voice mocking his efforts. Despair hits hard and a sob slips out. He never cried in front them. It's a small and stupid thing to hold on to but it's something. He never cried. And he never gave them what they wanted. Or did he? But he's sure he remembers being in a hospital bed; he remembers a life after. Or is that just wishing? They've made him feel so powerless. He rubs hard at his face wanting to take off the mask of weakness that they've put on him. But something haunts him while he tries to erase what's there, the idea that maybe it's not a mask and he's rubbing himself raw trying to get at what he thought he was. What if he was never that at all? What if this is what he is?

He growls again. This can't be real. Let it end. He turns his broken fingers into fists and pounds them against the pavement he's sitting on. Let it end.

"Tim?"

"Fuck you." Stupid, futile, weak. Just words. He thought he was more than this.

"Tim, Jesus, don't hurt yourself. There're enough people willing to do that for you."

Someone grabs his arms and holds them.

"I can handle grumpy Tim, snarky Tim, cold calculating Tim…,"

Maybe he should tell them where Sandoval is. Maybe he should just give in, admit that he can't do this anymore, that he's too much of a fucking pussy to take one more blow. He's crying now. And he tells himself he never cries.

"…smug Tim, drunk Tim, tired Tim...,"

Fucking somebody come help me.

"…but complete meltdown Tim, I don't know what to do with that. You're going to have to help me out here. What's going on, buddy?"

Help me, please, somebody.

Raylan sighs loudly, takes hold of Tim by the front of his jacket and heaves him onto his feet with a groan for the effort, gives him a shake. "Hey! Snap out of it. You're alright." There's no response. Raylan steadies him against the wall with his left hand and searches Tim's pockets with his right for keys. "I don't want to be out here with you like this if those idiots decide to circle the block. Dammit, where're your keys?"

He grabs Raylan with both hands and struggles against him. Raylan lets go and Tim nearly drags him back to the ground when his knees buckle again and he collapses.

"Tim, let go!"

He releases his hold and protects his head with his arms.

Raylan straightens up, breathing hard. He stares at Tim then throws both hands out in defeat and walks to the front corner of the house to see if Ogden's friends are coming around for a second pass. The street's empty. He returns and looms over the crumpled figure by the door.

"Shit." A different tactic. He crouches and starts talking, his voice conversational, calm. "I've been doing some thinking about what happened. I think they left you alive because they never intended it to go as far as it did. People get caught up in it – momentum, mob mentality. Call it what you want. If it really was personal then they probably weren't pros. Murder was too big a step. They probably figured you'd cave with the first show of violence. Shit, Tim, who wouldn't? Why did you hold out? You got some seriously skewed moral compass, buddy. A bit too rigid. The world don't work that way – black and white, right and wrong. I had you pegged as the kind of guy who knew that." Raylan stands again just to straighten his legs, walks to the corner of the house for another look then back. He stays standing this time. "Maybe that's how you got through being in a war, you and your bulletproof code of conduct. I dunno, maybe it helped somehow. By the way, it's oddly reassuring to see you crying. I wondered if there was something wrong with your tear ducts, some chemical agent damage from your time in the military."

He's crying still, his hands wet with it. He didn't cry in that room, didn't really cry in the hospital either. The memory comes again, waking to a beep and a drip, thinking he needs someone to talk to.

That happened.

He remembers more – Rachel, a game of cards with Cecilia Rose, Nelson, Evelyn. Evelyn. She can't be real. Beautiful Evelyn. Too beautiful for this world. That night at her house. That was ugly. That was of this world. He rubs his left hand over the knuckles on his right, scabs reopened and oozing. Those wounds are real.

With effort he herds his memories into some sort of order and leads his mind back to now. There's no tape. There's no chair. He runs his fingers through his hair – they work just fine. He wipes a sleeve across his face, makes another pass with the other sleeve.

"I can stand here all night if that's your plan, trying to wear me down so I won't come in and drink up the rest of your beer."

Damned if it's Raylan's voice he's hearing. Fucking Raylan. He opens his eyes wondering which reality he'll be facing. He recognizes the boots. "Raylan."

"Well, hallelujah." Raylan tries again, takes hold of Tim and heaves him to his feet. "Who the hell else would be lurking around your place at this hour? What's wrong with you?"

The disorientation is overwhelming. He's beside his house, on his driveway. Maybe it never happened. He closes his eyes and sees an angry face – Derek Hutter. Derek Hutter. How does he know his name? How would he know that face if it never happened?

"Tim. Keys."

He opens his eyes again and stares at Raylan. "How did you find me?"

"You live here. Wasn't hard. Are you alright? Have you been drinking?"

He looks past Raylan and focuses on his truck in the driveway, then the cedar hedge. His head drops back against the wall and he realizes it's a dark sky up there between the houses, not a low ceiling between walls. He's standing. "I didn't tell them," he says and takes a deep breath in. "I didn't tell them." He wipes a sleeve across his face again to catch the salty stragglers that are giving him away. "Fuck." The word catches in his throat and his breath spasms and he starts sinking under the weight of unchecked memories and neglected emotions.

Raylan hauls him to his feet a third time. "No, no, no. You can sit down inside. Feet on the ground, now. C'mon Tim, help me out here. Keys."

Tim fumbles in his pocket. There's a hole in the lining. He's been meaning to sew it up but he never thinks about it until he's lost something through it and has to chase it. He slips his fingers past the tear and they hit metal and he grasps at it and pulls out his keys. He tries blindly to put them into Raylan's hand, his eyes focused somewhere else. He's feeling uneasy out here on his driveway. He hates not having a weapon. Where's his gun?

When Raylan finally gets hold of the keys, Tim opens his hand, palm up, says, "I need a gun."

"Now that's a Tim I can deal with – give-me-a-goddamn-gun Tim. But I'm not giving you back your goddamn gun, not till we're inside and you're acting a bit more normal." Raylan unlocks the door and supports him through it into the kitchen and onto a chair. "Christ, I'm gonna shoot Nelson next chance I get." He turns away and opens a cupboard. "I need a drink. You can have one too if you want, but don't say yes just to be courteous thinking I need the company."

The anger comes suddenly, roaring in like a tsunami after an earthquake, out of the sea of emotions that he's been trying to keep in check. It drowns out Raylan, demolishes everything in its path, pushing through the civilized structures built up in his world and dragging it all in a rampage of debris through his thoughts, physically into his body. He destroys a chair with a wall in a frenzy of release, lets loose with a scream of rage with the first contact of wood and plaster. It was a solid chair, now there are bits on the floor and a hole in the wall.

He drops the splinter of lumber he's still holding, grips another chair, lifts the two back legs off the floor, his breathing ragged. He yells again, a primal and inarticulate outcry of anger and loss.

Raylan watches silently.

He releases his grip on the chair, takes a last wipe at his face, wet again, turns and walks from the kitchen into the front room and drops heavily onto the sofa. He lets his head fall back, crosses both arms up over his eyes trying to hide. With them closed he's back in the room. A lash of despair. He jerks his head up, his eyes open, and wraps his arms tightly around his chest and stares at the wall across from him.

Raylan follows with two glasses and some whiskey. He stands holding them casually, like he was born with a liquor bottle in his hand. He watches Tim. He chews on his bottom lip, the only evidence that he's at all disturbed by the destructive outburst. "If you need a hug," he says, "I can call Rachel. But I ain't giving you a hug."

"I don't need a fucking hug."

"Well, that's a relief." Raylan holds up the bottle he found in the kitchen, eyes the label curiously. "It seems we drank up your supply of bourbon this week. This is all there is left. You need to get your ass to a liquor store. Isn't there one, like, just around the corner?"

Tim looks blankly at Raylan, looks away again and leans forward with his head in his hands, elbows on knees. Breathe in, breathe out – he repeats the four words until he can get through it five consecutive times without being dragged back down into a whirlpool of anger and desperation. His face creases again as he touches on the last. He tries to remember himself before all this. "I fucking hate it."

"Hate what?"

"That they could fucking do this." He yells it, buries the heels of his palms into his eyes and digs his fingers into his hair, holds tightly until his vision is a kaleidoscope of colors that washes over all other images.

"Do what?"

He doesn't answer the question. He can't talk about it with Raylan. He can't talk about it with anybody. He doesn't know how.

"The day you realize that someone can shit all over you and that you can't do anything about it, that's a hard day." Raylan's discomfort is more obvious now - he shifts his weight from one leg to the other, shifts his eyes to look directly at Tim for only a second but it's long enough to reveal a hint of personal history. "Especially hard if you're in it alone. Sometimes I think Arlo might not've had such a hold over me if I'd had a brother to share that asshole with."

Raylan unwittingly gives Tim the opportunity he needs to put the mask of his choosing back in place. "So it's you needs a hug." He wants to sound sarcastic but his voice is too exhausted to have any bite and it comes across as sympathetic instead.

"I already told you, I ain't giving you a hug, or accepting one, but I will facilitate a solution and get Rachel here. Or maybe Miss Zoe. Thinking on it, I'm not entirely sure Rachel does hugs either."

"Fuck."

"What?"

"Just imagining a hug from you and I can feel a need for therapy."

"They'd just tell you you need a hug."

"What I need," he says slowly, "is to go down to Las Cruces and fuck somebody up."

"Who exactly?"

"Taylor for a start."

"That I can help you with," says Raylan. He tips the bottle he's still holding in Tim's direction and grins. "Vengeful Tim – now that Tim I can relate to."

Tim tries and fails at a cheeky head tilt, notices finally the bottle that Raylan is still holding. "Since when do you drink Jameson?"

"When it's all there is. Since when do you drink Jameson?"

"When I'm with the guys."

Raylan's no wiser.

"It's a Ranger thing," says Tim as explanation.

"A Ranger thing?"

He nods.

"Why?"

He shrugs. "Fuck if I know. Tradition, I guess."

"Like hooah?"

"We never say that anymore." The 'we' is spoken out of habit and longing.

"Why not?"

"It's old."

"Maybe Jameson's old."

"Nope, not yet."

"How do you know?"

"Got buddies still in."

Raylan wags the bottle. "Well, if it's alright with you, I'm gonna break tradition."

"Jesus Christ, Raylan." The conversation, the explanations, they're exhausting. "Just fucking pour," he says without a trace of rancor. "You talk too much."

The response releases Raylan from the odd role he's taken on tonight. He grins relief, sits in the chair opposite, pours and passes Tim a glass. "You alright then?"

Tim wets his lips and takes a sip, then a gulp. He can't answer that question either – he doesn't know.

Raylan talks to fill the space. "Speaking of Rangers, you must've had situations where you were handed a truckload of shit and couldn't do squat about it while you were over there." He waves the bottle he's still holding in a roughly easterly direction.

By 'over there' Tim presumes Raylan means Afghanistan. Without doubt there were moments when he felt as desperately powerless, supported on either side by those where he felt all-powerful. One incident hacks it way out from his memories and he pushes it back down quickly before it can clear a space to set up camp in his head – he can't deal with that tonight – but the glimpse makes him realize something. "It was different." Sure shit was always happening but there was always a guy right next to you who was in the same shit. Tim turns to look for the camaraderie in the empty seat beside him. It was different, he thinks, you just had to share a look. Battle buddies. You didn't have to explain anything. "We'd come home and drink." He lifts his eyebrows to pretend it's nothing. "Wash it all downstream."

Raylan twitches like he's going to set down the bottle finally but stops, chews his lip again. "Look, you wanna talk about it, I'll listen."

"You wanna talk about Arlo?" He doesn't ask nicely and it resets the tone of the conversation.

"And then there's asshole Tim. That's a Tim I'm used to."

Tim doesn't take the bait. "They had to come at me on my fucking driveway. What is it about my driveway? Maybe I'll dig it up and plant a bunch of thistles and thorn bushes."

"I suspect they figured they were being clever. Probably heard the story about what happened and decided to fuck with you."

"Assholes."

"Stupid assholes coming at you like that. I held back a spell, hoping you'd shoot them."

"What were you doing here anyway? Nelson put you up to this?"

"It was the only way I could get him to stop nagging. He was worrying like a mother hen. I told him I'd keep an eye on you." Raylan tops up their glasses generously, sits back and sets the bottle on his leg.

"I was dealing with them."

"Yes, you were, and nicely done too. It's what you're not dealing with that's gonna get you."

Tim reaches out to Raylan, his arms wide. "Gimme a hug."

Raylan huffs, drains his glass and tops it up.

Tim holds his empty glass out for a refill. "That's the thing with opening a bottle of Jameson, you have to finish it."

"More tradition?"

"No, more like 'in my experience.'"

There's little talking while they get to work on the task of emptying the bottle. Limbs and eyelids get heavy and Raylan is drifting off when Tim slurs out, "Seriously, I need to get to Las Cruces somehow without anyone knowing."

Raylan speaks with his eyes still closed. "So when are we going?"

"We'd have to drive. Flying involves identification."

Raylan is on repeat. "So when are we going?"

"It's a long drive."

"What - twenty hours or so?"

"'Bout that."

"We could do it over a weekend if we trade off at the wheel. What d'you have in mind?"

Tim thinks about what's being offered. He'd like to leave now but he doesn't have a plan, not yet. Each new piece of information that sheds light on the events changes his ideas of retribution, each new insight into his own feelings and the feelings of the people around him that have some influence, force a reevaluation. All he's sure of is that someone else has to hurt to balance things out. It has to happen, just like tonight had to happen.

Something Raylan said outside comes back to him, pulls him from his thoughts and screws up his face. "You got a bet going on me at the office?"

"Yep. Everyone's in…except Rachel. We didn't ask Art and I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention it to him. I don't think he'd look favorably on it."

"What's the bet?"

"When you'd finally crack, or if."

Oddly, it doesn't disturb him. If it were somebody else, he'd have organized it. "Are you gonna tell them about…" He moves his glass in a haphazard circle, encompassing the whole of a shitty night.

"And lose my five bucks? Do you see that happening?"

Tim struggles to his feet, stands swaying. "You can have the sofa. I'll get you a blanket." He takes the empty bottle to the kitchen on his way.

Raylan stumbles across to the sofa and stretches out. A blanket lands with a thud on his chest followed by a pillow. "You know," he says as he kicks off his boots and gets comfortable, "if you'd given him up, there'd have been some evidence that they'd gone to the house where you had him. We still had a uniform on the street in front, a wait and see."

Tim thinks about that, nods slowly. It makes sense.

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it."

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Author's note: New Radiohead! Woot! Happy, happy day! (Sorry, overexcited.)