I do not own the characters or anything from the show. They all belong to the creators of Justified and Elmore Leonard. That statement applies to all chapters.
I hope some of you will like it
Preface
Before I get to the actual story I would like to do some calculations (they have been done once already – it the Something about Tim story) – because of what I understood from Justified, Tim was the youngest in the office when the show started. Therefore I believe he was younger than the actor portraying him (Jacob Pitts was born in 1979).
I did some research (on official military websites, some forums and official website of US Marshal service), took some assumptions and calculated.
Bear with me. We will start at the begging of the show (2010) – I've read somewhere that Tim was in the office for about 9 months.
Assumption nr 1 – Tim ended up in Lexington office straight out of US Marshals Academy. Training takes 18 weeks (a little over 4 months).
Assumption nr 2 – Tim's last deployment ended with him hurt and a medical discharge – so let's say 4 month overseas and around 2 months of recovery (back to the full of his physical capabilities).
Assumption nr 3 – he did 2 tours of duty before that, both 15 months with 6 months in between.
Army Basic Training lasts 10 weeks (70 days), Army Rangers course is 61 days.
To become a Sniper you go to a 29-day course.
That sums up to 158 days (approximately 22 weeks, which is a little over 5 months).
Now on to the calculations:
Military training combined gives a little over 5 months.
Service time combined sums up to around 4,5 years
US Marshals Academy – 4 months
9 months in the Lexington office before episode 1.
That gives us 6 years in total, let's maybe add some time in between here and there, required breaks between tours, therapy etc. So that would give us around 7-8 years – let's say 8.
Assumption nr 4 – Tim enlisted at 18.
2010 minus the calculated 8 and we know that Tim was 18 in 2002 (that would make sense, seeing as 9/11 happened in 2001 and that event could prompt him to enlist).
And from those calculation it follows that Tim was born in 1984.
Now let's start with the story…