tinstar | Slingin' from the hip, never the heart.

There’s no hitch to the lie, it makes perfect sense, and she doesn’t have a reason to question it. She hasn’t actually seen him around this woman yet, and she has seen him around a lot of women who thought they were more subtle than gen z is worldly.

She climbs back onto the stool.

“I know you will,” she says softly. She can’t help remembering her own accusation and the look on his face right after she said it. If you wanted me here you’d find a way to keep me safe.

She’d meant it. She also just knew it would hurt.

“You always do.”

"Well that's somethin'." Good job future him, he supposes. Always good to know he hasn't lost his edge. With one more steely glance towards the door, Raylan goes back to checking off boxes as he rubbernecks the stacks being set inside the bar, oblivious to the drama of the beefy dude flexing for no reason.

He finishes with the incoming inventory quickly and signs off on the invoice, sending the deliver man off. Raylan lifts a finger to Willa as he lets the unmoored door close behind him.

"Five minutes, lemme go get dressed, make a call and we're leavin'."

He was a prompt man and five minutes later, he was trotting back down the stairs, now dressed in a button down shirt that wasn't done up, his gun, badge, hat.. Everything that Willa would find familiar about him.

"Let's hit bricks."

It’s reassuring. All the ways this Raylan and her-dad-Raylan are alike. She’s quiet, she goes where she’s told, and she buckles up without prompting

She’s scared, if she’s honest. Scared he doesn’t believe her and she’s about to go to a doctor or a social worker.

“What are you gonna tell people?”

"I don't know yet. But whatever I say, go with it." It would be better that way. WITSEC was always a good option; no one questioned that. He hadn't decided yet.

His driving hadn't changed at all, though he was, perhaps, a little more attentive to his mirrors. Never could tell if an asshole was going to make a stupid decision today or not. More often than not, they did and his backhairs were already up.

He glances over at her. "Are you really her?"

Go with it. For a moment, her lips pinch into annoyance, and her eyes narrow.

For once in your life, just say 'yes dad.'

"...Okay."

She looks out the window, missing his glance but turning back when she hears his question.

"Yeah," she says, quietly. Willa looks back out the window. "I don't have any idea how I'm here, but I'm her."

He didn't know how deep of a fight he gets to skip with Willa's 'okay' but he was grateful for the capitulation.

Of course, some part of Raylan would stay suspicious about all this until the core of him felt it was proven. Still, the rest of him caved to the tug of emotions. She was his daughter. Look at how big she'd gotten. How tall. Brave to have not cried already. Sure as shit looking better than he did at fifteen.

He lets the silence sit between them until he rolls into the Courthouse parking lot, throwing the car into park and taking out his keys, but not quite getting out of the car yet.

"We'll go for lunch in a few hours if nothin' gets in the way. I can.. call Winona in the mean time."

She'd been studying the courthouse as they pulled in, memorizing every detail she could in case she wakes up on the plane again.

When he says he'll call her mom, Willa tenses. She doesn't think her mother would react any worse than her dad, really. She has no reason to think that. But there's always an edge of judgement in her mother that she never feels from him.

"What d'you think she'll say?"

"Honestly kiddo, it's anyone's guess. C'mon." Raylan opens his door, slides out of the car and starts ambling towards the Marshal's entrance, glancing back to make sure she's keeping up with him so he can lock the car with the remote, the reassuring beep beep sounding behind them.

He opens the door for her and follows her in. The first guard they see, standing at the end of the short hall next to a metal detector and an xray machine.

"Well hey Marshal!" the guard says in greeting. An older man with a bit of a beer gut and a friendly kind of smile, he turns the same harmless energy on Willa, with a- "And little Willa!" he gestures them through. "Been a while since we've seen you around here, you havin' a fun day with your dad?"

Raylan was openly shocked. What??

Kiddo, he says, and there's something incredibly comforting about his nicknames being the same even now. If she was willing to completely let go of her dignity, she might have tried to take his hand, but she's too proud. Too proud and too scared that he might not want to take hers.

Her head is still on a swivel as they walk inside, even though it's yet another courthouse. She snaps to when the guard says her name though, asks her that, and she's just as shocked as Raylan.

At the guard's concern, she tries to pull her head together. "Um. Yeah."

She sort-of-laughs. "How long has it even been?"

She's still her father's daughter.

A very good question and one Raylan was eager to hear the answer to. With light fingers, he urges Willa through the machine and to the other side, where he stands next to her with one hand cocked up on his hip.

"A couple of years, I think. That right Raylan?"

Raylan stares for a long second, face pinching in slightly. "Yeah, Don. Couple of years sounds about right."

Don continues on, talking about how cute she'd been but that he shouldn't keep them from their day and it was a pleasure seeing her around again. Raylan nods his head a little, with a soft thanks as he leads Willa away.

"Okay, now I'm really lost," he murmurs to her as they head towards the elevators. A door opens as soon as Raylan hits the button, and he shuffles her in, stopping someone who was trying to join them. "Protected travel, catch the next one."

Everyone in the courthouse was used to that kind of thing, so it wasn't a problem, but Raylan turns to look at Willa with a little bit of a wild look in his eyes.

"Is any part of this makin' any sense to you?"

"I've never been here before. You don't even talk about Kentucky." She's as mystified as he is.

Willa follows him into the offices, wondering if she'll recognize any faces or names. She's heard of Art Mullins, mostly secondhand from her mom or Raylan's current Miami coworkers, now and then.

What she doesn't expect is for the pretty Black woman with a desk in the same cubicle as Raylan's to smile at her in open welcome. "Hey, Willa. We heard you were coming back to town. Here to stay this time?"

She opens her mouth. Closes her mouth. And looks up at her dad, mystified.

Once he gets out of here, he maintains there's simply no need. Nothing for anyone he loves here, nothing for him. To hell with the past, and it's ghosts.

Raylan keeps his painfully confused look as they step into the offices and it doesn't change with Rachel's greeting. So it's not just Don. He had to wonder if Winona would know too, like some big cosmic joke was being played on him and Willa. He needed to make that call.

"For a couple days at least, Rachel," he answers, supplying her name for Willa's sake only. "We haven't really decided the rest yet - Can you-" He gestures at Willa with a finger and Rachel nods, setting down her pen and leaning back in her chair. Raylan gestures towards his desk at Willa and starts to walk away with - "Won't take me but a minute-" as he pulls his blackberry out of his inside jacket pocket. Stepping into the conference room, Raylan keeps half an eye on Willa as he dials up Winona's number and listens to the ringing.

Willa makes a noise of protestation over being given a babysitter when he's not even leaving the building and Rachel grins. "Come on, I'll show you my nephew's favorite gag when he visits me."

Winona picks up after the fourth ring, with unsettled baby noises close to the receiver. "Yeah, Raylan, what is it?"

Ah. He could tell she wasn't in a great mood. The fussing was about right - Never stops bitching, Winona had once said, exhausted from days of it, and he still couldn't help but wonder if soemthing was wrong with Willa to make her cry that much. Winona assured him she had it under control, thank you, and to mind his own business about it.

"I got somethin' real weird to ask you."

"Okay?" 'Get on with it then'.

"You've.. Everythin' alright there?"

"Well Willa hasn't slept in what feels like four days, I can't find anyone to watch her during book club for this whole month and we were supposed to be out the door to go to Gayle's a half hour ago, but I can't set her down without hearin' all kinds of hell about it, so if you've got somethin' to ask me, please get on with it."

He took and let a deep breath. "I-I got a girl in the office here, showed up at my apartment this mornin'. Out of my apartment this morning. Say's she's Willa. 15 years old."

Maybe he just needed to hear from someone else that this was crazy. That he was crazy.

"What?" She's distracted, yeah, but there's something in her tone that says she's clearly not truly hearing him, either. "Raylan, what on earth are you talking about. Someone named Willa broke into your apartment?"

Willa herself is pretending to look for fugitives to offer Raylan as possible date options. But as soon as Rachel gets called away by someone--someone else who knows Willa's name--she's looking up Clement Mansell. And trying to print what comes up before anyone comes back.

"Yeah, I guess.." It sounded stupid when he said it all out loud. He knew that.

"Okay? And? You know what to do with kids. Find someone in the office to call CPS, let them handle her."

"Winona, she knows stuff. Specific type stuff that I find it hard to believe would be a research packet for a fifteen year old girl. She-.. " He sighs out his nose and looks back over to see Willa behind his desk and typeing away.

He knocks on the window to get her attention and shakes his head. Don't do that.

"Shit, Winona, she looks like us."

"Okay. Take a picture. Then send her to CPS."

The background fussing turns into crying. "Look, I need to take care of the real Willa. Was this it?"

Willa looks up at the knocking on the glass, eyes huge with innocence as she takes her hands off the keyboard. She already got what she wanted. Maybe he'll look away long enough for her to close the search page without him noticing her move the mouse. ...Then she just has to be sneaky about getting the paperwork off the printer. And hide it somewhere until she has a chance to give it a proper look.

Edited 2023-08-14 01:11 (UTC)

Satisfied with Willa's drawback and irritated by Winona's dismissal of it all, Raylan sighs as he paces away from the door.

"I don't think you're understandin' me here - everyone at the courthouse says they know her. Acts like they know her. It's.. weird."

Winona sighs back at him. "Raylan, really, I don't know what else to tell you okay? Willa and I have got actual problems here. We're late already. I'm hanging up now."

"Winona-" But she'd done just what she promised and he was left with a dead line. He frowns at his phone for a long second and bites his lip as he looks back towards the rest of the office. Guess he really was dealing with this on his own. Shit.

He needed another long minute by himself before he was sauntering back out to the open room of the office, eyes sweeping over towards his desk first.

Willa... is not there. She's on her way back there from the printer, studying the papers in her hand. It's a lot of pages already.

She almost runs into her dad. Starts to apologize. Then realizes who she crashed into. "Uh."

With a large stab of panic and a glance around him, he doesn't expect her to be coming from that direction. Hands spread as if to catch her, always polite to make sure you're not knocking people over, he frowns at her and the small stack of papers in her hands.

Now he had reason to be suspicious.

"What are you up to?" A hand is held out. Turn 'em over.

Fuck, she thinks, emphatically. Her lips purse in annoyance and chagrin, she hesitates, and then holds out the paperwork. It's Clement Mansell's file, with the addition of his last known.

"I was just curious."

Better that she gives it over than him having to grab it. He takes them and starts looking them over.

"Clement Mansell, who-"

Rachel looks up from her desk and the call she's on.

"Raylan? I got Harlan PD on the line. They're askin' for you."

Raylan glances over his shoulders, lips tight in open annoyance before he looks back at Willa. "We'll talk about this later."

Striding over, he takes the phone. "Givens." His expression gets darker, the longer he's on the phone.

"Is there a reason I'm still solvin' your problems?" A beat. "Yeah, and ain't I just fuckin' lucky for it." He sighs as he hands the phone back to Rachel, looking over at Willa.

"We're gettin' back on the road. C'mon."

Saved by The Call. That's a new one. Harlan PD, Rachel had said. They're getting back on the road?

Willa trots over to him, sticking close until they're in the elevator and the doors are closed. "Harlan? We're going to Harlan?"

"Unfortunately." His face suggested he was less than pleased about it.

"Apparently, someone decided to go skydiving without a parachute and someone's broken into the house. Unrelated, I'm assuming. Tim and Art will meet us down there."

Raylan leads them back out and to his car, stride unforgiving as he fidgets with the horseshoe ring on his finger, papers still caught up in the left. He doesn't say anything as he turns the engine over and pulls them out of the lot.

Edited 2023-08-14 02:24 (UTC)

Okay. That's... right, sure. She'll figure that one out on the way.

She has to jog to keep up with him through the building then the parking lot. The whole time she's cycling through the questions she's built up over the years, trying to decide which to start with.

"Whose house got broken into, did the guy go through the roof? Can we go to your old house while we're there? Who's Tim? Does he live down there?"

She climbs into the car, buckling up as her dad tosses the file onto the dashboard. Willa doesn't think she can reach it from here.

Slingin' from the hip, never the heart. | Open Post

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