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

Having settled in one of the porch chairs behind him, Raylan left one long leg angled out with the other serving as a shelf for the bottom of his cup that he turned idly as he enjoyed the quiet. So much of life was chaos and noise, giving a delightful sense of contrast sometimes, when self loathing didn't ruin it.

Raylan had lifted his chin at the first question, humming a soft passing note of permission, not that Doc really needed it, and lifted his eyebrows a little at the second.

"No. Serial killers murder for fun or some twisted, broken selfish reason. Take joy in it. Every man and the one woman I put down.. They were all justified, every bullet. Doesn't make me a serial killer.. though the argument for murderer still remains. Onna Arlo's favorites. For all he's done, he's never murdered someone." Arlo did love lording that over him.

"Don't know that murderer bothers me so much sometimes. Better I stop 'em then lettin' more people get hurt." He'd ask what prompted the question, but he also knew that Doc might get around to that explanation himself. "I imagine you've shot a few people, considerin'. You find it to be any different?"

Yeah so what if they tempted their own damnation for the greater good? Raylan would rather carry the unsure weight of it around then leave it on narrower, younger shoulders or innocent ones.

Justified. What does that even mean? Surely everyone believes that what they are doing is justified. They wouldn't be doing it otherwise. And who is to say that shooting people who hurt others is not some twisted, broken, selfish reason to justify pulling the trigger to oneself?

"I have killed a few people, yes. It does not keep me up at night." For Doc carries a lot of trauma with him, and there are many nights where he is kept awake or startled awake, but it is never because of the lives he has taken. What that says about him, he does not know.

"Who is Arlo?"

What people believed and what the US Government believed was very often at odds and for all the wild west vibe that people got off him and his hat, Raylan was beholden to the Marshals Service and ~~most~~ of the rules they followed. It was half of the power hammer he wielded.

"My daddy." He wasn't going to elaborate on why he called Arlo by his first name; he was sure a smart guy like Doc could figure it out.

"Where's this serial killer question comin' from?" His brow pinched a little as he focused on Doc's bent shoulders.

"Oh." Yep, they're tabling the daddy issues for another night, probably when they are both far less sober than they are now. Raylan's just getting a tight-lipped smile and a few nods for now.

"It occurs to me that I have been - still am, sometimes - living my life like the first time I was told I only had a few months left to live. I've got a little one on the way, like you do. And I was thinking. Looking at our friend, what he's going through - and you. With Arlo, whatever he might have done. I was just thinking... if she, or he, would forgive me." He does not have a badge, like Raylan. No justification. Only selfishness, and cowardice.

He'd appreciate that. He didn't like wasting sober breath on Arlo unless he had to.

He tilted his head a little as he listened and thought over his answer, ring tapping a few times against his glass.

"I've been sharin' a space with you for near a week now. None of us are perfect but you ain't cruel. You're not mean spirited. Whatever flaws you got, you seem to be a decent man. That puts you miles ahead of Arlo already. Just don't beat your lady or your kid and you're set."

Spoken as a child of that kind of environment, anything above that line was.. more than he could have asked for as boy.

Doc breathes out a sigh and looks Raylan over. There was a time they closed one eye on that, turned away, called it being a mean drunk or home affairs or something else they don't interfere in. The conduct of people who cannot act like gentlemen is something Doc doesn't feel like would be his place to comment.

"If anything she's gon' beat me for upping and leaving like this," he muses with a small twinge of a smile. Except he knows she won't. He knows she might take it as him bailing, even after he told her he would be there for her.

"Her name's Wynonna too. I thought that was rather uncanny."

That time wasn't past and Raylan had to suffer people knowing and doing nothing. Seeing them in church the next Sunday when his mother made him go and dealing with their sympathetic eyes. He always supposed that he should be grateful for it but that kind of graciousness wasn't in his DNA. Temper was.

"Yeah?" Raylan smiled. "It's not a name I hear a lot. Normally I wouldn't ask this, a man's business is his own, but we're out here chewin' the fat.. How'd you meet her? I take it she's not.. gifted with the same longevity you enjoy. Modern Woman?" A modern woman for an old school man. It was bound to be an interesting story.

"She is most definitely a modern woman, yes. Accidentally rescued me from the well. Threw a gun that belonged to her great great grandfather in it and left the rope hanging when she climbed in to retrieve it." It wasn't the smoothest start and their relationship is still very ill-defined, but he does care very much for her. Even if she isn't willing to open herself up enough to tell him that she loves him.

"I'm partial to the Colt Lightning myself but Wyatt Earp's Buntline Special is uh... particularly special." He would rather talk about guns than the fact that he's slept with his best friend's great great granddaughter, or that he has the potential of outliving her and the kid she's carrying. He hasn't actually thought that far yet.

"Suppose you have never used these old relics. They don't make guns like they used to." They're all... plasticky and much more reliable now.

Did that mean she threw a Buntline special down a well? ..Did that mean Doc didn't need to eat or drink, technically speaking? The last was an unexpected question but one that popped up anyway.

"Sounds like a big ass well.. I know how to fire and maintain rifles. They aren't as old as a Colt Lightning but there's still plenty of slide-action rifles out there bein' used. Can't say as to how they're made, I prefer my sidearm, but my range is pretty decent in both.."

A beat passed. "You said 2017. You still findin' reasons to shoot?" More to the point, was he still shooting with something as old as he was.

"Everyday." His eyes are steely cold, devoid of the warmth when he brought up the Earp girl earlier, and he answers with such certainty and without hesitation that he clearly didn't need time to think about it.

Now he is no hero, that would save a Raylan from an Arlo. He believes that is what the Marshal has committed to doing. He's committed himself to fighting other things. And while Doc has never been outdrawn, for as long as he can remember, sometimes he does dwell on what he has done, even when he's just pulled the trigger and the gun is still smoking.

"Sometimes I look at someone, or something, and I have to... come up with reasons not to shoot," he admits with a raised lip and a shake of his head. Whatever that says about him.

"Suppose I would rather be a bad man than let a bad man walk away."

Raylan nodded softly, pleased with the sure steel that Doc replied with. Doc's guess towards why Raylan does what he does was half right - protecting people that couldn't protect themselves. The rest of it was just wanting to be the asshole Lawman that came in to make bad guys have bad days. To refute the crime he was expected to fall into with everything he had in him.

Even if he found himself often walking the same line Doc was talking about.

"That means you're doin' the right job. If we let them walk away, we become responsible for lettin' back out to continue their shit... Get shot at enough, your gut starts feelin' it before it happens." He let a beat pass, considering how far to take this. A 43 year old Marshal talking to a 166 year old Gunslinger about getting shot felt.. a little laughable.

"Job bein' what it is, I admit there are times where I look for a reason to shoot. Better to put 'em outta their misery and ensure they don't come back to be a pain in the ass. One thing I do know is that everyone of 'em draws down eventually. They know what they're doin'. What they're askin' for. We supposed to die so they can feel like bigger better men and go on out into the world doin' what they want?"

Short answer: Hell no.

"I've been shot. I would not recommend it." He can feel the heat behind Raylan's words, like steel that's been tempered and hammered down to tow the line. Probably because it is not the Wild West anymore and he does not have the luxury Doc did of shooting anyone whose face he didn't like.

They might be a little too sober to be having this conversation, but he isn't sure either of them would be willing to tell the other when enough is enough, when it comes to drinking or the things they tell themselves so they can sleep like a baby at night. Best they don't start tonight.

"I just want to protect the girls," he says quietly, denying any such heroic motivations even though he would put his life on the line for just about any one of these folks he's practically just met. He knows himself and he is sure of these facts: selfishness and cowardice don't make for a hero.

Whether it's what Wyatt would have wanted... didn't really factor in. It didn't when he made the deal to stay alive as long as he had. And now he is dead. Dead men don't get a say.

"You need to be there for Winona, whether she wants you there or not. You can't make a little girl put on her best Sunday dress to come to your funeral. And I know - believe me I know - thirty seconds at the OK Corral ain't nothing compared to walking away from this life. But the world ain't ever gon' run outta assholes. You need to hang up that hat sometime, son."

Right again - People tracked that kinda stuff a lot more closely and as a Federal Agent, he was kept on a short leash. Something he felt was right, even if it got in his way more often then he liked. There were still ways around it, ways that Raylan had found over the years, but he didn't feel guilty about that law skirting. Sometimes the law wasn't in favor of itself.

"My bein' there sometimes aggravates the situation. I've been shot before too, couple of times. Never any fun and scary as shit. But better I get shot out in the field then lettin' trouble find me at home. You solve the problem before it gets to home." If he put down all the bad guys coming after him, it usually only left the slow and stupid coming at him.

"Better to risk her comin' to my funeral then risk me goin' to hers. That's protectin' them.. Modern world bein' what it is Doc.. There's simultaneously less and more to worry about. Things might be different if we were a little further in the past."

He does not have the luxury of taking care of their problems before those problems find them. The homestead is often under siege. And that is something that is going to be unsustainable, especially with that baby bump showing. Just another worry to add to the long list of worries that will never be resolved by standing around here.

"I know things are different." He can see, hear, feel that for himself. Many things have changed for the better. Some things have not. "And I also know where this road you're on will take you. Sometimes trouble comes finding you and yours, and you have to do what you have to do. But are you gon' stand there and tell me you don't ever go looking for trouble?"

It wasn't hard to miss the rebuke in the emphasis. Raylan wished his hands weren't empty. Smoking had never been his vice but getting up to get some shine right now would be a different kind of telling that he didn't want to tell. It gave his hands anything to do that wasn't worry his thumb against his index finger.

"You say that like the entire Marshal service ends their career in the ground. Any trouble I go lookin' for is backed by the might and power of the US Government and their resources. That means men, firepower, CI's and whatever else we got to throw at it. Deal with it out there so it don't come back here. Deal with the trouble at home the same way." He shook his head and stood up, unable to sit so idle.

"What the hell else would I do, Doc? This is the only thing I'm good at, shootin' shit and catchin' bad guys. No place for that at some greeter position in Wal-Mart."

"I am not worried about the entire Marshal service, Raylan. I am worried about you." and he can't possibly be the only one who is worried about him. But he can see that the topic is making Raylan uncomfortable. He does not want to push too much.

"Look." Doc raises both hands and leans back just a little bit, giving Ratlan the illusion of some space. "All I'm saying is. Every once in a while. The right thing to do is to walk away. Some of us missed that opportunity. I hope you will still have the choice, even if you are too stubborn to take it."

Worry is not something that Raylan has ever done terribly well with. Likely due to his childhood, if he had bothered to put any thought into it at all, but Doc saying that he was worried was surprising enough on its own. Very few people worried about Raylan Givens, least of all, Raylan Givens.

"It ain't that I'm too stubborn. I am the job. I've been the job since I was about 25. Winona doesn't get it either. I tried to go back to firearm instruction for her but.. It wasn't far enough away from the job. So I'm supposed to what, give up the thing that saved me from Harlan without a question? Because I might get shot?" Raylan shook his head, turned and leant on the railing, arms crossing.

"Without me out there, more people get hurt. With me at home, I'll drink myself to death," he admitted with a look over at Doc. "I ain't lookin' to do that just yet."

That's what stubbornness sounds like, good sir. But at least Raylan is honest with himself. Doc wouldn't have even admitted to the drinking. Breathing out a barely audible sigh, he tilts his head back and raises one foot to rest his sole against the pillar, going through the motions of lighting another smoke up. These cigarettes are not the cigarillos he would have preferred, but they are starting to grow on him.

"I ain't ever met nobody on their deathbed who thought they should've given more of their life to their job." Turning away briefly to blow smoke over his other shoulder, he gestures towards the hunched over Marshal with his cigarette slowly burning away between those fingers. "You might be the first."

"That's cause I still got a lotta years before I come anywhere near my death-bed. I know the risks of it all. I know what I ain't gonna get to have. Better to focus on what I can do, what I'm good at. It's not the job I focus on so much as the people within it. The ones we save. And I can't say there isn't a bit of joy knowin' that when I get outta bed, it's to ruin a bad guy's day."

It was the only admission to 'looking for trouble' that he'd give Doc - he could find out himself just how well Raylan found trouble when there was some to be found.

"You said you knew Wyatt Earp," he recalled. "He the kinda man who'd leave the job?"

Those years will be coming up to him before he even realises they have passed him by. Though, to be fair, it is still too early to say which path is the right one to follow. The end has to come first in order to determine whether it will have all been worth it in the end.

"Wyatt Earp wanted to be a farmer. He could not abide the violence, the bloodshed. But it was not to be." And John Henry Holliday wanted to be a dentist. That was not to be, either. He is here now, smoking on a porch a hundred and sixty something years later. And Wyatt is long dead and gone. Doc never blamed him or felt resentful for having to do his dirty work when he couldn't stomach it, for cleaning up after his messes all those times he shot, got cold feet, and ran away. He would always be a dear friend, and Doc doesn't feel the need to dig all that ancient history up now.

"The OK Corral damned us all." Doc closes his eyes and lets his cigarette hand hang loosely by his side, flicking ashes off with a few swipes of his thumb.

"Knowing what I know now, what happened to his children and his children's children, if I could take it all back, I--... hell I would have kept my practice open, bought him that damn farm myself, sent him there." So, yeah. If he can save one marshal several lifetimes of agony, he will. And if he can't, then at least he's tried his damnedest best.

"That's somethin' the stories left out, apparently." Raylan couldn't imagine being a farmer. It worked for the age that Doc came from but.. Not him. He knew what a farming life was and that kind of peace and solitude would drive him a different kind of insane. Nevermind that farmers were poor and worked much harder to break even. He wanted to lift himself out of the hollars, not settle into one.

"It made you legends," he argued gently before moving on, knowing full well Doc would argue such a title.

"What happened to his children's children? His sin carry over onto 'em?" Raylan had feelings about the Sins of the father being passed on, but that was something he knew was a luxury of his time and only a half held one at that. Can't be fully out from under it when you've accidently kept family feuds up.

He would say that there is no value in being a legend. Especially not with the prices they have paid, unable to break free from this cycle of harm. He might not be unhinged the same way 'The Surgeon' is but the only difference between himself and Malcolm's father are the narratives that managed to make him out to be a celebrated killer.

"They come of age. They get hunted like animals. They die. Those who hunt them become more despicable, more of a monstrosity, ever more cruel and vile. And then the next generation comes of age." Doc doesn't go into the details. He does not expect Raylan to understand even if he might believe whatever Doc tells him about the legend of the Earp curse. It is a terrible legacy to leave behind, any way you look at it.

"I am not certain that we are cut out to be farmers, you and I." Raising chickens somewhere no one can find you has a certain sort of undeniable charm. But it is not their calling.

"Sounds like humanity, if you don't mind my sayin' so. No bloodline is.. granted the right of purity or.. goodness. That comes down to the people that raise those people. Can't imagine that havin' that name caused any flowers to sprout out of anyone's steps, but.."

He lacked a lot of context, coming at this as he came at all Family lines. They were bullshit and yet, he still clung to his name and its power in the Harlan hollar. He didn't run drugs, or scams like Arlo, he wasn't a preacher or a teacher, he wasn't hill folk, but he still had the name. The trouble that Arlo had set up to come for it.

Then again, there were no devils or men who were trapped in wells for over a hundred years.

"On that last point though, you are right. My options were really get out, get into law just to stick a seed in Arlo's craw or join him and start my life of petty crime. If it wasn't for my Aunt Helen, I'd likely be dead or in jail.. That in mind, I think this is the better option. Least I know I ain't him."

"She has inherited some sins," he agrees. And he will pass his own sins on, if he is not careful. It was not something that had weighed on his mind before. But lately he has been contemplating what legacy is, what it means, the unexpected lasting impact that mistakes made a hundred and fifty years ago has had today.

"You did not merely 'get into law' to defy your father's legacy," Doc insists. He understands well, how the weight of a last name is all the more heavier when everyone knows it in a small town, when it is tainted by deeds you did not personally commit. But to reduce such a life decision to merely an act of defiance, like a petulant child - it is simply not true in his eyes.

"What Arlo does is Arlo's business. You are a good man, Raylan. You did not suddenly discover this when they stuck a star to your chest and gave you a gun. If you had other ideas, if you were a different man, you would be using that authority differently."

A heavy weight to bear when you're seeing the legacy fully formed, Raylan imagined. Were Doc an arrogant man of that type, a bragger who let it stroke his ego, there'd be a lot less sympathy to be found. But he could see the cracks in stoic face Doc wore and where the weight of it curved him a little.

Raylan looked over at the protest, eyebrows lifting a little as Doc tried to disassemble him and smiling faintly at it.

"Hard to say that when he's draggin' me and the Marshal's service into it. When his business is our business. I am a good man because I was forced along with Arlo's business my entire life. I was shootin' rats by ten, drivin' by 11 so that he and the truck could make it back to the house from Noble's Holler. Used to beat her so bad she'd run up into the black holler, take refuge.." He killed Frances too, though not directly. Not in an actionable way that Raylan could lock him up and make him suffer for. His eyes got a little darker as he thought about his mother and what she had to suffer. What she taught him while she was suffering.

"He was a powerful man. Expected me to be just like him," he continued, face pinching with incredulousness. "Just like every other family clan in those mountains. And with Arlo, you didn't have a choice about gettin' that kinda attention. You ever see tornado weather? Sky turns green, and you know somethin's up as soon as he'd walk in. Except with him, didn't matter what you said. Truth or what he wanted.." Raylan shook his head, tone as calm and unbothered as ever. "It was goin' south. No, I got into law to stop people like him. To catch criminals like him and put the trash where it belongs... And I don't know you'd find to many people who'd call me 'good'. More than likely 'Asshole'. But I'm an asshole that's generally right."

In the federal pen is where that kinda trash went. And he was good at it.

Edited 2020-12-04 19:45 (UTC)

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