Deputy U.S. Marshal Tim Gutterson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
comfortablyerect) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
singillatim2026-02-23 08:11 pm
comfortablyerect) wrote in singillatim2026-02-23 08:11 pm
Entry tags:
your body's aching, every bone is breaking
Character Name: Tim Gutterson (Big Tim)
Who: Tim and You! (OTA + closed starter)
What: Paying respects, dealing with Fog Things (may add more later!)
When: Mostly early February
Where: The farm house, milton outskirts, around milton, community hall
Content Warnings: Mentions of character death, dead animals (no descriptors), food scarcity with The Fog(tm), the required self-harm for dealing with the fog. Will update as needed.
It’s not like he hasn’t known that the Darkwalker can do some serious damage. Physical, mental, emotional, getting to them through nightmares and curses and insane weather. Some of it he’s only heard about, some of it he’s experienced himself in the almost year he’s been here. Death has always been a very real threat, and he lost plenty of people he loved to it long before this.
Somehow, Chloe’s death has him reeling. He didn’t expect it. In Afghanistan, he always expected it. It was always right around the corner. It is here, too, but the circumstances – she should’ve been safe in the farmhouse. She was one of the toughest of them. In the stories they swapped– he knows she had to have fought tooth and nail.
They didn’t know each other incredibly well or particularly long, but he saw her as a brother in arms. Now he won’t see her at all, and he’s feeling a particular way about it. Angry, of course, but also oddly helpless. That’s never been his experience with death. The anger has always fueled a need for retribution, given him a sense of stubborn patience to see it through. Right now, he feels like there isn’t any point. If it can get to Chloe, it can get to any of them. If she couldn’t win against it, none of the rest of them can either.
He’s at the farm house. Not on the property proper, but at the edge of it. Last time he was here was when he was helping her pull boards from her windows after the hail storm. It feels appropriate to pay some form of respect.
"All gave some, some gave all,” Tim says. “‘Til Valhalla.”
Tim never hated fog so much in his life.
Just the presence of it puts him on a particular edge. Last time it conjured a memory and triggered a full blown PTSD episode that took months to fully come back from. He’s not sure that he would’ve if he didn’t have someone here to keep him sane. He’s not very keen on repeating the experience, and he’s almost relieved at first when he realizes that’s not what the fog is doing.
Until he realizes what it is doing.
The traps have been scarce lately. Maybe this is why. Tim finds a rabbit rotting in one of them that was empty just the morning before. It’s not long after that he discovers the fog’s effects extends to all living things by way of coughing up a bit of blood. Rather than trying to make it home, he barricades himself in a (hopefully) empty house. Which doesn’t do much, but the rune he recalls from the dream does, Tim not hesitating to cut open his forearm for the blood to draw it on the door.
He draws it on the back of his hand, too, leaving his glove off to keep it from smudging. He doesn’t run as hot as he used to, the lightbringer power feeling fizzled inside him, but he doesn’t mind the way it numbs his fingers. It’s the hand that adopted the injury of Raylan’s to heal him, which has been aching and stinging more and more lately.
He stops by the community hall on his way home, trying to take stock of what food they have in storage. There’s still some meat from the moose hunt, but not a lot. He paints the rune on the ice chests and pantry doors. They’re going to be eating scarcely for a while.
[ ooc: Feel free to find Tim checking traps, at the community hall, or around town in between! The house he barricades himself in doesn’t even have to be empty tbh. ]
A little bit of it is left over from physically pulling him from the mines just a couple of months ago, but most of it is this feeling of helplessness he can’t seem to shake. The truth is, he’s terrified. Terrified that every time they part ways for the day, it’ll be the last time they see each other. That the next time he sees Raylan, his body will be distorted and disfigured the way they say Chloe’s was. That they won’t make it home together to live out the future he’s longing for.
He makes each kiss last as long as he can. He tries to keep himself busy throughout the day, but he always spends it feeling like something inevitable and horrible is going to happen. A lingering sense of dread that he didn’t even get in Afghanistan and Iraq. The only thing he feels certain of for some reason is that it’s almost over. He just doesn’t know how it’s going to end.
Tim’s sitting at one end of the couch because it means he can see the front door. There’s a glass of bourbon on the coffee table – since the Holiday Boar’s visit, he’s fallen somewhere between drinking like he used to and still trying to ration, which essentially amounts to a glass a night, occasionally two. The end is nigh, or whatever. It doesn’t feel imperative to make it last a year.
There’s a book open in his lap that he’s very much not reading when the front door opens. It’s probably an interesting book, but focusing on menial things has become increasingly harder to do.
“Welcome home,” he says before Raylan’s even fully in the door. Something begins to settle a bit inside him.
Who: Tim and You! (OTA + closed starter)
What: Paying respects, dealing with Fog Things (may add more later!)
When: Mostly early February
Where: The farm house, milton outskirts, around milton, community hall
Content Warnings: Mentions of character death, dead animals (no descriptors), food scarcity with The Fog(tm), the required self-harm for dealing with the fog. Will update as needed.
FARMHOUSE
It’s not like he hasn’t known that the Darkwalker can do some serious damage. Physical, mental, emotional, getting to them through nightmares and curses and insane weather. Some of it he’s only heard about, some of it he’s experienced himself in the almost year he’s been here. Death has always been a very real threat, and he lost plenty of people he loved to it long before this.
Somehow, Chloe’s death has him reeling. He didn’t expect it. In Afghanistan, he always expected it. It was always right around the corner. It is here, too, but the circumstances – she should’ve been safe in the farmhouse. She was one of the toughest of them. In the stories they swapped– he knows she had to have fought tooth and nail.
They didn’t know each other incredibly well or particularly long, but he saw her as a brother in arms. Now he won’t see her at all, and he’s feeling a particular way about it. Angry, of course, but also oddly helpless. That’s never been his experience with death. The anger has always fueled a need for retribution, given him a sense of stubborn patience to see it through. Right now, he feels like there isn’t any point. If it can get to Chloe, it can get to any of them. If she couldn’t win against it, none of the rest of them can either.
He’s at the farm house. Not on the property proper, but at the edge of it. Last time he was here was when he was helping her pull boards from her windows after the hail storm. It feels appropriate to pay some form of respect.
"All gave some, some gave all,” Tim says. “‘Til Valhalla.”
MILTON OUTSKIRTS/COMMUNITY HALL
Tim never hated fog so much in his life.
Just the presence of it puts him on a particular edge. Last time it conjured a memory and triggered a full blown PTSD episode that took months to fully come back from. He’s not sure that he would’ve if he didn’t have someone here to keep him sane. He’s not very keen on repeating the experience, and he’s almost relieved at first when he realizes that’s not what the fog is doing.
Until he realizes what it is doing.
The traps have been scarce lately. Maybe this is why. Tim finds a rabbit rotting in one of them that was empty just the morning before. It’s not long after that he discovers the fog’s effects extends to all living things by way of coughing up a bit of blood. Rather than trying to make it home, he barricades himself in a (hopefully) empty house. Which doesn’t do much, but the rune he recalls from the dream does, Tim not hesitating to cut open his forearm for the blood to draw it on the door.
He draws it on the back of his hand, too, leaving his glove off to keep it from smudging. He doesn’t run as hot as he used to, the lightbringer power feeling fizzled inside him, but he doesn’t mind the way it numbs his fingers. It’s the hand that adopted the injury of Raylan’s to heal him, which has been aching and stinging more and more lately.
He stops by the community hall on his way home, trying to take stock of what food they have in storage. There’s still some meat from the moose hunt, but not a lot. He paints the rune on the ice chests and pantry doors. They’re going to be eating scarcely for a while.
[ ooc: Feel free to find Tim checking traps, at the community hall, or around town in between! The house he barricades himself in doesn’t even have to be empty tbh. ]
CLOSED to Raylan
you know i play with all those strays prowling outside your door
It’s getting harder and harder to let Raylan out of his sight.A little bit of it is left over from physically pulling him from the mines just a couple of months ago, but most of it is this feeling of helplessness he can’t seem to shake. The truth is, he’s terrified. Terrified that every time they part ways for the day, it’ll be the last time they see each other. That the next time he sees Raylan, his body will be distorted and disfigured the way they say Chloe’s was. That they won’t make it home together to live out the future he’s longing for.
He makes each kiss last as long as he can. He tries to keep himself busy throughout the day, but he always spends it feeling like something inevitable and horrible is going to happen. A lingering sense of dread that he didn’t even get in Afghanistan and Iraq. The only thing he feels certain of for some reason is that it’s almost over. He just doesn’t know how it’s going to end.
Tim’s sitting at one end of the couch because it means he can see the front door. There’s a glass of bourbon on the coffee table – since the Holiday Boar’s visit, he’s fallen somewhere between drinking like he used to and still trying to ration, which essentially amounts to a glass a night, occasionally two. The end is nigh, or whatever. It doesn’t feel imperative to make it last a year.
There’s a book open in his lap that he’s very much not reading when the front door opens. It’s probably an interesting book, but focusing on menial things has become increasingly harder to do.
“Welcome home,” he says before Raylan’s even fully in the door. Something begins to settle a bit inside him.
Community Hall
(Zoey painted the rune on Tayrey's home, and the young lieutenant might never realise how much of her survival she owes to that action.)
She only emerges when she hears another person's presence. Their footsteps. It's Citizen Tim, she sees, and she's reminded of when she was last in this place. Another fog. It seems so long ago.
'Peace and prosperity,' she says quietly. There doesn't seem to be much of either to be found right now, but it's as much a wish and a hope as a greeting.
'Do you- oh, your arm!' The cut is almost a blessing in disguise, giving her a focus, a purpose, however fleeting. 'Have you cleaned that?' His behavior, drawing that sigil in his own blood, she doesn't remark upon. He's far from the first she's seen do it. If Tayrey has secretly experimented with the marking, she used far more prosaic substances.
no subject
He doesn't draw his gun this time, either. It's hard to say if it's because he's not hot off the heels of a PTSD episode, or because this overwhelming feeling of hopelessness makes him care a little bit less.
"Hey--"
Oh, his arm. He looks down at it, unbandaged and freshly bleeding thanks to having just applied it to the cabinet doors. It's not very deep. It'd probably be mostly healed within a week if he stopped reopening it to repaint the rune on various doors and himself.
"Not since this mornin'," he says, shutting the cabinet door. "Hard to keep clean when I have to keep paintin' this damn rune everywhere."
no subject
Staying out felt dangerous but today, he had good reason for it. Word had gotten around about some of the Wolfdogs, that those that had promised to look after them dying or vanishing, anything that could happen to all of them at any time. But Raylan finds himself soft-heart for these animals now, especially after Goose's companionship.
So tonight when he opens the door, a wolf trots in first instead of the cowboy with her tail low and eyes scanning, but that tail comes up a few inches, wagging softly and the wolf relaxes a little as she sees Goose. Raylan follows after her and once the door was closed, he had good enough sense to look a little guilty as he looks over at Tim.
"Hey darlin'. I, uh-" He glances at the dog with a swallow as he starts de-coating. "Well, this is Scout. Goose's mother."
Had he thought about if Tim would be angry about this? No; he didn't think that Tim would be mad. Goose needed one of his own around, just like they did, and proved it by the way he scrambled up to his feet to go and greet his mother with a round of sniffs and playbows.
no subject
There's another whole-ass wolf in their house.
Tim doesn't bother to keep the exasperation out of his voice or off his face as he watches the older wolf slink further inside. Really, it's bad enough that Raylan adopted a wolf and named him Goose before Tim even got here, and even worse that he can turn into one himself, and now he's brought a second one home. Tim's never been a dog person, not since his daddy's mean-ass brothers liked to scare him with their untrained pits when he was a kid.
He'd be lying if he said he hadn't gotten used to Raylan's wolf form, or formed a very soft spot for Goose. But another one--
Raylan had to have known he couldn't say no once he saw the two wolves interact. The way Scout's uncertainty drains away at the sight of her kin, how Goose acts like a pup greeting his mother. Tim sighs, throwing up a hand in easy defeat.
"Is this how it's gonna be when we're back home, too? You bringin' home whatever strays pull at your apparently very tender heartstrings?"
When, not if. Everything feels hopeless but he hasn't exactly been vocal about that feeling. He has to at least pretend he thinks it's going to happen, even if he can't make himself feel it.
farmhouse.
Maybe that's why he doesn't feel the shockwaves of Chloe's death as strongly as the people around him, even Kostya. He'll miss her, and he's sorry that she's gone. He liked Chloe, even if it wasn't a deep friendship, and he feels neutrally about most people. His wariness around her had started to melt as she established herself as an ally, an altruist under the surface impression of stubborn self-interest. But no tears come, even once he visits the farmstead he'd visited so many times before to exchange eggs and meat.
There's just... a numbness that shouldn't be, a melancholy chill as he steps through the snow around her homestead. The boiler they'd examined together is fixed now; there isn't even a ghost of her presence. The place is just quiet. Still, like the forest after a fresh snow.
At least until he hears a familiar voice a little ways away and immediately pins it as belonging to Tim The American, saying something he can recognize as a freeform paying of last respects. ]
She was a good person. [ It's something, in his experience, that Americans throw around far too lightly. Vasiliy means it. Most of the people here, Tim The American included, are still pending judgment. ] You knew her?
no subject
He slides his hands into the pockets of his coat. They're gloved, but the fire-wielding power gifted to him by Enola doesn't keep him warm the way it used to. ]
Knew her well enough to miss her.
[ It's more than he'd normally admit, but if Vasiliy is calling Chloe a good person, then he must have known her well enough, too. Besides, Tim gets the feeling that he's experienced his fair share of deaths, too. ]
She was among the toughest of us. Hard to think she went out the way she did.