YOU'LL NEVER LEAVE HARLAN ALIVE.

Tim gets a call. It’s near enough to midnight that he’d been halfway towards actually sleeping, so when he answers the phone he’s verging on groggy and blunt alongside it. It takes him half a minute to actually figure out what he’s being asked, if he knows a Barry Berkman. He does know a Barry Berkman, but his brain needs a few seconds to sort through itself and find that information.

By the time he gets up and ready and drives out to the local PD that picked Barry up, he’s collected himself enough that none of this makes any sense. Before he’d been clammed up with a dim, half-asleep acceptance, Barry being caught somewhere he shouldn’t be and dropping Tim’s name like a hotcake. Now, Barry being caught somewhere he shouldn’t be is a fact that’s snagged itself in him like a door handle around knit fabric, yanking him back a few steps.

He makes up some bullshit excuse to scoop Barry out without charges – something about calling in a few favours, and the lot wasn’t owned by anyone anyway, and there’s nobody to really press charges, and he didn’t actually break anything, did he, so really it was just the entering half, and isn’t this America, a free country – and walks him out to his truck. He’s running on a few beers, but with the exception of what he does during the day at work, he’s always driving on a couple. It’s fine – he’s used to it.

Arkansas sucks. This is the conclusion Tim has reached after being here less than an hour. He’s trying to be objective about it, but there’s only so much objectivity he can stomach before he starts to hate the sound of his own annoyingly hopeful inner monologue. Flights are boring enough as it is, but flying on prisoner transport is a special kind of eventless hell. The prisoner he’s currently shucking along goes by the name Crunch and he’s, as Tim very quickly discovered, partial to a monologue, in the way that only people from Kentucky seem to be.

On top of the flight there was an hour-long drive from the airport, during which Crunch described, shot-for-shot, his favourite episodes of Storage Wars. Even that would have been moderately interesting if Crunch hadn’t had a penchant for speaking in a low monotone that put Tim’s own carefully curated flatness to shame. He’s only too happy to finally be rid of him, watching the back of his patchily-shaved head disappearing down the corridor. There’s a certain sense of vindication that comes with hearing Crunch’s awful Appalachian drawl echoing back as he’s being tugged along to his new cell: y’all ever watch Storage Wars?

Mark is a no-show. Tim’s trying not to be disappointed about it, so he’s just pissed instead, as if that’s going to make him feel any better. Being pissed is ultimately pointless if there’s no ultimate vindication, and he’s never going to get that because Mark somehow exists just to spite him like that. He manages to stay the whole hour out of some perverse idea that Mark is going to show up late, grinning haplessly and throwing out halfhearted apologies that don’t stick. Tim’s standing by the table laden with coffee cups like he’s on guard, arms folded tight. 

There’s a lot of men here, in fact there’s only one woman, who is standing out not because she’s a woman but because she’s wearing the biggest hat Tim’s ever seen. It’s putting Raylan’s to shame. She’s the first to mosey over to the coffee table when it’s all finished. She hadn’t said anything the entire time, which isn’t worthy of suspicion on its own because plenty of people go to group therapy just to hear other people talk. He leans over as she’s pouring herself a cup of coffee, catching her name in spidery black ink on the badge on her chest: MARLA. His says TIM, but it seems markedly friendlier on account of the smiley face he added.