Fic: Untitled
Justified. Raylan, Loretta.
Post S2. 1,500 words.
Unbetaed. Written for the Summer in Harlan Comment Fic Meme in response to a prompt from natfudge.
Short disclaimer: All characters and scenarios belong to Elmore Leonard and Graham Yost and NOT ME.
Summary: The prompt was "bad day."
Untitled
"Loretta, honey, you can't keep on doin' this every time something bad happens," he tells her because he feels he has to.
Raylan had found her finally hiking along the state highway, Lexington bound, in the oppressive heat of midday. She'd climbed into the towncar with a sullen frown and weary eyes.
She doesn't respond to him, just twines her fingers around the ratty strap of her bag, looking out the window as the trees rush by. She's dusty from the road, but Raylan is glad she seems unmarked and unharmed. She's sulking because he'd pulled a u-turn as soon as he'd picked her up and now they are on their way back to the foster home. The new one, with the big house and the cold woman and the absent man.
Glen and his wife couldn't have kept her no matter how much they wanted to, not after the thing with the gun. Social services said the girl had lucked out with her new placement, a well-to-do, childless couple out in Somerset. Raylan doesn't agree. He'd met them just once, the last time Loretta had run, and he heard the insincerity in their thanks when he brought her back, the impatience in their tone, and saw the judgment in the way they'd looked at her. He knew Loretta felt it too, and he thought a lot about how much it must weigh on her.
He'd called the social worker, who'd told him these were the kind of philanthropists that enjoyed making big statements with grand gestures along with giving out heaps of their money. They'd quietly requested an older, pretty girl, undoubtedly to show off their commitment to the cause, and Loretta had fit the bill. Raylan supposed they hadn't counted on Harlan stubbornness and pride coming along with her.
"Where were you running to, anyway?" He doesn't like to even allude much to the fact that Loretta doesn't have any family at all anymore, no real place to run to.
Loretta shrugs and says nothing.
Raylan gets it, he really does. But he also knows there is a pressure, a tension building in that foster home, and this attempt to escape isn't going to make things any easier. He also knows Art's going to skin him alive if he begs off one more time to go fetch this girl.
"It's lunchtime," Raylan says, not quite tired of talking to himself yet. "You must be hungry." He pulls over to a roadside place he's stopped at a few times before. "They've got good barbecue here," he tells her.
Raylan gets them two sandwiches and two cokes and they eat while sitting on the hood of his car. The sun is behind some clouds now, and a cool breeze is blowing through.
Loretta gets through two-thirds of her sandwich before she starts sniffling. Raylan doesn't say anything at all.
Raylan wishes a lot that he could somehow make things easier for her, could do more than he'd already done and was already doing. But he always reminds himself that this isn't his girl, that he shouldn't take any more steps like she is, or ever could be. He sees too much of himself in her and it makes him want to help her more than he should.
"You're going to make me go back there, ain't you?" She said finally, eyes dry now. He notices her trying to put her accent back in hard and awkward when it wavered out now and again. He's caught between being glad that she'd been trying to smooth things over there by fitting in and disappointed that she may ultimately loose her roots to these people. That is, if she ever swallows her pride enough to stay and let them give her a future.
He looks at her with open honesty, bare and harsh. "Loretta, where else do you think you're gonna go?"
She just looks away again and finishes her sandwich like it had done something mean to her.
She's never asked for him to take her. He thinks sometimes she wants to, but she's smart enough to know what he'll have to say. And he's glad she doesn't put him through having to say it.
"They look down on me," she says, after a long silence. "Especially, her. She thinks I come from trash, that I ain't got no manners and no sense."
"Well, darlin', it probably makes no sense to her why you keep running away. You can't shove a gift like that big ol' house in someone's face and expect them to think better of you."
She closes her eyes like she knows he's right. "I just... sometimes she says things, and I know she ain't thinking about it, about how it sounds. But I... And I hate her stupid friends. Maybe she's not so bad anymore, but she has these parties and her book group," she says the words like they're the worst kind of filth, "They think I'm worse than trash. They think I'm going fuckin' murder those people, or sell all their kids meth. Jesus."
"You know how to deal with ignorant people," Raylan replies patiently, then sips his coke. "I know you did that at the last place."
She nods, just a little, and then looks up at him a tiny crease between her brows. "It seems so much harder now."
Raylan smiles sadly at her. "I ain't gonna say you don't have any right feeling like that. A bunch of truly terrible shit has happened to you, in not a very long piece of time. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't throw away a real good thing because these fancy assholes don't treat you nice."
She bristles at his words, they're blunt, but he's speaking softly so she can't get too mad. Raylan's just glad she's listening.
"You can get a real good education living out there, better than what you'da had in Harlan," he continues. "I know you thought you'd be selling weed off your daddy's land, or workin' for Mags in the store. But you can have more than that now, you can have something better."
"But what makes it so much better," she asks quietly. "Those people aren't happy. They're not good."
"They're idiots," Raylan replies. "You're smart enough to take what they're offering and make it your own. You can do whatever you want with your life, Loretta, but it will start here. And it'll be easier from where you are now. I'm not saying you won't have to work at it. And I'm not saying it won't be hard living under that roof. But you can help yourself and hurt them more by proving them wrong."
Her expression changes somehow, subtly, and Raylan knows she's understood him.
He looks her over, noting the new clothes they must have bought for her, but the little saved details of the girl from Harlan. She still had her ratty satchel, her father's watch, the dirty knock-off converse that must have walked countless times up and down the rows of her daddy's crop.
"They buy you a cell phone?"
She smirks and pulls it out. It's a fancier one than what he gave her before, with a little keyboard and a touch screen front. He knows she lost the other one at Dickie and Coover's house.
"Give it here," Raylan says and she does, squinting her eyes in a question.
Raylan punches his number into the phone and saves it with his name attached, not his title. When she reaches to take it back, he raises it a little, just out of her reach. "I put my personal cell phone number in here, Loretta. Now, I want you to call me if you have a problem and you want to talk about it, hell, even if you don't want to talk about it. And I don't mean big problems like running away again, because I know you won't do that, right?"
She shakes her head, but there's a wary look in her eyes.
"Before," Raylan continues, steeling himself, knowing this is both what he should and should not be doing, "I asked you to call if you were in trouble. Before, you and me was about keeping you safe. Now, I'm saying call and we can talk, okay? I might not be in Kentucky much longer, but that doesn't mean I can't help you out. It doesn't mean I don't want you to be okay."
She's looking at him with big round eyes. "You... would do that?" Her voice is small and uncertain and it provokes in Raylan a rueful smile.
"I am doing it, honey," he says and hands her the phone. "Now, I got a lady with a baby staying with me, so don't call too late. And if I don't answer it might just mean I'm busy, what it doesn't mean is that I don't want to talk to you. It doesn't mean I ain't gonna call back, all right?"
"Yeah," she nods and the edges of her lips pull up just a little. She looks down, punching fast at the keys on the phone. "Raylan," she says, and he realizes she's reading it. He hadn't bothered to put his last name. She looks up and smiles real big. "Thank you."
He drives her home that day, and they're both kind of quiet, but not uncomfortably so. She calls him the next week and her voice over the phone sounds strong.