trying to get more done on and somehow, through it all, I stand and then this lil nugget popped out. It's, of course, Justified and Tim centered whump because I've dubbed this day as Tim Tuesday.
He's lost track of time, but he thinks that maybe it hasn't been a signicant amount of time since he landed. The complete blackness surrounding him is doing nothing to help orient him while he lays there, seemingly facing a ceiling of some kind, or whatever's left of it. Part of it is sitting on his chest. And it hurts. He blinks, he thinks. It's so dark, maybe the smack to the back of his head when he landed caused him to go blind. His throat hurts and he suspects that's from the coating of coal dust that seems to be everywhere. He can feel it beneath his hands and he decides that being able to feel his hands probably means he's not completely paralyzed. There's something wet under his left leg and, again, the fact that he can feel it gives him hope that he might walk away from this. Maybe. He pulls in a slow, tight breath to try and tame the fire that's currently in his lungs. He can't tell if it's from the coal dust or the weight bearing down on him that's making it hard to breathe. Whatever is the cause, though, sucks. A lot. He can feel wetness on his forehead and beneath his head. He definitely has a concussion, but he's alive, so he figures he's fallen maybe 10 or 12 feet. Anything beyond that and he probably would be in worse condition, but then again, the floor gave way beneath him so quickly that he didn't even have a chance to tense up, so maybe he fell 50 feet and just got lucky as hell. His thoughts are jumping all over the place, which all but confirms the concussion. He knows he should probably call out -- he wasn't alone when he was chasing after whatever the Fugitive of the Week's name was -- but the thought of yelling when his chest feels like it's going to collapse at any moment makes an unsettling cold wash over him and all he manages is a cough that reignites the fire in his lungs. "Tim? Jesus Christ, Tim? You down there?" It's Raylan because of course it is. He blinks when a weak flashlight beam catches him in the eyes. Hey, he's not blind afterall.
Small victories. "Tim! Hey! Don't move, okay?" He can't even if he wanted to. He hears Raylan yell something else that he can't make out and he blinks again. This feels eerily similar to waiting for rescue after he'd been ejected from the humvee in Afghanistan and he's not happy at all that his concussed mind decides to go there, so he pulls in another slow breath and tries to focus on staying in the present. Coal dust. Damp, rotten wood. Stale air. It's not exactly a great present to stay in, but it's better than the alternative. "Tim!" Oh, Art's here now? Tim blinks again when a stronger beam of light illuminates his current state. The source of the pain in his chest is a beam -- a big one -- that lays diagonally across his chest and rests, or crushes depending on how he looks at it, his left shoulder. Yep, he's in trouble.
