Hello!

This is my first Longmire story! I have not written Fanfiction in quite a while...but I am actively procrastinating on a pathology assignment (Yay college!)

I hope I have managed to keep in compliance with the characters. Note that this is taking placing several years after the season 6 finale (approximately 16). So just keep that in mind while reading!

Any comments/questions/critiques you have are welcomed! Feedback is always fantastic!

I own nothing...usual disclaimers apply.

Thank you for reading!

Chapter One

1500 Miles and No Gun

As her Subaru careens down the gravel road, Vic grits her teeth and prays to God that Walter is home.

She hasn't driven down this road in ten years and yet, nothing has changed since that last time she left the cabin. The mountains are the same, the grassy meadows and lush green forests that surround her in every direction. The sky is the same periwinkle blue, a cloudless Wyoming spring day. And had this been under any other circumstance, she probably would have enjoyed the view. Eased off the accelerator a little bit, maybe slowed down to a leisurely eighty miles an hour. Instead, with every curve gravel skids out from underneath her tires, pinging against the doors. Clouds of dust kick up behind her.

"You want to slow down a bit?" Callie flicks a strand of neon pink hair behind her shoulder and rolls her at her mother "I'm sure Dad will probably want to kill me while I'm still alive."

Vic rolls her eyes right back at her daughter, hands clamped on the steering wheel and glares at the studs dotting Callie's ear, the industrial bar running through the top of one "Not funny."

"Do you actually think I care?" Callie snips and replaces her earbuds "Whatever mom."

Vic can still hear the tinny beat of music over the pinging of gravel. She heaves a sigh as Walt's cabin appears around the bend. Like the mountains, his cabin hadn't changed in the years she had been gone—it was the same sturdy log cabin she had remembered, that she had shared with Walt for years. She feels a familiar pang and involuntarily, her hands tighten on the wheel. There's no car, no rusting Bronco sitting in the drive but that doesn't mean anything—for all she knows, Walt had absconded into the forest, surviving solely on spite and tree bark.

The Subaru skids to a stop and Vic wrenches the car into park, grabbing her keys. She takes off her sunglasses and levels a glare at her daughter "Callie."

Callie doesn't look up from her phone.

"Hey! I'm talking to you," Vic snaps and reaches forward, tugging out an earbud "I'm just going to the door okay?"

Callie doesn't look up at her "And?"

"And…just, don't do anything." Vic jams the key into the pocket of her jeans and strides off towards the cabin, glancing back every so often to make sure that Callie isn't sprinting out across the Wyoming countryside. Weirder things had happened, that was certain.

She pounds on the door "Walt!"

There's no reply and she smacks her palm against the door again "Walter Longmire, open up."

She grits her teeth and peers in through the window, wondering if this day could get worse. Her eyes adjust to the dark cabin interior. Nothing looks too different—the couch is the same, even the knitted afghan thrown haphazardly over the rocking chair in the corner hasn't changed, like the cabin is stuck in a time paradox.

She knocks again for good measure, threatens to kick down the door if her doesn't open up and looks inside one final time. Now that she's looking again, there are tiny, subtle differences that make her uneasy, even though she isn't sure why. Like the pictures hanging on the walls, in actual frames. Or the modern yet tasteful area rug obscuring the living room hardwood. Or the sunflower printed rubber boots sitting next to the oak bench by the door.

Unless Walt had started wearing sunflower rubber boots in her absence, she figures that it just her crappy day just got a hell of a lot worse.

"This town is shit."

Vic pulls her Subaru outside of the old library, which like the cabin hadn't changed. Vic privately agrees with her daughter-this town is shit and incredibly, it hadn't changed at all. There were a couple of new stores, a brand-new pub sitting where the old agriculture co-op had been but aside from that, it looked exactly the same.

"Language Callie." Vic knows there is no point in reprimanding her daughter but she it's so ingrained her, it's habit. She pulls in behind the Absaroka County Sheriff truck, wondering just who was driving her truck now. She had stayed in contact with a couple of people for a while—Ferg, Cady, Ruby but as things had gotten busy as she settled into her new life, the emails had grown more distant and sporadic. Now, all the news she heard from Absaroka came on the back of Ruby's annual Christmas card.

"C'mon," she marches towards the police station Callie in tow. Figures it's best this way—at least she's less of a flight risk.

Callie eyes the building critically "I remember this place."

Vic pauses with her hand on the door handle, the faded letters peeling off the glass "Yeah? Last time you were here you were just tiny."

"I coloured at Ruby's desk while you caught a serial killer."

"Callie."

"And while you figured out some murder. And worked weeks on some drug case. You put my crib a cell."

Vic sighs "Callie, please."

"I understand," Callie smiles sweetly at her "You and dad were so hellbent on your careers that you couldn't make time for your own child. No biggie."

"Okay," Vic bites her tongue and and wrenches the door open "Up the stairs. Now."

The nostalgia hits Vic harder then she thought it would, considering she didn't consider herself a sentimental person but as she walks up those stairs, she can't help but stop the sudden rush of memories from her Absaroka days, a large number involving Walt. She glances over at Callie who's staring at her phone and shakes her head. She does not need to reminisce right now. What she does need to do is find goddamn Walt Longmire before she loses any semblance of control and strangles him with her bare hands.

She pushes the office door open with a bang and figures it's probably a good thing that her gun is more then a thousand miles away.

Thank you for reading! Any reviews are greatly appreciated.