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it takes them years to break the curse, to track down every last revenant and send them back to hell. eight years, to be exact. eight years filled with countless bullets and too many wounds and one (super gay) marriage along the way.
eight years and they’re done and wynonna can feel it pass through her bones as she kills the last revenant. she feels her soul become lighter and she swears the sun becomes brighter and everything finally feels like it’s okay as peacemaker’s orange glow dies down.
‘you did it,’ waverly whispers as she stands with her hand intertwined in nicole’s.
‘we did it,’ wynonna replies, holstering peacemaker for what she hopes is the last time.
there’s nothing but silence, all around them. the air is still and the trees have stopped rustling. even the birds have stopped singing. all there is is blue skies and their makeshift family and a sense of accomplishment so numbing wynonna thinks she may pass out.
‘you know what this means,’ doc says, but wynonna closes her eyes and shakes her head imperceptibly because no, she can’t get her hopes up, not after all this time, not if there’s a chance that maybe this isn’t the end.
but before she knows it, dolls is packing up the black badge room and burning all of the files, sharing a cigar with henry. jeremy’s looking into selling the homestead for a tidy profit and waverly and nicole are looking at adoption files because it’s finally safe enough to bring a baby into the mix.
and wynonna --
wynonna stares at that small slip of paper, the one with the phone number she’s dreamed of calling every single day for the past eight years. she stares at it and she shakes as tears stream down her cheeks because this is what she wants more than anything and this is what she fears the most. slowly, she dials the number and a familiar voice answers after only two rings.
‘gus,’ she breathes. ‘it’s me.’
--
they decide to wait until they’ve left purgatory for good, until the house is packed up and shorty’s been sold, until nedley’s found a replacement and they all have somewhere to go.
they wait until they have a new home, somewhere near gus where they can all live and begin to be happy. and they all go, too, waverly and nicole and wynonna and dolls and doc and jeremy. they’ve been family for so long, it’s the only thing that makes sense. fighting side by side for all those years, now it’s time to finally live.
and then they find themselves in a small country town on the edge of a modest city. they find themselves on a porch, ready to ring the doorbell, all of them present at wynonna’s insistence.
wynonna rings the bell and almost in an instant, the door opens. gus stands, a hand on her hip.
‘good to see you all made it one piece,’ gus says, and wynonna can feel her heart beat wildly, overwhelmed with the urge to be whole once again.
‘boy am i glad to see you, old bird,’ wynonna sighs, and gus opens the door wide, allowing them all in, hugging her nieces for the first time in almost a decade. waverly takes pride in introducing her aunt to her wife. jeremy takes great pleasure in introducing himself to aunt gus.
she leads them through the house and out to the back porch, to a garden that backs onto a small patch of trees. wynonna hears her before she sees her, a peal of laughter followed by the playful barks of a dog.
‘no, down!’ comes the small voice, slightly out of breath. waverly grips her sister’s hand, and wynonna squeezes it as hard as she can.
‘alice, come here a moment please!’
and then barrelling towards them comes a wiry ball of energy, with a smile they can see from several feet away. wynonna feels her heart ascend to the highest level happiness, she feels her soul settle deep within her chest, she feels peace flow throughout her being for the first time in her entire life.
she’s not the baby wynonna remembers holding in her arms for too brief a time. she’s not the small, squirming, chubby thing waverly handed off to perry all those years ago, the little babe doc has buried in his heart.
instead, standing before the small family is a young girl, the image of her mother but with her father’s dark hair and piercing blue eyes. a young girl with dimples even when she wasn’t smiling, with long hair that hung in waves down her back, with a curious look at the people who stared back at her.
‘al, i got someone i want you to meet,’ gus says, and wynonna gets to her knees, in order to get down to her daughter’s eye level. alice stares down at wynonna and wynonna feels more love than she thought her heart could hold. she can feel her family behind her, the people who mean the most to her in the entire world, her sister and her nicole and her dolls and her jeremy and her doc. her doc stands behind her and she can feel his own excitement and anxious energy and in front of her stands the one thing that made everything worth it, the person who was her driving force for eight long years, her only reason to keep going most days.
wynonna smiles and she runs a hand through her daughter’s hair and she knows that no matter what, they’ll be together now. for good. she smiles and she wipes the few stray tears from her eyes before finally finding the words that stuck in her throat.
‘hey, baby girl.’