Chapter Text
the bandit queen
get your motor runnin'
head out on the highway
lookin' for adventure
and whatever comes our way
- 'born to be wild' by steppenwolf
“No,” Nicole says firmly. “Absolutely not.”
“But, mom, where else will she go? Look at her face!”
Belle pouts and lifts the cat as high as she can to try to shove its face into Nicole’s.
She goes a little cross-eyed as her eyes refocus on the feline in front of her. The cat is beautiful, she’ll give it that. Some sort of lilac colorpoint with more fur than even Calamity Jane had. The size of it makes Nicole think ragdoll , but she’s not a vet or even that much of a cat enthusiast.
Calamity Jane had been happenstance. Not that Nicole didn’t like cats, but she had never envisioned herself as a cat owner. Her family had a pet dog when she was growing up — a hyperactive, miniature Australian shepherd named Hashbrown that loved her older sister way more than Nicole. But never pet cats. Just the dog.
So she had never thought of herself as a cat person or even a future cat owner until that matted, orange floof turned up on her porch, half-starved and crying pathetically. She took it inside, as any person with a beating heart would, and fed her and brushed her and bathed her. And when she took the cat to the vet two days later and learned that she was probably a stray, Nicole gave her a home and a name.
But she wasn’t a cat person. Not really. Calamity Jane was special. Her first friend in Purgatory.
Nicole lifts a hand and scratches the cat’s head between its ears. Its blue eyes flutter closed and its whole body trembles with a pur. She doesn’t smile, and if she does, it isn’t in approval of bringing this new stray into their home.
“Please, mom?” Belle begs again, and she’s doing that thing with her face that she learned from Waverly that Nicole is powerless against. “Pleeease?”
Nicole sighs. Waverly is so much better at saying ‘no’. This is how her kid ends up with a stomach ache from eating that third bowl of ice cream for dinner. Or with a broken arm because she wanted to go dirt biking with Wynonna and Alice. Or with welts on her back because she wanted to try paintballing.
Maybe Waverly won’t threaten to kill her over a cat?
“We need to take it to the vet clinic,” she says. “See if it’s microchipped first and if there’s anything wrong with it that we need to know. Then maybe, maybe we can keep it.”
She’s still kind of heartbroken over losing Calamity Jane. The damned cat was thirteen years old, but damn it, she was Nicole’s first friend in Purgatory. She stayed with her through thick and thin, and she even tried to scratch a revenant once. They’d bonded. It’s been a year, though. Her heart has surely mended enough to maybe love another cat, right?
The smile that Belle gives her as she pulls the furball close to her chest is healing enough, she decides.
“Can we go now?” her not-so-little girl asks, and the cat is still purring in her arms with its eyes closed. Content , Nicole would say. Happy , even.
Nicole looks down at the case files she has spread out on the kitchen table. Her watch reads 15:45, which of course it’s after three if Belle is home from school. It’s one of her days off and she’s been staring at these missing persons cases — trying to figure out how many of them are because of revenants or other otherworldly beings — since six in the morning. She hasn’t been sleeping well, and she’d rather turn her attention to work than wake Waverly because she’s having nightmares about nothing of consequence.
(Dragged through the woods, screaming. Trying to forget about a Jack the Ripper sort of supernatural-folk. Then being shot by a normal human jackass and going to actual purgatory with a lowercase ‘p’. Meeting Willa and learning that there isn’t any choice in the matter of walking toward the light or returning to her loved ones that are still alive and hoping beyond hope that she’ll return to them. Belle and Waverly screaming for her but she can’t reach them in time. Can’t save them.
That last one hasn’t happened. Not yet. She hopes it never will.
It’s a nightmare just the same.)
But Belle is here and now and holding a cat that she definitely thinks might be pregnant. She’s here and asking if they can keep it and can they please go to the vet now? And Nicole is defenseless against that pout and those green, green eyes and so she sighs again and says, “Why don’t you go find CJ’s old carrier? I’ll call the clinic and see if they’ve got time to see us.”
She knows they will, though. They’re not swamped with clients, as most citizens of Purgatory are still hesitant to own a pet after all those ‘coyote attacks’ some time ago. And they always made time to see Calamity Jane around Nicole’s crazy law enforcement schedule.
She calls anyways. The number is still in her phone.
“Hey, Dr. Eisenstein, it’s Nicole Haught.”
“Sheriff Haught, haven’t I told you to call me Vigo?”
“Yes, Vigo P. Eisenstein. I think you’ve shared your name with me more times than I can count. And until you start calling me Nicole, I am going to call you Dr. Eisenstein.”
“Of course, Sheriff. What can I do for you today? Animal Control pick up another stray cat to bring in?”
A few months back, Nicole had started an initiative with Purgatory Animal Control and the Vet Clinic in order to catch the strays and barn cats in the town to have them spayed and neutered. So far, Lonnie has only been scratched four times with only one necessary first aid intervention. It’s a work in progress, and it gives Animal Control and the clinic something to do.
“No, not a stray.” She pauses before tacking on,. “Well, sort of. My daughter found a cat on her way home from school. I was hoping you might have time to check it out this afternoon?”
She hears Belle’s trainers on the basement stairs and the mewling of a very unhappy cat. She must’ve found where Waverly stored all of Calamity Jane’s things when Nicole couldn’t look at them anymore.
“I’m available now, if you would like to bring it in,” Dr. Eisenstein tells her, just as she had anticipated. “Just tell Jimmy that I’m expecting you.”
Belle makes her way back into the kitchen, holding the cat carrier with a triumphant grin. Nicole hitches her chin up in acknowledgment before finishing her conversation with the veterinarian.
“Thanks, Dr. Eisenstein. We’ll see you soon,” she says and ends the call. When she pushes away from the table and goes to stand, her back cracks loudly. “That’s what I get for not moving all day.”
“And getting old,” her daughter chimes helpfully with a shit-eating grin that she could only have learned from Wynonna.
Nicole narrows her eyes and chuffs. “Your aunt is older than me, you know,” she grumbles, and her daughter just nods and continues to smile. “You two good to go?”
“Yep.” Belle pats the top of the carrier with her free hand. “Dr. Eisenstein said he can see us?”
“Sure did, monkey.” Nicole grabs her bag off the hook by the door, checking for her wallet and pulling out her keys. “You wanna start the truck? I’ve gotta run upstairs for a minute.”
Belle reaches for the keys that her mom offers her, but she doesn’t turn away or move toward the door. It isn’t hesitation or reluctance that holds her in place, that keeps her standing there biting her lower lip. It’s a thoughtful kind of quiet that settles between them with the meows of the imprisoned feline as the only thing breaking the silence.
Nicole can tell that this is one of those moments to be patient, to wait for Belle like she does for Waverly. Sometimes they need time to think through what they want and need to say. Time to gather their thoughts so when they share them, they come out right. So Nicole waits, a compassionate smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
“It’s been ten years, mom,” she says and her tone is reticent.
Nicole waits a little longer.
Belle nods, slowly. “Almost ten years since… since. I’ve been around Aunt Wynonna and Doc and Dolls… and I know you’re a cop, mom. I know that you carry a gun, that you and mama have that safe in your closet. It’s okay. I’m okay.”
But she hadn’t been. She had been nervous around any sort of firearm after the dust settled, after the funeral, and after those first few weeks had passed. Nicole and Waverly had installed the gun safe before Belle even came to live with them; they’d done it when they were applying to become foster parents. But with Belle’s history, they were more than careful to try to keep weapons out of sight and out of mind.
It was difficult — they were a family of law enforcement officers, not to mention just about everybody owned some sort of gun in Purgatory. They made sure to sit Belle down and explain that yes, there were guns in the house but that they were in a safe. They explained that their jobs were to protect people. The Sheriff’s Department and Black Badge. That the guns that they owned were tools to help them do that — serve and protect.
Nicole had pulled out her badge and offered it to the little girl. Belle traced the letters and the scales of justice with her fingers before looking up into warm, brown eyes. “Do you know what this badge means?” she had asked Belle.
And the girl shrugged, leaning heavily against Waverly’s side as they sat on the sofa. Her eyes dropped back down to the badge in her tiny, four-year-old hands. Nicole positioned herself on her other side, leaving a cautious amount of space between her and Belle. Because Belle was still unsure about her. But Waverly was safe, and the sheriff wouldn’t begrudge the child for that.
(She gets it; Waverly is her safety and security, too. Her anchor in the storm.)
Nicole tapped the badge gently with her index finger. She spoke softly and openly; she didn’t want the weight of her words to go unheard. “This badge is an oath,” she explained. “—a promise to serve and protect. It means that it’s my job to keep you and all the other citizens of Purgatory safe. It means that I will do everything in my power to make sure that nobody can ever hurt you again. I swear this to you, Belle.”
Belle had nodded, much like she had that day in the sheriff’s office when they asked her what she wanted. When she couldn’t find the right words and didn’t know how to ask for what she wanted. She hadn’t known that trying to say yes could make her head swim with so many other words. But this time she understood, and she nodded and returned the badge to Nicole.
It was difficult, at first, trying to be mindful about their guns. Then it got a little easier. In time, Nicole, Wynonna, Doc, and Dolls also became safe. One by one, she came to know all of the deputies in the sheriff’s department, and one by one, they became okay, too.
(Price was first, and she had disassembled her service weapon on her desk and explained all the pieces, even if Belle didn’t quite understand everything. But knowing more helped a little.
Things aren’t as scary when you see them in the light.)
But Belle’s better now. She has been for a few years. And while she doesn’t think she’ll ever like guns, she isn’t afraid of them anymore. She doesn’t hear a shotgun blast and a surprised yawp. She doesn’t catch a whiff of something acrid and sour and a little metallic. She doesn’t flinch when her mama takes her shotgun from the safe to go monster hunting with Wynonna. Doesn’t shy away when she sees a gun on the hip of a deputy that she hasn’t yet met.
“I know you’re going upstairs to get the compact that you keep on your ankle whenever you leave the house. I know you and mama have tried to be so careful in the house, even after I got used to Wynonna and Doc and Dolls and all of your deputies. You’ve been looking out for me since that day you wrapped me up in your coat and took me from that shitstorm.”
“Language,” her mom chides gently.
Belle shakes her head, a smile on her face. “I love you guys. Everything you did and everything you do to look after me.”
The snack basket. The gun safe. The camping trips to Little Elbow on the days surrounding the first of July to escape the sounds of fireworks in the air. Their advocacy for her in school. The books . All of the books.
Her smile widens and she meets her mom’s gaze with comfort and confidence and something a lot like love in her eyes.
“But I’m better. It’s okay. You don’t have to tiptoe anymore. You and mama — you helped me learn to be better. You taught me how to chase away the monsters under my bed, how to be brave even when I don’t feel like I am. You and mama and Alice and Nonna… everybody.”
There aren’t tears in Nicole’s eyes, and it doesn’t count as crying if she blinks them back.
Meeeoooowwrr.
They laugh together and the moment lingers between them. There’s glee in brown eyes and green eyes, and they bask in the feeling for a moment longer.
“When did you become so wise?” Nicole breathes, reaching forward to brush blonde hair away from her daughter’s face, tucking it behind her ear.
Belle just grins at her. “Probably around the time you got old.”
Nicole guffaws and shakes her head. She cuffs Belle lightly and playfully on the chin. “I love you, monkey.”
“I love you, too, mom. I’m gonna go start the truck now.”