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“Nicole! Nice boots!”
It was just about the last thing she’d expected to hear as she and Doc barreled through the woods in search of Wynonna and Waverly.
But, then, she’d been actively trying to avoid expecting anything.
It was the only way to keep herself together.
About five minutes into their search, she’d had to force herself to essentially turn off her brain entirely and allow Doc to lead; it wasn’t at all her style, but it was also the only way to stop herself from picturing the massacre at Pussy Willows…with the victims’ faces replaced by the faces of her aunt and uncle.
And Waverly.
Waverly’s skin marred by jagged, gaping wounds. Waverly with a puddle of blood haloed around her hair. Waverly’s beautiful eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling. Waverly crumpled in a heap on a bloody, booze-soaked, glitter-encrusted wooden floor.
Waverly gone.
The thought alone almost made her sick.
So she trusted in Doc’s tracking skills and just counted the trees they raced past. They had just passed number forty-seven when she heard Wynonna’s oddly cheerful greeting.
It took her an extra couple of seconds to process the fact that Wynonna was hanging upside down from a tree, cheerfully complimenting her boots and Doc’s jeans.
When her brain caught up, she blurted, “Where’s Waverly?!”
She knew it sounded desperate and a little frantic, but she couldn’t help herself.
In any other place, at any other time, logic would dictate that if Wynonna was calmly joking about clothes, Waverly was probably relatively okay — but this was Purgatory and her blasé attitude could be a misdirection either on Wynonna’s part or someone else’s. For all she knew, Wynonna had been hypnotized by tree elves or was under some sort of amnesia spell.
“Waverly’s good. She’s good.”
But then where is she?
“I killed the bad guy, as you do….”
But then where the hell is Waverly?!
She looked around, peripherally aware of Doc unceremoniously cutting Wynonna down from the tree. “In the cabin,” Wynonna grunted as she rolled over and tried to rub some feeling back into her legs.
Cabin?
Wynonna waved vaguely behind her. Doc was still propping her up, so Nicole took off down the path by herself.
She had barely gotten up to full speed when she heard Waverly yell, “Wynonna! Still kinda stuck in here!”
She was in no way prepared for the flood of emotion that hit her when she heard Waverly’s voice. She skidded to a halt and staggered against a nearby tree, relief making her knees weak.
She should have known.
For all that she’d tried to talk herself out of it during the interminable months between meeting Waverly and that day in Nedley’s office, she’d more or less fallen head over heels in love with Waverly that very first time she’d peered into Shorty’s just in time to see Waverly turn off the misbehaving taps at the bar.
So of course – of course – she nearly threw up from relief.
But she also had to shake her head in amusement when she heard Wynonna’s shouted reply: “Haught Shot’s on her way!”
It was enough to re-start her brain.
Thank God for Wynonna Earp.
“Nicole!”
She shook off the daze, pushed herself away from the tree, and took off running. “Coming! Keep talking!”
She followed the sound of Waverly’s voice to a ramshackle cabin that looked like it had walked right out of a horror film. It set off every alarm bell Nicole had. “I think I found you,” she called, but she held herself back from entering and bowed to her howling instincts long enough to ask, “Is it safe to come inside?”
There was a brief pause. “You’re so much better at this than Wynonna,” Waverly said. “She almost got herself decapitated.”
“She what?!” Nicole called, peering through a gap in the door; the interior of the cabin was too dark to make out any details.
“The whole place is booby-trapped. Or breast-alligatored.”
“…what?”
“Never mind. I’ll explain later. It’s safe to come in, but stop right in the doorway. I’ll guide you through the traps.”
Nothing could have quite prepared Nicole for what she saw when she opened the door. Obviously Waverly was restrained in some way or she would have come after them, but seeing her girlfriend sitting miserably in an actual cage…it almost took her knees out from under her all over again. “Oh, Waverly,” she murmured, sick.
“C-can we please get me out of here before we freak out?” Waverly asked. “I mean, I’m not averse to freaking out, per se, because this is pretty freak-out worthy, but can we just…wait?”
It was probably the one thing that would get her past the nausea the sight in front of her had elicited. She was horrified, but Waverly needed her. “Okay,” she said, forcing calm. “How do I get to you?”
She was aware of the overwhelming stench of the place but it wasn’t until she got within arm’s reach of the cage that she realized that at least part of what she was smelling was fresh blood.
And then she remembered the bloody wrap that she’d found on the ground near the truck.
She’d shoved it into her jacket pocket when she took off after Doc – the thought of leaving it out to the elements, in the frigid wind on the frozen ground, had never even crossed her mind.
It was Waverly’s.
And through some quirk of her devotion to Waverly, she could no more leave it out to elements than she could have left Waverly herself.
“You’re hurt,” she said, unable to resist resting her head against the bars of the cage for just a moment in a desperate attempt to get closer. She felt Waverly stroke her hair, shuddered, and pulled back in order to keep herself from losing it. “Where are you hurt?”
“My leg,” Waverly said. “I…it’s cut, I think, but I can’t see it. And….” She gestured at the cage, wordlessly pointing out there was no way for her to really check on her wound.
There was something else.
Something in her eyes.
“What – Waverly, what is it?”
She held up a badge attached to a long lanyard, then shook her head firmly and laid it back in her lap before Nicole could make out any details. “Later.”
She wanted to ask, to tease out what was going on in those shadows in Waverly’s eyes, but there were cage bars between them and so all she could do was kiss the fingers Waverly had wrapped tight around the bars and murmur, “Waves….”
“I can’t. Not right now. I’ll tell you about it…I promise. Later.” It was a plea; there was nothing she could do but honor it.
“Okay,” Nicole said, looking around for something she could use to break into the cage. “How come Wynonna…?”
“Something’s wrong with her arm. She tried a crowbar, but she couldn’t….” Waverly shrugged.
“Crowbar? Where?”
It took a few minutes to lead Nicole through the booby traps to get to Wynonna’s discarded crowbar safely, but she after she had it, it was the work of mere moments for her to lever the cage open. As soon as she did, she dropped the crowbar and surged forward, ducking her head into the cage to plant a kiss right on a surprised Waverly’s lips.
“Hey,” she said, a little breathlessly, searching Nicole’s eyes worriedly, perhaps sensing the desperation behind the kiss. “What’s that for?”
Nicole pulled back, a little embarrassed. “It’s just…ever since I saw Wynonna’s truck….” She shrugged, looking down at the rusted bottom of the cage. “I thought…I was worried you….” She looked back up into Waverly’s eyes and forced herself to say it. “I was afraid I’d lost you.” It had been a heart-stopping moment and while she had held onto her composure in front of the man who’d flagged her down, her world had teetered on the brink of falling apart and a large part of her was still shaken. Waverly sighed, and Nicole, seeing the ghosts in her eyes, shook her head and forced herself to put it aside. “Come on. Let me get you out of here.”
She helped Waverly uncross her legs, which had long since gone to sleep, then patiently rubbed some feeling back into them, avoiding the long cut she found on the side of her right leg. “You’re gonna need stitches in this, I think…at least at the top here.” she said.
Waverly yelped and staggered into Nicole when she first tried to stand, so: “Let me carry you,” Nicole said, holding her as she tried to catch her balance on one leg. “You’re never gonna get past all these traps on your own.” Waverly eyed her skeptically, her innate stubbornness and independence at war with the pain that was keeping her more or less immobile. Nicole caressed her cheek with her free hand. “Come on, baby, please? I don’t want you getting decapitated, okay?”
“Yeah, that would suck,” Waverly joked hoarsely. “Okay. But please be careful. I don’t want you getting decapitated either because you’re stuck lugging me around.”
Nicole wrapped her arms around Waverly in a long, quiet hug. “I promise. Now, come on. Let’s get outta here.”
They ran into Doc and Wynonna just as Nicole was setting Waverly back down onto her feet outside the cabin but the look Waverly shot her sister was more than a little confusing so, rather than ask, she just led Waverly to a tree stump so she could sit down. She eased Waverly’s injured leg out in front of her, then quickly shrugged out of her jacket and tore her uniform sleeves off to use as a bandage. Instinctively, she offered her jacket to Waverly, who was shivering as she sat, but although the wind was bitterly cold, Waverly refused her offer and insisted she put her own jacket back on. “There,” she said, patting Waverly’s knee after wrapping her injury with the makeshift bandage. “I’m sorry, Waves. It’s the best I can do until we can get you to the hospital.”
She and Doc took it in turns to support Waverly as she limped through the woods back to the cliff, after which the cut on Waverly’s leg became the least of their concerns.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
In the end, though, she did eventually manage to get Waverly to the hospital for stitches, but by then they were all so shellshocked that if she’d known how to put in a few haphazard sutures herself, she may very well have done so.
The inevitable thought hit her like a blow: Dolls knew how to suture.
She pushed the thought away; she hated to cry on general principles, let alone in front of other people (even Waverly), and she certainly wasn’t going to do so in a hospital waiting room over a couple of damn stitches.
Besides, she had other priorities. Waverly was trying so hard to be strong for Wynonna, but even she had a breaking point; Nicole was determined to be there for her when she hit it.
Her own grief could wait. It would have to.
Her guilt was choking her, but that would have to wait too.
Because once the stitches had been put in, once Doc and a dazed, bizarrely quiet Wynonna left, once she’d been discharged and lurched out of the hospital’s wheelchair to hobble into Nicole’s patrol car…
…Waverly came apart at the seams.
It wasn’t just Dolls.
It was all of it. Finding out about her mother. Finding out Wynonna had been lying to her all along.
It was being kidnapped. Having her voice stolen.
And it was Dolls. Of course it was Dolls.
And Waverly, who had held it together through it all – through Revenants and demon possessions and Willa dying and Alice leaving and all of it – broke.
So Nicole, who had never once even thought about using her patrol car for personal gain or convenience, flicked on the lights and siren just so she could get Waverly home faster.
Somehow she didn’t think Nedley would mind.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Waverly had stopped crying by the time she parked in front of the empty Homestead – wherever Doc had taken Wynonna, it wasn’t here.
Nicole had mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, no matter how complicated Wynonna’s relationship with him had been, she had unquestionably loved Dolls and she wasn’t known for processing emotion in healthy ways – which was the last thing Waverly needed to deal with right now.
But on the other hand, she was Wynonna and she should be here with Waverly.
And then there was the third hand – the selfish part of Nicole that wanted Waverly all to herself so they could comfort each other without having to deal with the weight of Wynonna’s grief.
Yet.
In any case, it was what it was and she put all thoughts of Wynonna out of her mind as she circled the car to pull Waverly to her feet. She’d gone silent and glassy-eyed, and passively allowed Nicole to bundle her inside and right up to her bedroom.
“I’m gonna change, baby, okay?” Nicole murmured as she tucked Waverly under a pile of blankets.
No response.
Nicole sighed and pulled a tank top and shorts out of her drawer in the dresser, then slipped into the bathroom to change. Normally she wouldn’t have bothered changing in private, but she needed a moment to pull herself together.
Or that had been the plan, at least, until her knees suddenly buckled and left her sitting hunched over on the toilet, a hand pressed over her mouth to stifle the sound of her own sobs.
The door eased open and her head jerked up.
She was busted.
Waverly limped across the bathroom and settled herself on Nicole’s lap.
And cried.
They both did.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
It was much later.
Wynonna had yet to appear, and yet she was almost more evident in her absence than she would have been in her presence.
Nicole and Waverly were cuddled together under a mountain of blankets that Nicole would have generally found stifling, but tonight, it felt like being in a cocoon – warm and comforting.
They’d both dozed a bit, but neither had really gotten any real sleep, and Nicole was beginning to feel the long day. The adrenaline, the fear, the grief…it was all catching up to her. Perhaps that was why she’d eventually found her filter slipping. “Waverly, I – ”
Waverly, who somehow read all of her guilt and regret in those two short words, cut her off with a surprisingly angry glare. “Don’t you dare say it!” A little taken aback, Nicole pulled back a bit and stared at her. “Don’t even think it,” Waverly added. “Don’t you dare say Wynonna should have let you fall. Don’t you dare. Don’t you fucking dare, Nicole Haught.”
Nicole was completely taken aback by the ferocity of Waverly’s anger. She opened her mouth to reply, but Waverly interrupted her again: “What’s your middle name?”
“…what?”
Waverly scowled at her. “If I’m really gonna yell at you, I need to know your whole name.”
“Um…Rayleigh?”
Waverly blinked at her, her train of thought thoroughly and completely derailed. “You’re kidding me.”
“What? No. Rayleigh. R-A-Y-L-E-I-G-H.”
Waverly shook her head. “You mean to tell me your parents knowingly saddled you with a lifetime of Haught puns and then picked the only middle name in the world that could possibly sound like Really? I mean…Really Haught? Nicole Rayleigh Haught? Really?”
Nicole wasn’t quite sure what to do with the whiplash of emotions, so she just shrugged.
“You do know what will happen if Wynonna ever gets wind of this, don’t you?”
The tension broke as they both laughed. Then Waverly met her eyes, serious again but no longer angry. In fact, tears were beginning to build in her eyes. “I mean it, though. Don’t you ever say to me that your life is worth less than his was. Or anybody’s.”
“Okay.”
Waverly sniffled. “Don’t even think it, Nicole. I can’t…I can’t handle knowing you think that way. Don’t make me scared I’m gonna lose you too because you don’t value your own life.”
And then it all made sense. Waverly was used to people abandoning her, and she thought she’d found the chink in Nicole’s armor. Nicole tenderly brushed the tears away with the pads of her thumbs, then leaned over and gave Waverly a sweet, lingering kiss. “Okay.”
“I-I mean, I know you have a dangerous job and this is Purgatory and I’m an Earp – sort of – and we’re both in ridiculous amounts of danger all the time, but that’s…that’s hard enough. Don’t give me more reason to worry, please, Nicole. I can’t take it.”
“Okay,” Nicole whispered. “Okay, Waves, I get it. I promise. I’m sorry, baby. I’m not going anywhere. I promise. And you’re totally, completely an Earp. I don’t care what the DNA test said, and you know Wynonna doesn’t either.”
“Don’t ever tell Wynonna to drop you off a cliff again.”
“Okay.”
“And don’t tell me you think she should have.”
“Okay.”
“And don’t you think she should have.”
“Okay.”
Waverly exhaled. “We should get some sleep. Wynonna’s gonna need us tomorrow.”
Nicole nodded with a wistful smile. “I know. But…you get first dibs, baby. If you need me, you tell me, okay? I mean, of course I’m here for Wynonna, but you’re my priority.”
Waverly’s face contorted in that one specific, heartbreaking way Nicole most hated to see – the look of mixed shock and delight that someone would put her first. “Okay, but…same goes for you, okay?” she said. “I know you cared about him too.”
Nicole smiled wistfully. “He was the first person who realized I had a crush on you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Well, unless you count Calamity. She got an earful the night after I met you.”
A few moments later, they were interrupted by a loud bang from downstairs.
They shared a mutual sigh, then slid out of bed. Nicole handed Waverly her thick winter robe, then followed her downstairs, where they found Wynonna calmly – and eerily silently – gathering every bit of alcohol she could fit into her arms.
Doc was nowhere to be seen and Wynonna showed no awareness that Nicole or Waverly were even there. She took her collection of booze and headed out into the night.
Nicole and Waverly shared a glance, then headed back upstairs to get dressed and armed. They followed Wynonna to the edge of the woods, hanging back a little to grant her whatever privacy they could. “Let’s make a fire,” Nicole said. “We should give her some space.”
“What if – ?”
“If she needs us, we’ll be here.” She met Waverly’s eyes, then started clearing space in the snow for a firepit. “Meanwhile, we can be here for each other while we wait.”
“Okay.” Waverly sighed. “Nicole? Don’t ever even think it, you hear me?”
“I swear, Waves.”
“Okay.”