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She hasn’t been able to take a deep breath since she saw the truck.
She hasn’t moved since she called Dolls.
She’s just stared at the hillside where the truck dislodged a small mountain of debris as it flipped. More than once. Her training tells her that much at least. Her eyes can’t stop staring at the evidence in front of her that the truck flippedas it went off the road.
She is hardly aware of the bitterly cold wind and even if she were, it wouldn’t compare to the ball of ice sitting in the pit of her stomach; it’s already whispering things like “she’s gone” and “you’ll wake up alone tomorrow.”
It’s not Dolls who comes; it’s Doc.
Of course it’s Doc.
He’s probably imagining the same bleak future for himself that she is right now.
It’s only later that she realizes he has an extra worry – that without Wynonna, Alice would someday become the Heir.
And then she sees the bloodied scarf and any thought of her own pain, of the potential horror of a life without Waverly, blows away on the frigid wind.
Because it’s just occurred to her — belatedly enough that she’s a bit ashamed of herself for losing herself to numbness and shock for so long — as she holds the scarf, stiff with frozen blood: “Waverly. She’ll be cold.”
Of them all, Waverly knew only Ward and Willa ever meant to be cruel. Well, and maybe Stephanie. But for someone as hyper-attuned to others’ reactions to her as Waverly was, even an exasperated sigh had a habit of sticking in her brain.
Ward had actively tormented her for it. He’d ‘misplace’ jackets and blankets and her flannel pajamas. She’d left for her first day of school without a coat because he refused to let her look for it, claiming they’d be late.
They’d been twenty minutes early.
Fall had just started; no one else had been wearing one because the morning chill would burn off soon enough and no one wanted to be bothered to keep track of a jacket they wouldn’t need by the time the morning break rolled around.
So Waverly had spent her first day of kindergarten shivering and flinching from a shadow she thought she saw in the mirror.
She never told anyone about either. She’d already learned it wasn’t worth it.
At first, the other kids had mostly ignored her – and she’d been more concerned with avoiding any reflective surface to really care what the others were doing. But after Ward’s death and Willa’s disappearance, things changed.
The name Earp became a de facto curse word in Purgatory (when Nicole had referred to it that way when they were just becoming friends, long before she knew anything approaching the whole story, Waverly’s startled laughter at the characterization had puzzled her).
The other kids listened, of course, to their parents’ whispered gossip. And so Waverly had gone from the weird kid the other kids ignored to the outcast they felt free to torment so quickly it had made her head spin.
The others started hiding her mittens and making sure she had to sit at the table closest to the door in the lunch room so she’d feel a gust of cold air every time someone entered the room. They called her names and joked about her dead family. They’d even once dumped an entire thermos of ice cubes down her back. The whole class had lost recess as a punishment — even a shaken, shaking, shivering Waverly, who’d vacillated between lonely misery and seething outrage at the injustice of it all.
Even in high school, after she’d perfected the smile-and-wave that was the only defense she could think of against the baggage of her last name and had somehow managed to join the cheerleading squad (thereby going from town pariah to one of the ‘popular kids’ overnight), the other girls on the team would decide on their warm-weather uniforms even in the dead of winter. They’d make up excuses each time, but Waverly could tell from the look on Stephanie Jones’s face why she’d bullied them into it.
Because their slight discomfort was worth it to see Waverly truly suffer.
Chrissy Nedley would look sympathetic but helpless while Stephanie smirked as she put on the warmer uniform tights that were the only concession she allowed to the weather. The tights that Gus and Curtis simply couldn’t afford to buy for her. Too much of their income went to Wynonna – for bail and counselors and lawyers and therapy, not that any of it seemed to do any good.
It was never with malice, but Gus and Curtis would tease her about it — in a way they probably meant to be a gentle inside joke rather than anything meant to hurt. It was never much — just an eye roll as they waited for Waverly to stuff her already-gloved hands into mittens.
But even that slight, slight hint of censure rubbed Waverly raw.
Even Wynonna would joke about her three duvets and her impressive scarf collection and while Waverly knew it was just her sense of humor and it was truly meant to be just a bit of sisterly teasing…
…it hurt.
She couldn’t control that she was cold all the time. Even though she, more often than not, wished she could.
To her credit, Gus had once taken her to the doctor when Waverly, in her early teens, was still suffering well into spring — when the rest of them had already begun to shed layers and gloves and scarves — and other than slightly low blood pressure, they’d never been able to find an explanation.
“It’s just how your body works,” the doctor had said with a shrug, sending her on her way with instructions to come back if she began to feel faint or showed any other troubles from the low blood pressure.
Much, much later, Waverly would remember the startled look Gus sent the doctor in response to that comment, and her very thoughtful silence as they drove home. She would remember Gus telling her to unstick her wings, and she would wonder.
It became a habit to apologize before she even started looking for a scarf or a pair of gloves. To keep an extra jacket in the car so she wouldn’t have to go back inside to get one if she went outside only to find it cooler than she’d expected. To tuck her hands up under her arms and conjugate Latin verbs in her head to distract herself. To tell herself, “It’s only a couple of minutes.”
To put others’ convenience ahead of her own needs.
Which was why she’d nearly burst into tears the first time she’d woken up at Nicole’s only to find herself covered in two more blankets than she’d gone to sleep with. “I got up to use the bathroom and you were shivering,” Nicole said with a shrug. Nonchalant and matter-of-fact and without a hint of scorn or teasing.
As though it meant nothing.
It meant everything.
The first time Waverly felt Nicole involuntarily flinch away from her hands – she’d forgotten to warm them before slipping under the covers and she’d accidentally brushed one ice cold hand against Nicole’s hip – her heart had sunk and she’d looked away, whispering an automatic and disconsolate “I’m sorry” as an echo of Champ Hardy’s voice hissed annoyed recriminations in her head.
“Hey,” Nicole had murmured, and Waverly had seen her perplexed frown out of the corner of her eye. “Not worth apologizing over, Waves.”
And then she’d done the most remarkable thing.
Instead of teasing or even just quietly letting go of the matter, she’d taken Waverly’s freezing hands between her own and began to chafe them to warm them up before she lifted one then the other to her lips and kissed it, holding eye contact all the while.
There was no impatience in her eyes. There was just warmth and affection and something that looked an awful lot like love.
This time, Waverly did cry.
And, later, when Waverly tiptoed back to bed in the middle of the night, Nicole – half awake at best – had caught Waverly’s hands, which were already ice cold, and tucked them against her heart before wrapping her arms around Waverly, holding her close until she stopped shivering.
Nicole slept hot and couldn’t stand to stay under that mountain of blankets all night, but she always – always – held Waverly until their shared body heat banished the worst of the chill.
It was Nicole who coined the term bonus blankets one night in the dead of winter when they’d planned to stay at the Homestead. They’d been at Nicole’s the night before – a newer, well-maintained, well-insulated house – and, despite it all, Waverly had ended up sleeping in not only her own flannel pajamas but also a spare pair of Nicole’s, cuddled under four blankets and wrapped around Nicole’s much warmer body.
Her knock had sounded odd and when Waverly opened the door she realized Nicole had been kicking it instead of knocking…
…because she had a stack of blankets under each arm, including a heated blanket that trailed an electrical plug behind it. Later Waverly would find three extra pairs of woolen socks stuffed into Nicole’s back pocket.
“Hi, baby,” she said with a warm smile, with nothing but acceptance and kindness and thoughtfulness in her eyes. “I thought you might need some bonus blankets if we’re staying here tonight. The windchill is supposed to be awful.”
She’s never liked carrying a purse; she really only ever does when she has to attend a formal event.
But while Waverly’s gone, she carries a purse everywhere she goes. It has gloves, woolen socks, and chemical hand-warming packets she found online. She has blankets stored in the trunk of her cruiser, too, along with the parka Waverly had been wearing the day she’d burst breathlessly into Nedley’s office and changed the course of both their lives.
When Wynonna questions her about the purse, she scowls – she’ll forgive Wynonna someday, but that day is very much not today — and says only, “It bothers her when you tease her about being cold all the time,” before she turns and stalks away, holding the purse close to her body the way she wishes she could hold Waverly – as though somehow she can send the warmth over the distance between them through the proxy of the purse.
“Stay warm, baby,” she whispers, touching the ring she wears on a chain around her neck. “We’re coming for you.”