Chapter Text
Nicole was a full two suitcases in, and she knew if she didn’t pace herself that she would eventually try to pack her entire room into the remaining duffle bag and the backpack she had left to spare, but it wasn’t like she’d done this before. How was she supposed to be any better at packing for a year of isolation in some remote research station off the coast of Vancouver than anybody else? She had lost all cognitive ability to decide whether something was important or not: everything she told herself she wouldn’t need would somehow end up in her bag five minutes later and she could never remember what happened in between.
When it came to any sort of information about orcas or anything to do with her job, she could always pull off the confident face of the person she tried so desperately to pretend that she was. But this was out there- even for her- so she was certain that she was far from alone in her worry and her excitement. Working for one of the most successful Canadian organizations in marine biology was nothing to be taken lightly- especially not in a position as high up as she was, and she had spent over half the past decade working vigorously to reach that point of her career in Ocean Wise as a lead cetologist with a specialized focus in orcas. But she hadn’t always been so lucky.
As a young, determined, 21-year-old graduate of The University of British Columbia with a masters in marine biology, she had been all too eager that she would come across a job opportunity immediately after graduation, but that confidence had slowly faltered when a day, a week, a month, and soon almost half a year had gone by without so much as a newspaper article that provided her any assistance with finding a starting position in a marine institution. And then, by what was nothing short of an actual, heaven-sent miracle, it happened- A typical trip to her local cafe for a morning coffee was cut short one morning when her phone alerted her with an update from a job search app she had downloaded that the Vancouver Aquarium was looking to hire for the position of a research intern, and suddenly coffee was the last thing on her mind.
An application typed with shaking hands and a few moments of holding back a scream later, and suddenly she was on her way to an interview with one of the lead biologists in the aquarium to discuss why she would be a good addition to the team of scientists working for Ocean Wise. When she got the call that she had been hired, she almost didn’t believe the person on the other line.
Nicole was 27 now, and she had dedicated countless hours of her time and energy for the last six years researching hand-in-hand researching and partaking in conservation-based case studies to earn her way into a position like the one she was in at that current moment, eagerly preparing to spend an entire year in an oceanic research facility in the Pacific Northwest ocean some 150 miles off the shoreline.
The Costal Ocean Research Institute was the name of the unit in charge of this expedition, one she had been a part of for most of her time working for Ocean Wise that focused their efforts on collaborative research and the conservation of marine life. It was a major research operation, one that had been in the works for well over two years now and was finally ready for execution. Three separate, identical stations had been constructed parallel to the coastline of Vancouver, each with accommodations to comfortably sustain two individuals, and a group of six experts with specialized interests would be hand selected to spend a full 12 months- August to August- in these facilities while researching the environmental impact of climate change, high concentrations of micro plastics, and the ever-rising sea levels on the marine life present in the region.
And out of all the brilliant, world-renowned minds they had at their disposal that they could have asked to fill those spots, instead they had come to her.
Whether it was a matter of her tenacity and the passion she held for the field or because they saw something in her she couldn’t see herself, Nicole had been approached by Dr. Lance Barrett-Lennard himself- the director of the entire unit- and asked if she would consider accepting his invitation to be the lead cetologist on the project. She had never agreed to anything so quickly in her life.
That was a month ago, but it hadn’t been until the previous night that she was able to reveal this secret to the fans on her TikTok account in a surprise video that she posted around 2:00 A.M. when she was too excited to sleep. All day, she had been absentmindedly scrolling through the comments in amusement at the excitement and the desperation to know more about what was actually happening than she had let on.
It felt bizarre, that something as seemingly trivial as a video-based social media platform had created such a drastic change in her life. A year ago she was an everyday scientist who spent her days in a lab conducting research, and of course that element of her life hadn’t disappeared, but now it was infused with moments of brief intermittence where she would where she would pull out her phone to record herself moving things in the aquarium gift shop to see how long it took to be put back where it had been or racing her coworker Xavier Dolls through the coral maze in the kids corner with all the lights out and using glow sticks to see.
It had been Chrissy’s suggestion that she create a profile, and though she obliged with little objection to it, she had never expected what started as a joke to appease her sister’s playful sense of humor to ever turn into what it was today, where she had accumulated over a million followers on an account under the handle @orcapedia.
Sure, her videos sometimes had nothing to do with her job and from time to time consisted simply of audio-edited laughter at inside jokes, secretly filming Dolls in an attempt to catch him doing something camera-worthy, but the real reason why she found the app so valuable was because it had helped her to spread awareness about protecting marine life in ways she hadn’t previously thought possible. And of course, there was the added bonus of being able to share her not-so-secret passion for plants.
Maybe it was the impact she had on her viewers that set her apart from some of the other options that could have easily been considered to go instead of her- she had a connection with the future generation, and ever since she had been involved with TikTok she had seen a dramatic increase of online support for the conservation efforts of orcas not just in Canada but worldwide. Whatever it was, she was more grateful than she could put into words.
A glance at her dresser shifted Nicole’s attention and her eyes landed on a small pile of seed packets, specifically an assortment of aquatic plant seeds that she had purchased a few days back at a a nearby garden center. Hydroponic planting was something she had always wanted to try her hand at- she’d always had a love for gardening as far back as she could remember, and her room had always felt incomplete unless it was filled with plants- but the idea of growing an entire garden in assortment of plants completely in water was something she had never taken a shot at before.
At first, it was simply because she hadn’t yet learned about it, but once she had learned of this approach to gardening, she was quite hesitant to actually start the process, and it had taken her some time to decipher exactly why. Her best theory was that botany was something that had always fallen within Nicole’s comfort zone. Growing plants was something that came naturally to her, and the possibility of failure involving something that she had consistently been successful in her entire life was more nerve wracking than she was willing to admit. But even so, the idea of water-based plants fascinated her, and ultimately she decided that since she would likely have a lot of free time to herself over the next three-hundred and sixty-five days, those days would be better spent learning the technique she was so intrigued by.
She read each of the seed names as she delicately packed them into the corner of her suitcase: water lettuce, duckweed, mint, tarragon, fairy moss. Fairy moss was something she had specifically purchased because it was an annual, which meant that if she planted it at the beginning of her time at the research facility, it was likely going to die right around when her expedition was set to end. She viewed it almost as a sort of symbol- it felt like the ferns would serve as a good reminder that her time at the facility would be as limited as the life of the plant, but she wanted to at least make a goal for herself to keep it alive until her last day.
She also had purchased seeds for a ginkgo, and was planning to attempt to grow the tree aquatically and practice the art of bonsai. She had successfully started growing a Japanese-maple bonsai that was currently four years old and sitting proudly in a pot in her window, but Nicole was the type of person who was constantly challenging her own limits, and an aquatic bonsai tree seemed like an excellent test of her abilities.
Out of the corner of her eye, the ginger woman saw a flash of bright orange fur and turned to see Calamity Jane had jumped up to land gracefully on the corner of her bed, and she spared a few moments to run her fingers through the length of the cat’s fur.
“I dunno CJ, I don’t know if I’m gonna make it a whole year without having you around,” she chuckled to herself, scratching the tabby just behind the ears with the nails she hadn’t filed down yet. She had been given the option to request bringing a pet along with her, but Calamity Jane was an older cat who wasn’t all that used to change, and after spending 15 years as a lackadaisical house cat in the suburban, craftsman-style bungalow Nicole still lived in with her dad and her sister, it felt unfair to suddenly introduce her to an entirely new environment that might cause her discomfort, especially one in the middle of the ocean where she had no means of leaving. Still, she couldn’t deny that she would miss her nonchalant, overweight companion while she was away. “Hell, I may have to resort to talking with my plants,” she half-chuckled, half-sighed to herself.
As if she didn’t do that already.
Whether she could understand her owner or not, something about Calamity had always felt safe for Nicole; the cat had always provided her with an environment that made her feel like she could openly discuss her feelings and that she was being heard. As if she could tell what the woman standing over her thinking, she blinked a few times and started purring quietly, but suddenly Nicole realized that it wasn’t the only sound that was audibly noticeable in the room. Feeling eyes on her, the she laughed quietly under her breath as she mindlessly tossed another shirt into the duffel bag that was filling up more quickly than she would have preferred.
“Hi dad,” she didn’t have to turn around to recognize the feeling of the eyes burning into her back, or to hear the soft but heavy breathing of lungs that had been exposed to more than their fair share of toxic smoke and smog over the years. She slowly straightened her back until she resumed a full standing position and turned to see the familiar, aging figure of her dad standing in the door. Randy Nedley, the chief of the Vancouver Police Department, who she had seen as a father since she was just barely 6 years old. Seeing that he was struggling to keep his expression as stone faced as it was, Nicole made her way towards him with a sympathetic, understanding half-frown. He sighed and she nodded, seeing that he was forcing back a thin film of tears over his eyes.
“It feels like it was yesterday you were just a little girl, sitting on my office couch and swinging your legs because you couldn’t reach the ground yet,” he chuckled sadly in a shaking voice that ruined any attempt to appear as though he was holding himself together. Beneath the façade of the brave expression he was struggling to maintain, his daughter could clearly see the strain in his face while he tried his best to stay strong, and he coughed roughly to clear his throat to try and hide the sob he was choking back. Nicole offered up a watery smile and placed a hand on his shoulder, the action nearly bringing her to tears as well.
It was true- it was hard to believe that it had actually been 21 years since that fateful night, one that had started with what could only be described as a tragedy, but by morning had somehow unfolded into nothing short of a miracle.
It had been mid-April, 1998, and around 10:00 or so on an otherwise uneventful night, Randy Nedley’s evening on the couch watching cartoons with his 8 year old Chrissy had been interrupted by a call on his pager about a recent car accident near the western edge of the city of Vancouver- a two vehicle collision with three reported casualties so far. He was fairly new to the force at the time, still a rookie officer with roughly a year or so of experience under his belt, and after expressing his gratitude to his next-door neighbors for agreeing to watch his daughter while he was gone, he had arrived on scene in under half an hour to see a blocked off section of the road covered in glass and shrapnel from the crash, and he could see the back half of a car hanging over the side of a ditch next to the street.
Ambulance and fire had already arrived, along with his boss at the time and some of the fellow officers he worked alongside, but amid the array of flashing lights and not-so-secretive discussions about the accident, Nedley’s attention was somehow drawn to a single space, where a young, incredibly frightened girl with a mess of curly red hair partially covering her face sat in the doors of an ambulance with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, seemingly unharmed aside from a few minor cuts and bruises visible on her face and hands.
They had locked eyes; as they stared at one another through the rain and the crowd and the rotating flood of red and blue lights, Nedley could tell that there was something important about this child he’d never met, something that connected the two of them in a way that neither of them could have explained back then. Nicole Haught, the six- year-old girl sitting in the ambulance- was the only confirmed survivor of the accident, luckily being spared most of the impact from the crash in back seat of her parents mini-van. By some miracle that was likely the reason she had survived at all, she had managed to unbuckle her seatbelt and had climbed out through the shattered glass of back windshield.
After the paramedics on scene had examined Nicole and treated her cuts with some antiseptic then covered them with a few small bandages, they had given their confirmation that she had escaped the accident relatively unscathed. Nedley had been tasked with driving the girl to the police station and keeping watch over her until the storm died down and child services could be contacted, and with everyone else still on call at the scene of the accident, the station occupied by no one but the officer, the young girl, and the louder-than-usual sound of the ticking clock above.
It had taken quite some time before they spoke because the last thing he wanted was to upset this girl he suddenly was so protective of, but after a lollipop, some coloring books, and a cup of hot chocolate complete with mini marshmallows, the small ginger began to talk to the older man who in those years had yet to go completely gray and still boasted a decent amount of bold black color in his hair.
They talked, and they talked, and they talked, and Nedley slowly fell more and more in love with the newly-orphaned six year old girl, to the point where the thought of her spending her life bouncing between unstable foster homes or possibly the unforgiving streets of Vancouver was unbearable. Maybe it had been a hasty decision that was made in the spur of the moment, but since the death of his wife two years prior to that night he had built a wall around his heavy heart, a wall that this young girl he barely knew had bypassed as if it wasn’t there at all.
Of course it was a long process, and because following the death of her parents Nicole was technically an asset of the state, it took months of investigations into his financial stability, his family life, his background information, and a myriad of countless other things Nedley wasn’t capable of remembering the names of, but after 10 excruciatingly long months of meetings, paperwork, and a young ginger girl cementing a place in the hearts of the people who wanted her to officially be a part of their family, the papers were finally signed and the adoption was made official in court. And ever since that day- though she had kept her last name because it was her only surviving connection with her biological parents- the stoic but gentle police-chief-to-be and his cheerful blonde daughter two years her senior were the only people Nicole considered family.
“I can’t believe I’m not gonna see you for a whole year,” he continued in a gruff voice, clearing his throat once more and looking up in hopes that it would prevent his tears from spilling out. Nicole sighed and made her way over to sit on the edge of her bed, patting the empty space beside her and gesturing for the older man to join her. She waited until he followed her instructions and sat down at her side before opening her mouth to speak.
“It’ll go by faster than you think, I promise. Besides, Dr. Barrett-Lennard already said we could have our families flown in for the holidays and at our convenience. The stations even have two extra bedrooms to accommodate for family visits. And I promise, I’ll call you guys all the time to check in,” she explained with a sad half-smile, rubbing her hand over her dad’s shoulder lovingly. He chuckled to himself and shook his head, wrapping an arm around her in a lasting side-hug.
“I know sweetie, I’m just gonna miss you. But I know you’re gonna do great things out there, and I am so incredibly proud of how far you’ve come in all of this. We’ve got your back, always,” he promised her, squeezing her side again briefly for emphasis before standing up from her bed and making his way towards the doorframe.
He hesitated, just for a moment, then smiled to himself and continued out of the room. Nicole watched him until he had disappeared from view, and after collecting her thoughts she let out a deep exhale, then stood up so she could finish packing her bags, an easy smile never fading from her lips. She would never understand how she had gotten so lucky as to have ended up with a family as great as hers.
For over an hour now, Waverly had been sitting in that same damn spot on her bed, staring at that same damn, open suitcase lying at the opposite end of her mattress with barely anything inside. She just couldn’t get her head around how to begin packing for an entire year away from home. What did she want to bring? What was she supposed to bring? What even made sense to bring on a research trip that would last until the following August?
Clothes? Obviously, but what clothes? Shoes? Sure, but which shoes? And what else? If she was going to living somewhere else for a full three-hundred and sixty-five days, how much time was she going to have to herself where she could focus on something outside of research? Would she have time for that? Or was the research she was to conduct going to be so demanding that she would have time for nothing but? With a loud groan, she leaned back on her bed and closed her eyes, letting her arms cover her face.
Maybe she wasn’t cut out for this after all.
There was nobody else in the field who understood the importance of sharks and the role they played in the marine ecosystem the way Waverly Earp did. Sharks were beautiful, intelligent, significant creatures that had been the captors of her interest her entire life, and she would spend the rest of her career as a marine biologist defending their rights to be protected under the same conservation laws as other oceanic life if she had to.
But despite all that, Waverly was seriously beginning to doubt her ability to hold her own in comparison to the top experts in specialized fields of marine biology that she would be accompanying on this expedition, especially when they were all so experienced and well respected by their peers while she barely had three years of experience as a full time employee for Ocean Wise.
There was something about other fields of marine biology that had always struck a nerve deep in the pit of Waverly’s inner being, and it forced her to look at other scientists through a biased lens. Dolphins, penguins, turtles- none of these creatures faced the stigma of fear and demonization that sharks did. Sure they were hunted unfairly, and they were all just as affected by the environmental influence of climate change and pollution in the ocean, but those were the types of animals that people actually wanted to save.
Those were the animals that had entire movements behind them, that had whole teams of people all over the world working to conserve their environment and protect them under the law. And it wasn’t that there was no global effort to support the conservation of shark species, but people weren’t exactly tripping over themselves to defend them the way they did for other animals.
And orcas- they were the worst of them all, the animals that Waverly found herself in constant competition with both in and out of work. Not only were scientists specializing in the endangered mammals receiving unprecedented levels of international support, there were also now tons of reports of killer whales praying on great whites, which were the sharks that Waverly had a specialized focus on. It wasn’t really that she thought they were the reason for the diminishing number of sharks- the practice of finning and the illegal trading that went on between the scummy fishermen that worked for the fishing markets of Thailand, Mesoamerica, and some remote parts of the world were largely responsible for the dwindling figures in their populations as whole.
But the widespread support of the idea that orcas would rid the oceans of sharks was becoming increasingly popular, especially in the mass media, so because of this- whether they were deserving of her criticism or not- the brunette couldn’t help the instinctual disdain she held for both orcas and for the scientists that studied them.
Two months after graduating with the title of valedictorian of her small town class, the younger Earp woman ended things with her high school fling Champ and put all her focus into her studies. Her mom had walked out on the family when she was too little to remember, and her dad had died shortly after of a heart attack, so she and Wynonna had spent most of their childhood in the car of their aunt Gus and their uncle Curtis, though he also died from cardiac arrest when Waverly was around 14.
They had always done their best to be proper parents, and after Curtis died, Gus had given everything she collected from his life insurance policy to her nieces to fund whatever plans they wanted to pursue in their adult lives. Wynonna had used the majority of her share to move from their small town of Purgatory to the city of Vancouver where she landed a job as a bartender and had enough for a down payment on a small but functional apartment. Four and a half years later Waverly followed her sister to the city with the hopes of putting herself through college, and they moved into their current two-bedroom together. As the older woman continued working as a bar tender, her sister put all her efforts into her studies at The University of Victoria in central Vancouver.
Creak.
The sudden sound of her bed springs and the sensation of movement near her feet turned Waverly’s attention away from her thoughts so that she opened her eyes and looked up to see the shape of a 15 pound golden retriever/German shepherd mixed puppy, unable to stop a smile from forming across her lips at the sight despite the lingering weight of her nerves. Reef was just 4 months old, and she’d only been his official owner for just shy of a month then, but in those weeks that seemed to pass by in a blur she had fallen helplessly in love with her new companion, finding that she desperately missed his presence whenever he was absent from her side.
Waverly never thought that she would one day call herself a dog-owner- growing up she had never expressed any interest in owning a pet of any kind, and most dogs larger than a pug tended to make her nervous. But then again, she never thought that she would someday be considered a near-expert in the field of shark biology either, yet here she was, proud to hold ownership over both titles, and slowly finding out that these two areas of her life were much more interdependent on one another than she had previously suspected they would be. She enjoyed her work more than most things in her life, but her first week on the job after finalizing his adoption had been one of the longest in her life, and she had spent the days staring at the clock as she counted down the minutes until she was free to return home and spend time with the puppy.
Reef was the perfect name for the newest addition to the family- both because it was reference to marine life in general but also because it happened to be a type of shark that she knew plenty about even though she technically specialized in great whites- and Waverly was in love the moment she tried the name out on the young animal. It had been Wynonna’s suggestion actually, one that the younger of the two sisters was surprised but incredibly pleased with. She had given herself some time to seriously consider the title, dedicating an entire day of her careful thought process after bringing the puppy home trying to see if anything else fit him better. But ultimately- at the end of the day- the brunette had reached the conclusion that a better name for her newest companion simply didn’t exist, so she had excitedly and officially declared the dog as Reef.
To her surprise however, over the course of the previous weeks following his adoption from a local animal shelter nearby, Waverly had reached the conclusion that she would never be able to spend an entire year away from her newest cuddle partner. She had agreed to the upcoming research expedition months prior and in no way intended to cancel that plan or go back on her word, so she had instead called in to speak with Dr. Barrett-Lennard, desperately requesting permission to bring him on the trip, which luckily she was granted through an understanding and sympathetic confirmation.
Reef yawned as he stood to readjust his position after a few moments, curling into a ball beside his owner as she began to run her fingers gently through his his coat of incredibly soft golden fur. It was a good distraction for the time, but as the room fell silent and still once more, Waverly couldn’t help but feel her mind start to wander, and she soon was lost in a mess of thoughts about the expedition that was approaching far too quickly, as well as the fellow biologists who had also been asked to participate in the year-long study with her.
The brunette couldn’t deny that she was nervous about the fact that everyone was to be paired up with a fellow researcher with whom they would be sharing the space of one of three facilities for the following three-hundred and sixty-five days. It wasn’t that she couldn’t work with others, it was just that… Well, her ability to perform decently alongside someone else depended on who that someone else was. There were only five other scientists that were also going on the expedition, and of those five Waverly was pretty sure that she could function perfectly well/share a living and work space with all of them. Well, with most of them, at least.
The one exception to this was someone she knew virtually nothing about but whom she had a pretty good idea she wouldn’t get along with, and that was an overly-cocky, fiery-haired, easy-going and highly-respected cetologist. Nicole Rayleigh Haught, an Orca specialist who for whatever reason was someone that Waverly was all too happy avoiding whenever possible.
Over the past year, the slender woman with a notorious head of long, vibrant auburn hair had become nothing short of famous on the popular video sharing social media platform known as TikTok. Why someone like her had been selected for a position on the research expedition as opposed to the numerous other more-qualified scientists they worked with the brunette honestly couldn’t say, because from what Waverly had seen from the videos she had taken the time to watch, Nicole was not the type of person who was very research-oriented. Most of the content that she had taken the time to actually watch consisted of playful, silly games along with a fair amount of childish- and even somewhat irresponsible- behavior.
Sure, the ginger woman was intelligent enough and a qualified professional within her own field of marine biology. But the information she included in her videos about orcas was in Waverly’s eyes counteracted and contradicted by thing like clips of her running with glow sticks through the kids section in the Vancouver Aquarium at night after closing hours and garbage basketball tournaments in the labs.
A fair amount of her videos were also filmed in the company of another scientist who had also been asked to go on the research trip: Xavier Dolls, who more commonly was referred to simply by his last name, was a fellow ichthyologist who specialized in the study of rays, but even though they fell under the same sub-category of marine biology, Waverly had never personally met the man. She did know, however, that that he did not face the same kind of backlash about his studies, even with rays being so closely related to sharks. But, she supposed most people probably didn’t know that, so she couldn’t entirely fault the man.
Waverly had never actually met Nicole in person either- the closest she had ever come to an encounter with the cetologist was in the brief moments passing one another in the labs of the aquarium, or on the exceptionally rare occasions in which they would end up working within the vicinity of one another. But they had never actually exchanged any words before, and they certainly had never experienced a face-to-face encounter that required the use of some form of verbal communication. And Waverly wasn’t the type of person who was usually so quick to judge, especially without having all the pieces of the puzzle in her possession, but someone about this tall, cheery, abundantly-optimistic woman with her charming smile and her perfect dimples frustrated the brunette in a way she couldn’t logically explain.
If she was lucky- which she was sure wouldn’t be the case, considering her history with luck and the type that she so often seemed to have- Waverly would end up getting paired up with Jeremy Chetri, a coworker and friend of hers with whom she had become aquatinted when they started as interns together a few years back. Jeremy had focused his studies on herpetology and was now working on a project in hopes of protecting the green sea turtle population, and she would be lying if she said she wasn’t also a little bit jealous of the support he always seemed to receive for his work.
But at least he was- if nothing else- sympathetic to her cause, and he understood why sharks were so important to the ocean’s ecosystem, as well as to the shorter woman he had quickly befriended early on in his career. They had always gotten along well and had similar ways of thinking, so being assigned to spend the year with him would be the ideal. With Jeremy, she had never felt like she had to justify the right for her career to exist, the way she always did around some of the other scientists she had encountered over the years.
Waverly had heard very little about the other two scientists who were accompanying them on the research expedition, and knew only what she had been told briefly by Dr. Barrett-Lennard. Rosita Bustillos was an accomplished marine botanist from a separate research organization based in the areas closer to the northern Canadian coast, and she had been recruited and asked to study the declining ecosystem/plant life in the Pacific Northwest region. Robert Svane was a world-renown marine ornithologist from Norway, who would be observing the effects in the declining population of an endangered oceanic bird called the western snowy plover. Even though they were strangers to her, Waverly would have still preferred to have either of these scientists as her partner opposed to Nicole.
“Auntie Waves?”
Once again, Waverly’s train of thought was thrown off its tracks at the interruption, this time caused not by the presence of her dog but by the sound of a young girl’s voice that she immediately recognized as belonging to her niece Alice. She opened her eyes and sat up on her bed, hearing the increasingly loud footsteps making their way down the hall of the two-bedroom apartment that the occupants who lived there were quickly outgrowing, until the familiar face of the five-year-old girl appeared in her doorway.
“Are you done packing yet?” she asked, her hands fidgeting restlessly behind her back as she rocked on her heels by the door. Waverly couldn’t help the small laugh that escaped her lips and shook her head, glancing towards her still almost-completely-empty suitcase sitting at the foot of her bed.
“Ah, no! No, sorry, not yet baby,” she sighed through a tired smile. “Come here,” she gestured for her niece to join her on the bed. The smaller girl didn’t hesitate, and in a flash of dark hair she suddenly was sitting beside her aunt on the bed, petting Reef gently on his back. He let out a small bark in appreciation and stretched his legs out, trying to find a more comfortable position to lay in. Waverly took a moment to take in the features of the girl sitting beside her, knowing it would at least be a few months before she got a chance to do so again.
Alice wasn’t an exact replica of her mother, but the resemblance was stark enough that when they stood side-by-side no one would think to question that she was Wynonna’s daughter. They shared the same dark chocolate colored mane of wavy hair, and the younger girl’s eyes were that same shade of icy blue, her smile the same shape as her mother with a glint of playful mischief hidden behind every grin.
Waverly spent a lot of her time watching over the younger girl while her sister worked night shifts at a local bar and vice versa, but occasionally they still were forced to seek babysitting assistance from the neighbors across the hall. They were an older couple who always said they were happy to do it, but it still was a constant reminder on both the bartender and the biologist that they were stuck raising the young girl in a cramped space that was in delicate words less than ideal, and both were working tirelessly just to afford the rent that they paid to live there.
That was another reason why this expedition was so important for Waverly and her family. Alice- though a welcomed and excitedly anticipated addition to the family- had never been part of the plan she and Wynonna originally had for themselves, the result of a one-night-stand her sister had drunkenly set up with a stranger she hadn’t seen since. She was born when Waverly was still a 17-year-old high school sophomore, and after she moved in with Wynonna she had grown to love the child just as much as the girl’s darker haired mother.
Two bedrooms, a semi-decently sized bathroom, a small kitchen and a living room was enough space for the three of them when they first moved in, but Alice was getting bigger now and set to start school in August, and the apartment that was once small but cozy had recently started to feel something more along the lines of cramped. When Waverly first was informed about the possibility of going on the research expedition, she hadn’t hesitated in doing everything in her power to ensure she was offered a position on the trip. If she proved herself a valuable asset to the project and managed to impress her superiors, it was her hope that she would soon be able to advance to a higher position in her career that paid more and offered the possibility of a salary that would let them possibly put a down payment on a small condo or something else large enough for them to comfortably raise the girl and settle down into.
“Are you really gonna be living in the ocean?” Alice asked after a few moments had passed, taking a break from petting Reef and turning her attention towards her aunt with a curious expression. Waverly sighed. The benefits that the expedition would have financially and on her career were too important to pass by, but it still wasn’t easy to leave her sister and her niece behind. Life was stressful enough as it was- she could only imagine how much harder things were about to get in her absence. But she and Wynonna had talked about this extensively, and they both agreed that this would be a good thing for all of them.
“Yeah honey, in a special building for my job. But in a few months you and mama are gonna come visit me for Christmas so it won’t be too long before you see me! You’ll get to fly out on a helicopter and see where I’m living and what I’m doing at work,” she did her best to sound as positive as she could, and luckily Alice either bought it or didn’t question her if not. She grinned widely and nodded, and Waverly reached forward and ruffled her hair playfully with a soft grin. “Alright squirt,” she affectionately cooed her nickname for her niece, “Why don’t you, go on and play for a little bit? Mama will be home soon and then we can have dinner.”
“Can we have spagh-etti?” the younger girl asked hopefully, putting just a bit more emphasis than necessary on the word “spaghetti” and looking up at her aunt with wide, pleading eyes. There was no way the older woman could deny the request when she was being stared up at by such an expression.
“Sure sweetie, whatever you want,” she promised, watching her niece jump up cheerfully and run out of the room to go play somewhere, leaving Waverly once again in the company of nobody aside from Reef. She sighed again and looked down at the dog by her legs, scratching his head absentmindedly and letting her eyes wander back down to her open suitcase. With a frustrated sigh, she kicked the bag off her bed and listened to it clatter to the floor with a loud thud.
Reef looked up at her as he tilted his head slightly to the side, and she shrugged before flopping back onto her bed in exhaustion. She felt the puppy nuzzle her arm and let her fingers lightly run through the fur down his back. Yeah, she was still wildly unprepared for the trip that she was leaving for in a week, but right now she was too worried to prepare for it and too tired to worry more, so she didn’t fight back against the heaviness that had settled into her eyelids, feeling them slide closed with ease and plunging her into darkness. Packing her bags had officially become a tomorrow problem.