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Considering everything, Waverly pulled back from their kiss much sooner than Nicole really would have preferred. “I’m sorry!” she gasped; Nicole just stared at her in genuine confusion. “Nicole! Why didn’t you tell me I was kneeling on you?”
“I didn’t notice,” Nicole said, sitting up as Waverly hastily backed away just far enough that she could sit on the grass facing her, though their hands remained joined between them. “Honestly. I didn’t.”
There was a moment of almost uncomfortable silence, then Waverly shook her head with wonder and disbelief in her eyes. “I can’t believe you…promised that.”
Nicole caressed Waverly’s cheek with her free hand. “There’s no world where I wouldn’t.” Waverly melted a little, leaning into Nicole’s caress with an echo of a very familiar look. “Don’t forget…I promised to be by your side for as long as you want me.”
“That’s a lot more…literal…now.” Waverly’s eyes met hers and then skittered away, an echo of her old bashfulness that tugged hard at Nicole’s heartstrings.
“Good,” Nicole said, confident and secure and without a shred of doubt. She bit her lip, steeling herself to call up – to talk about – memories she usually tried to keep locked away. “Waves…I had eighteen months to see what life would be like without you. I’m okay, baby. This is nothing compared to that.”
“But – ”
“There’s no place I could go or…or mountain I could climb that would come…even close…to being worth the hole you’d leave behind if I lost you again. I know. I lived it for eighteen months, three weeks, and four days. And something like five hours.” She looked down at their joined hands, her thumb rubbing circles on the top of Waverly’s hand. “Waverly, I did all that traveling because…well, first, I think it was about trying to understand my parents. And then I…I think I was searching for something. I didn’t even know what. And then something – fate, or whatever – brought me here. Brought me back here. Where I think I was always meant to be. And I found…friends and family and purpose. And you.”
She could see Waverly battling with herself over it, and waited silently. Then her expression cleared into a look of gentle, total adoration, and Nicole breathed a sigh of relief. She opened her arms in invitation, and Waverly crawled into her lap with a sigh. “I should have known,” Waverly murmured as she rested her head on Nicole’s collarbone.
“Hmm?”
“That you were my Shield.” She pulled Nicole’s arms tighter around herself. “This always has been the safest place in the world.”
Nicole smiled and kissed her forehead.
They only stayed like that for a minute, though, before reality intruded and Waverly shook herself. “Do you have your phone? We need to check on Wynonna and Doc.”
“One thing?” Nicole said as she handed it to Waverly.
“Hmm?” Waverly asked as she typed out a quick text.
“Everything else aside? Dark angels are way hotter than chicken kickers.”
Waverly snorted, then began to giggle. It was contagious – more a release of tension than anything else – and soon enough they were both gasping for breath around their laughter. “We’ll have to agree to disagree on….” Then she trailed off, realizing that Nicole’s laughter had quietly and subtly morphed into crying. “Baby?”
Nicole began hyperventilating, her eyes wide. “Whoa, baby,” Waverly soothed, taking Nicole’s face in her hands. “Breathe with me. Come on. It’s okay.” While it was rare for Nicole to have a panic attack – Waverly could only remember her having three – she knew what to do. She kept constant eye contact, taking exaggerated deep breaths as Nicole struggled to imitate her.
Slowly – so slowly – her breathing steadied out. “I was almost too late,” she choked out. “You were already halfway up – ”
“But you weren’t. You made it in time.”
“Literally the only time in my life I’ve been grateful for a guy’s dick,” Nicole joked weakly. “Jeremy’s the one who…if he hadn’t….”
“Well, then we owe him something big.”
Nicole exhaled, eyes wide and sincere. “Waverly, I owe him everything. I’ve got to find him…I don’t know…a screen-used Baby Yoda puppet or something.”
“A what?” Waverly caught the flinch at the unexpected reminder of her absence. “Sorry.”
Nicole rubbed her eyes. “No, I’m sorry. It’s just…a lot of feelings, you know?”
“Yeah,” Waverly said, gently, reaching out a hand to help Nicole up. “Maybe we could find someone to set him up with?”
“Guess we could try. Slim pickings out here, you know?”
Waverly smiled. “As I told Jeremy once – it could happen…I found you. Isn’t that caterer you were talking about gay?”
“Hm.”
“Did you drive here?” Waverly asked, saving any potential match-making for later.
Nicole shook her head. “Ran. Jeremy said I had to go, so I went. Straight through the woods on foot seemed faster than following the roads.”
“Guess I should tell Wynonna it’ll be a while,” Waverly said.
“Don’t wanna race me back?” Nicole joked.
Surprisingly, Waverly shook her head very seriously. “No. As long as Wynonna and Doc are okay, I want…I think I need some time…just with you. To think about…what you just did. For me.”
“It was more selfish than you – ”
Waverly cut her off, looking deadly serious. “Please don’t.” She met Nicole’s eyes and laced their fingers together. “Please don’t downplay what you just did for me. Nicole, you….” Waverly shook her head, words failing her. “I love you doesn’t seem like enough to say. Neither does thank you. But…I love you. And thank you.”
Nicole smiled, leaning down to capture Waverly’s lips. “I love you too. I seem to remember telling you once that I’d never loved anyone the way I love you. And it just gets more true every day. Please, Waverly…please believe that this was the easiest decision I’ve ever made. Besides being with you. And saying yes. And proposing. And all that other stuff that makes Wynonna make that face at us.”
Waverly bit her lower lip, then smiled. “Okay.” She sniffled. “But you better believe I’m gonna spoil the hell out of you.”
“Okay. If you let me spoil you too.”
“More than you already do?”
“Oh, baby, you haven’t seen anything yet.”
Hand in hand, they walked away from the once-again-invisible stairs into their future.
Wynonna nearly knocked both of them down when she barreled into them at top speed and grabbed them both into a crushing hug. “Baby Girl!” she gasped. “Are you…?”
“I’m okay,” Waverly reassured her. “I’m me. Thanks to Nicole.”
Wynonna glanced at Nicole and, for a frozen moment, everyone teetered on the knife’s edge of not knowing which way this was all going to go. Which way Wynonna would go after…everything. Then her shoulders sagged in relief. “Guess it was your turn after all.” She paused, then pulled Nicole – just Nicole – in for another hug. “Thanks for bringing her home,” she said, deliberately echoing their reunion in Shorty’s.
“Always,” Nicole promised. She glanced at Waverly. “Do you want to tell her?”
Wynonna frowned at them. “Tell me what?” She backed up with a wary frown. “What kind of animal are you gonna puke on me this time?”
Waverly took her by the arm, pulling her away and speaking quietly to her. Nicole sat down next to Doc, who looked a little shaky. “You okay?”
“I…believe so,” he said, a little hesitantly. “Are you?”
“I’m great,” Nicole said, her eyes still on Waverly. She couldn’t actually seem to take her eyes off Waverly. And yet, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Doc gazing at her, head tilted and his mouth turned up in a small but deeply affectionate smile. “What?”
“You always look at her like she is the whole world.”
“She is,” she said, simply enough, but she saw him take in her words with look of deep understanding and something that looked an awful lot like gratitude.
He nodded, then said quietly, “I don’t know if I have ever said this so plainly, Nicole, but it warms my heart to see that Waverly has found someone who loves her so completely. She is truly fortunate that you chose to move to Purgatory.”
“No,” Nicole breathed, shaking her head, her eyes still locked on Waverly. “I’m the lucky one.”
Doc laughed quietly. “And there, in four words, you have made my point for me.”
Nicole was about to answer when she heard Wynonna’s screeching bellow of: “WHAT THE FUCK, NICOLE HAUGHT?!”
“Aaaaand, that’s my cue,” she said to Doc, standing up and wiping her hands on her pants.
She walked a short distance across Magpie Ranch until Wynonna heard her coming, then she froze as Wynonna advanced on her, an unreadable expression on her face. But Nicole glanced quickly to Waverly for guidance and found her relatively relaxed, so she assumed this was more disbelief than anger.
“What. The. Fuck?” Wynonna said. “What the fuck? What the fuck? What the motherfucking FUCK?!”
Nicole forced herself not to smile. “Are you done?”
“No!” Wynonna growled. “What the fuck, Nicole? What the fuck?!”
“Not done,” Nicole said, nodding to herself. “Okay.” She smiled briefly as Waverly passed by and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, then turned back to Wynonna.
“What the fuck, Nicole?!”
“There are…other words, you know?”
“You cursed yourself.” Nicole couldn’t quite work out how much of her outrage was shock, how much was anger, and how much was outright disbelief. “What the fuck?!”
Regardless, she would have done the same thing every single second of her life, so really the only thing to do was calm Wynonna down. “No, I didn’t,” Nicole answered, as gently as she could, trying to reassure her.
“What else do you call it?”
“I call it saving the love of my life. I call it guaranteeing we get to have a life.”
Wynonna waved her hands vaguely. “Here. In Purgatory. Stuck in the goddamn Ghost River Triangle.”
Nicole reached out and took Wynonna’s hands, stopping them from flailing any more. “With Waverly.”
“Here! In the ass-end of nowhere!”
“With Waverly,” Nicole repeated. “And, so what? It’s my home, Wynonna.”
Wynonna pulled her hands away, rubbing her face, and from the look in her eyes, Nicole could tell they were about to get to the crux of her problem. “So help me,” she said, “if you turn around five years from now and resent her for this, I will kick your ass.”
Ah.
So that was it.
Of course it was.
Wynonna had always – always – been afraid that being with Nicole would somehow break Waverly’s heart.
And just when Wynonna had finally started to allow herself to believe that that wouldn’t happen, that Nicole wouldn’t be chased off by curses or demons or the odd apocalypse or five, she’d found a new reason to worry.
And unnecessary one, of course, but Wynonna didn’t know that.
Nicole just shook her head. “No way. Not a chance.” Wynonna scowled at her. “I mean…maybe if I didn’t know. But, Wynonna, I know what life is like without her. I’m not gonna regret it or resent her because this was an informed decision. I know exactly what the stakes are. What not doing it would cost. This is nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” Wynonna protested stubbornly, but Nicole could see that she was beginning to believe her. Just a bit.
“It is to me. If I had to promise to say in one room for the rest of my life…Wynonna, I’d have done it in a hot second if it kept her safe.” She squeezed Wynonna’s arm. “And you know it. Because you would too.”
There was another long pause as Wynonna stared at her.
Evaluating her.
Looking for any hint that Nicole was trying to convince either her or herself.
And then, she shook her head with a sigh. “You’re a fucking hero.”
“I – ”
“I…didn’t have any choice. I didn’t choose to be an Earp. Or the Heir. I didn’t choose Peacemaker. I didn’t choose any of this. You know what you’re getting into and you chose it anyway.”
Nicole shrugged. “I’d rip the heart out of my chest with my bare hands if Waverly needed it. Like I said…this is nothing.”
“It’s not, but also eww. Can we go back to butt tattoos as symbols of your ridiculous, sickening devotion?”
The over-the-top fake disgust reassured Nicole immensely. She chuckled, pulling her hair back and showing Wynonna the mark on the back of her neck.
“Holy shit.”
“It’s not a phoenix, is it?”
“No,” Wynonna said, something close to awe in her voice. “It’s…wings and the Triangle and a sword.” She snapped a quick picture and showed Nicole her phone. “You ridiculous fucking hero,” she muttered.
Nicole couldn’t help but smile a little, putting a reassuring hand on Wynonna’s arm. “It’s the three of us now, Wynonna. It’s not just you anymore. You don’t have to do it alone. Not anymore.”
Wynonna exhaled shakily, reaching up to wipe away a tear. “I told Mama once that there was no one in the world that deserved Waverly but that you came close.” She shook her head. “I was wrong. You deserve her. You do.”
Nicole sighed, seeing that Wynonna was just on the edge of breaking down. “Look, I appreciate that, but something else is going on here.”
After a long, frozen moment Wynonna met Nicole’s eyes, her own open and raw and vulnerable. “You saved my sister.”
“Of course I did.”
“I owe you.”
“No, you don’t,” Nicole said, in her softest, gentlest voice. But Wynonna just stared back at her, not giving an inch. “Fine,” Nicole added. “You really think you owe me something?”
“Name it.” Wynonna paused, then smirked a little, though the joke was mostly pro forma. “Except sexy times.”
Nicole snorted, but then pulled Wynonna in for a hug. For a moment, Wynonna was stiff as a board in her arms, but then she sagged a bit and leaned against Nicole’s strength. Nicole rested her chin on Wynonna’s shoulder and murmured, “Try to see yourself how she sees you. Even a little bit. Just…try to be happy, Earp. That’s all I need.”