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Wynonna wakes up on a twin bed. She’s pushed against a wall that slants above the bed, under the eaves.
She stays still, once her eyes open. The last thing she remembers — fighting with the Stone Witch? Maybe? She’s not sure. It’s hazy. But she does know that this isn’t her bedroom. She’s been sleeping downstairs, on the couch, as far away from Willa’s memory as she can.
She didn’t put herself to sleep here.
Sitting up carefully, to avoid the slanted wall, she looks around the room. After a moment, she realizes that it’s the little one she used to share with Waverly — but it’s been painted, and the second bed, the one Waverly used to sleep in, is missing from the other side of the room. Instead, there’s built-in bookshelves loaded down with the sort of books Waverly loves — big ugly old ones bound with Wynonna hopes are only animal skin.
How did Waverly get all this done without me noticing? Waverly jokes that Wynonna never goes upstairs, but she didn’t think she would have missed changes like this.
The door bangs open. “Hey! Short-ass! Time to get up.”
It’s a woman only a bit taller than Wynonna herself, with short brown hair and wide cheekbones like Waverly’s. She’s wearing dark jeans, cowboy boots, and a white shirt with red embroidery.
Wynonna scrambles out of the bed, and it’s like she’s drunk — the reflexes and strength she’s had since becoming the Heir are blunted. “Shit! Who are you?”
The woman walks closer, her eyes narrow. “Wyn? What’s wrong with you?”
“You’re in my fucking house,” Wynonna says, frantically scrambling behind herself for a weapon. Nothing. “Who the hell are you?”
“What did you get into last night?” the woman asks. “I live here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m your sister, dumbass.”
“You’re not Waverly.”
The woman’s face crumples, just for a moment, and then she’s stepping forward and feeling Wynonna’s forehead. She mutters something under her breath in Latin, low, and then drops her hand. “You okay, Wyn?”
And then — Wynonna recognizes her. Maybe.
“Willa?” she asks, just above a whisper.
“It’s Will,” the woman says. “I don’t know what you got into last night, but Dolls called. He needs your research brain at the office in half an hour. Can you do that?”
Wynonna’s still crouched against the wall. This isn’t computing.
Willa?
* * *
Willa leaves Wynonna alone, which gives her several minutes to panic.
There’s a cell phone plugged into the wall. Wynonna’s first thought is to call Waverly, but there’s no listing for her.
There is a listing for Dolls, and a listing for Will. A listing for Aunt Gus and Uncle Curtis.
“Okay,” Wynonna says aloud. “This is not the time to panic.”
She goes to the closet and opens the door to an explosion of pink and pastel. Maybe Waverly is here, because this looks like her closet. Wynonna studies the clothing with a raised eyebrow before she manages to find something borderline-acceptable — light-brown boots and jeans and a black shirt which may be the only black thing in the entire closet.
Wynonna’s mouth tastes like something died in it, so she brushes her teeth in the upstairs bathroom with a toothbrush she hopes is hers. She grabs the phone and wallet and keys from the bedside table.
Downstairs, it’s the Homestead, but it’s nothing like what Waverly’s coaxed out of their home. Instead, it looks like it belongs on the cover of one of the fancy decorating magazines Wynonna sometimes saw in airport and train station gift shops. The floors and the walls are white, and everything looks — designer-y. Fancy. There’s a weird couch and there are weird plants. It’s not comfortable, like how Waverly’s decorated their house with what Waverly calls shabby-chic and Wynonna calls Goodwill.
Willa is putting a coat on at the door. “Hey, space case. You doing okay?”
“Fine,” Wynonna says, backed against the stairwell.
Willa studies her for a moment, and then throws her a light-brown leather jacket. “Okay. Let’s get going.”
* * *
Willa — Will — drives a narcmobile. Of course.
Wynonna looks from the black SUV back to her sister.
“Are you taking your car?” Willa asks.
“I —” Wynonna pulls the keyring she found on the bedside table out of her pocket. There’s a key for the SUV, and another key to — her car? It’s a shitty hatchback, parked in the shadow of Willa’s car.
“Yeah,” Wynonna says. “Yeah. I’ll meet you….”
“At the office,” Willa says. Like she’s impatient, or maybe worried.
“Right.”
* * *
The shitmobile drives just fine, so Wynonna follows Willa and the narcmobile into town to make sure she’s talking about the same office. As it turns out, she is.
Inside, Dolls is staring down at his laptop like it’s got the secrets of the universe inside. He’s rigid, the way Dolls was the first time Wynonna met him. Seeing this version of Dolls makes her realize how much her Dolls has unwound since they met.
At least there are donuts in this world. Thankful for something familiar, Wynonna grabs a creme-filled with frosting.
Willa’s next to Dolls. “Wynonna?” Willa asks. “Can you get the presentation ready to go?”
“Er.” Wynonna swallows. “Uh, yeah.”
She heads down to Waverly’s usual territory — the maps and the photos and the research, hidden in the cabinet on the wall.
It’s her own handwriting. Sort of. Messier than hers — which is weird — but still something where if she ran across it, she wouldn’t question that it was her own.
She fusses around with the board, trying to look like she knows what she’s going. She can hear Dolls and Willa talking quietly at the other end of the room.
“Something’s off with her,” she hears Willa say.
“Really? She looks fine to me.”
“She asked who I was this morning,” Willa says, just loud enough for Wynonna to hear. “That’s not normal, Dolls.”
They both turn to look at Wynonna, who tries to project normal.
“Possession?” Dolls asks, turning back to Willa.
Willa shakes her head. “No. I tested.”
So that’s what the Latin was about, Wynonna thinks.
Dolls and Willa keep whispering while Wynonna destroys her donut.
“I can hear you idiots,” she says, her patience finally running out. “I”m fine, okay? I just had a nightmare.”
Willa stares at her, a stare she must have learned from Aunt Gus — the stare Wynonna got whenever she stayed out past curfew or went to a party. The stare that says I’m on to you.
But Wynonna didn’t spend four years sneaking out of Gus’s house, juvie, foster homes, and psych wards without learning how to meet someone’s eyes. After a long moment Willa nods. “Fine. Can you get the briefing started?”
“Um.” Wynonna looks down at her icing-covered hands. “Uh —”
Willa sighs. “I’ll cover it, just for today, okay?”
Wynonna nods, and takes another donut.
It’s a briefing for an operation so routine that Wynonna’s not sure why Dolls and the Heir are on it, instead of Officer Haught or someone else from the Sheriff’s office. Just an overnight stakeout at a place the revenants are suspected to frequent.
When Willa shows a map of the trailer park that’s only half-filled-in, Wynonna sits up. “Doesn’t Doc have more information on the park?”
Willa and Dolls look at her like she’s lost the plot. “Who?”
“Doc,” Wynonna says. But their faces say they have no idea what she’s talking about. “Sorry, okay, don’t mind me.”
Willa looks concerned, but she goes back to the briefing. Wynonna lets her mind wander. Whatever else happened in this world, I never threw the Colt down the well. So Doc —
“So?” Willa asks, at the end. “You’ll stay here for research while we get things set?”
“Sure thing,” Wynonna says, hoping she can figure out what she just agreed to.
“You’re an important part of the team,” Willa says, in the patronizing tone of voice that usually means the opposite. “We need this research for the next phase of the plan.”
“The next phase,” Wynonna repeats. “Right. So not for tonight.”
“No, not for tonight.” Willa comes over and feels her forehead again, but this time she doesn’t bother with the Latin. “You sure you’re okay, baby girl?”
“I just slept really badly,” Wynonna says. “Nightmares.”
Willa breathes out and then nods. “Yeah. I know. After last week, hardly surprising.”
“Yeah, well.” Wynonna lets it hang, hoping Willa won’t expect her to know about whatever horrific thing happened last week in this universe.
“Take a gun if you go out,” Willa says, nodding over at the armory in the corner.
Willa and Dolls head off for training or something, leaving Wynonna alone in the briefing room to research… something. Instead, Wynonna logs in to the computer, and bless the US Government for assuming that something with a thumbprint lock is secure in a world where revenants can possess any body they want. There’s no way Wynonna was going to guess this universe’s Wynonna’s password.
Searching through the files and notes on the computer reveals nothing about body-swapping or parallel universes. There’s nothing on the Stone Witch, either, which surprises Wynonna — nothing that looks like it could even be her. Maybe she’s decided to hide herself better in this universe, where the Heir had more time to prepare.
Wynonna gets sidetracked by the case files. Willa’s been the Heir in this universe for at least a year, judging by the earliest paperwork on the computer. There are write-ups of all of the recent things, but it looks like Dolls didn’t show up until six months ago, because the information before that is sketchy.
Willa’s put together metrics and graphs for her revenant kills — of course she has; Wynonna remembers this about her, how focused she was on performance. On getting better. How she would decide that she was going to learn how to do something — a gymnastics move, or whatever — and she’d just go at it, practicing over and over again until she had it. No matter how many tries it took.
It’s one of the reasons why Wynonna always knew Willa would make a better Heir.
Wynonna doesn’t keep statistics, so she has to count on her fingers to figure out how many revenants she put down in her first month as Heir, but she’s surprised to see it’s several more than Willa put down in her first two months. Maybe I’m not the worst possible Heir after all.
Then again, Willa has actual safety practices and procedures. There’s an honest-to-God Health and Safety Plan showing the locations of all of the nearest hospitals. Judging by the mission planning this morning, she and Dolls are all about the controlled environment. Holding back until they know everything about a situation.
It’s never been Wynonna’s way. But then, Dad never spent the type of time training her that he did with Willa.
A pass through the books in the room doesn’t reveal anything that can shed light on Wynonna’s vague memories of the — thing — the Stone Witch threw at her. There’s nothing useful on the computer.
Wynonna pushes back her chair. She needs help. An ally.
Someone who won’t potentially freak out when she tells them she’s from a universe where they died, years ago, slow and messy and at the hands of the revenants.
* * *
Gus is out in the barn, cleaning something, when Wynonna pulls up in the shitmobile. She looks up when Wynonna walks in.
“Wynonna! How is my favorite niece?”
“Good,” Wynonna says, leaning into Gus’s hug.
“Come on in. You’re a sight for sore eyes.”
Wynonna’s not sure what to say. Gus has always loved her — she knows this. Why else would Gus keep putting up with her? But they’ve never been friendly. Not really. Gus always saw her as someone to protect Waverly from.
Apparently their relationship is totally different in this universe.
She can see Curtis’s gravestone, down by the tomato patch, but it looks weathered — not new-cut stone like the one she remembers from her world.
Inside, it’s the same log walls Wynonna remembers from her old life. Gus’s knick-knacks on the shelves. Curtis’s books tucked away into the little closet he always kept locked, under the stairs. Aunt Gus always bitched that he loved the books and tomatoes as much as he did her, so Waverly bought him a Tom Clancy novel because her friend at school bought one for her dad for Father’s Day.
Wynonna still remembers that morning — Waverly so proud of the gift she’d wrapped in newsprint, and Uncle Curtis opening the package and having no idea what to make of it. (“But you love reading,” Waverly said. “Aunt Gus said.” And Uncle Curtis laughed and took her into the book closet to look at the types of books he read. The same type of books this Wynonna keeps in her bedroom.)
Suddenly Wynonna misses Waverly so much, it’s like someone punched her in the gut. She came here to try to pump Gus for information, but now — she doesn’t want to know. If this world doesn’t have her smart, amazing little sister in it, she doesn’t want to know.
Gus busies herself, heating water and brewing tea.
“How’s your sister?” Gus asks, and it takes Wynonna a moment to remember which sister she’s talking about. Which sister Gus has to mean. “Still busy with that big-time job of hers?”
Wynonna tries to smile. “Yeah, something like that.”
Gus’s face goes still. “I wonder if I did the right thing sometimes, Wynonna.”
“Right thing?” Wynonna takes a sip of her tea (whiskey-free, but she has the feeling alternate-Wynonna wouldn’t be asking for booze at ten in the morning).
“Letting Willa move you out to the homestead,” Gus says. “I know you were both in high school by then, but it’s awfully lonely. The two of you —” She breaks off, looks down into her own tea. “Well. I’m just glad she let you leave town for college, even if you did end up studying all those dead languages, and what you plan to do with those in Purgatory, I do not know.”
“I’m consulting,” Wynonna says, feeling defensive of the other Wynonna, and of Waverly, who followed the same path — and on her own.
“Well.” Gus purses her lips. “As long as you’re happy, Wynonna.”
Wynonna isn’t sure how to answer that. She has no idea whether this universe’s Wynonna is happy.
So she changes the topic instead. “Can I borrow some rope?”
Gus raises an eyebrow. “Any reason why?”
“Project I need to work on.”
“Whatever you need,” Gus says. “Anything else?”
Wynonna thinks about the condition Doc’s like to be in after spending a century at the bottom of a well. Dude is going to need clothes.
“Yeah,” she says. “Uh — can I borrow some money?”
“Doesn’t your sister pay you down at that consulting job of hers? I thought you had your credit card paid off.”
Wynonna stares at her over the teapot. “My credit card.”
Gus looks worried. She leans forward and puts a hand on Wynonna’s forehead, just like Willa did that morning. “You feeling okay?”
Wynonna shakes her head and then nods. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
This version of me has credit?
* * *
Wynonna’s original plan involved a quick stop by the discount store with some cash from Gus, because dudes who’ve been pulled from wells can’t be choosers. But with a credit card? Yeah. The shitmobile can take her to the big city, someplace fancy like Target or Walmart.
She has like eight black t-shirts and a pair of artfully ripped indigo-wash jeans in her hands before she remembers that she’s not here for her — she’s hoping not to be here for long enough to need a new wardrobe. So she hits the men’s section. Socks, underwear. Guesses at the sizes for shirts and pants and shoes. She throws in a hat, because she’s spent enough time up in Doc’s personal space to know that he considers it uncouth and ungentlemanly to be without one.
She throws in a case of water from the food section and a pack of razors from the health and beauty section.
Wynonna holds her breath at the checkout, but the credit card in her wallet goes through without any protest. Amazing.
She’s on the road back to Purgatory, just passing by the billboard for Earp Country, when her stomach growls and reminds her that it’s lunchtime.
Shorty’s isn’t exactly packed, but it’s open. And it’s Shorty behind the bar.
Wynonna feels her eyes start welling up when she sees him — Shorty, here and alive.
It’s hard to be sure what she was hoping for. Some sign that her get-taken-hostage-first, ask-questions-later methods weren’t the reason Shorty died the way he did? But here in this world, with Willa as the Heir, Shorty’s behind his bar, where he should be.
“Hey,” Wynonna says. Her voice is going to betray her here. “It’s really good to see you.”
“Hey, kid,” Shorty says, looking up from the beer taps he’s cleaning. “What can I get you?”
Right, Wynonna thinks. Just another beautiful day in Purgatory. “Can I get a couple sandwiches to go?”
“Roast beef okay?”
“Throw on some horseradish, you got a deal,” Wynonna says, digging in the wallet for money. There’s cash. Unspent. Amazing.
Shortly puts the order in and slides her a Diet Coke — what is this version of Wynonna up to, that Shorty would assume she wouldn’t already be drinking at lunchtime?
But it’s good to see him. So good. Wynonna asks him about the bar and how he got started and he starts telling the story about how he won it in a poker game and then the shitweasel he won it from figured out a way to make him pay full price for the paperwork, which is why Gus and Curtis invested in the place, and at first neither of them notice when her sandwiches come up from the kitchen.
“It was really good to see you,” Wynonna says. Screw it. She goes around the bar and hugs him.
“What’s this for?” Shorty says, joking, and hugs her back. “Hey, it’s okay, kid. I’m still here whenever you want to drop in.”
“Yeah,” Wynonna says, backing up and looking at Shorty again because damn, it is good to see him. “Thanks for the Coke.”
* * *
The shitmobile has a high enough clearance that Wynonna decides she’ll risk it and drive right up the dirt track to the old well. It makes it, just barely.
Once she’s at the well, Wynonna ties the rope up. That’s one thing Dad taught all three of them, how to tie decent knots.
Wynonna looks down the well before she drops the rope. Nothing. She’s got a tiny flashlight on her keychain, but the dark of the well laughs at it; it barely illuminates the first ring of stones.
She yells down the well instead. “Hey! Doc Holliday! Henry! Hank!”
No response. “Hellooooooooooo?” She considers kicking a couple stones down, but decides not to — what if he’s at the bottom?
She even thinks about going down the rope after him, but it was hard enough climbing back out when she was the Heir. She’s missing that strength now, the flexibility, the speed.
And there’s no telling what shape Doc’s in down there. The last thing she needs is to get stuck down the well — she’s not immortal in any of these timelines, and nobody knows where she is.
Wynonna gives the rope a pull, makes sure it’s actually attached enough to support a full-grown whatever-the-fuck-Doc-is, and throws it down the well. She grabs one of the sandwiches from the car and a bottle of water and leans back against the hood to eat.
And wait.
She’s done with her sandwich and wishing she’d asked Shorty for chips when the rope finally pulls tight against the lip of the well.
Wynonna wants to run over, look down the well, see him climbing up — but she remembers what Doc is like in her world when he thinks his back is against the wall. No reason to confront him now.
It’s not like he wants to stay down the well in this world. She hopes.
Finally, after listening to the wind and the creak of the rope for what feels like far too long, a hand comes over the lip of the well. It’s gray with dirt but it’s got Doc’s ring on it, and Wynonna’s heart speeds up.
Doc hauls himself over the lip of the well and lies on the ground, panting. He’s wearing clothing, sort of. It’s gray with dirt. His beard and his hair are wild, like a picture Wynonna saw on the web of a sheep who got lost and roamed the hills until his wool was so overgrown he couldn’t stand.
Wynonna gets up, carefully, trying to stand so she doesn’t look like a threat.
“Doctor Holliday, I presume?”
His hand goes for his gun.
“And who might you be?”
“I’m the one who threw you the rope,” Wynonna says. She grabs a bottle of water from the car and twists the top loose before throwing it to him. “Water?”
He catches it automatically. Stares at her for a long moment, then opens the water to sniff at it ostentatiously.
“Come on,” Wynonna says. “We both know poison isn’t going to kill you.”
“I’m afraid you have the advantage of me,” Doc says. He studies the water bottle and then twists the top off to take a deep gulp. “Who are you, and how do you know my name and situation?”
“I’m Wynonna Earp.” Wynonna throws him the second sandwich. “I think you knew my great-grandfather. We need to talk.”
* * *
Wynonna already knows her Doc is a natural-born chameleon. He rarely shows his discomfort with modern shit. But this Doc — just out of a century of a hole in the ground, and he’s already pretending he knows what a car is.
Wynonna knows better than that. She can read her Doc well enough to know that this Doc, under his layers of hair and dirt, is nervous at how fast they’re moving.
But he trusted her enough to get into the car. Or maybe just figured she was the only option.
He’s sucking down another bottle of water when they pull into the homestead. “I recognize that brand,” he says, peering up through the windshield at the gate. “Earp.”
“Yeah, I said,” Wynonna says, parking at the edge of the house. “Come on in. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
“I would prefer to tend to my own ablutions,” Doc says, like he’s not carrying half a mudslide on his body.
In the end, he does, with a little assistance from Wynonna on getting the shower going, although Wynonna’s hoping that Willa and this universe’s Wynonna are planning on pumping the septic tank soon because the amount of dirt Doc just put down the drain is alarming.
Wynonna hears him swearing at the razors from outside the door. “You need help?” she calls.
“I do not require assistance,” Doc says, snottily. “I merely require the correct tool for the job, which this is most undoubtedly not.”
“Sounds good,” Wynonna calls back. She heads downstairs to make them some nachos. (This universe’s Wynonna is apparently better than her at leaving corn chips uneaten.)
Wynonna’s putting together her second plate of nachos when Doc comes down the stairs and through the white-walled living room to join her in the kitchen. “Hey,” she says. “You clean up good.”
It’s true. His hair is chopped to a vague resemblance of his regular cut — how? — and his beard and mustache are sort of under control.
“I would feel more appropriately prepared for the day if I had the services of a barber,” Doc says. He sits down across from her at the table and peers at the nachos as Wynonna scatters pre-shredded cheese over them and dumps them into the oven to melt.
“Yeah, well, my specialty is really ropes,” Wynonna said.
“For what purpose did you retrieve me?” Doc asks. “How did you know I was in that pit of perdition?”
“How the hell were you living at the bottom, dude?” Wynonna grabs a beer from the fridge and sits down across from him. “I mean. It’s a well. What the fuck?”
Doc’s eyes narrow. “My situation is a complicated one,” he says.
“I guessed.” Wynonna cracks the beer and takes a long pull. “So. Stone Witch?”
Doc’s eyes slide sideways like maybe he’s expecting — what? “I do not recollect that name,” he says, carefully.
“Yeah you do.”
Wynonna’s been thinking about this. She’s pretty hazy on the last thing she remembers from her universe — the universe with Waverly, and damn, does it hurt to think about her sister.
But she’s pretty sure it involved the witch.
So maybe Doc’s worth a try. And maybe she couldn’t take the thought of leaving him down the well. Maybe her life is better with his brand of controlled chaos in the mix. Maybe this Wynonna’s life will be better, too.
“What can you tell me about how she works?”
Doc just studies her while she gets the nachos out of the oven. The cheese is melty. Good cheese. He keeps watching her while she carefully loads the nachos down with salsa and jalapenos from a jar.
“Pardon me for saying this,” he says. “How am I to ascertain that you are trustworthy?”
Wynonna slaps the nachos down on the table and sits down to face him. “Why the hell would I not be? I just saved you from a damn well, dude.”
Doc studies her. Doesn’t say anything.
“And don’t think I don’t want to know what the hell you were doing down there,” Wynonna says. She grabs a nacho. “Like. Where the hell were you? Why didn’t I see you down there?”
“I did not see you enter the well,” Doc says, carefully.
Yeah, not in this universe, Wynonna thinks. She eats another nacho and stares at Doc.
He leans forward, finally, to take one of the nachos and carefully eat it. Apparently it’s not to spicy for him, because he has a couple more before he says anything.
“The well is a complicated place,” Doc says, finally. “In a sense, you could say the place I was could be a metaphor as much as a real location.”
“Bullshit,” Wynonna says.
Doc raises one eyebrow. That expression that infuriates her.
“In another sense, you could say that I found a mine tunnel which connected to that hell-pit,” Doc says. “Unfortunately, not a mine tunnel which led to my release.”
“Right. So. Stone Witch?”
They go through the full plate of nachos before Doc’s agreed to help her. He’s hogging the damn jalapeños, too.
* * *
Doc’s got a huge leather-bound book open to a page on fetish spells. Not the fun kind of fetish. The creepy kind, that involves wrapping pieces of dead animals together with barbed wire or something.
“Was the token which resulted in your transformation wrapped with an eagle feather, a hawk feather, or the feather of some other flying creature?”
Wynonna rubs her eyes with the heels of her hands. “How the hell am I supposed to remember that? I was getting cursed.”
“I find the presence of danger sharpens the senses,” Doc says, flipping another page. “What can you describe of this feather?”
“It was big,” Wynonna says. “It was a feather. I think it was brown?”
“Ah.” Doc’s mustache looks smug.
“Unhelpful,” Wynonna grumbles.
Doc’s deep in a medieval book on witchcraft that looks highly disturbing, and Wynonna’s surfing her phone, looking at photographs of feathers and trying to see if anything looks familiar. That’s why they don’t hear Willa’s narcmobile pull in. Wynonna doesn’t realize Willa’s home until she hears feet on the stairs, and then Willa’s bursting into the room, Peacemaker drawn.
“Wynonna! What the hell, baby girl, you didn’t set the proximity alarms?”
And then she sees Doc, and she’s aiming Peacemaker at him before Wynonna can explain.
“Will! Will. Stand down. This is not a revenant. I realize he looks like one, but, um, he’s not.”
Willa keeps Peacemaker trained on Doc, who looks more curious than worried.
“And who might you be?” Doc asks.
“This is my sister,” Wynonna says, “and everybody be cool, okay? I can explain.”
“I am not going to be cool,” Willa snaps, keeping Peacemaker on Doc. “Who the fuck are you, and where is my sister?”
“I’m right here,” Wynonna says.
“You’re not my sister,” Willa says. Still not taking her eyes off of Doc. “I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing in her body, but there’s no way in hell that my little sister would forget to set the proximity alarms one fucking week after revenants came onto our property and kidnapped her.”
Wynonna thinks about what Willa said earlier — After what happened last week… shit.
“I’m a different Wynonna,” she says, hoping that she can get this out before Willa loses patience and just shoots Doc. “I’m from another timeline. I think. I woke up here and now I’m trying to get home.”
“And this — individual?”
“He’s Doc Holliday,” Wynonna says. “Look, I know it sounds impossible. Please don’t shoot me. Or Doc.”
“You have one minute to convince me,” Willa says.
Wynonna looks around desperately, like there’s some sort of audiovisual aid that she just forgot to bring with her across the trans-dimensional boundary. “Look, do you — do you know who the Stone Witch is?”
“We’ve heard chatter,” Willa says. Still not looking away from Doc. Still not meeting Wynonna’s eyes. “She hasn’t come out into the open.”
“So, in my world, she’s out front and center. She’s the one who cursed Doc and she’s been going after Waverly.”
“Waverly —” Willa glances towards Wynonna for the first time. “Waverly?”
“She’s not dead in my world,” Wynonna says, and then she remembers that she’s not actually sure if Waverly is dead here. She didn’t want to know.
“You’re the one who’s dead,” Wynonna says, instead. “When the revenants attacked that night, they took you and —” and I shot Daddy in the back, but Wynonna’s not up for sharing that — “and yeah. You’re dead. In my world. Which means that I’m the Heir.”
“The Heir,” Willa says. “Instead of me.”
“You died before you turned twenty-seven,” Wynonna says. She’s trying to keep clinical but there are tears in her eyes. “In my world.”
“And I should believe this because?”
“How else would I know where Doc was?” Wynonna asks.
“I have only your evidence that this — individual — is who you say he is.”
“I could agree,” Doc says. “Or I could take you out for a shooting demonstration.”
“I’m not arming you and setting you loose,” Willa says.
Wynonna opens her mouth and then realizes that pointing out that Doc is both armed and a faster draw than even an Earp heir is not the winning strategy in this case.
“I didn’t ask for this,” she says, instead. “I didn’t want to replace your Wynonna and I’m really hoping that if we can get me home, you’ll get her back, too.”
* * *
Willa calls Dolls and keeps Peacemaker close at hand. But it seems like she’s decided to try to work with Wynonna — for now. Wynonna thinks about how she’d feel, if Waverly got replaced by an alternate-universe version of herself, and she gets where Willa’s coming from. Anything’s worth trying to get the sister she remembers back.
They’re hunched over the books and a laptop that Willa had Wynonna get from the other room.
“So in your world — who killed Daddy?” Willa asks.
Wynonna is so not ready for this conversation.
“He got killed in the shoot out when the Revenants attacked the homestead,” she says, instead, hoping that’s enough of an answer.
Willa looks over at her, but doesn’t meet Wynonna’s eyes. “Happened like that here, too.”
And Wynonna wonders — if Willa wasn’t the Heir yet. Would Peacemaker have betrayed her the way it betrayed Wynonna?
But Wynonna no more wants to ask Willa if Willa killed their father than she wants to tell Willa that she killed their father. So. She looks down at the books again. They’re confusing and thick and she really misses Waverly, for a hundred reasons, but not having to read the books herself is the most pertinent of those reasons just now.
“I believe I may have the answer to our quandary,” Doc says from the other side of the kitchen table.
He passes over the book. Wynonna recognizes the illustration of the fetish — creepy as fuck, yup, that’s definitely it.
Willa grabs the book but keeps her other hand on Peacemaker. “Willow bark, cold iron, feather of a — okay, we can get the Latin name.” She sets the book down and gets her cell phone. “Dolls? Got a shopping list for you.” She rattles off the ingredients, with some discussion of specifics — Dolls must be asking questions.
“This periodical advises that any counter-charm must be cast at the witching hour,” Doc says. “It says that the spell must be reversed within one day, or it may not be reversible at all.”
The witching hour. Midnight.
“We got a deadline, too,” Willa tells Doc on the phone. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll keep them covered. You just get here.”
Wynonna gets up to start putting the rest of the books away, but Willa waves her off. “Wynonna has her own filing system,” she says. “She’ll want to put those away herself once she’s back.”
So this world’s Wynonna is kind of a nerd. But she still ended up staying here. She’s not off at medical school, becoming a doctor. Instead, she got wrapped into working on the demon problems. Like Waverly did in Wynonna’s world.
The thought of Waverly still hurts like a punch in the gut. Wynonna leans back in the chair and thinks about what she’d think of this version of the homestead — fancy and polished, but apparently unsafe, since Wynonna was kidnapped from here.
Because Waverly wasn’t here to dig up the fetish, Wynonna realizes.
They have time to kill before midnight. Before Dolls arrives with the necessary ingredients.
“Hey, Willa?”
* * *
Wynonna remembers that night-time afternoon like it’s burned into her brain. Remembers the way Waverly bent down, digging frantically.
“It’s next to where Waverly buried Pikachu the hamster,” she says to Willa as they head out the door.
She talked Willa into tying up Doc and leaving him in the house instead of trying to cover him outdoors. Wynonna is pretty sure Doc is going to slip those knots. All three of the Earp sisters are good at tying things, but Doc’s been slipping out of bad situations since before any of them were born. Wynonna knows Doc’s not going to hurt Willa, or the other Wynonna, and if he’s not here when Dolls arrives, that’s probably for the best.
Outside, the lights from the house make it brighter than the last time Wynonna saw the fetish get dug up, even though the sun set hours ago.
Willa carries the shovel from the barn. She’s obviously on alert — watching the house for Doc. Watching Wynonna. She’s agreeing to work with Wynonna, but Wynonna can tell it’s not a matter of trust.
Maybe it’s a matter of blood.
Wynonna finds the fetish right where Waverly buried it in her world. It’s disgusting. Just as she remembers. She brushes the dirt off, trying to touch it as little as possible, and hands it over to Willa.
“If you wait for a revenant to get on the property, you can throw it over the property boundary and the bedrock will yank them away,” she offers. “That’s how it happened in our world.”
“It goes to the Black Badge Division for study,” Willa says. “That’s how we do it in this world.”
Big sister voice. Wynonna remembers this, remembers the way Willa knew everything — remembers wishing that she got to be the Heir sometimes. That they could take turns.
She didn’t want it to be like this.
They sit in silence, in the flood lights, while Willa examines the fetish and Wynonna looks off into the darkness beyond the property line.
When Dolls arrives, he pulls his narcmobile up next to Willa’s and jumps out, large black bag in hand. Willa hands him the fetish and he puts it in an evidence bag, and then in a warded box, thick plastic imprinted with sigils.
“I’ve got the fetish pre-assembled,” he says, pulling it out of another box and letting it swing on a bit of chain.
It’s disgusting. It’s familiar. Wynonna feels hope rising in her chest for the first time since she realized where she was.
Willa checks her watch. “Five minutes to midnight,” she says, her voice tight. “Based on the book, there’s no setup. Any evidence to the contrary?”
“None,” Dolls says. He sets the fetish back in the box, sets the box on the ground, and turns to study Wynonna.
“Hello,” Wynonna says. “Just standing here.”
“It’s fascinating,” Dolls says, studying her. “You can tell she stands differently than our Wynonna.”
“I am standing right here,” Wynonna says, feeling pissed off because what the hell, Dolls?
He looks for a bit longer, and then looks down at his watch. “Witching hour.”
Wynonna turns to Willa but she has no idea what to say. Sorry you’re dead in my world. I’ll say hey to Waverly for you. Yeah, maybe not.
Willa doesn’t look like she knows what to do either, but then she shakes her head and steps forward and hugs Wynonna, hard.
Wynonna lets her head fall into Willa’s shoulder. It’s the last time she’s going to see her big sister. The only time she’s going to see her big sister.
“We miss you,” Wynonna says. “In our world. I miss you every day.”
“And we miss Waverly,” Willa says, hugging Wynonna tight one more time before moving back. “Dolls? Time?”
They can’t really miss Waverly, Wynonna thinks. Because they don’t know her. They don’t know what an awesome amazing incredible sister they’re missing out on.
But then, maybe she hasn’t gotten to know Willa that well, either.
Countdown to midnight. Dolls has the fetish. Willa has the words. And Wynonna has the wrong body.
The watch on Dolls’ wrist beeps, and he picks up the fetish and turns to Wynonna and starts chanting. Willa steps back, expression tense.
At first it’s an anticlimax. Dolls, chanting the words of Latin, but there’s no feeling of something watching, the way there usually is when Dolls gets into the magic back in Wynonna’s world.
But then he lifts the fetish, and the air seems to suck in, close, like Wynonna can’t breathe, and there’s a long stretching moment where everything seems to move slowly —
And then Dolls throws the fetish. It’s disgusting and it’s about to touch her and then Wynonna’s frozen, trapped, standing still.
And then she’s gone.
* * *
Wynonna opens her eyes to the ceiling of a room she hasn’t seen before.
“Wynonna?”
It’s Waverly’s voice. Waverly’s face comes into view, looking down at Wynonna, and then she’s frantically pulling out her cell phone. “Dolls! She’s awake! She opened her eyes!”
“What the hell happened?” Wynonna says, or tries to say, but it hurts to talk. It’s like her mouth is full of sand. The sight of the IV in the back of her hand makes her heart race, thinking about Jack, but it’s got to be safe this time, or Waverly wouldn’t be here.
“Lie back,” Waverly says, pushing Wynonna back to the pillow. “I hit the nurse call button.”
The next few minutes are a blur of neurological testing and Dolls showing up and Waverly refusing to let Wynonna go, which she’s getting used to.
Hell, screw getting used to it. Wynonna hugs Waverly tighter, as close as she can from a hospital bed. She may never let her baby sister go again.
Dolls is the one who notices that Wynonna’s not talking and talks the nurse into getting her water and a straw even though the doctor hasn’t OK’d it yet. He pulls his marshal badge. It’s very sexy, Wynonna thinks, lying back against the pillows but not letting go of Waverly.
“So what the hell happened?” Wynonna asks, once she’s got enough water into her mouth to be able to move it properly again.
“You went up against the Stone Witch,” Waverly says. “She threw something at you and then it flashed and vanished, and you just — dropped.”
“How long was I out for?”
“Full day,” Dolls says, from the doorway. He looks exhausted.
Wynonna tries to move her legs. They respond (score) but it hurts to move and she decides that maybe she’s OK with staying put for a little longer.
“Did you figure out what she used on me?”
“We were working on it.” Waverly points to an enormous stack of books in the corner, on the rolling table. “But whatever she threw at you vanished. And —“ She catches her breath and hugs Wynonna harder.
Dolls is staring at Wynonna. “Do you remember anything?” he asks.
Wynonna looks at him and wonders how much he figured out about where the Stone Witch might have sent her. If he suspects that she went somewhere. Because she does remember. She remembers Willa. She remembers not being the Heir. She remembers missing Waverly like part of herself.
She’s not even sure if that world was real, but if it is, she hopes Willa got her Wynonna back. She hopes Doc escaped. Maybe he’ll throw some chaos into their lives. But good chaos. She hopes.
Waverly hugs her closer, and Wynonna hugs her back. That’s what matters — not maybe-a-fever-dream Willa. Not another world.
Waverly’s here. She’s alive.
Wynonna’s not letting anything separate them again.
“No,” Wynonna says. “No, I don’t remember anything.”