The plan was good. The plan was solid and smart and, you don't mind saying, it was just about the most logical (and adult) thing you'd ever seen Wynonna come up with.
And then, of course, it all went to shit. So, you know, even more Wynonna.
Rosita was first. You've never been sure exactly what happened with her, but seeing her tearing ass out of Shorty's back door like some revenant bat out of hell (which, as descriptions go, was both sorta accurate and sorta redundant) was a fairly large tip off that something might be going just the tiniest bit awry.
You didn't need to be the best (or, really, only) detective on the force to figure that one.
There was a moment - one that lasted probably far longer than it should have but still far shorter than your usual - when you thought about rushing right on in. Gun drawn, foot smashing through that door, yelling something about taking out all those shit-fuckers (not the best taunt, you know, but you're a cop, not a writer) (or, you know, Waverly) and saving the day.
But then you remembered some of your other attempts at day saving and that hospital bed you thought you might never leave (and that's not even mentioning how seeing Shae sitting next to said bed made you wonder if death might be the better option) and realized that whatever had sent Rosita running for the hills might well make you do the same, just without her 'I'm already dead' invulnerability (or poor footwear for running choices.) And you being dead would really mess up the plan and you promised Wynonna.
That was what did it, you think, what made you stay put in the car. Your promise.
Or, maybe, it was that whole weird like a teenage girl (you) trying so desperately to impress the cool kids (the Black Badges) thing you had going on or, maybe, it was your still weird but slightly more grown up girl (still you) trying even more desperately to please your girlfriend's judgey (but not because you were gay and that was still a bit odd) family thing or, maybe (and yeah, you are well fucking aware that that's at least one too many 'or's and even more too many things) it was Wynonna's million and one reminders to, no matter what, "Stick to the fucking plan, Haught. The plan is all that matters."
And nope, you didn't need to be a good detective - like at all - to know that when Wynonna said 'plan', she meant 'baby' and you getting dead, even dead in the line of Earp duty, would do her no good at all.
And that was what did it, what made you stay put. That was why you sat and you waited and you watched and, while you did all that?
You prayed.
And if that's not a sign of how shit it all went to shit, you don't know what is.
Rosita was first but Bobo was worse.
(Or, you know, worst because that would rhyme perfectly and Lord knows you've read enough rhyming shit over the last year and a half - and why people think that little kids need everything Seuss-ified is beyond you - and it entertains the tiny, but damn you don't need to think in it too.)
Thinking back on it - without rhyme - is something you've had more than enough time to do over that time and you've come to one inescapable conclusion. Someone should have seen it - and by 'it', you so fucking mean 'him' - coming. And… well… they did, sort of. It's not like the entire BBD braintrust of Purgatory didn't expect that Bobo would try to stop anyone making any move to get the baby the fuck out of Dodge.
"Bobo's definitely going to try to stop anyone making any move to get this baby the fuck out of Dodge," Dolls said (he always was the smartest.) They all agreed, nodding in that 'you have a good point, but I've got shit in the way of ideas on how to deal with it' way that was par for the Purgatory course back then, which then usually lead to Wynonna deciding to shoot something and to Doc going right along with her - as if he was going to argue with shooting - and Jeremy saying something dorky (and borderline inappropriate) and Dolls trying to come up with a plan, an actual one, and to Waverly kissing you because it calmed her and helped her think.
Or so she claimed.
As if you were going to argue with kissing.
Even if, most of the time, the shooting didn't sound like all that bad an idea and you had at least one (or two or three or twelve) plans so damn good they put even the Deputy Marshall's ideas to shame. You always knew you were helping - and not just by 'calming' Waverly - but you could've helped so much more if they'd just let you be something other than the stay behind at the station until everything else has gone to fuck all and maybe we should listen to Nicole last resort.
Of course, if they (and you totally mean her, as in the heir) hadn't done that… well…
You watch Alice playing in the sandbox and there's a shudder that runs through you and yeah, maybe being the last choice wasn't so bad.
It was still a choice.
So, they'd agreed on the danger of Bobo, even Doc who was super busy staring with utter terror at Wynonna's 'oh shit, any second now' belly and glaring at Dolls in that whole 'you shot me and I know it was some weird alternate reality bullshit, but you killed me' way that he thought no one else noticed.
As if they could miss it.
So, they agreed and they knew and they thought about it and they were - supposedly - ready for it, so they should have seen it coming, but really, who would have ever thought that the battle of Bobo vs. helicopter would actually go the way of the revenant?
(Well… maybe anyone who had ever seen a bad movie and knew just how easily a helicopter, especially one being flown by a clearly deus ex machina pretty boy, could be taken down.)
(So, you know… you.)
You were about three minutes away from the rendezvous and, for once, your habit of stopping at every intersection - big red sign or not - probably saved lives, like, you know, yours. If you'd been three minutes sooner, that rotor blade that embedded itself in that Oak tree right next to where you'd have parked might have found a more fleshy and less barky target and, as noted, you getting dead would have… um... killed the plan.
(No pun intended.)
(You don't joke about your own death. At least not by flying helicopter parts.) (We've all got our weird phobias, shut up.)
Though, to be fair to all of them, Bobo managing to crash Perry's chopper through the power of his mind - which was only like the third or fourth weirdest thing you ever saw - did a pretty good job of DOA'ing the plan all on its own.
Plan 'A' at least.
So… Plan 'B'.
Once upon a time (another of those phrases you've said more in the last year and a half, than in all the twenty-seven that came before) you would have liked to think that you were Plan 'B' or, at the very least, you were a part of it - even just a bit - that you were something of a very key cog in something higher up on the list than Plan 'We're all out of other plans'.
And yes, you know Wynonna asked you and you know she said that you were the 'only one', but you're not deluded enough to think that had anything to do with anything other than your DNA.
What with it being human and all.
Once upon a time, you'd have wanted, maybe even needed (so not maybe) to be something more than the getaway driver, the chauffeur. It would have mattered back then, it would have mattered a lot.
This ain't once upon a time anymore and you've come to learn that there are things - people, small and innocent and defenseless people - that matter far more than your silly wants.
So… about that Plan 'B'. One thing you learned over all the time you spent with Wynonna: she always had one. Of course, it was usually just to shoot everything in sight and then spend days drinking away the guilt for any collateral damage she might have caused, but hey… a plan is a plan.
And, in her defense, demons and hellspawns and whatever the fuck that thing that almost came through - the one with the tentacles and the goo and the Willa - aren't exactly the sorts of things you can really plan for unless you're really drunk or sort of evil or just plain ol' out of your fucking mind.
(And yes, you know exactly how well that describes her, but… details.)
Still, that time, the time she was sitting on a (or not really sitting cause it hurt her back and made her ankles swell even more) a timebomb that could have changed everything, Wynonna actually had herself a backup plan. And a backup to that backup and even a backup to that backup (that one was to shoot everything in sight) and she laid it all out for you, plain and simple.
"If something happens," she said, "if anything happens and Perry can't get the baby out, then you bring her right back to me, you understand, Haught?"
You nodded and ignored the fact that Wynonna said 'her' (some wishful thinking or pregnant ESP you've never been sure) and then you'd sworn - on a bottle of whiskey so, you know, on the Earp family Bible - and then she'd stared at you, eyes locked on for so long that it got a bit unnerving, almost to the point where you started wondering where Peacemaker was or if she was imagining it glowing gold between your eyes and then, finally, she spoke again and you kinda wished she was.
"Fuck that," Wynonna said and it might well have been the quietest you'd ever heard her, so quiet that you almost didn't. "If something happens, if anything goes wrong… don't you dare bring her back to me. You run, Nicole. You run and take her across that damn line and so far out of this fucking triangle that you can't even remember where it is."
And then she looked at you again and if you thought thousand-yard-stare Wynonna was scary, well, desperately facing her own mortality, the loss of her child, and breaking Waverly's heart all in one fell swoop Wynonna was Goddamned terrifying.
"You're the only one who can," she said, dropping her eyes the moment the words were out. "I know what I'm asking and what it is I'd be taking from you," she said, "and I know I don't have the right, but…"
She trailed off at the feel of your hand on hers - and was that the first time you'd ever touched her, like something more than a helping hand up or a brush by in the hall? - and she was right, of course, she didn't have the right to ask.
But when had that ever stopped her?
"I will," you whispered, your own thousand-yard-stare going over her shoulder, watching Waverly in the corner, whispering with Doc while Dolls lingered in the background giving Doc a 'you shot me even if it wasn't really you or me' glare of his own. You weren't stupid and you knew exactly what you were promising and what you were giving up and somehow, in that moment when it seemed ridiculous, when it seemed like Plan 'A' was absolutely foolproof and that Wynonna had thought of everything?
You knew.
And it broke your heart but Wynonna was right, again.
It had to be you.
Sometimes, it really sucks being the only normal one.
Normal isn't a word you ever really thought applied to you. Normal, you thought, was a word for people who fit.
That was one thing you never did.
You didn't fit with your family, even before you came out and found yourself actually out. It was the way you dressed or the ways you wore your hair or the way you had next to no tolerance for the bullshit. Like, for an instance, the undercurrent of misogyny in everything (and you do mean everything) your father said and did. Or the way your mother not only took it, but seemed not to mind. Or the way your sis and your bro were… well… sis and bro.
They were too cool for school and too cool for you and, really, if they were cool, then you were absolutely fine with never being anything close to it.
And it wasn't just family, because that you could have almost accepted, that you could've found almost… well… normal. But it was everywhere and it was everyone. Your friends - the few you bothered to try and have - were only barely there before and then, after, when word got around and that word was gay…
That word was alone. Not that you really noticed or minded or thought much of it. You'd been alone in crowded rooms for years and you knew that somewhere, out there in the ether of what might be, there was a someone (or more than one) and a somewhere (a lot of them, actually) to fit with you and take you in and make you a home.
And you were right.
Which is why when Wynonna asked, even though you knew - fucking knew - that it had to be you and that it was worth it, you still almost said no.
But that was the thing about fitting. It was everything you thought it might be and even more but it didn't come free. It came at a cost. The high price of love and devotion and care.
The wages of family.
But before you got there, there were those other stops along the way, all those square holes that your round peg just couldn't fit, couldn't fill. Like the academy. No fit for you there either, not in your classes, not with the men and women who wanted nothing more than meaningless work in some small town, to just be the badge, the big fish in the small pond, they were all the ones who were happy with just being.
Just.
That was the problem. You've never been just anything and sure, sometimes you've wished for a tiny bit more 'just' in your life, but only just… well...
Just enough.
Enough to give you just some of those things that the normals have, the only things you were ever jealous of them for - like the wife and the home and the love and the life - those were the only normals, the only 'justs' you wanted. Just that someone and that somewhere, just a heart that you knew beat for you, not despite the way you dressed or the ways you wore your hair or the feelings you felt that they never got.
Because of those things. All of them.
(OK, maybe not the dressed one cause, really, you expected to spend like eighty to ninety percent of your life in uniform and, seriously, who expected that to be as hot as it ended up being?)
When you think about it now - which you try not to, but it always creeps on in when you least expect it, like when you're giving Alice her bath or tucking her in or watching her sleep - you know Wynonna didn't mean it, you know it was the goo talking, but you can't help remember how she told you (taunted) (she taunted you) about Waverly not being the white picket fence type, and you wanted to laugh in her face, you wanted to tell her that you didn't care and that wasn't what you wanted, anyway.
But you couldn't. Despite not coming out for years, you're just fuck all as a liar.
Were.
You've gotten a bit better at it this last year or so. Except, maybe, to yourself.
Which probably explains why you can't quite buy those thoughts you try so hard to flood your mind with every day, the ones that say how you miss them all and you miss that town and you miss that life and you'd trade all of this for that in a heartbeat.
You'd trade normal - a single mother living in a small apartment with a trusted babysitter who comes every morning and a simple job that doesn't require a gun (though you do keep yours locked in the drawer of your nightside table, fully loaded, safety off, always) and even a date or two, now and then - for the shitstorm of Purgatory without a second thought. That's what all you tell yourself, every day.
And if you ever believe it?
Well… then you'll know.
It's time for Plan fucking 'B'.
They would make the call. Wynonna drilled that into your head. They would call you and only when (if) it was safe.
You knew that was a lie hearing it as sure as she did saying it. 'Safe' was a joke, a condition that would never be met so long as there was a curse, so long as there was a single demon, a single revenant shit-ticket roaming the Earth. And still, safe or not - so obviously not - there'd be a call.
All you could do was hope that it wouldn't be a call to say goodbye. As in, forever, as in no hope, as in the curse had claimed them and there was nothing and no one and maybe even nowhere for you to ever come back to.
Even now, you still have nightmares about that call and sometimes - like the days when Isobel takes Alice to the park with the other kids from the building, leaving you all alone, nothing but your thoughts and high speed internet connection for company - you still do deep-dive Google searches, looking for any mention of some small town no one has ever heard of that just… isn't, anymore.
Purgatory's still there, as best you can figure. It and them or so you think because even if, once upon a time, you were sure, like certain, that you would feel it - that it would kill you - if anything ever happened to Waverly?
This isn't once upon an anything anymore, remember?
The call - the first and last one you ever got - came a day's ride outside Purgatory. You spent that day (and that night) not worrying about what might have happened after you ran.
"I can't," you said to Alice (as much as to yourself.) "I can't because if I do, I'm gonna turn this car around and we're gonna go straight home."
Less than a day and you already sounded like a mom.
"They're fine," you told her. "They're always fine. They found a way out of it. Out of Bobo and all the revenants storming the castle and that demon Waverly helped them wake up and they're gonna end him and the curse and, you know, maybe it'll take a few days, maybe a week or even two, but they're gonna do it. And then they'll call."
You had visions - flashes right before your eyes - of a future filled with telling her that same load of the bullshittiest bullshit ever, day after day after day.
Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning.
Sure, Groundhog Day might have been the more current reference, but Princess Bride beats everything every day of the week and twice on Sundays. And, if it taught you nothing else, it was that true love always wins.
Fucking movie was full of fucking shit, that's what it taught you.
But then the call came - that day's ride later - as you and the baby (that's all she was then, just 'the baby') hunkered down in a back corner booth of a Tim Horton's and you slowly sipped your tenth or eleventh or, for all you could remember, one-hundredth coffee and crossed your fingers that the voice on the other end of the line wouldn't break your heart.
(Though the coffee was already doing a bang up job on that.)
That call came and the voice on the other end of the line was slow and groggy and weak, but it was fucking her and that was all that really mattered, or so you kept telling yourself.
(Fuck all liar, remember?)
They'd won, she said. More or less (emphasis on the 'more', like she was trying to sell you on it or maybe she was selling herself.) The widows were dead, Bobo was in the wind, and oh, yeah, the demon was awake, but there was no sign so far and Dolls had a file (she always did love the research) and they were sure there would be something in it, some clue or some hidden secret they'd find just in the nick of time and Wynonna would use it and save the day.
The day.
As in, not this one. Not today.
They'd won, she said, but just the battle. The war was still on and what with Bulshar awake out there, looming and lurking ("can he be doing both?" she asked and you damn near died from the cute) it still wasn't safe. Not for the baby,she said, though she said 'Alice', and that just made it, made her real, made her something more than just a tiny squirming bundle in a blanket, hustling you right on out of that somewhere you'd finally found and, you'll admit (now), you didn't want to hear it, you didn't want to hear her say that name.
It sounded too much (and nothing at all) like when she said yours and that was just one bridge too fucking far.
"I want to tell you to come home," she said and you thought, just for a moment, that she actually might. "There's nothing I want more in this world then for you to come back."
Nothing except…
"No," she said and you realized that you'd said it out loud. "Not except. And… God… I know that makes me… shit… I don't even know what that makes me,that I'd even think of it like that, but I do, Nicole. You have to know that. I do."
You didn't know - and you still don't - if she meant it or how it made you feel to think that she just might, but whether she did or not, she never asked, she never put you on the spot, there was no chance she ever would, no matter how badly you both wanted her to.
And you knew then (and now) that was exactly what made her every bit the hero fate had apparently ordained her sister to be. Blood be fucking damned.
She asked after the baby and she asked if you were both doing alright and she mentioned that no, Wynonna didn't want to or maybe just couldn't talk and you got the feeling that maybe she didn't or couldn't cause, well, she wasn't there, like maybe she'd run (though obviously not far) and, really, you didn't think you could blame her.
You just hoped Waverly felt the same.
She promised you then, promised that there would be another call, that they'd be reaching out again and soon - this Bulshar bullshit just would not stand - and they'd have the plan, seeing as how they had all their big brains and a definite surplus of crazy and they'd figure it out, come up with something that would let you and her both come home. Maybe more talismans around the homestead or some spell from yet another witch or maybe she'd just make some crazy ass wish on a trophy or maybe...
Or maybe.
The story of your life. Your new one.
Or, maybe, that call would come in a week or a month and it would be Doc or it would be Dolls and they'd be calling to tell you she was gone and your heart would break (shatter) (explode) (shrivel to nothing inside your chest) and you'd think that there was just no way you could go on and that it was all over and then Alice would cry or coo and you'd know you had to find a way.
Or, maybe, it would come in the dead of the night and it would be her and she'd be calling to tell you she'd found someone else - I owed you the truth, she'd say - and she felt like calling was a thing she needed to do, that she needed you to know, that she needed to release you and then Alice would cry or coo and you'd know.
Waverly wasn't the one holding you anymore.
Or maybe… well… maybe it would be a year and a half later and you'd still be waiting for that call except that now, really, you're not waiting. Your phone doesn't sit right next to your pillow every night and you don't check it a dozen times a day to make sure the ringer is still on and there are moments - day long ones, sometimes - when you almost forget that call might ever come.
And then, after that, there are moments - week long ones, at least, when you wonder what that says about you.
That call, the only one that's ever come, ended abruptly. She couldn't hold it together anymore, the tears coming and the words slowing and it was suddenly just too hard and suddenly just too much and she swore - in a waterlogged gurgling and hiccuping voice - that she'd call again soon and you'd be coming home soon and this would all be over (all this, not you, not you and her) so very soon.
"I love you," she said, the last three words you've ever heard from her and they were ridiculously perfectly clear.
"I love you too," you said.
You think she heard you. But the line went dead so fast and she was just… gone… and then Alice was fussing again and it was time to move and yeah, you think she heard you.
But you don't know.
And you kinda doubt you ever will.
The ad was simple.
One bedroom, second floor apartment over family home. Kitchen, living room, one bath. Quiet neighborhood, quite home.
The typo was what did it, you think. Quite home. It made you laugh and that made Alice laugh and that - even if you knew, logically, it wasn't really a laugh - was all it took.
Well… that and the fact that you were almost out of money and hotel rooms were a lousy place to raise a kid and it had been two months. The call wasn't coming but that hadn't brought life to a screeching halt. Alice kept eating and growing and changing - two months for a tiny is like six years for a… well… biggie - and maybe you'd never thought much about raising a kid, but you'd developed enough common sense to know that all the moving and moving and moving and did you mention moving wasn't good for her.
And it wasn't all that good for you, either, and no, that didn't have anything at all to do with the way moving felt more like running and hiding and so, settling somewhere seemed like the way to go and if you were going to settle anywhere, a quiet neighborhood (and quite home) was the perfect call. At least for a start.
Not that you thought of it like that. As a start.
A start meant there was more to come, upgrades and changes and growing and you swore that there'd be none of any of that, except from Alice and, really, that would only happen if you could stop hustling her from place to place, spot to spot, and so, start or not, it was clear that checking the place out - the address listed in the ad was only three streets over and you'd already called for an appointment - seemed like a plan.
And, as plans went, it was good. It was solid and smart and, you don't mind saying, it was just about the most logical (and adult) thing you'd ever come up with.
Right until you got there and you sat out in the street in your car (not your car cause you'd sold that one a month and a half ago and bought this one from a different dealer and paid in all cash and yeah, that was a bit of why your money was running out) and stared up at it, at the place.
The place.
It didn't have a white picket fence because, really, that would just be too perfect, that would have made it the Mary fucking Sue of places.
The fence was brown. And old. Wood with knots in the boards and a couple loose planks in a few spots and oh, you couldn't picture Alice pushing those out of the way, trying to crawl out of the yard to freedom.
No, you couldn't picture that at all.
You thought about asking Alice what she thought, but you weren't so far gone yet that you were asking a three month old for opinions.
"You like it," you said and so, clearly, you were just far enough gone to be giving said three month old opinions.) There was movement behind the curtains, and you saw two small dark eyes checking you out, wondering why you weren't moving.
They weren't the only ones.
Actually… they were. You weren't wondering at all why you weren't moving. You'd been doing so much of that lately - always moving, running, checking and double-checking and watching in the rear-view the entire time - that just sitting, just being still, especially in the face of such huge change, it just felt… right.
And that felt like something you should savor, lest it never come again.
But then it was like five or six or fifteen minutes and just sitting (and savoring) had gotten a bit creepy and so you pulled yourself out of the car, Alice on your hip - eyes so bright and moving, like her mother before her first shot of the day (and you're not sure whether you mean drink or gun shot or if it even matters) - and you took the ten old concrete steps up from the street, two at a time, knocking on the door before you lost your nerve.
You smiled when she opened the door, her dirty blonde and gray hair bunned atop her head, a pair of ripped (from age, not from hip) jeans on beneath a paint stained tee and, in that moment she reminded you so little of your own mother that you thought that maybe this just might work.
"Hi," you said, "I'm Nikki and this is my daughter, Alice. I called about the apartment?"
She stepped aside and ushered the two of you in and as the door closed behind you, you tried your damnedest to ignore the symbolism of it all. You know, one door closing but another (the door to the upstairs apartment that she's unlocked with a tiny key you can almost feel burning in your hand already) opening. One life ending and another… well…
It was a start.
A year and a half later, you think that now, maybe, you can call it something else: a somewhere and a someone and a fit.
It's just.
Just enough.
