Waverly Earp wakes in the small hours of the morning. The sky, visible from the bed through a sliver of window, is a deep indigo, and the chirring of the night insects has ceased. She knows that soon, the morning birds will begin their exploratory pre-dawn song. She knows, because she has awoken in this hour many times over the past few months. Ever since she was released from the darkness inside her.
Waverly wakes, and all is silent, but for the soft, even breaths of Nicole beside her. In the dim light of the barely-brightening sky, she cannot identify the red of Nicole's hair. It's just dark strands splayed, curling, over the white pillow. The air is cool.
Waverly wakes and is still, heartbeat slow, body languid and heavy on the soft mattress. She is wide awake, but calm, serene. She has grown to appreciate these hours she has alone in the mornings. They are rare and precious in a life as hectic and dramatic as hers.
In these hours Waverly feels most herself. She can just be; she is subject to no expectations, no pressures, no preconceptions. She can reach for her truths without worrying who she'll disappoint, or who will judge her.
When she's alone, in the stillness of pre-dawn, she doesn't need to be the Waverly they all expect her to be.
It is her favourite time. Waverly needs this respite, needs this time of clarity and honesty.
Because Waverly Earp has been telling lies.
Carefully, so as not to disturb Nicole, Waverly raises her arm, touches her fingers to her lips. She remembers with an untoward lucidity the taste of her mouth when she was possessed. It was sweet, like anise, and bitter like good dark chocolate. She would wake from a blackout, unsure where she was, to find that taste in her mouth. She remembers notes of black pepper.
Her mouth doesn't taste like that anymore, but she remembers how it felt. She remembers better and clearer than she wants to. There was a hunger, omnipresent, constant. She wanted to consume life in all its forms. She wanted meat; she wanted emotions, intense and chaotic – fear, anger, longing. She wanted touch: violence, sex. She was insatiable.
She turns over to her side, disturbed, and Nicole mumbles sleepily as she readjusts. Waverly's heart is pounding now, belying her excitement. Though no-one can see her, she flushes with shame.
It comes back to her in flashes, vivid shards against a vast darkness. Most of the time, when the demon was in control, she was blacked out. It was a constant battle, waged deep inside of her, and when she'd wrest back control, she would be in strange, sometimes wild situations. She remembered nothing, but would be standing in the middle of a field, her hands and pockets full of metal detritus, her mouth full of licorice and cocoa, bare feet numb with cold and soiled with mud.
She'd be confused, out of sorts, but even though it would no longer be in control of her, she could feel its vestiges in the way she'd clutch at her prizes, stow them and keep them safe.
Hours or even days would pass before she'd come to, mind foggy, and in her mouth would be the foul taste of animal flesh — she'd be crushing it between her teeth, salivating as the fat streamed across her tongue. Waverly had been a vegetarian since she was ten years old. Her stomach would turn with guilt. She would hide the evidence and feel sick for the rest of the day, and the thing inside of her would laugh at her expense. She would be left with the memory of the raw virility of it charging through her.
Or she'd blink awake, her hands tight around the throat of a bully, some superhuman strength infusing her limbs. Suddenly her muscles would begin quaking with the effort, but she knew that until that moment, even if she hadn't been conscious, she had been doing it. She was holding a grown man off his feet, her body a well-honed tool, efficient, strong. She would blink awake and find herself feeling powerful. Feeling dangerous.
It had been the first time in her life she'd felt that kind of power. Any power, really – and she'd liked it much more than she felt comfortable admitting. Now, in these still, pre-dawn moments, she misses it. She longs for it.
Smart, cheerful, well-liked: that was Waverly Earp. She was kind to the downtrodden; downright charitable, sweet and loving, the nicest person in Purgatory. She was athletic. She played in the school orchestra, her fingers flying with skill and practice, her melodies eloquently expressed. She cheer-led; she excelled academically; she was elected to student government. She was beloved equally by her teachers, her friends, and town outcasts.
But it had always been so much work.
Rejected by her family — those who were, one supposed, obligated by blood to love you — Waverly strove to be perfect. She wanted to give no-one any excuse to spurn her ever again. She had built her identity on this foundation ever since childhood. Purgatory was a small town; she'd be hard-pressed to find a hundred people she couldn't name within the town limits. And it was absolutely exhausting to live under that kind of pressure.
Waverly knew, certainly, that it was her fault for building up those expectations. She also knew that, if she was being realistic, she cared what people thought much more than anyone cared about her. But she just couldn't imagine letting anyone down. These people knew her, knew who she was, had an understanding of her character. Valedictorian, prom queen, head cheerleader.
Waverly had always been the counter to her older sister Wynonna's wild-child ways. The beloved sister of the town pariah, Waverly was everything Wynonna was not: she had never slept around, had never said a harsh word in anger, nor made a scene when drinking too much. She'd never been in trouble, had always been a paragon of the good small-town girl. Aspirational.
She has been chafing at these self-imposed bonds for some time now, since even before her possession, truth be told. When she'd started dating a woman, she had tried so hard not to worry what people would say or think, to not let it affect her behaviour. It had not been easy.
She laces her fingers through Nicole's hair, feeling the locks of it sliding through her fingers. This, at least, has been worth it.
The black goo she'd taken into herself had given her reprieve from the pressure. It had given her license to behave badly. Once she'd had a taste of how good it felt to be impulsive, the bounds of propriety had become fetters.
A pang of guilt surges through her, from down in her stomach up into her chest, roiling hot and cold.
She had emerged from blackness once, when the demon was strong in her, her lips tingling from kissing Nicole hard. She had suddenly realized then, as sound came rushing in, that they were in a room full of people, jeers and laughs from all sides, and Nicole had been in uniform. She had chastised Waverly then, and rightly, but Waverly had felt a spasm of heat expanding through her body. Something about her had liked the exhibitionism of it.
Nicole had noticed the taste. She was no fool.
Waverly turns her face to touch her burning cheeks against the cool cotton of the pillow. She writhes a bit, shameful. That had been only one of many times.
She'd come to once, as if from a deep sleep, mid-way through pocketing some legacy flatware at the department store. She had no idea how she'd gotten there, but she knew she was in the city. Her oversized parka pockets were heavy, and she'd slipped her hands in and felt around. Metal tinkled against metal inside. She felt a corkscrew, the delicate slide of a necklace chain over her fingertips; knives and letter openers, rings, a stainless steel cake lifter. She'd been wandering around in the wedding registry department, pilfering items marketed to happy couples, engraved monograms available for an additional charge.
Waverly had looked around, heart pounding with fear, and had realized no-one was watching. She knew, somehow, that she had hundreds of dollars' worth of merchandise in her pockets, just as she knew that if no-one had noticed yet, that she could get away with taking these things.
Awake then — no longer overcome by the dark force of the demon — she had walked out of the store, hands caressing the bounty in her pockets as she slipped past the shoplifting detectors at the exit. And she had felt high on the badness of it. She'd driven home with a dumb grin on her face the whole way. Waverly had never stolen before, not since she was a little child and had taken precious objects from Willa's room to soil them, bury them, destroy them. Even at that, she had never been caught.
Waverly breathes long and slow to calm herself. She realizes that she has fistfuls of bedding clenched in her fists and makes a concerted effort to relax. She knows, deep down, that the demon just gave her an excuse that she'd already been looking for. Everyone knows Waverly is a good person, but sometimes she wants to be bad.
And then there had been the many times she'd flashed in and out of awareness, waking to skin, sweat, desperate hard kisses, Nicole's deep moans and soft whimpers.
The sex.
The demon had made sex unbelievable.
Before Nicole, Waverly'd had a summarily unsatisfying sex life. Boys. Young, inexperienced, unbelievably selfish, and Waverly herself focused primarily on being agreeable, on seeming fun and sexy and easy to please. She had tried so hard to avoid all the things good girls weren't supposed to be: neither slutty nor frigid, but at the same time exciting, never boring.
Nicole had been the first person she'd been with who seemed to really care about how she felt — not only physically, but emotionally and mentally. She had been patient, waiting for Waverly to be ready. She had opened Waverly up like a bloom; where she had been tightly closed, she was now open, ripe, dripping with pollen. But Waverly had been too nervous to take the next step. Nicole's kisses awoke feelings unlike any she'd experienced before, but as much as she wanted it – and oh, did she want it – Waverly was so afraid of doing something wrong that she shied away from consummating their relationship. She would dream of it, fantasize about it, and tease Nicole with it, but when it came down to it, she would panic.
The demon changed all that. It empowered her to be her boldest self, to indulge her desires. The demon wanted to consume everything around it; it wanted life, messy and sumptuous. The demon wanted Waverly to have Nicole, and to have her with reckless abandon.
After Wynonna had shot the released demon with Peacemaker and wiped it from Waverly's life, Waverly had felt a hollowness, a shameful sense of loss. Her dark passenger was gone, and she'd hoped the urges would depart with it.
They had not. Months later, Waverly was frantic, scrabbling at her self-imposed bonds.
Waverly had given in a few times, trying to recapture the undeniable rush that came with being impulsive, wild, doing things because she wanted to, without thinking first. She remembered that night she'd pressed her lips to Rosita's, heady from steam and champagne, throwing caution to the wind, devil-may-care. The freedom of it had been short-lived. It had been only a handful of seconds before the guilt and reality had hit her.
Still, she doesn't feel as bad about it as she thinks she should.
After the demon's departure, Waverly had told Nicole, in no uncertain terms, that she had been fully present every time they'd made love. Waverly herself, not the demon wearing her skin. She had told Nicole that she remembered every touch. Even though Nicole could remember the dark, sweet taste of the demon in her mouth and on her body, Waverly lied. Nicole was all too eager to be fooled this time.
It plays through her mind, vivid, broken: flashes of lips, breast, hip, Nicole's weight on her, her handdeep inside Nicole. Just as much, or more, was lost to Waverly's memory; she'd gasp awake mid-orgasm, the deep quake of her release momentarily kicking the demon's hold over her, and she'd know only by the story of her body how good it had been.
Waverly knows that the possession gave her what she needed to cross that bridge — the confidence she needed to make love with a woman for the first time. It also gave her the license she sorely needed to devour Nicole, ravenously, rapaciously, with abandon. Without shame. Waverly had wanted it, but the demon had helped her get there. God, how she'd wanted it, but she'd been timid and fearful. No amount of research could prepare you for something like that. She had let the demon give that to her, and she didn't regret it.
But Nicole could never know. It would devastate her.
So Waverly had lied.