Waverly buries her face in crook of Nicole's neck, savoring the comfort of finally being reunited with her wife. Her smell, sweet and like vanilla, Waverly realized that she'd needed nothing more than to be engulfed in her love. A shelter. A quiet moment for her to recollect, because despite this smallest relief: they aren't finished.
She wants to tell her, from the beginning, when she pulled those ridiculous boxes out of the closet by herself because all she wanted to do was finish the nursery before Nicole got home. About the attack, how helpless she'd felt when she'd realized their biggest fear had become a reality. She'd lost the baby, at the hand of a revenant, and that's a weight that she'll carry, no matter what Wynonna had done to fix it. On some level, in Waverly's head, she had failed them.
Does she really want to tell her that?
Will she ever tell her everything?
She pulls back just enough to see Nicole's face, soft and delicate, smiling at her. Waverly traces a finger across her lips before she kisses them. Her eyes dart to the bandage on her forehead and her hand travels up to meet it, but she doesn't touch, she hovers. Her gaze is filled with more scrapes above her eye and a bruise on her cheekbone, she wants to ask her everything.
"Hey, I'm okay," Nicole cups Waverly's face in both of her hands and pulls her close until their foreheads touch, "are you?"
She fights back tears; she knows now isn't the time. What if she can't come back if she lets herself go? And they don't have time for her to explain, not now.
Waverly reaches up on her tippy toes and pulls her into another kiss, she isn't sure if its to reassure Nicole or herself, but either way, she says, "I'm fine."
After another quick kiss, Nicole is the first one to break their embrace, leaving Waverly with a strange chill. Not because the warmth of her love is gone, but because of the scene she is met with in the BBD office. Her palms go clammy and she can feel her face getting hot.
She'd forgotten that they weren't the only ones in the room.
Waverly has been working on not being run by her emotions when it comes to things involving the supernatural. Four years of experience will teach that lesson to anyone, but when she realized that she is, once again, in the presence of the revenant that has stolen their lives out from underneath them, she feels her blood boil.
In that moment, she'd concluded that no amount of Chi can prepare someone for the emotion they'll feel when they are face-to-face with an animal like this.
In the center of the room, he stands, tall, in the lock box, hands plastered on the glass beside his badly bruised face, smiling; taunting Waverly. She's engulfed in a tunnel vision, everyone else in the room quickly becoming a haze. Hot tears threaten the surface as her heart rate soars.
How dare he! How dare he come into their lives, just as things were winding down and becoming wholesome again. How dare he destroy her house and her sister, making Wynonna choose between Alice and herself, knowing that that was one of the toughest decisions she would ever have to make.
Neither of them breaks eye contact, she watches the grin on his face grow. He taps on the glass, as if she's the one that's trapped in the cage, and after that morning, she may as well be. She felt as though her free will had been taken from her, that their fight had been for naught because, in the end, they had Alice anyway. She's watching the life that they had all been fighting for, disappear.
"You bastard!" Waverly charges for the glass.
"Waverly!" Wynonna catches her. She locks her arms around her waist, hoists her up and into a 180-degree spin away from the revenant.
"Wynonna, let me go!" She writhes in her sister's grip, but Wynonna doesn't budge.
"Not a chance, baby girl," She turns her around so they're facing each other, though this time Wynonna is blocking her view, "you're forgetting why we're here."
"Me?" She points over Wynonna's shoulder and to the revenant with a fire in her eye, "you have this monster locked in a cage, in our home! After everything he's done to us! How are you not furious?"
Wynonna closes the gap between her and her sister, she speaks just above a whisper, though, not without force, "You think I don't want to tear this guy apart? Alice is gone. The only promise I'd ever made was to keep her safe, and I couldn't." She speaks evenly and finds her sisters gaze, hoping she'd understand, "He'd be dead right now if it wouldn't have been for Nicole, and we would have had to use our wish on something else."
Waverly felt that; the truth she wasn't prepared to hear, but she knows Wynonna's right.
"We need him alive so we can find her, that's what this is for." She walks over to her desk and picks up a small remote with a single button on the top.
Waverly's eyes flicker from the remote and back to her sister. She's never felt more somber in the midst of her sisters' glory, but curiosity triumphs her anger.
She arches an eyebrow, "What's it do?"
Waverly half expects Jeremy to intervene, knowing all too well that, even though this may have been Wynonna's idea, this little device was his doing. She turns, and to her surprise, everyone had stepped out after her outburst, everyone but Nicole that is.
Her love stands behind her with a slouch and her arm still across her abdomen holding her ribs. She really should sit down, but she stands in the same place she had left her. Nicole gives her a reassuring nod, and Waverly's hands instinctually reach for her belly out of comfort. Still in there, both hands able to ease her mind for the moment.
She smiles at her wife and turns back to Wynonna.
"I don't think you're ready for this one." Wynonna proudly leads her to the glass, mere inches from the revenant. Able to sense her sisters' discomfort, Wynonna rubs the small of her back, encouraging her to stay.
"So, me and Mrs. Haught stuff found out the hard way that our little friend, here, is able to bounce around wherever he pleases. Bastard flipped my truck and almost killed the both of us earlier." Waverly's head shoots up, but Wynonna stops her, "Don't worry, baby girl, we're fine and he isn't getting out of there."
"How are you so sure?"
"Jeremy took some samples while he was still out. I don't really know what he was saying, nerd talk, you know? But I got that he teleports using sand, and the cage is spotless. I made sure of it myself, and you see that?" Pointing at the newly added metal plating on the base of the cage, "that's how we're going to get Alice back. He doesn't want to tell us anything, so we'll force it out of him. Watch."
Wynonna turns to the cage and pushes the button.
Waverly wasn't entirely sure what she was looking for, but she did think it was odd that their revenant wasn't wearing any shoes. Or moving.
Out of sheer confusion, she looks to Wynonna, whose taken on a more serious demeanor, then back to the revenant. He's frozen, seized to the spot in which he's standing, then she see's it. Smoke starts rising from his body and quickly filling the box with a dense cloud, then it hits her.
He's being electrocuted.
Her stomach churns. Endless torture because he's already dead.
Suddenly all her anger drains and is replaced by something she isn't quite sure how to describe.
Frustration and confusion well up in the pit of her stomach. She should love this. She should want nothing more than to watch him burn to a crisp after everything he's done, after the scene she'd just caused.
So why is it that her first instinct is to turn away? To leave the room and pretend like all of this is just a bad dream. Her and Nicole can go back home and restart their day in bed together, only this time she'll ask her for help with those damn boxes. With the two of them there, they can finish twice as fast and Waverly could study. They could finish planning their lives together, talk about graduation and buying a house because they're going to need more space in a few years. Will they stay in Purgatory with her family?
Where would Alice be in that scenario? Or Wynonna?
She wants to save Alice just as badly as Wynonna, and she needs her to know that. As much as she'd like to leave, she doesn't, knowing all too well that as hard as her sister's exterior is, she needs Waverly's support.
So, she stays; even turns and gives Wynonna a nod approval, who then stops the current and pulls her into a hug, "I knew you'd love it!"
"Of course, I do! So, what's the plan?"
"I stay here with our new friend and see what I can get out of him, you and Nicole go get food."
"What?" Thank God, "Why can't Doc or Jeremy go on a food run this time?"
Wynonna glances over to her baby sister, "You need to talk to that girl you got over there," she says, then looks to the ground in front of her, "maybe make a quick run to the doctors while you're out."
She should. Just to make sure everything is okay, or that the wish had done everything it was supposed to. Though, she can honestly say that she feels fine.
She meets Nicole, who's still patiently waiting by the doors, and they promise to be back as soon as they can after getting everyone's food requests.
As soon as they are out the doors, Nicole turns and says, "You hate it, don't you?"
"Of course, I do!"