A/N: this work contains references to abusive parents, as well as depicting some results of trauma, such as panic attacks. additionally, the endgame relationship is a poly femslash one, so if you don't like that, you probably won't enjoy this fanfic.
She takes it as a last ditch option, the equivalent of hurtling towards a searing flame and pulling a breakneck u-turn right before she hits, except in this case the flame is being sent back to the psych ward and the u-turn is applying for the two year highschool-community college hybrid program in an attempt to prove to her psychiatrist that her life is going just fine . She makes it, but only just—the cut-off for the program is a 2.5 GPA and hers is exactly 2.505. In her defence, it's kind of hard to succeed academically when you're constantly missing days because of being in and out of inpatient programs and your medication fucking with your brain. There's a fancy term for it, she knows, because Doctor Elliott has used it a few times, but she can't for the life of her remember it, nor does she really give a shit.
She sits there, filling out paper after paper, listening to her school-assigned guidance counsellor prattle on and on about how she'll need to pick at least a portion of her college classes so that she can fulfil the graduation requirements for high school, and wishes she could just disappear from Purgatory and go live somewhere where no one knows the name Wynonna Earp.
"Well, I think that's everything!" the counsellor, whose name tag either says Mindy or Cindy , says brightly. "We've got you all squared up and ready to go. Classes at the CC start on the 28th, and here—" she waits for the printer to spit out a sheet before handing it to Wynonna—"is your schedule."
Wynonna takes it; jerking the paper from the woman's grasp and ignoring the disapproving look it gets her; shoulders her beat up messenger bag and sees herself out the door. Her next class doesn't start for about twenty minutes, so she finds herself one of the benches dotted on the green, beneath a willow, and looks the schedule over.
The only high school classes she's taking starting tomorrow are electives, Culinary Arts and Construction, because they sounded the least mind-numbing, and the remaining core classes are at the CC—English Lit 101, Physics I, Calculus, and World Civilisations I. Of them all, Calculus is what she's most worried about—she managed to scrape by in Algebra II, but she hasn't taken Precalc, and it feels like a big leap to make.
She takes a deep breath; checks her schedule again. She'll only have CC classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, and they're all in the afternoon. There's the small matter of transportation, though—Cindy (Mindy? whatever) had said that it's up to students to arrange transportation, which is all fine and dandy if you have two parents alive and kicking with a car or two between them, but Wynonna decidedly does not .
Pulling out her shitty red Nokia, she opens up the browser and spends ten agonising minutes squinting at the tiny screen in an attempt to make out the bus schedule and the cost for a year's pass, before she glances at the time and realises the bell is going to ring in about a minute and her class is on the other side of campus. "Shit!" she yelps, shoving her phone into her bag and hightailing it across the green.
She makes it to Biology, but only just; and as she takes her seat, it's with the weight of Mr. Reed's glare on her for interrupting him mid sentence. Well, fuck him—he decided to start talking before class officially began. She raises her chin in defiance.
The rest of the day passes fine, or at least fine by her standards—there's the typical snide remarks following after her in the hallways, but other than that, it's fine. She leaves her last class—pottery—with her bag slung over her shoulder and her head held high.
The walk back to the house of her current foster family is long, but the haze of smoke from the forest fires to the south and the west dull the weight of the sun. When she gets to the front door, the shoe-rack and driveway are empty—Sam and Cathy are out, maybe staying late at work but more probably off cheating on each other with their current flings, and Waverly's middle school is a longer walk than Wynonna's, so she fishes out her keys and lets herself in, pulls out a frozen pizza from the chest freezer in the mudroom and switches the oven on to preheat.
While she waits, she makes herself a quick sandwich, just butter and honey between two toasted slices of sandwich bread as she re-navigates to the Purgatory Transit website. The cost of a year's pass is a bit pricey, but she has enough to cover it as long as she doesn't use any of what remains on anything but the essentials, like new shoes for Waverly, or groceries. Well, there goes her hope of being able to buy herself a bra that actually fits.
The oven beeps at her at the same time as the front door creaks open; and over the sudden blast of heat as she opens the oven, she hears the telltale sounds of Waverly dropping her backpack on the floor. Sliding the pizza in, she rises, offering her best approximation of a welcoming smile. "Hey Waves, how was your day?"
Waverly grumbles something unintelligible, stomping over to the pantry and pulling out the box of lemon bars. Wynonna raises a brow. "That good, huh?"
"Champ's being a dick again," Waverly says, glowering, once she finishes eating; throws herself on the sofa. "I was talking with the new girl, who seems really nice, and he kept throwing things at me because he's, like, jealous at not being the centre of my attention. God, boys are stupid. "
Wynonna hums sympathetically. "He doesn't deserve you," she says, a sentiment oft-repeated but still ringing true.
"Yeah, I guess," Waverly says. "Hey, what's for dinner?"
"Pizza in a few," Wynonna responds. "I got the vegetarian kind, so it'll probably taste like rabbit food." The last bit is said teasingly—it's an old argument, one without any real bite; Waverly's been vegetarian since fourth grade, so Wynonna's pretty much used to it.
Waverly smiles, like the sunlight breaking through clouds after a long day. "Sweet!" she says, and then peels herself off the cushions to rifle through her backpack, pulling out a few papers—some syllabi and a travel permission slip for the debate team. Wynonna grabs a pen and quickly scrawls Cathy's signature on the required lines. "There," she says, handing the papers back to Waverly, "all set."
The oven beeps, and Waverly scrambles to set the table while Wynonna cuts the pizza, and soon they're sitting down at the dining table, munching away. Over the pizza, Waverly elaborates on her many frustrations with Champ, her boyfriend—a common occurrence, as he's kind of a douchebag, except all of her friends besides Wynonna seem to think he's god's gift to humanity. "You should just dump him," Wynonna advises, not for the first time. "You've just started middle school, and you've been dating him since last year—maybe it's time to move on."
"Maybe," Waverly says, dispassionately, in the way that says she knows Wynonna's probably right but she doesn't want to accept it. In a clear attempt to change the subject, she says, "What about you?"
"What, boys?" Wynonna makes a face. "My peers suck , so hard no."
" No, " Waverly says, laughing at her distaste, "I mean how are classes going? It's been a week, right?"
Wynonna nods. "Yeah, a week today. It's been..." she hesitates, before continuing. "My grades are okay, I guess, but I flipped out twice in class." Were it anyone else, she'd just lie and say things have been fine, but Waverly's been around her during an episode before, and they agreed years ago not to keep secrets from each other.
Waverly nods sympathetically. "That sucks," she says. "Let me guess—the popular kids are being even shittier to you because of it?" + weekend lifeguarding job
"Yeah, like, entrails in my locker kind of shitty," Wynonna says, taking a bite of pizza that turns out to be too big and hot, and has to wash it down with some water. "It's fine though, 'cause I'm only going to have two classes at the P-Hi starting tomorrow, so I won't even need my locker."
Waverly takes another piece of pizza, leaning forward. "Oh?" she asks.
"Yeah, uh," Wynonna grimaces, "Doctor Elliott's been getting on my ass the last month or so about getting my life together, having a plan for my future, figuring things out and practising my coping mechanisms or whatever so I don't wind up in the psych ward again, so I thought, fuck it, what's more forward-thinking than starting college early, right?"
"The hybrid program?" Waverly asks excitedly. "Oh man, you're going to have to tell me all about it. I wish they'd offer it for middle schoolers..."
"If they did, you'd get in right away, I'm sure of it," Wynonna says affectionately. "But I promise you can look over my notes from my classes."
After dinner, they rinse their dishes off and load up the dishwasher, and then get started on their homework. Wynonna has a set of free response questions she has to do for the summer reading they were assigned, which necessitates going into the bedroom and fishing out her ratty, second-hand copy of Animal Farm and paging through it in an attempt to remember the pertinent information. Some of the questions are worded in really weird ways, too, so she winds up asking Waverly for a second opinion on what they're asking for, but by seven she's got them all done, and most of her other homework mostly completed.
Once they've got their homework put away, Wynonna puts a bag of popcorn in the microwave, and then they turn on the Mummy, and settle onto the couch together, pressed shoulder to shoulder, and Wynonna can feel it when Waverly laughs; and for the moment, everything is perfect.
The next two weeks pass like some sort of daydream. In Construction, they've finally moved on from drawing plans to actually putting the sheds together, and Wynonna's hands and arms ache from gripping the hammer, but she can feel callouses starting to build up, and her muscles getting stronger. For Culinary Arts, Ms. Cochran has decided she trusts them enough to give them their first project, which is to create a tea platter, and while Wynonna almost burns the scones she's in charge of making, they wind up turning out alright, which is good—before the start of the year, she'd be hard pressed to make scrambled eggs without setting something on fire, the class has helped her improve a lot to the point where she's almost confident enough to cook and bake without constant supervision.
Sarah Parker still fills her locker with entrails, but Wynonna just walks past it, ignoring the oozing blood, which is worth the comically surprised expression on Sarah's face. She and her posse still try and play cruel pranks on Wynonna, and continue to spread vicious rumours, but Wynonna finds that no longer sharing any classes with them makes it somewhat more tolerable. Also, she's grudgingly started reading the book that Doctor Elliott gave her about emotional management, and some of the techniques for dealing with anger actually help a bit. Not that she'd ever admit it to the psychiatrist.
When the next Monday rolls around, Wynonna sides one side of her group's shed, makes the filling for the canolis they're going to be working on the next day, and then boards the bus to the CC. When she checks her phone, she finds a message from Waverly. Good luck! 3 is all it says, but it makes her smile a bit.
It's not the first time she's been on the Purgatory Community College campus, but it is the first time she's actually had to find the main building, and she finds herself glad there's an hour and a half intermission between her last class a P-Hi and her first class at the CC. In the end, she manages to hunt down one of the students walking between their own classes and get directions.
She finds the building just fine after that, and there's even enough time for her to quickly eat the waffles and snack bar she packed for lunch before she has to go inside.
She snags a seat towards the back after grabbing one of the packets of paper on the stool in front of the chalkboard with take one written over it, and digs around in her bag for the red notebook she's assigned as her Physics notebook, as well as a pencil. Just as she's about to leaf through the packet of papers, the girl in front of her turns around, looking apologetic. "I seem to have misplaced my writing utensils," she says, voice heavy with a thick Southern drawl. "Would you be so kind as to lend me a pencil or pen?" She looks familiar, but Wynonna can't quite place her.
Wynonna's mouth feels cottony; and she says, "Sure," voice probably a touch too high, and digs around blindly, grabbing the first pencil her fingers hit; hands it over.
The girl smiles; dimples appearing at the corners of her mouth; the rest of her face half-shadowed by the wide-brimmed hat she's wearing. "Thank you kindly," she says "I shall return it posthaste." And with that, she turns back around, leaving Wynonna feeling slightly winded. She shakes her head, trying to dispel the feeling; scolds herself for being so effected by a simple interaction.
Thankfully, the syllabus is dry enough to take her mind off of the interaction, and Wynonna more or less forgets about it between that and trying to pay attention to what the professor is saying—something about position and velocity, which is kind of going in one ear and out the other, but she's scribbling near-illegible notes as quickly as she can, so she can probably just study the notes when she gets back home to patch up the blank spots that'll inevitably appear in her memory.
When the hour is up, she makes her way to the door, stepping out into the hallway. She's just about to go hunting for room 108, which is where English 101 is, before someone taps on her shoulder. "Pardon me," comes the honeyed voice from earlier, and Wynonna finds her knees going a little weak. Turning around, she finds the other holding out the pencil she gave her. "I thought I ought to return your property."
"It's fine," Wynonna says, quickly. "You can keep it, I have, like, fifteen others, really, it's fine—"
The other girl shakes her head. "I am a man of my word," she says, firmly.
"Oh. Okay, um, thanks...uh, I never got your name," Wynonna finds herself babbling, and, remembering the pencil, snatches it back.
The other's lips quirk. "You didn't," she agrees. "But then, neither did I get yours. A name for a name, perhaps?"
"Wynonna," she says. "Er, Wynonna Earp, I mean. And yeah, I am related to Wyatt Earp," she adds, the phrase practiced and falling forth dully.
The girl quirks a brow. "What a coincidence," she says. "I'm John Henry Holliday, but my friends call me Doc," she adds, and her smile takes a cheeky lilt. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Earp."
Tipping her hat gently to Wynonna, she brushes past her, leaving Wynonna's shoulder tingling. She stands there for a long moment, staring off after where the other disappeared around the corner, pencil clutched in hand, before she shakes herself and hurries towards where her next class probably is.
It's not until she gets home that she realises why Doc looks familiar, and she digs through Waverly's pile of celebrity magazines to find the article from the previous year— Heir To Georgia Peach Empire Disowned at Seventeen, it reads, with a short interview with Doc, then referred to as Loiusa May Elder, regarding her parents' decision to disown her after finding out about her relationship with a peer of hers at the all female Catholic school they had sent her to. A quick google search reveals that, after changing her name, Doc more or less dropped off the map. Wynonna wonders how on earth she ended up in Purgatory, and tries not to feel a bit disappointed as her gaze catches once more on the bit about her being in a relationship.
" What are you doing with my magazines?" Waverly demands, and Wynonna startles at the sound.
She grins sheepishly. "Didn't realise you were home already," she says, weakly. "Maybe knock, next time?"
"This is my room too, Wynonna," she points out. "Now put my magazines back, or you have to share those fancy perfumes I know you stole from the store a few years ago."
"Alright, alright," Wynonna says, putting the stack of magazines back in order and shoving them away on the shelf of the small bedside table next to Waverly's bed. "There. All's well with the world again."