It's noon by the time Waverly wakes up.

Or, really, it could be. It could be nine am or it could be five in the evening or it could be - though it isn't likely - the next day. She can't really tell cause she can't find her phone and the power is out (again) and so the tiny clock radio she keeps next to her bed is useless.

She told Wynonna they should have gotten the ones with the battery back up. "In case the power goes out," she said, "in case we're stranded in the dark and not sure what time it is and yes, I know the other one is five bucks cheaper and yes, I know Black Badge doesn't pay for shit and yes, I know you've got enough battery powered… things… in your bedroom, but…"

Waverly did know. Oh, how she knew.

The homestead was safe and the homestead was protected and the homestead was home, but fuck all were the walls thin.

She rolls from the bed, careful not to wake Nicole and that… well… Waverly can't help smiling like a fool at that, at knowing that there's someone in her bed she cares enough not to wake and that that someone is someone she actively wants to be there. That's new, not like it was with Champ and if Waverly had a nickel for every time she'd thought that over the last few weeks, she probably could have doubled Bobo's offer and bought Shorty's herself.

Her hands find the hem of Nicole's PPD sweatshirt, tugging it down past her hips, and Waverly's not exactly sure when she ended up wearing that (not that she's complaining) and lets her mind wander for just a moment, lets herself picture that little dream of domesticity. Her running the bar, Nicole waiting for Nedley to die so she can become Sheriff, nothing worse than the occasional bar brawl or a drunk and disorderly for either of them to worry about.

No revenants, no witches (save for the White one), no back from the dead gunslingers (or, you know, sisters), no heirs, no badges, no danger. She'd be just another girl, working in a bar and wearing far too little clothing at work and then coming home to learn all about how wearing too little clothing in front of the right person can be so much more fun than wearing nothing at all in front of the wrong one.

It's a nice dream. Nice and normal and... well... so not ever going to happen and Waverly shakes her head and hops off the bed. She's spent too much time, wasted too many years of her life trying to be normal and she's not going to do it anymore. She's going to embrace who she is, she's going to dive headfirst into her actual life and not the one she's fashioned for everyone else to see and she's going to stop wishing for what can't be.

You know… right after she figures out what the hell time it is.


Waverly parts the blinds with two fingers and stares outside, watching the Witch work her spells.

It's daylight, she can sorta tell that, mostly cause the dark of night is gone and she can see it now. She can see the snow and the ice and she can see the wind, like it's an actual thing, like every gust is made of concrete and steel and even behind the protection of the homestead walls, she can still feel the thudding impact of every whip as the Witch throws them like knives.

It's a bad one, she can tell, worse probably than the last one and that one brought the town to a standstill for the better part of a week, trapping everyone where they were and that's a feeling Waverly knows all too well.

She glances over her shoulder at the bed. The bed where Nicole still sleeps and yeah, Waverly knows what it's like to feel trapped.

But she's not so sure she'd mind it now.

That last Witch that came through was just three years ago and it was bad but they saw it coming. They saw the signs and the good (and the not so good and the just fucking weird) people of Purgatory did their best to prepare. The old people stocked up on bread and milk and boarded windows and hunkered down to ride it out. Curtis laid down tarps, nailing them into the ground over his gardens. He was a smart man (except maybe in who he left his creepy shit to) and he knew no tarps were gonna do any good, no plastic sheets were gonna keep the soil and the seeds beneath from being ravaged and ripped and sliced by the Witch. He knew but he said he "had to try. Can't just let the old bitch win" and Waverly nodded along and stacked her books atop her desk and and then offered to help with the tarps.

She knew a little something about the futility - and the need to ignore it - of trying.

The old people hoarded and the young ones stocked up on booze and beer and condoms. Curtis tarped and Gus made sure they had enough wood for when the power inevitably went out - and Waverly was sure she stocked up on batteries too, thank you very much - and Nedley coordinated stuff (Waves was never quite sure what) and Shorty made sure he had enough beer to last a month, so like half his usual supply, and people headed home and expected the worst and hoped for the best. And Waverly…

"You sure you don't want to stay with us?" Gus asked and Waverly shook her head and said she'd be fine - just fine - in her room over the bar. She was a grownup now, she'd been eighteen for two whole months and she had her books and three different flashlights and enough candles to open her own shop and, besides, she'd be perfectly safe and totally protected.

"Champ will be with me."

And if Waverly had… ignored… the way Gus rolled her eyes practically back into her skull, well, she could be forgiven. She was in love.

Or, you know, she thought she was. She wanted to be. She was supposed to be.

Waverly watches Nicole from the window, the Witch outside long forgotten as she counts the slow rises and falls of her the other woman's chest, as the hypnotic force of it lulls her and soothes her and she forgets the wind and she forgets the snow and the ice and she hardly feels the cold through the thin glass anymore.

She lets the blinds flick shut and scoots back across the cold floor and snuggles back under the blankets, curling against Nicole as the redhead almost unconsciously loops an arm around her and pulls her close.

And, not for the first time, Waverly wonders how she could have ever been so dumb.


When she thinks about it now (what with now being here and now being snuggled and now being Nicole) Waverly thinks of it as dumb.

Three years ago, when the worst Witch in a century ripped through town with a beautiful fury, leaving three people and four horses dead and a cleanup that seemed to take months in her wake?

It wasn't so much dumb as it was… necessary.

Curtis hauled wood and Gus checked batteries and Waverly made sure that Champ had her spare key to the bar and he knew when to be there and that he was sure, as in "Sure you want to do this?"

She meant riding out the storm with her. She meant spending that much time in that small a space with no way out and no escape and - once the power went - not all that much to do and if she'd been thinking about it at all, Waverly probably would have realized that that was something Champ was oh so very sure about.

If she'd thought of that, if she'd been focused on Champ's needs (like, you know, every other time they were together) maybe Waves would have seen the error of her ways. But she was trying to help Curtis and Gus and she was worried about Shorty all alone and there'd been a particular passage in one of her books about a particular revenant (some guy named Jack) that had her spooked and so, no, she wasn't thinking about Champ or little Champ or what either of them expected to be getting… up… to while they waited out the Witch.

That was her first mistake.

When she thinks about it now, what with now being the seemingly endless number of positions and configurations and arrangements she and Nicole can make of their bodies while they're literally sleeping together, Waverly is pretty sure (like completely) (like 100%) that Champ was always her first and her second and her last and her biggest mistake. She hadn't needed to be trapped with him for a week to know that but…

Ah, there it is. But.

There was always a but and when it came to her and Champ, there'd been plenty of 'but' to go around. She'd had a but, an excuse, a reason for everything. And Champ had needed every single one.

He was a boy-man, for sure, but he was sweet, or at least he was to her. Once. One time in tenth grade when he'd told her she looked pretty that day, with her hair braided like that instead of just always falling around her face where it covered up her eyes and made it hard to see those sweet, sweet lips and yes, that was what passed for sweet in Purgatory and, really, it wasn't what he said, more that he'd actually said something and that was more than pretty much any other guy in Purgatory who wasn't old enough to be her father and dirty enough to think cursed girls were hot and so yeah, it counted.

And sure, he spent more time on his appearance than she did, but he was hot. At least by Purgatory standards and it wasn't like Waverly was hitting the big city to find herself a male (or… not male cause yeah, she'd always kinda known) model any time soon. And yes, Champ was cocky and arrogant but that made him cool and popular and he was exactly what any (not that) self respecting, well adjusted (compared to Wynonna, maybe), and desperate not to be cursed (with stares and whispers and 'oh, that's her') girl could want.

What it boiled down to, in the end, what all those 'buts' added up to was that what Champ was, was normal and, back then, that was what Waverly wanted… no… not wanted, not like she wanted chocolate covered cherries or that bubble gum sake she'd seen online. Normal wasn't like that, normal was what she needed because normal was what she was. Or so she said to anyone and everyone who would listen.

"I'm not her," Waverly said and, really, she could have meant either her, the one who got dragged off in the night or the one who snuck away in it. "I'm just like you," she said and it didn't matter even a little who she was talking to cause she could be, she could be just like them if she tried.

And for so very long, she so tried.

Waverly said all that but what she meant - and what she knew they heard - was 'I'm not an Earp. It might be my name but it's not what I am.' She meant it but she never said it, not out loud, because somehow… somehow that would have been too much. It would have been one step over the invisible line she had drawn for herself, the one she'd sworn in her head that she'd never cross. She could pretend and she could fake it (and with Champ there was a lot of that) and she could act the part for all she was worth.

But she would always know better.

Waverly would always know that inside, under the need for normal and the willingness to endure almost anything - even Champ - to get it, and under the flirty flirt flirting and short shorts and crop tops that got his attention and blinded the rest of them, she would always know the truth.

She was nothing but an Earp and she didn't need a name to tell her that.

It was in everything she did that no one else saw. It was there when she was alone with her books and when she aced one class after another. There it was, in every language she learned, every bit of family history she uncovered. She saw it in every bit of lore about the curse and the revenants and the heirs. It was right there, in every reason she couldn't find for why she couldn't do it, for why she couldn't break the curse.

It was there every morning when she woke up and she was still there. Every day she woke up in Purgatory proved it. Willa was dead and Wynonna was gone and Waverly was… different… and maybe she was acting a part and maybe she was, in her own silent way, denying everything as much as Wynonna ever had. Maybe she was spending her every waking moment around other people pretending, but (and there it is, again) that was just for them and when she was alone, when she didn't have to fake a fucking thing, she was still there and she was still trying and that, she'd thought, had to count for something.

Waverly pops one eye open and let's her gaze trace a slow path over Nicole's face, watching the way her eyes flutter as she dreams and the way her lips part, ever so slightly as she breathes. She's there and Nicole's there and they're safe and they're protected and, in that moment, they're nothing if not normal. Except…

Except that's just pretend.

Because it's only for a moment. And yeah, that moment might last a week or ten days or however long it takes the Witch to do her business but it's still just a moment. And then they'll be back out there, with Wynonna and Doc and Dolls (and Willa) (can't forget her, no matter how hard she might try) and the revenants and the Triangle and the gun.

But if she's still pretending, if she's still trying to have anything… normal… if she's still hiding from the one person she lov… likes… then maybe staying and trying didn't count for anything at all.

Waverly slowly slips from Nicole's grasp and pads silently into the other room, plucking a book and a folder and a set of photos from one of her boxes and boxes and boxes of proof that yeah, she really is an Earp, and makes her way back to the bedroom. She settles down on the bed, not as close to Nicole as she'd like but if she's gonna do this then she's gonna do it right.

"Nicole?" she says, gently nudging the other woman. "Baby? Can you wake up? There's something… there's something I need to tell you."