Waverly's faced revenants determined to kill her, revenants determined to use her to hurt and then kill her sister, revenants determined to fuck with her mind and make her want to kill herself.
She's been shot at by mercenaries and demons. She's had her head in a noose and a skull in her hands. She stared down a psycho witch while holding said skull in her hands and she stabbed a not-a-stripper in the head with scissors. She watched her father die and her sister be snacthed awat in the night. She spent years working alone and now she works alongside an undead (he prefers not dead but really?) and a Marshall who sometimes has more secrets than sense.
She has, over the years, dealt with drunk Wynonna and sober Wynonna and miserable Wynonna and happy Wynonna (once) and… well… Wynonna.
Waverly spends her days - all her days - living under a curse she didn't create and she can't break, in a town that seems hell bent on finding new and inventive and newly inventive (and bloody) ways to try and kill her and those she loves. And yet…
And yet, it only take a few minutes and a bit of enthusiasm (which should be endearing but seems more terrifying) and a smile she thought she could only love before Waverly realizes that she doesn't fear anything like she fears the woman sharing her bed.
Nicole takes it all pretty well, surprisingly well, worryingly well, really. Waverly expected more of a freakout, more of a panic, more of 'you kept this from me?' and 'what the hell do you mean demons?' A little more skeptical Gus and a little less gimme a gun and a stake and some silver bullets Buffy the Revenant Slayer.
Waverly had hoped that, eventually, Nicole might be on board with the whole thing, but this is a lot sooner than eventually and Nicole isn't just on board, she's driving the damn truck.
She handles the idea that there are these… things… (she gets the idea, but the word, revenants, seems to trip her up but Waverly supposes 'hell spawns' or 'evil fuckers' both work just as well) and that they're trapped inside the Triangle and that there's a curse and all the rest and she handles it with ease. Instead, it's Waverly who's thrown a bit, surprised not just at Nicole's reaction but also at just how much rest there is, how deep that lake seems to go, how just when she thinks she's hit bottom, she finds more and more depths to go.
It's weird, she knows - their life - but she doesn't really get it until she actually says it all out loud.
It is weird, but Nicole seems to revel in the weird, seems to soak up every little nugget, swallowing them down and popping right back up for more.
Henry is Doc Holliday? Yes, he's that Doc Holliday.
"That explains the hat," Nicole says with a confident nod. "And that… thing… on his lip."
Waverly's not entirely sure anything explains Doc's stache.
What about Wyatt Earp's kills coming back to sort-of-life and are seeking revenge and escape from their triangular prison? "Got it," Nicole says. "How many we talking here? Forty, fifty? Sorry, I should have brushed up on my Earpstory."
Waverly nods and tells her it was in the seventies but it's down to like sixty-something now and she knows the exact number but it's slipping her mind at the moment cause "Wait… Earpstory?"
"Well, yeah," Nicole says as she's sitting on the bed with a note pad and a pen, like a good little student and she's making Waverly feel like she should be addressing her as Ms. Earp and asking for extra credit and no, that's not distracting at all. "Earp history," she says. "Earpstory."
It's weird and adorable all at once (werdorable?) and it's all Waverly can do not to tackle her right then and there, right on top of the photos and the books and the years of painstakingly compiled and collated and collected research, organization be damned.
Peacemaker doesn't bother Nicole - not even a little - because of course there's a mystical weapon, she'd be disappointed if there wasn't and that "explains why Wynonna doesn't replace it with one of the like fifty guns Dolls has in the safe."
"You know about the safe?" Waverly asks, as if she knows about the safe.
"I'm a cop, baby," Nicole says. "I wouldn't be doing my job very well if I didn't."
Point, Nicole.
Bobo being Bobo - as in Waverly's Bobo, the imaginary friend from Hell (literally) - doesn't bother her and there's not a lick of judgement in her eyes as Waverly tells her of the talisman and the attack and that she was the one who let the Seven take them, that it was her fault her father and her sister… well… her father, anyway… died.
"Bullshit," Nicole says under her breath but still loud enough that Waverly hears it but she can pretend she didn't, even if the small smile that flits across her face says different. And then Nicole nods along as Waverly talks about being 'keeper of the bones' and the Stone Witch and even that - the existence of magic and spells and bones that come back to life and a witch that isn't the storm - doesn't seem to surprise or unnerve her in the least.
"Jack the Ripper kidnapped your sister in front of me," Nicole says, her eyes darkening at the memory, at that feeling of failure, of being derelict in her duty as a cop and as a girlfriend, even if back then that had still only been a wish. "A witch? Please."
She takes it all, every last bit of it and she takes it well, better than Waverly could have imagined, better than she had even let herself have hope for and that should make everything right, that should make this the best day ever, but, really, it just makes it all worse, because that just can't be, nobody's that perfect and no one is that much of a Mary fucking Sue (and Waverly didn't even know what that was till she looked it up online, during a furtive and futile attempt at a 'so you think you might be gay' quiz) and Waverly wants to believe, she really really does.
But...
Waverly nods and she smiles and she says that yes, she's so happy it's all out in the open now and she's so relieved and she feels so much lighter now when, really, she's so freaking right the hell out, she's so losing her shit, she's so panicking that it's all an act, that Nicole is really plotting her escape, that she's waiting for the moment she's no longer an actually captive audience, trapped here by the Witch and the second that's over, when the storm and the roads and the sky clears, she's going to be out the door and down the road and she's only gonna stop long enough to turn in her badge but she's gonna keep her gun cause let's face it.
There's fucking crazies in this town.
Waverly does her best to ignore it, to pretend she's not feeling it. She smiles and she nods and she hops onto the bed and into Nicole's arms and snuggles close as her girlfriend flips through her research and her notes, asking questions here and there, nodding with every answer, letting loose with the occasional 'I knew it' (and Waverly can't believe - try as she might - that she did.)
She cuddles closer and watches as Nicole works her way through some dusty old book, a history of the Ghost River - more fiction than fact - that Waverly bought years ago from a library sale and she does her best to be there, just there, with Nicole and not in her own head and to stop doing that thing she does that causes so much trouble - you know, thinking - and, especially, to stop thinking that Nicole's gonna leave, that she's gonna run.
Waverly tries, really she does.
But history's just not on her side.
Waverly doesn't move or speak or do much of anything for a long while, except stay right there, right in Nicole's arms and right in the moment, right there with her and right there in warmth and happiness and all the sorts of things her whole life has trained her to dream of and hope for but to always know will never last.
But she's determined to, at least, enjoy it while it lasts.
The Witch is roaring outside and the fire they built earlier is slowly dying and the cold is starting to creep in, but neither of them seems to feel it. And even if she did? Even if she was freezing and shivering and her toes were turning blue and her fingers were numb, Waverly wouldn't move an inch. She's pretty sure she doesn't ever want to move again.
Which, of course, is why she says "I spent the last Witch with Champ."
Never let it be said Wynonna's the only one who doesn't know when to shut up.
The words tumble out before she can stop them and Waverly feels Nicole tenses under her at the sound of his name and she can't help smiling a little at that, at that instant flare of jealousy that she knows she should find silly and petty and beneath her.
Or, you know, kinda sweet and caring and maybe just a little hot.
She considers, briefly, if maybe there's a Champ in Nicole's past. Probably not, she figures cause Nicole seems very… not anti guy but not exactly pro them either… but maybe it's nto a guy, but instead there's a girl or a woman or two and Waverly wonders when she should ask about that, cause that's what you do, right? When you're a couple? You talk about your pasts (which she's done) and your old lovers (and Champ's her only one of those) and your old loves (and Waverly's not as sure as she once was that Champ, or anyone before now, really fits that particular bill) and - as much as she doesn't want to even imagine Nicole with anyone else - that sort of talk…
It might be nice.
Nicer than revenants and witches and curses and 'hey, when are you going to take off and get away from me as fast as you can', at least.
"I know you don't like him," Waverly says and she's got no idea, really, where she's going with this, except she kinda feels like she has to. Go with it, that is. "And I don't really either, and I'm not sure… " She trails off, cutting herself off before the lie, before she can rewrite her own history and say that she never did, because she won't do that. It wouldn't be true and it wouldn't be right and it wouldn't be fair. Not to Champ.
Or to herself.
Waverly rolls herself free of Nicole's arms - the cold settling on her almost immediately - and scoots to the edge of the bed. "I liked Champ," she says and she feels Nicole sitting up behind her, but not moving any closer, respecting her space - respecting her - and yeah, that's new, add another item it to that long long list. "He was funny and he was goofy and he was… he was Champ and he'd always been Champ and I'm pretty sure he's always gonna be Champ."
She knows Nicole's never thought of being Champ as a good thing and she can't really blame her but Waverly knows him better and yeah, she knows there's not really all that much to him to know better, but…
"He stayed."
She says it softly and if Nicole was breathing just a little heavier or the fire was crackling just a little louder in the other room or the Witch chose that exact moment to swirl the wind through the rafters and make the house creak, the words probably would have died an almost silent death in the cold of Waverly's breath.
But she's not and it isn't and it doesn't, so they don't.
"At the beginning, when we started dating," Waverly says, "people wondered why he was with me. Why he was dating the weird little Earp girl, the one…" She grips the edge of the bed tight in her hands and shivers against the cold. "The one that was left."
She remembers the looks and the whispers and the slow 'that poor boy' shakes of so many heads and Waverly knows - she knows - that if she'd been him? She'd have run the very first day.
But Champ stayed.
Waverly pulls a folder out of the pile of them on the bed, barely glancing at the contents as she thumbs through it. "Eventually," she says, "no matter how normal I acted, I always ended up… here," she taps the folder. "Sooner or later, I ended up back with my books and my courses and my incessant library searches." She smiles, mostly to herself, as she remembers. "Gus and Curtis wouldn't let me drive, not by myself and certainly not out of town - they taught me how to shoot but driving was a no no - so I used to send Champ on runs for me. I sent him three towns over for that book," she says, tipping her head at the book in Nicole's hands.
And still, Champ stayed.
"Champ was… is… an ass," Waverly says. She stands up, collecting the few folders that start to slide off the bed as she moves and stacking them on the small table next to the bed.. "He's not too bright and I used to keep an extra bottle of whiskey under my bed at all times cause sometimes I needed a little alone time and when he's drunk, he can't… you know."
It occurs to her that Nicole probably doesn't, well, she does cause she knows, but she doesn't know and somehow Waverly's incredibly jealous of that.
"He's a boy in a man's body and he's insensitive," she says. "And there was every reason in the world for that… shithead… to leave me time and time and time again."
But he stayed. Time and time and time again.
Waverly crosses the tiny space between the bed and the wall, leaning against it, her eyes focused on the window, on the Witch just beyond the glass, roaring through the woods. There's a part of her - small but fierce - that wants to stride out into it, that wants to risk certain death just for the chance to go somewhere, anywhere. Just so long as the some or the any or the where isn't here.
She wants to run. She wants to run first.
"You know what the thing is about the Witch?" she asks and even though Nicole doesn't say anything - not an answer or even so much as a 'what the hell' about the subject change - Waverly can see her reflection shaking its head in the glass. "It comes," she says, "it storms in and it gets right in your face and it makes itself known." She watches it rage just outside, captivating in its power. "And then it just… goes. It just disappears and it's almost like it wasn't even here and you wouldn't even know it had been if it weren't for the…"
"Wreckage," Nicole suggests softly and Waverly nods. That's as good a word as any, that's a perfect word.
The last Witch that came through was three years ago, just past her eighteenth birthday, and it hit on a weekend, slamming its way into town on a Friday night. Waverly remembers watching it charge its way down Main Street, blowing and bellowing and going wherever it wanted, doing whatever it felt, all force and fury and sheer act of fucking nature.
"The gusts," she says, shivering as the chill of the memory. "The last one… the wind… it shook my window, and trembled the glass and seeped in through the cracks and kept blowing out my candles."
She stayed there, her forehead pressed against the glass, watching as the cycle of snow then ice then wind repeated itself over and over and over, until her eyes grew heavy and she forced herself to stumble to the bed and Champ and the warmth of another body, shielding her - however briefly - against the cold.
It stayed that way, the cycle repeating, day after day and night after night, seven in all, every one blending into the next, snow and ice and wind and Champ and sex and sleep until Waverly woke that next Friday and the Witch…
She was gone.
"She left without warning," Waverly says and she means the storm but she doesn't too and she's not sure if Nicole gets that as easily as she did all the rest, not sure that even if she does, if she gets the… implications. "She was gone and all that was left was that… wreckage."
Ice and snow and piles upon piles of it, burying everything in sight.
"It took forever," Waverly says, "to dig out, to unbury and to… get back to… normal." She runs a finger along the glass, the cold from outside almost burning her skin. "I hope," she says, "I hope this one isn't as bad."
She hopes, she really does.
But she knows. History's just not on her side.
