They do it, at first, almost just like Nicole said. Opposite ends of the couch, sipping tea (and Waverly was right, Nicole hates it) and talking.
Well… there's sitting and there's sipping and there's silence, but two outta three ain't bad, right?
Waverly huddles back against the arm of the couch, safe on her end, with her knees tucked up to her chest and the sweatshirt stretched out over them. She wants to try, she said so and Nicole believes her, but Nicole also believes that wanting and doing are two different things and sometimes the trip between them is a long one.
And it's easy to get lost.
She knows that all too well.
Her mother always wanted. Wanted to love her, wanted to be OK with her, wanted… well… wanted something else - someone else who was something else - in the end, and she did try, though not nearly hard enough but then, Nicole supposes, if her mother had tried harder, if she'd done better, then Nicole might not be here and silence or no silence, Witch or no Witch, tea or no tea (preferably no), Nicole wouldn't trade here for anything.
She wouldn't trade it for anything even though they've been this way for fifteen minutes already, long enough for Nicole to work through most of her tea - she hasn't had anything to do but sip, sip and think and that never gets her anywhere good - and Waverly's cup is slowly growing cold on the coffee table, which really isn't much more than a couple of milk crates and a badly sanded two-by-four laid atop them.
Apparently furniture didn't scream 'home' as much as sparkles did.
They sit, on their opposite ends, and Nicole watches Waverly and Waverly tries to make it seem like she's not watching Nicole, like she's not waiting for her, for her to quit, to give up, to decide it's really all too insane and not at all worth it and even braving the Witch would be better than this.
There's a part of Waverly that really doesn't think Nicole will. It's the same part of her that felt her breath stop and her heart shake and her world shift just the tiniest bit to the left (or the right or up or down, she's not at all sure of anything except that it moved) that first day in Shorty's, when she got stuck in her own shirt. It wasn't Nicole's touch that did it or her obvious (even to Waverly) flirting.
It was her eyes.
It was that moment when the shirt came unstuck and Waverly found herself staring straight into Nicole's eyes (straight up, even in her boots) and there was… something… there, something dancing in them that Waverly had never seen before. It wasn't lust - well, not just lust - not like when Champ looked at her and she could damn near envision exactly what he was thinking of doing to her (which might have had less to do with the expressiveness of Champ's eyes and a lot more to do with it always being the same fucking thing.)
Even now, Waverly doesn't know what it was, not that she can put a word or a name to it at least, but she's got an idea, a feeling about it, a feeling about how much… joy… she saw there, so much unbridled happiness and she doesn't know if it was from looking at her (she likes to think so) or something else, but she knows how it made her feel. All warm and light, like the steam rising from her mug. Free and floating and drifting on the currents.
Waverly's imagined for most of her life that love feels a little something like that and she'd really like to find out, to know, so she doesn't want to rush it or pressure or push, so she really doesn't watch - much - as Nicole presses herself back against her end of the couch, her still sort of steaming mug of tea clutched between her hands, and waits, positioning herself as far as she can, giving Waverly all the space she needs but still being… there.
It's a delicate balance, Waverly imagines, being there without being there, comforting without crowding, holding without touching. It can't be an easy thing, but Nicole's doing it - as best she can - she's trying, and Waverly knows that should tell her something and that that something should not be that Nicole's trapped, that she's only still there because she can't be anywhere else, not with the Witch still roaring just outside.
"I wish it wasn't snowing," she says softly, the fuzzy blurred vision of Nicole she sees out of the corner of her eye, sitting a little more upright, paying a little more attention. "I wish… I wish you had the option to go, even if you wouldn't take it."
Waverly wraps her arms around her knees, holding herself tight. She's as bundled and huddled and tucked away as is possible and she knows it doesn't take a psych degree to read those signs.
"Gus took me to a counselor once," she says. "It was more than once and more than one, actually. You'd be surprised how many mental health professionals there are in Purgatory."
Nicole's pretty sure she really wouldn't be. Not at all.
"I was like thirteen the first time." Waverly wraps her arms tighter, shivering against the cold she doesn't really feel, not this close to the fire. "He called me introverted. Introverted and reserved to the point of withdrawn."
There were other terms too, she remembers. Self possessed. Closed off. Living inwardly, that was her favorite. They all meant the same thing.
She picks at a thread, a tiny navy blue one dangling loose from one sleeve. "Those were the technical terms," she says. "In English? I was scared. Sacred and shy and weird and alone and… alone."
Nicole pulls her legs up onto the couch. She's spreading out a bit, expanding the perimeter (a little cop talk), but she's careful to stay on her half, careful not to spook Waverly. She thinks, for a long moment - and a longer, almost painful sip - of how to respond, weighing her options, choosing the right move.
There's always 'I know what you mean' and really she does. Maybe her sister didn't die and her brother didn't leave and her mother was always there, but Nicole knows.
Sometimes you feel the most alone when you actually aren't.
Or maybe she could go with the 'yeah, me too,' cause, her too. Her too with the counselor and the terms and the judgment that Waverly didn't really mention but Nicole heard it anyway.
But she doesn't want to 'project'.
Another one of those technical terms.
Nicole considers and Nicole weighs and she thinks about reaching out, about sharing a little but this isn't about her, this isn't about that. So she thinks of the others but she settles on "What about Gus?" she asks. "And your uncle?"
"Curtis?" Nicole nods and Waverly smiles, a tiny thread of a thing, like the one she twirls between her fingers. "He was great and he was sweet and he did his best," she says. "But…"
But he wasn't Ward. But he wasn't Willa or Wynonna. He wasn't a mother, not that Waverly would have known the difference, and he wasn't a father or a sister and those differences she did know.
Nicole nods, filling in all those blanks in her head, all the while trying her hardest to ignore just how that feels. It's almost like muscle memory, the way it reminds her. Not just of her own feelings, of drifting away from someone who was still right there, but also of her training. Of interrogations, sitting across from a suspect, always having to think her way through the conversation, never just going with it, never just being there, cause she has to be one or two or three steps ahead, always planning the next question, the next comment, always steering and guiding and working.
She doesn't want Waverly to be work, not like that. She's had enough relationships that were like that, enough connections with people that she had to constantly navigate and rechart and rearrange. Nicole wants to work with Waverly, not on her and she knows getting there, well, it takes work and she's ready for that. Ready and willing.
She just hopes she's able.
Waverly rests her head against the back of the couch and Nicole's struck by the urge to tug a blanket up over her, to tuck it in tight under her chin and just cradle her close and let her sleep, to make her safe. Always.
"Curtis knew," Waverly says. "He knew about the curse and the revenants and about Purgatory." She thinks of the message her uncle left her, the clues he was so sure only she would be able to suss out, the duty her trusted her with. Keeper of the bones.
That used to be so much less… ironic.
It's weird for her now, looking back on it all, on the way she missed so much. She knows all about the Triangle and she can tell you the backstories and histories and psychoanalysis of most every revenant in town. But she never got it then, she never saw her aunt and uncle for what they were, the flip sides of the same cursed coin.
"Curtis was the one who taught me to shoot," she says. "And Gus was the one who tried to stop him. She didn't want me to be… that. She thought it would just make it harder."
Another Earp with a gun. Just what this town needs. Just what this family needs. Don't you think the guns and the girls have done enough?
"But what if…" Nicole sets her mug down on the two-by-four, trying to think of the right way, the least painful way to put this. "Willa was gone and Wynonna was still alive but what if something happened? You'd be the heir. That was always who you were."
Waverly nods and shrugs, her shoulders brushing back against the couch. "Maybe it was," she says. "But Gus didn't want that for me. She didn't want me… she thought I could have something better."
Waverly's watching the steam slowly fade from her mug, watching it boil down to nothing, a cup once warm now gone cold, the last gasps of it floating away right in front of her. She's caught up in it, in the rising and twirling and dancing tendrils of it in the homestead air that - this time - she really isn't looking at Nicole and this time she really doesn't see it.
That little bit of that joy in Nicole's eyes, flickering and fading like the steam.
"I talked to one of the counselors about it," Waverly says. "About Wynonna and daddy and the shooting and Gus and… I tried explaining it without, you know, mentioning demons and a curse and a magic gun." She laughs a little, hearing just how silly that sounds when you say it out loud as she stretches out, her knees slipping free from under the sweatshirt.
"Yeah," Nicole says, pulling her legs just a little closer. "Somethings are kinda hard to explain to someone who just… can't get them."
Waverly nods, turning in her seat to face Nicole, the perimeter widening just a bit. "He said it was a classic case," she says. "Gus didn't want to deal with who I was, with what I was, by history or experience or blood, it didn't matter."
No, Nicole thinks, it never does.
"He called it willful ignorance," Waverly says, remembering how much she enjoyed hearing Gus be called ignorant, even if it was behind closed doors and never to be repeated. "Fancy talk for denial."
"Sounds like," Nicole says. She tucks her feet underneath her, the arm rest on her end jabbing into her ribs. She knows a little about denial, a bit about so many nice boys and a bit about grandkids and not just a little about not in my house cause if I don't see it…
It's not quite the same thing as Waverly, she knows. Waverly's was life and death (and a few more lives and a few more deaths) and hers was just… love.
Just.
"Gus wanted me to be safe, that's all," Waverly says. "Willa was dead and Wynonna was gone and if she could keep me off the roads either of them went on…" She smooths her hands down the front of the sweatshirt, tugging at the wrinkles. "She couldn't get through to me so she thought maybe the shrinks might."
"She thought they could change you."
Maybe, Nicole thinks, it was more the same thing than she'd thought.
There's an edge to Nicole's voice that Waverly hears but doesn't understand, one she can't and Nicole knows that. She knows she hasn't told her and she knows that isn't Waverly's fault, just like it isn't her fault that growing up an Earp in Purgatory means a few more layers to who you are beyond who you love.
"She thought it was for the best," Waverly says, a slow ripple of caution (and confusion) running through her voice. She notices the way Nicole's eyes flare at that - she can't help noticing - but Waverly also sees the way Nicole waits, the ways she holds back and doesn't jump in, the way she gives her space, as always, and the chance to finish. "Gus thought no heir and no curse meant no pain. I could be nor…" Waverly pauses, the word sounding wrong even if she doesn't know why. "I could be whatever I wanted," she course corrects. "I could love and not be like my sister."
The 'either of them' goes unsaid.
It's not the only thing that does.
Nicole sits for a minute, until the stiff back of the couch that she's pressing against - harder and harder - gets to be a little too much. She sits up then, collecting her mug from the table and stands. "I'm gonna get a… refill," she says, waving the mug and ignoring the 'but you hate it and you didn't finish that one' look on Waverly's face. "And maybe I'll, um, get a couple of those cookies? You want anything?"
It's abrupt and not just in the way Nicole's already heading for the kitchen before Waverly can even shake her head 'no.' She watches from the couch as Nicole pads across the room before disappearing from sight and Waverly doesn't want to, but she can't help thinking it.
Maybe the Witch is still outside and maybe they're still trapped.
But that's just a storm and a closed door. That's not nearly enough to keep anyone from leaving.
