Wow. I've been stuck on this chapter for weeks, trying to get the pacing and dialogue right and finding the time to write it. Between some rewriting, major restructuring and adding an extra chapter to the plan, I've finally got there. Thanks so much to anyone who has been waiting for hanging in there.

So we're still on 1x07 and I'm planning to steam straight on with the next chapter after this, so expect another update SOON.

Nicole's frozen popsicles had become entirely liquid by the time she got them home with the rest of her groceries. A worthwhile sacrifice for ten minutes with Waverly, in her opinion.

But it did mean she'd had to use up some of her remaining time before work to clear up the trunk of her car, which was now strawberry and tropical fruit flavoured. With not much time left before she was due at work, Nicole opted to grab food at the diner before her shift started rather than trying to rapidly cook something at home.

She sat at a table on her own, tucking into the diner's signature bacon fries. She'd only been there a few times before, but the food wasn't too bad, as diner food went. It had improved a lot recently too since it was under new ownership and the menu had been updated. Nicole didn't know the previous owners, the Tates, but nobody in town seemed too upset at the loss of the old, extra-greasy menu. She'd asked Officer Tate at the precinct if they were relatives of his, but if they were then it was too many generations back to know much about it. Either way he didn't know them. Turned out not too many people in town really knew them as anything other than the family that ran the diner. Apparently the family had run the place for as long as anyone could remember, and then had moved out of town very recently. Very suddenly. Very unexpectedly and without any goodbyes to other townsfolk.

Nicole froze, staring unseeingly ahead.

Goddamnit Haught, you're an idiot.

How had she missed that? A family that has run a town business for generations just ups and leaves without a word? She rolled her eyes at herself and made a mental note to add it to her 'weird shit' list of stuff to look into. Yet another piece to figure out in the ever-increasing Purgatory puzzle.

Her self-scolding was interrupted by the arrival of a trio of young women with big hair, short skirts and loud voices. They were giggling and chatting about some shopping trip they had been on in the city, apparently untroubled by the dining experience of anyone else in the place. They descended on the relative peace like a vapid force of nature and came to rest in the the table behind Nicole's back.

She rolled her eyes again. Seriously? The whole damn diner of tables and they chose the one right next to her?

"-so how long do we have?" one of them asked scathingly. "I wanna get some shots in before you head over to the murder house."

Nicole sat bolt upright.

"Rach don't call it that. There's a cop like, right there," a second voice reprimanded. "She'll think you're a criminal or something."

Nicole actually heard one of them turn fully around in her seat to check Nicole's uniform. This was followed by silly girlish giggling. She rolled her eyes yet again.

"Well what else do you call it Steph?" said Rach. "And what do you call the freakshow that would want to live there? I can't believe you're actually gonna go."

"Ugh, what was I supposed to do," Steph replied. "It's not like she doesn't have like, a whole bunch of weirdness to make up for. And who am I to say no to a party?"

Nicole had frozen once again, a french fry in her hand, halfway towards her open mouth. If this woman was Steph then did that mean they were talking about Waverly?

"Rather you than me," said the third voice. "Who else is even going?"

"I don't even know," said Steph. "I think she invited like, every girl in town."

"Desperate much."

"Well whatever, right? As long as there's booze and music we'll find a way to have a good time. And maybe it means Waves is officially done being weird and is gonna remember her friends once in a while."

Nicole had absent-mindedly crushed the fry in her hand. So these were Waverly's supposed 'friends'. Nicole's mind conjured up an image of a teenage Waverly at a shopping mall with these bitchy women, buying clothes and gossiping about other girls behind their back. Something about it didn't fit. Waverly didn't fit. Waverly was the nicest, sweetest person Nicole had ever had the fortune to meet. Why would she go to the trouble of throwing a party for these people? Did she know that this was how they spoke about her behind her back?

She tried to ignore the disappointed thought that if Waverly had invited every girl in town, she'd missed at least one.

"Yeah I don't know what malfunction she's been having lately, but it's like she's been trying to undo all her progress."

"You'll have to give us the skinny on whether she's planning on staying in the murder-house or not."

"Rach!"

"Ugh, Sonja take a chill pill already it's just an expression."

No it's not, Nicole thought with an eye-roll. There was a pause.

"Fine,the 'Earp' house then. I want a full report on why she and Wynonna are suddenly like, BFF's again."

"Ooh yeah and find out if she's planning on getting back together with Champ. I don't know what the hell she was thinking, letting that boy go."

Nicole's breath caught in her throat. Her heart beat little harder in her chest and the ghost of a smile started to grace her lips.

Waverly had broken up with Champ.

When had this happened? Surely longer ago than a few hours, which meant that when they'd had that coffee earlier Waverly had been…. Single. Waverly was single. Waverly was single and she'd invited Nicole to join her for coffee. And she'd smiled at her and she'd bitten her lip. And she was single.

Hold up Haught, single doesn't mean interested, she reminded herself. Just because Waverly had broken up with Champ didn't mean she was suddenly batting for a different team. Obviously she could well have been batting for a different team all along, but that still didn't mean she would think of Nicole… that way.

She let out a deep breath and wiped the mushy potato from her hands as the conversation behind her continued.

"Oh my god yes, I don't know what she was thinking. That girl needs a reality check fast. She'd better take him back before someone else snatches him up."

"Well you tell her to take her time, cus' I for one plan to do a little snatching myself."

There was a chorus of giggles at this and Nicole found herself clenching her fist again.

"You're such a bitch, I love it."

"Hey I'm just bein' practical here. If Waverly doesn't realise what a freakin' gold mine she'd struck then it sucks to be her. I sure as hell ain't missing my chance for a little Champ action."

"Honestly I don't know why he stuck with her so long. She never deserved him. He was like… really good to her."

Nicole fought the urge to turn around and tell them point blank how idiotic they all were. Waverly didn't deserve Champ? How could they have it so clearly backwards? Champ was an idiot. Waverly deserved a million times better and Nicole felt a weight in her chest lifted at the thought that Waverly now stood a chance of finding someone actually worthy of her. Someone who put her first. Someone who treated her like she was the sun, moon and stars. Someone like…

Nicole swallowed hard. It wasn't her place to decide what or who Waverly deserved. It was up to Waverly herself to choose what she wanted, but Nicole felt a warm fuzzy feeling at the thought that Waverly might just be starting to figure out exactly what that was. In spite of the searing pain that came with the knowledge that Nicole was unlikely to be the person Waverly ultimately chose, she was still over the moon at the prospect of Waverly being happy.

She permitted herself a mental pat on the back. Wishing genuine happiness for your someone even if it means you don't get what you want… that's what friends do, right?

The giggling bitch brigade behind her seemed to finally have moved onto a different topic, turning their attentions to the menu and whether or not they wanted cheesy fries or not. Nicole took this opportunity to extract herself from the place, before these airheads said anything else that might make her want to smack one of them square in the face. She left the money for dinner beside her plate, grabbed her stetson and headed for the door. As she left she caught a few final hushed whispers from the irritating trio.

"Wait, do you think the butch cop knows her? She does hang out at the sheriff's department like, all the time now."

"Nah, officer newbie's always on her own. I don't think she has like, a single friend in town yet. Who's she gonna tell?"

Two murders. Roughly same MO. One young woman, one middle aged man. One murdered in their own home, one in the restroom at a bar. Both had their throats cut and neither seemed to have fought back. No trace evidence of the killer at either scene and nothing to connect the two victims.

Nicole massaged her temples wearily, resisting the temptation to take her 'secret case file' out of her desk drawer and go over it all again. She already had the details etched fairly well into her memory, but she wanted to keep rereading it all the same. Like it would reveal something new after fifty read throughs. But she couldn't do that right now. Now, she was sat at her desk, supposedly finishing a writeup of a shoplifting reported at a local liquor store. Her mind was on other things. Several other things, in fact.

Subjects like Waverly Earp and the secret case file and the BBD were all fighting for poll position in her head, and Nicole hadn't had nearly enough coffee to process it all. As energised and enthused as she had felt after seeing Waverly that afternoon, the overheard conversation in the diner had given her so many new things to think about that she didn't quite know where to begin. Waverly had broken up with Champ, but was she going to take him back? Why had she broken up with him in the first place? What did it mean that she had, and what did it mean that she was throwing a party for such blatantly awful friends? If those were the kind of people she wanted to be around, then was there any place in her social circle for Nicole?

Nicole took a deep breath. Nope. Too much to process for now. She was on duty and if she was going to be distracted from the report she was writing, it probably ought to be by something vaguely police-work-related at least. Her mind turned back to the cut throat murders. She knew she needed more information.

She'd had a chance to talk to Phelps before his shift ended a few hours ago, asking him friendly, casual questions about his home life, his wife… and then subtly dropping in a reference to the Megan Halshford murder scene. True to form, Phelps didn't question why she'd brought it up.

It occurred to her that that may be the reason he'd been sent inside to collect evidence, while she had been stuck on pavement and punter duty. Phelps followed orders and didn't question much. He took things on face value and didn't lose a wink of sleep over unsolved mysteries. He was happy to let things go. In this town that seemed like a really good skill to have if you ever wanted a happy life. As far as Nicole was concerned, there were some things going on in this town that were weird, dangerous and downright wrong, and she sure as hell wasn't going to let anything go. Nedley must have known that. He hired her after all.

But he also didn't seem too keen on her trying to dig for the truth either, like he was glad she was smart and intuitive, but only when it followed the pace he wanted to set. There was something he was keeping under his hat for now, and she was obviously on the right track because he'd been putting barriers in her way whenever she tried to ask certain questions. Questions like, how were there so many coyote attacks when nobody in town ever seemed to see an actual coyote? Or why weren't people more freaked out that townsfolk went missing on a semi-regular basis? Or how the hell was a drunk, historically delinquent deputy toting an antique revolver the ideal candidate for the covert government agency that rocked up out of nowhere and took on all these weird cases?

Spurred on by the knowledge that she must be on the right track, Nicole had asked Phelps about the crime scene. The photos had long since been seized by the BBD, but Phelps described the scene pretty well. The victim was in her front room, throat cut, lots of blood, all the mirrors in the house were covered with cloths and scarves, and a message smeared on the full length mirror beside her. 'Repent sinners'. Cheery.

The circumstances confirmed that this and the murder at Shorty's were definitely connected, but there still seemed to be no link between the two victims. Phelps had happily gone about the rest of his day without further concern, but Nicole had spiralled into an afternoon of theorising and adding all-new questions to her ever growing list. The only things each murder had in common was the way in which they died, and the message on the mirrors. Oh, and that fact that there was no evidence of a killer in the room. They clearly didn't commit suicide because there was no murder weapon either. Unless the killer escaped through the mirror into Wonderland.

That particular passing thought had lodged in Nicole's head and was a far bigger rabbit hole than she had anticipated when the idle idea passed through her mind. There had been a mirror at both scenes. The killer could have written the bloodied messages anywhere, but they chose a mirror each time. And, Wynonna had apparently shot a mirror by accident back in the BBD offices the same day. Did Black Badge see a connection with the mirrors? Why kind of connection could there be? Why were the mirrors at Megan's house covered? Nicole didn't really think there was a murderer in a mirror.

Did she? Was she seriously going that crazy?

She decided to park the thought for a bit and actually concentrate on the shoplifting report. Apparently the store owner knew who had done it, because it was the same group of teenagers that always did it, but somehow never seemed to get caught. Nicole had pulled up previous reports to see if there was a pattern to the time of thefts in order to stake out and catch them in the act next time. In addition, she'd recommended the store invest in some CCTV cameras.

The minutes ticked by in a very normal, uneventful way for maybe twenty or so before Nicole's mind had wandered back to the cut throat murders. She looked up and around the Bull Pen. It was a quiet evening. Nedley was off for the night and Tate was due to go home soon too. She was on yet another graveyard shift. She ground her teeth and huffed a sigh. Nedley seemed to put her on a lot of those lately.

Tate was reading some sort of report on the far side of the room and so she deemed it safe to retrieve her file from the drawer. She read through everything again, systematically considering every note she'd taken since the morning outside Megan Halshford's place. She sighed again, wistfully thinking about what other kinds of evidence or notes she'd have to work with if she'd been allowed inside. She doubted Phelps would have noticed anything significant in there if it had smacked him round the face. All she had to work with was the product of her minimal eavesdropping.

She frowned, looking at her notes from that day. Wynonna had said she couldn't stand Megan, so she obviously knew the victim. In a small town that was hardly surprising so Nicole hadn't really thought about it at first, but a line was suddenly forming in her head, connecting one dot to another. Wynonna knew Megan. Wynonna had a past of delinquency and broke her probation, landing herself back in juvie. She must have had a probation officer. Jay Novak was a probation officer.

The Purgatory Sheriff's Department database was slow by anyone's standards, but it felt to Nicole like it had devolved to utter snail's pace as she hurriedly tried to pull up the details surrounding Wynonna's juvie record. Much of Wynonna's record was sealed it turned out, but there were some notes in relation to a drugs possession charge that included Jay Novak's name. Bingo. Nicole surreptitiously printed off a copy of the notes and added it to her file.

It couldn't be a coincidence that Wynonna knew both of the victims and it couldn't be a coincidence that she worked for Black Badge seeing as they were the ones who took on the case. The fact that the BBD took on the weird cases absolutely cemented the conclusion in Nicole's mind that Wynonna was connected to the weird stuff going on in Purgatory. And this was just the weird stuff they they knew about.

Hell, this week alone had included the disappearance of a young woman, the possible serial murder of another, and the latest in a long-running series of reports that there were ghosts in the Pine Barrens. Possibly the weirdest thing about Purgatory by far though was that nobody talked about how weird all of this was. Nobody acted like it was unusual or suspicious that, say, a well established family that ran the town diner would up and leave without warning. To Nicole it felt like a great big, town-sized elephant in the room and she was waiting any moment now for someone else to glance at it, catch her eye, and say, 'I know, right?'

But they didn't. It was like they didn't even see it. Only a select few people seemed to be aware that something wasn't quite right, and Nedley, Dolls and the Earp girls were among them.

She knew already that she'd get nothing out of Nedley or Dolls and talking to Waverly while she was still trying to get past her feelings was…. difficult. Maybe it was time to go directly to the source.

Maybe it was time to see just how much of the town rumours were true.

The rest of the department had gone home for the night. A light was still on in the Black Badge office, but that was par for the course. Nicole wouldn't have been surprised at this stage to find out that Dolls was a vampire - it would explain the long nights and stone cold behaviour. She had finished her third cup of coffee within an hour and half. The lateness of the night was starting to sink in. It was the usual midnight wall; burden of the graveyard shift.

She'd eventually finished the shoplifting report and had been looking since at the case file for the murder victim brought in the day before. It was gruesome. She was the third young woman to have been found in this condition; carved up with some sort of blade. Nicole had barely contained a shudder when Nedley had first briefed her on it. The shudder was still just beneath the surface now.

The coroner's report was a mess. Aside from the atrocious handwriting, it was only half completed and the few bits that were legible were chaotic and nonsensical. Nicole was planning to follow up with the coroner about it and demand an explanation.

Yet another obstacle in the way of even the most basic crime solving. And this was from the people actually working for law enforcement. It was ridiculous. Between incompetence, ignorance and BBD cover ups it felt like Nicole was never going to get anywhere. She glanced down at the autopsy photo again, and then cast it over her shoulder in a mixture of frustration and revulsion. It landed somewhere under the desk but she didn't check where. She'd pick it up later.

She took a deep breath and rubbed the back of her neck, her eyes dragging over the speeding fine paperwork on her desk, next in line for completion. She sighed. It was gonna be a long night.

There was a knock from the doorway to her right.

Nicole looked up to see Wynonna leaning against the doorframe, bottle of what looked like whiskey in hand.

"Saturday night," she said. "I'm the town pariah with ten years of bad deeds and social suicides to make up for, what's your excuse?"

What was Nicole's excuse for being stuck on duty, alone on a Saturday night? The working theory was that she'd been asking too many questions and looking a little too closely at the weird shit connected to the woman stood in front of her now. That didn't seem like the wisest answer. She went for something with fewer implications.

"Nedley."

"Say no more. Bosses are the worst. " Wynonna nodded knowingly. There was a pause. "Also, I'm scared mine might be dead," the Earp added, unscrewing the cap from her bottle.

Nicole stared, looking for some signal that this was a joke - albeit in poor taste. Wynonna quickly scoffed the comment away, but there had been a fleeting expression of sincere concern on her features beforehand. "Oh, kidding." She took a healthy-sized swig of whiskey.

Most of the times Nicole had seen Wynonna she'd been wearing a hard, 'don't dick with me' type expression, like the world of shit and that followed her around was just water off a duck's back. Like she didn't actually give a damn and everyone else could go to hell for all she cared. Like she knew what she was doing and what she wanted and she didn't need or want anyone else's bullshit along for the ride. Seeing her now she looked… lost. Lost and alone. Waverly danced a different dance for the public eye, one of friendliness and smiles and being whatever anyone else wanted her to be. Maybe she was starting to step to her own tune a little more, but her natural defence was to just be too lovely for anyone to have a problem with. It seemed that Wynonna had the opposite approach, throwing up the least approachable persona she could muster and making it clear she didn't want or need any friends. Or at least, that was the impression Nicole had seen.

Right now though it seemed like the facade had slipped a little. Like she could do with a friend.

"Are you sure you're OK?" Nicole asked as gently as she dared.

"Mm-hmm," Wynonna murmured unconvincingly, clearing her throat and tipping back the bottle once again.

Nicole sighed inwardly. It looked like the Earp was in need of a lifeline. There we a tonne of possible reasons why. There was no sign of Dolls around and Waverly was obviously busy this evening. Nicole wondered if Wynonna had declined an invitation to the party of if she just hadn't been included from the start. Either way the precinct was host to its own pity party of two.

"At least I'm not the only one who wasn't invited to the party. Makes me feel better."

Wynonna lowered the bottle, suspicious frown in place.

"What party?"

Oops.

"Uhhh," Nicole hesitated. Was the party a secret? Waverly hadn't said anything like that. Maybe Wynonna had forgotten or something? "Waverly's party for her friend? The engagement party at the homestead?"

Wynonna scowled in silence for a moment, her eyes flickering back and forth ahead vacantly as she seemed to be trying to mentally calculate something. Her face crinkled into an expression of disgust.

"Ugh no, must be the Devilettes," she groaned, apparently having come to some realisation.

"Excuse me?"

"Just the worst club of people on earth," Wynonna grumbled, planting herself heavily on the corner of Nicole's desk and taking another gulp of whiskey.

Nicole's mind raced. Devilettes? "Uh… satan worshippers?"

"Worse." Wynonna looked grave. "Cheerleaders."

Nicole laughed breathlessly and hoped her cheeks didn't burn too red at the thought that if Waverly's friends were cheerleaders, she might have been one too. Fortunately Wynonna seemed not to notice Nicole's momentary fluster.

"So Waves told you all about her rad party and then neglected to attach an invite? Harsh." She looked at the bottle in her hand for a moment as if considering something, then held it out to Nicole. "Trust me though, you dodged a pom-pom-wielding bullet."

Nicole looked at the bottle for a moment.

She was on duty and staying sober was one of those 'goes without saying' rules about police-work.

But she had wanted the chance to speak to Wynonna and try to get her to open up about the unusual happenings in town. And Miss Cold-Shoulder herself was offering her an olive branch - well, whiskey - and who knew if that would ever happen again. She may never have another chance.

She accepted the bottle and took a drink. Wynonna nodded very slightly and Nicole wondered if that had been some kind of test. She handed the bottle back to Wynonna who took another swig and let out a satisfied 'aahhh'.

"I'd unclip your bra and get comfy Red. It's gonna be a long night." She blinked and then squinted at Nicole. "What was your name again?"