Her body was numbed from the winter chill, but she didn't care about her own self-worth as she hunched even more over the wounded one she held cradled in her lap.

"Doc?"

Wynonna didn't lift her head at the warning crunch of snow, only worried about the weakening gurgling of Doc's breathing as she cradled his bloodied body closer. She wanted to beg him to keep fighting, to stay with her, but she could tell by his breathing that it was more than pointless as she cried over him.

"Hey, girl. Did you miss me?"

At first, she didn't recognize the voice as the asker dropped onto a squatted couch beside her, and Wynonna's chin lifted only for her curse-filled warning to stay away from her fallen gunslinger to die on her tongue as soon as she looked into the face of the one kneeling next to her.

Kiersten, the first victim she'd failed to save in her meant-to-be short trip back home those short years before.

"Still picking my brain, it seems," Wynonna sighed, not bothering to ask the obvious: Why had the escapee from the literal Garden of Eden decided to come back to her proverbial hell on earth after all this not-so-long time?

"Call it one last chance to mess with you, but mostly, I wanted to help him," Eve, still taking on the persona of Kiersten, offers. "Just something about when a guy stabs you in the stomach with rusted blood-smeared hedge clippers; I mean, who wouldn't fall in love just a little." She shrugged but was mindful of keeping her hands to herself as Wynonna hugged his bleeding body closer.

"Stone witch immortality bs again, no way."

The literal bast from her past smiled the same pained grimace she'd flashed before the real Kiersten tragically declared she'd be getting off the bus. Eve doesn't react to the edge in her voice. "Not exactly that." She says, "But you can call it a loophole if you will, and don't flatter yourself, bus girl, I'm not back for you." She smiles as if this was meant to be some of the best news Wynonna would hear that day. "I'm just leading out the Calvary."

It's then Wynonna hears the rumbled approaching of her sister's Jeep rolling closer to where the trio huddled, with only one of them wetting even more of the mockingly white ground with bloodied crimson.

"Wynonna, we can help him," Nicole calls out, jumping from the car before it had stopped rolling on the snow-caked ground to kneel at Wynonna's side.

"How," Wynonna asked, trusting only Nicole's gaze as the other two loomed over them like heartbreaking shadows.

"There has always been three." Her sister's shield says as if the words would clear everything up. "the champion and the guardians. A trinity."

"Lucky for you, yours is an incomplete trio." Eve cuts in, still using Kiersten's stolen voice.

Wynonna's mind spirals between keeping her hold on Doc and wanting to punch the borrowed face right off Eve's playful smiling expression.

Blood-smeared fingers lift Wynonna's chin, forcing her to meet Nicole's more understanding expression. "He can be my deputy," Nicole says. "It'll bind him to my rules of being bound to watching over the triangle, but it will keep him alive." She adds, then lifts her eyes skywards as the buzzing hum Wynonna knew to be some kind of Angle's shield magic hums around them.

"An extension of the angels shielding." Waverly, this time gliding down on literal angel's ashen-colored wings. "Such a clever firecracker." She praises.

"John Henry?" Wynonna asks gingerly carding her blood sticky fingers in her man's hair. His breathing was so shallowed it was a wonder he was able to keep his promise of trying to stay awake.

"Always deputized at the last moment." Doc laughed his teeth stained with his own blood as he struggled to meet Nicole's watching eyes. "I'll be proud to follow you, Sheriff Haught," He agreed.