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The first day wasn’t so bad.
They got out of the BBD facility by the skin of their teeth. Her leg wasn’t so much broken as it was shattered, and getting out was a humiliating and excruciatingly painful process. The doctors somehow pinned it back together, and even though it hurt like hell, they seemed confident that it would heal in time.
And the whole time in the hospital, she waited for two people to walk through the door— her best friend, and the love of her life. The pain hung over her like a red haze, but she knew that once Waverly got there, she would be very pleasantly distracted and fussed over, and if Wynonna wanted to draw dicks and swear words all over her cast, then so be it, as long as Waverly kissed her the whole time.
She knew that everything would be mostly fine, the same way it was always mostly fine. They always took their knocks and kept going, but they did it together, as a family, and so whatever this new craziness was, they would get through it, as soon as Waverly and Wynonna showed up.
Only they didn’t.
The second day was still okay.
Her leg hurt, but between the crutches and the painkillers, she could hobble around a little.
Purgatory was in chaos. She wanted to help, but she was still woozy, and with her leg, she was all but useless. Part of her just wanted to go home, but her house was too close to the action, and besides— when Waverly and Wynonna got back, they would go to the Homestead to regroup. So that’s where she went, too.
She didn’t really expect them to be there, but it wouldn’t have been the strangest thing to ever happen. Even though she knew better, it was still a little disappointing when she shouted their names in the hallway and only heard her own echo reverberating in the walls.
She wanted to go upstairs and collapse into Waverly’s bed and smell their familiar, comforting scent, but there were a lot of stairs and her leg really hurt. She stole Wynonna’s bed instead. It smelled like leather, with hints of smoke and whiskey, and underneath, something a little more feminine.
If they returned while she slept, she would probably wake up from the sound— neither of the sisters were especially quiet. They could help her up to Waverly’s room and from there, everything would fall into place. If Waverly was hurt, they could take care of each other. And if she wasn’t, then she could fuss over Nicole’s leg and they could have that talk about their future together.
As she drifted off to sleep, still half-listening for the door, she hoped she wouldn’t have to wait very long— she really wanted to go upstairs to their real bed.
The third day was… a little harder.
She awoke dry-mouthed and with her leg practically on fire with pain. She hadn’t thought to leave any water by the bedside, and there was only a quarter-full bottle of whiskey by the side of the bed. Against her better judgment, she used a tiny swallow of it to chase the painkillers down.
With her leg taking her out of the action, all she had to do at the Homestead was wait. She tried to text the others for updates, and occasionally got answers back, mostly brief and confusing. Mostly, she just rested her leg and listened for the sound of the door opening. After awhile, she moved to the porch and sat there instead, hoping to see Wynonna and Waverly’s return even a moment sooner. She was worried about them, and she missed them.
It was cold on the porch, but that was okay. The warmth of that first hug would chase it all away, and then she would feel better.
When the sun set, she went back inside.
The seventh day was harder.
Her leg still hurt, and her nightmares were back, and she’d really expected Waverly and Wynonna to be home by now. She was tired, and everything was strange, and Purgatory was in some state of chaos, and she really wanted Waverly to walk through the door, healthy and happy and carrying her father’s ring. As much as her leg was bothering her, she was sure that a few good hours of cuddles and a good night of sleep would make her feel completely better.
She kept waiting on the porch, but the isolation was starting to get to her. She wanted to do something. If the town was in trouble, she wanted to help. If Waverly and Wynonna were in danger, she wanted to save them. But she could barely walk.
So all she could do was wait.
The thirtieth day was so much harder.
Her leg still hurt a little, but she could tolerate it better now, at least enough that she could go to town sometimes and help where she could. Truth be told, that pain was nothing compared to the ache in her chest. Sleeping was getting harder and harder. She was still in Wynonna’s bed— she could climb the stairs now without any trouble (thank goodness, since the Homestead’s one bathroom was annoyingly up there), but she was afraid of what it would do to her emotionally to go back to Waverly’s room.
Would the sheets still smell like her? Smell like them? Or had she waited too long? Would she wake up confused, reaching out for the body that was supposed to be next to her? Would she roll over after a nightmare, looking for a warm embrace to snuggle into? Or would it just be a cruel reminder, as soon as she opened her eyes, that they still weren’t back?
She felt touch-starved and cranky, but she couldn’t help it. She missed them. She missed Waverly. They hadn’t been separated for this long since they’d met, and it was torture. She wanted to talk to her, to see her face and hear her voice and listen to her reactions. She wanted a big, tight hug and a long, deep kiss, and one decent, dreamless night of sleep.
Sometimes she caught herself daydreaming about simple things— the sound of Waverly’s laugh, or the tone of Wynonna’s voice as she made a joke. She thought about how soft Waverly was— her skin, her lips, her hair— and the way they all felt under her fingertips. She remembered the sounds she made when they made love in the upstairs bedroom.
She still waited on the porch sometimes. But not as often.
The hundredth day was the hardest yet.
She was getting used to waking up screaming or crying. She didn’t even reach out anymore, no longer half-expected Waverly’s warm body next to her. She just already knew she was alone.
It was somehow worse that way.
At some point, she had given into temptation and gone into Waverly’s room. She had waited too long, but sometimes she would catch the slightest whiff of her scent in a pillow or in the sheets, and her heart would give a huge, embarrassing leap at the reminder. She started using it as a sort of reward, or a rare source of secret comfort. If the day had been bad enough, or the nightmare upsetting enough, she would crawl into Waverly’s bed and remember their sweet shared moments there and just imagine that someday, eventually, her family would come back for her.
The two-hundredth day was pretty bad.
Purgatory was still a mess, but they were all doing what they could. She saw the others only rarely these days, and though they were all bonded by the intensity of the situation, they all mostly had to lie low, isolated in their own little bunkers. Nicole stayed at the Homestead, convinced that if— no, for God’s sake, when— Waverly and Wynonna came back, they would want to go home. So she kept it safe, and kept it in one piece, and shot at anyone who stepped foot on the cursed Earp land.
Her hair was visibly growing out, and she let it. She had too many other things on her mind to worry about, and it didn’t seem important. Besides, Waverly had always liked it long. Sometimes, at her low moments, she imagined how nice it would feel for Waverly to run her fingers through it. The thought made her ache worse than ever.
The cast had come off her leg, and it was such a relief, even if the muscle had weakened from its time in the cast and would take some time to build up again. She had felt a weird pang as it came off, struck by the thought that Wynonna had never gotten the opportunity to scrawl lewd drawings onto it. She couldn’t quite explain to the doctors that she was upset by the lack of dicks on it.
Some days, she would stand around the Homestead, looking at the pictures hanging on the walls or propped up on tables, making sure she still remembered their every feature. Waverly’s smile, Wynonna’s smirk. Waverly’s long, beautiful hair, Wynonna’s top-shelf ass. (She laughed at that, even alone in the empty house.)
Daydreaming became a full-fledged hobby. It was bittersweet to remember the days they’d all spent together— sometimes fighting evil, sometimes just… living. Coffee in the kitchen in the morning, and sitting around the fire at night. Her focus was usually on Waverly, but she missed Wynonna, too. They were her family, and she hadn’t seen them in the better part of a year.
It was getting harder and harder to hold onto to hope that they would return. Something had obviously gone wrong— terribly wrong. But she had to believe that they were still out there somewhere, trying to get home. What other choice did she have?
Christmas sucked.
Her birthday sucked, too.
Both times, she clung irrationally to this strange, desperate thought that maybe that would be the day they turned up, that her present would be an end to the endless waiting. That she could wrap Waverly Earp up in her arms like a gift from the universe and never let her go again.
After that, she tried not to hope so much.
The three-hundred-sixty-fifth day was horrible.
She baked herself a cake.
It didn’t help.
The five-hundred-seventy-second day was… cold. And empty.
She hadn’t seriously thought about them returning in months— not really, not in any legitimately hopeful way.
After all, after all those months, after a year, after five hundred and seventy two days… why should any one day be any different?
Time barely meant anything anymore. They still fought to keep Purgatory intact, she still guarded and maintained the Homestead, and all the days sort of blended together. She fixed a broken part of the fence. She shot a demon trying to raid the Homestead. She rehung a crooked door. She ate. She slept— sort of. She made sure all Wynonna’s precious throw pillows stayed in their proper places and all of Waverly’s favorite blankets stayed clean and cared for. She left Valdez carved into the wall as a tasteless memento of that fateful day.
Nights were still terrible most of the time. She sort of remembered what it had been like to sleep next to Waverly— she remembered the blankets, there were so many blankets. They had been too warm for her, so they couldn’t always sleep right next to each other. But she was always there, close enough to touch, close enough to listen to her breathing. And first thing in the morning, there had been sunrise cuddles and lazy smiles and gentle, affectionate teasing. And sometimes, there would be hands sliding under clothing and hot, panting breaths, and burning, sensual touches, and cries of release.
She never reached out anymore, except after the worst nights, where different layers of nightmares— Bulshar’s massacre, the widow’s bite, free-falling down that damn grate— left her brain so scrambled that for a second after waking up, some long-buried instinct still thought she was entitled to a hug of comfort. In her weaker moments, she fantasized about warm arms encircling her, and a gentle voice telling her that she was safe and that everything was okay. But she tried not to think about that so much anymore. It helped, but at a cost.
Her leg was back to being as strong as it ever was, but she felt like her heart had hardened. Every day, for five hundred and seventy-two days, she had waited for her family to come back to her. And every day, for five hundred and seventy-two days, she had been let down. That push and pull of hope and disappointment had left her raw at first, but now the wound had long since callused over. She refused to move on, she refused to give up on them— but she was getting too exhausted to really hope anymore.
She still stood on the porch sometimes. She told herself it was just to keep watch over the lands. She didn’t let herself admit that there could be any other reason, any hope lingering under the callus.
On the five hundred and seventy-third day, Nicole Haught stood on the Homestead porch, just leaning in the doorway. She kept her shotgun with her, but didn’t really expect to need it. It was a cold, snowy day, and she rubbed at her eyes as the wind stung them. She’d had strange dreams all night, the good and the bad all tangled together, and it left her feeling twitchy and on-edge.
She caught movement out of the corner of her eye, standing out against the snow. She raised the shotgun and barked out a warning shot.
“Eat shit, shit-eater! I’m warning you, no trespassing!” she shouted in that direction, hoping they wouldn’t bother putting up a fight. She was too tired. The figure ducked behind a tree, then emerged seconds later.
No.
No way.
It couldn’t be.
After all this time, these months, these years, after everything…
“Waverly…”
It was her, standing against the rising sun like a vision.
Exactly like she remembered her, down to every last detail.
She fumbled the shotgun as she set it against the wall, the shock leaving her numb. She didn’t wonder if it was a trick. She didn’t wonder if it was a dream, or a lie, or a hallucination, or an imposter.
Nicole had thought that her heart had hardened, that it had built up a layer of armor around it, but it all shattered like ice the instant Waverly Earp flew into her arms.
“It’s me.” The impact, physical and emotional, nearly bowled her over. Waverly held her tight, then pulled back enough to look into her face. “It’s me. Oh God, it’s you!” She was beaming, and the sight of her smile nearly dropped Nicole to her knees. “I’m home…”
“Are you… real…?” Nicole stammered out, the words tumbling out of her on sheer instinct.
“Are you?” Waverly countered, half-laughing.
“Get in here and check,” she choked out, and Waverly surged forward. Their lips connected, and everything else fell away.
Without breaking apart for even a second, they staggered their way into the house, and then, layer by layer, clothes fell away. They needed to see each other. They needed to feel each other. It had been eighteen months, three weeks, and four days, and it was over. The time had finally, finally come.
Nicole tried to steer them up towards the bedroom, but it was hard to focus on the task when Waverly was soft and real and here, here, here. They kissed like it was the end of the world, and like it was the start of a new one. Every touch, every kiss, was a new revelation, a reminder of what she had lost, of what had been returned to her.
Their clothing dropped to the floor piece by piece, a trail of love leading straight to where their bodies paused— here against a wall, here on the floor, here on the stairs, inching their way up to the bedroom with agonizing, delicious slowness.
The stairs turned out to be as far as they got. If anyone had asked Nicole what she thought about having sex on the Homestead stairs, she would have laughed in their face and pointed out the bedroom a ten-second walk away. But here in this moment, ten seconds was far too long to stop, far too far a distance to travel. Waverly was in her arms, naked and real, and she wasn’t going anywhere.
They paused in a moment of afterglow, not fully separating, just breathing, just staying close, just looking at each other in amazement.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy,” Waverly said, and Nicole’s heart soared, almost two years of fear and sadness and loneliness pouring out of her in sweat and heavy breaths and small, involuntary laughs. “So why do I feel like bawling?”
Nicole pressed their noses together, smirking at her and feeling more like herself than she had in… oh, about nineteen months, give or take.
“Well, after what we just did, you’re probably pretty dehydrated,” she teased, drunk on the lightness she felt.
Waverly laughed, giggling against her, and something in Nicole’s chest broke anew. She basked in the sound, letting it wash over her, purifying her.
“Your laugh…” she breathed, closing her eyes for a second to drink it in. “…is like… Christmas.” She shook her head even as she said it, refusing to remember what last Christmas had been like. Suffice to say, there hadn’t been a lot of laughter. She kept going, instead, washing the memories from her mind with another kiss. “Your lips are so soft.”
“Are you going to spend all day listing all the things you like about me?” Waverly asked.
“More like the rest of my life,” Nicole said, and meant it.
Waverly seemed to search her face, silently asking if that was the answer to a question asked so long, long ago.
“I love you,” Waverly said, breaking Nicole’s heart open anew. And then, as though that were too much, too real, too serious, she gripped the ends of Nicole’s hair and tossed them in her hands. “I’m also loving the Little Mermaid vibes.” She looked at it like there was something funny about it, and Nicole wondered if she’d expected her to keep it the same length this whole time. “So, what, you just zipped into the Ghost River Triangle and got extensions?”
Nicole gave her a strange look, trying to understand her confusion.
“I just grew it out,” she said, hoping that they could return to the rest of my life and I love you part of the conversation, which were still tugging at her soft, soft heart.
“What?” Waverly asked, her voice puzzled and oddly serious. Nicole shook her head, nuzzling closer as tears encroached.
Somehow, Waverly’s confusion, this focus on such a pointless thing, just made the moment seem all the more real. In Nicole’s dreams, even the best ones, Dream Waverly could only speak on her script, only say what Nicole expected her to say, but here… now… she was her own person, thinking her own quirky thoughts in her own beautiful brain.
It was Waverly. Her voice, her face, the crinkle of her smile, the light in her eyes. She was here. She was really here. She felt real, and she smelled real, and she tasted real, and it was all just… so much. A feast after a famine.
“Sorry, I just… I just missed you so much.” Overwhelmed, she buried her face in Waverly’s shoulder as the tears forced their way out, and Waverly held her close, cradling her head and gripping her hair like she really wouldn’t let go.
“Wait… How did…” Waverly pushed her gently back after a few seconds, her brow furrowed and a confused frown on her face. “How did you grow it out?”
Nicole couldn’t understand how they were sitting there, together, naked on the Homestead staircase, and Waverly only had questions about her hair, of all things. She chose to take it as a larger question about what had happened while they were separated.
“I broke my leg, and I came back to Purgatory, but I had to retreat to the Homestead. I did everything I could to keep it safe for you.” Desperation rang in her voice at the last part— she wanted Waverly to know how hard she’d tried, how she’d wanted to do it, all for her. How she’d waited. How despite everything, she’d never really lost hope, not completely.
But Waverly still looked serious.
“Nicole, wait, just tell me. How long have I been gone?”
“Don’t you know?” Waverly didn’t answer, so Nicole continued, not even needing to think about it. The clock in her head had never stopped ticking, the mental calendar had never lost a day. “You’ve been gone… eighteen months, three weeks, and four days.”