A/N: Sorry this took so long. Been working on finishing other fics and started a new story for my Kindle store. Sometimes the stories that (sort of) pay the bills gotta come first :) Let me know if it was worth the wait!

The phone shakes in Waverly's hand, once, twice, three times, the sporadic rush of messages trickling through as the storm clears - just for a moment, just enough - to squeeze them in before the line goes dead again. It's happened that way every few minutes for the last hour or so, ever since the first one.

Y: Willa's gone.

Waverly didn't react at first and Nicole wasn't sure - she's still not - if it that was out of shock or anger or sadness or… hope… (even thinking that…hope that Willa and the storm and... it makes Nicole feel dirty and wrong and crazy and horrible and wrong) (maybe) and then the second came and then the third and the fourth, long winded bursts of Wynonna being all Wynonna, sending messages that she knew would get there eventually (and no, that's not her being her at all) rather than dialing and redialing and redialing and redialing and you get the idea.

Y: I don't know what happened.

Y: We were just talking. All of us. And we started talking about the revenants and I tried to change the subject but Willa was all kill 'em, kill 'em all and I was like Dude!

She was. She was so… dude.

Y: And I told her, I said he couldn't be first cause we've gotta figure his plan before we let him burn, but I swore to her, I promised her I'd kill Bobo myself and then like a minute later I looked up and she was just… gone.

Nicole read them all as Waverly did, leaning over her shoulder, a comforting hand on the small of her back. Half her attention was on the words, the other half on her girlfriend, on the way Waverly reacted and she saw the flicker in her eyes at Bobo's name, saw them darken at the mention of Willa running and yeah, Waverly knew something or thought she knew something or was starting to think something and Nicole wanted to ask, she wanted to know - even if just to share the burden she's learned that 'knowing' can be - but then Waverly set the phone on the counter and walked to the door and Nicole forgot all about burdens and started worrying about crazy instead.

Waverly's boots were by the door. Her coat was on the hook next to it and her keys were in its pocket and they jingled as Waverly brushed a hand against it, fingers closing around the sleeve.

"Waverly -"

The phone buzzed again, cutting her off and it almost made Nicole laugh - saved by the text and all - and a sense of relief washed through her, cause she had no idea what the next words out of her mouth would have been, no clue how she would have said it.

Don't go. Don't go after her. She's not worth it.

OK, so maybe she had an idea.

"What does it say?" Waverly asked, her hand still on the coat, her eyes still on the boots and Nicole almost didn't dare look away, afraid her girlfriend would pull a Willa and when she'd look back up from the phone, Waverly would be gone. "Nicole? The message?"

"Right," Nicole said, and she flipped the phone over, reading aloud.

Y: We're going after her. Doc has some gear, some Black Badge special shit he ordered after he almost froze that time. We'll find her baby girl, I promise.

It buzzed again, shaking in her hand just as she finished the first one, like Wynonna had some ESP shit going on except Nicole knew that wasn't true.

No one with ESP could be so blind.

Y: You stay put. Dolls said he thought Deputy HotStuff was on her way to see you before the shit hit the fan, so if she's there, you both stay put just in case Willa shows. I don't think she could make it that far, but I can't think of anywhere else she would go.

Waverly said nothing, but Nicole saw her grip tighten on the sleeve, just a little, just a bit - she didn't need ESP for that - and yeah, maybe Wynonna didn't know anywhere else, but Deputy HotStu… Haught… had a pretty good idea that someone did.

Nicole tried not to let the hope (the desperate, please please please listen to your sister for once kind) that she felt, trickle into her voice. "Wynonna's got a point," she said, her mind already running the odds that Waverly would see it that way, that she'd reconsider what she was so obviously still considering - she hadn't let go of that sleeve yet - and yeah, Nicole didn't have to be Doc to know those odds weren't in her favor. Maybe everyone thought of Wynonna as the intractable one, as the stubborn as a mule (and kicks as hard as one too) sister, but Nicole knew better.

Waverly stayed. All those years and all that shit, two thirds of her family dead and another third that might as well have been and all she had was Champ and she still stayed. Stubborn wasn't just in Waverly's wheelhouse, it was in her blood. And if there was was any one thing the Earp sisters shared, it was a distinct lack of 'reconsider'.

"If I was Willa," Nicole said, dropping the phone back down to the counter. "I know this is the first place I'd go."

Waverly knew better and Nicole could see it, it was written all over her face and the deputy was already thinking of how quickly she could get to the handcuffs in her purse - she brought them everywhere, not just everywhere Waverly was, though that thought, that other thought, it had crossed her mind but that was like two hours and one missing and hopefully not dead (again) sister ago - when Waverly dropped the sleeve and plucked the phone from the counter. She rolled it over and over in her hand, staring down at it for a long minute before stepping back into the living room and taking up a spot by the window.

"Willa won't come here," she said, so matter of fact, so sure of herself. It was the most confident of anything Nicole had ever heard her.

"Why not?" she asked. She had meant it when she said this was the first place she thought Willa would go, it wasn't just desperate lip service. "This is home."

Waverly shook her head, rubbing a sleeve across the glass where her breath had already fogged it up. "No," she said and fuck, Nicole heard her heart break. "It was."

The last time the Witch came through was three years ago.

It lasted a week, which was bad but they'd had worse. It killed three, which was also bad, but this is Purgatory so, you know, they'd had worse. It shut down the town, trapping some in their homes, stranding others in stores and churches, burying an unlucky few - those dead three - in their cars. By the seventh day, the roads and streets and sidewalks were four feet deep, the more open and less developed parts of town were under twice that much. Waverly heard a handful of people lost fingers or toes to the cold, five families lost their homes, and half a dozen more had to almost totally rebuild.

Lately, as the weather's gotten colder and the thought of a Witch coming through has danced through her mind, Waverly's wondered how Willa and the other girls she was with - the ones without a forgotten family to go back to - made it through that last one, how difficult it must have been for them, alone in the woods, lost in the dark and the cold, no warning, no comfort but each other. Sometimes, she thinks about that and she makes a note, a tiny post-it in her mind, a reminder to ask Willa. It'll show interest, Waverly thinks. She'll sit across the dinner table form Willa and she'll hold her hand and she'll ask, she'll care.

Like Wynonna does.

You know, for Willa.

Sometimes, these last few weeks, Waverly thinks about it. And maybe, sometime, she'll actually ask.

"It's not really all that fair of me," she says, staring out the window, her phone silent and still in her hand and she still hasn't checked the messages and she doesn't need to. Waverly knows what they'll say, she knows it'll be more reminders to stay and more reassurances that they'll find Willa and she knows Wynonna's only saying it to reassure herself cause the thought that she might have… lost… Willa again, kinda literally… it's just too much. "I shouldn't be jealous," she says and she knows she shouldn't. "It's not like that. I mean, I get it. I stayed but Willa… my sister was… she was dead. And dead trumps stayed."

There are moments, moments Waverly hasn't mentioned to Wynonna - not to anyone - when they're together, her and Willa, but Willa... she's not… there. And in those moments, Waverly finds herself staring at this woman who came back - and that's what Willa is, a woman, not a girl, at least not anymore - and when Willa catches her staring, when she drifts back into herself from wherever it is she went, there's this look, and it reminds Waverly so much of the outside, the world beyond their walls, of how it looks now that the Witch has had her way.

White. Nothing but white. Blank and cold and empty. A nothing on the surface that looks so peaceful, so serene.

Until you step into it.

Sometimes, when she sees those looks, Waverly can't help but wonder if maybe dead trumps coming back too. And now she can't help wondering if maybe that's why Willa ran.

The last Witch came through like a monster, like a revenant gone mad. It was all roars and bites, gnashing teeth and demonic groaning winds that slammed against buildings and tested even the oldest and the strongest, the most resilient and 'fuck you, I was here first' of trees. It fought, that Witch did. It fought the town and it fought the people and it fought against itself, surging and recoiling, feasting and starving until - like all things of such power - it burned itself out, and exhausted it's every last breath and then it roared its last, fading and crumbling and falling into nothing somewhere over the Barrens.

"It was there," Waverly says. She's still staring out the window, searching the white for a speck, a dot, a bit of dark in the bright that might (somehow) be Willa, staggering in from the cold, her heart still hoping for what her head knows better than to expect. "It was there that night when I fell asleep and I remember hoping that the windows would hold, that I wouldn't wake up covered in glass and ice." Instead, she woke covered in Champ and she wondered, not for the first time, if the alternative might have been better.

The window is fogged with her breath again and Waverly wipes a sleeve across it, and she's sure to consciously choose the arm attached to the hand that isn't attached to her phone cause she's managed not to look at that for going on five minutes now - after reading the messages that were exactly what she thought they'd be - and now mostly accepting that it will ring when it rings and it'll say what it says and there's nothing she can do about either one. The glass clears and Waverly stares out into the nothing and that's all she sees.

Nothing.

"There's a road out there," she says, tipping a nod toward where she thinks it is. "A road and your truck and that ridiculous car of Doc's out behind the barn." Nicole nods. There is… are… all those things. All those things and a bitch of a storm and a… and Willa… somewhere, shuffling through the snow or huddled and shivering in a dark and empty doorway or frozen by the side of the road and none of those are good.

But if Nicole's gonna be honest? Some are better than others. And God, she hates herself for even thinking that but if she's gonna be even more honest? She hates herself more for thinking that she's probably not the only one who is.

The phone shakes in Waverly's hand and she looks down, her thumb ghosting over the button, a click away. It doesn't say it - it doesn't say anything - but that damn button… it might as well be screaming at her, hollering out 'Press here! Press here and see the latest and the greatest and the newest way one of your sisters has gone and fucked it all up. Again.'

She sighs, one long slow blow slipping out from between her lips, hot against the cold glass, steaming it over again and Waverly looks up, her eyes darting back to the window, to the world just on the other side of it and it occurs to her - again, not for the first time - how often this is how she's seen it.

It's like it's (she's) always been behind that foggy and dirty glass, with an obvious layer of something - whether it was fear or determination or just a blind stubborn refusal to be just another one who leaves - between her and it, between her and everything out there.

"You know I've never been farther than Vernon?" she asks and Nicole doesn't answer but then Waverly doesn't really expect her to. "It's one town over," she says, pointing out the window in a vaguely easterly direction. "One town thataway," she says with a laugh and it hurts her to hear it, that short and hard and bitter sounding thing coming from herself and it reminds her just so much (too much) of Wynonna and that… yeah… that only makes it hurt worse.

Nicole slips off the couch and leans against the wall next to Waverly, close enough to be there, but not crowding her and yeah, it's a balancing act - again - but she doesn't mind, not even a little. She's spent her life waiting for this tightrope and she'll walk it forever if she has to.

"It was just before the last Witch," Waverly says. She looks down at the phone, at that message blinking up at her over and over and over. Press here. Click here. "The winter that one came through," she says, "it was right after the last time Wynonna did."

Waverly's tried, over the years, not to think of it like that.

Wynonna and the Witch. The Witch and Wynonna. Wynonna the Witch.

There's an 'and' there. Really.

She's tried to separate the two in her head, to find a way to think of one without the other and she really has tried, she's made an effort, she's not just saying she has. She has, she's tried. But trying… well… Waverly knows better than most that trying, it doesn't always equal out to succeeding and, try as she might, Waverly's just never quite… gotten there.

She knows why. Getting there means getting to OK and yeah, Wynonna's back - for good, it would seem - and yeah, they're closer than ever. They're a team now, or a part of one, one with good people, people Waverly cares about (some more than others) and trusts and that's new for her. And now Willa's back too (assuming, you know, she doesn't die) (again) and Waverly thinks that maybe that's a sign, that maybe it's fate finally dealing them pocket aces instead of a quick fold or a bad beat. Maybe, she thinks, this is their chance to actually be a… family.

And that she has to think - like think - to even come up with that word? That's how she knows that it's never going to be OK, no matter how desperately she wants it to be.

But she has tried, even if all that trying has never quite taken, even if all those feelings she's got are the same now as they've always been and even if, really, 'always' isn't always, it's more like since the Seven or since the day Wynonna bailed or since the day she bailed again or since the last Witch, since those three years.

It might only be just that long but in Waverly's head, 'always' always seems like it's so much more… forever. Like it always was and it always will be and as if it was that way then (when she left) and it was that way the time before (also when she left) and the time before that and - if Waverly's honest, at least with herself - as if it will, eventually, be that way this time.

And probably the next time too.

Because there will be a next time. There always is. Water is wet, the sky is blue, the Witch is always just around the bend, and Waverly will let Wynonna back in.

There are certain truths, you know.

Like, for instance, the certain truth that every time she thinks of it - and there are more of those times than Waverly would like there be - like every time Wynonna leaves, every time she walks out a door, every time she hangs up a call, every time she says she'll 'be right back', Waverly sees it the same way. It's like a slow wipe, a Star Wars scene fade (and thank you very much, Champ and your fucking Han Solo obsession.)

"I see the taillights," she says, tipping forward so her head rests against the cold cold glass and she swears she can see her breath as she exhales. "The last bus out of Vernon," she says, "I see them every time."

Wynonna heading back into the world - that's what she sees - those taillights dissolving into the blank walls of her room or the clear sky of a Purgatory morning or the blazing white of the Witch, the blistering cold and the fading and flickering lights of the homestead. Everything she knows as hers, everything that is her world, that is her.

Everything Wynonna left behind. Again.

"We met at the bus station," she says which, she figures, explains the taillight bit and Waverly knows she really ought to start talking and thinking in order before Nicole thinks she's as fucked in the head as her sister.

Which one?

Take your pick.

"Vernon was the furthest I'd ever gone and back then… before Curtis and the curse and all that… it was the closest Wynonna would come."

A forty-five minute ride away, twenty minutes past the farthest reaches of the Triangle, not a soul from Purgatory within spitting distance. And still Wynonna almost didn't come.

"I remember the fights," Waverly says. She turns slightly, enough that she can see out the window from the corner of her eye, not that there's fuck all to see. "She and Gus got into these screaming matches over the phone like you wouldn't believe."

It's her birthday. Her eighteenth.

I don't give a good Goddamn where you are right now, only where you are then.

No, I don't think you should come, I don't think you should ever come anywhere near here again but she does and if you've got anything of your mother left in you…

"Gus didn't think I heard," Waverly says. "Which is kinda funny, really, cause I'm pretty sure they heard her in Vernon." She feels Nicole's hand slip into hers and God, how does that make it so much better and so much worse? "In the end, Wynonna agreed, she said we could meet at the bus station in Vernon."

"I'm surprised she even managed that," Nicole mutters and then immediately wishes she hadn't, not exactly sure where the lines are, if Wynonna's fair game (she knows Willa is) or if she's still on the wrong side - the visitor's side - of that 'no one talks shit about my family but me' border.

"So was I," Waverly says,her hand never slipping free and Nicole guesses that that answers that. "But it was my birthday and I think the bit about… mama… I think that got to her."

Sometimes, Waverly wonders how much easier it would have made it if they'd ever had a body to bury, if mama hadn't been so much like Willa - gone but not dead, lost but not forever, not for sure - and sometimes she wonders who, exactly, it is Wynonna sees every time she looks at their sister.

And sometimes she thinks she's better off not knowing.

"Gus told me not to get my hopes up," she says, turning to lean her back against the window, the cool of the glass strong enough to make her skin tingle even through her top. "She said Wynonna was reliably unreliable at best and reliably crazy at worst." Truer words… "I was looking for trouble," she said, "and maybe I was, but if I was… well…"

"Wynonna was a pretty good place to start."

Waverly nods. "It didn't seem like she was going to cave," she says, "so I finally told Gus to just tell her we could meet somewhere if she didn't want to come all the way ho.. Here… and that's when she came up with Vernon."

Somewhere. Somewhere was supposed to be somewhere Wynonna was. Greece or Rome or California. Maine or Maryland or New fucking Jersey. Somewhere Waverly could feel new sun on her skin and new air tickling her lungs, where the dirt under her feet wouldn't have been the same dirt that had blown off the top of her father's grave, where the stares of passersbys would have had less to do with her name and everything to do with her.

Waverly would have taken anywhere. She would have settled for a night in a hotel by the border with room service pancakes and a cheap bottle of wine. She would have been thrilled with a chain restaurant - the kind she saw ads for online, one of the ones with a day of the week in the name, maybe - with waitresses in real uniforms (the kind that don't involve too much midriff and shorts that squeeze your ass and not in the way she likes) who came to your table and sang Happy Birthday while they served you a piece of cake so rich and decadent you'd need cholesterol meds after a bite.

What she got was the Greyhound station in Vernon and a watered down Starbucks Moccachino served alongside an oversized chocolate chip cookie.

"It had a match for a candle," she says, "so that was something."

It did. One extra large match - Waverly didn't even know they made them in sizes - and she waited too long to blow it out. The flame burned too low and scorched a chip or two, melting chocolate (or what passed for it on a bus station cookie) into some hardened blah and she had to take a plastic spork from the pretzel place and scrape it off.

Still… best cookie ever.

"It lasted an hour or so," Waverly says, "my little… party." Her phone buzzes in her hand again and she glances at it for a moment before stuffing it into her pocket. "An hour and ten minutes, right up until the last bus was loaded and fueled and ready to roll."

And Wynonna with it.

She was headed out again and Waverly had never had any illusions that she wouldn't be, off into the world, on to her next flight, her next stop, her next… somewhere.

"I waited," she says, pulling her hand free from Nicole's and wrapping her arms around herself, a shiver slipping through her. "I waited every single one of those seventy minutes, wondering when… if… she'd ever say it."

Come with me.

For the longest time - her life - those were the three little words Waverly so longed to hear. She had Champ for love (or something like it) and she had Gus and Curtis for family and she had Shorty for… being Shorty. But Wynonna… and those words… God how she'd wanted to hear them, how she wanted to have that, even for a moment.

"She never did," Waverly says, though she suspects Nicole already knew that. "And that was just as well, really, cause I would have had to shoot her down anyway."

Of course she would have. She couldn't just leave. Not her home and her job and her home and her boyfriend and Curtis and her books and her home and her classes and that was her curse cause she couldn't just leave her home.

She couldn't just go.

The phone buzzes again in her pocket and Waverly knows she should look, it might actually be important. They might have found Willa or they might have lost her or they might have saved her or they might they might they… might…

They might. But she can't.

"I would have said no," Waverly says and she doesn't know if Nicole believes her and… hell… she doesn't even know if she believes herself. "I would have," she says, tugging the phone free, tossing it on the couch as she walks by, headed for the bedroom instead of the door. "Still," she says. "It wouldn't have sucked to be asked."