A/N: OK, so I really shouldn't be starting another story what with trying to finish my ones for a different fandom, still working on Snowed In, and thinking of another chapter for Rope, but... But I read something online about Nicole eating super healthy and that made me think and then I couldn't get this idea out of my head so, here it is. I tried to mix more humor in with the angst (like the show) and this is my first real try at Wynonna as a character so... First chapter presented in three parts. More to come if folks like it. Let me know (I'm a total sucker for comments :) )

Part One: Silence

Waverly watches the snow fall against the windshield, slow and steady, hitting the glass and then dripping away, rolling down down down, melting into nothing. Each one, each perfectly different flake, disappears just in time for another to fall and replace it. Some melt quicker, almost burning away as soon as they touch the glass. Others take their time, hanging on, clinging to cold life even as the inevitable replacement comes ever closer.

One falls, another comes along. There's always another.

Waverly stares out the windshield and doesn't turn, doesn't so much as glance at Wynonna, asleep in the back.

There's always another.

They don't have snow like this in Purgatory. There it's always all or nothing, blizzard or green grass and dusty trails. She can't remember ever seeing anything like this, not in person, not for real. She's seen it on the pages and the screens but this… this is so much. She tilts her head, leaning up in her seat toward the glass so she can see it come, watching as it falls from the dark, on down through the faint glow of the street lamp right above their car.

It's amazing to her, watching it like that. Waverly remembers enough from her high school science classes, the ones she didn't have with Champ so she actually got to pay attention, that she knows the flakes form high, high up. They're born in the clouds and drift to the ground and even though she can't see them - up high and in the dark - they're there, they're there long before they float into view, crossing into the whispering haze of the street lamp.

They're not about her, they're not about being in her sight to make themselves real.

Waverly lets her eyes drift down, following one particular flake even though she knows that's just silly. She can't see them like that, can't make out just one, not even in the light, so she just follows a spot, watching as they drift in and out of it, some landing on the glass and others making it farther along, slipping off the hood or the window or the door of the car, or settling softly onto the street just outside.

It's covered - the sidewalk too - coated in a thin layer and it's two in the morning so there's not much in the way of people walking and so it lays there, undisturbed. It's a… what did Nicole call it?... a dusting. Waverly's heard that before, but she never really got it, but now she sees it, right there, just beyond the glass.

It reminds her, the way it slowly covers the street and the sidewalk and slowly obscures everything below. It's like that thin layer of time and abandonment they found coating everything in the homestead when they finally moved back in, the one they wiped away so easily even if that really just meant ignoring the slush it left behind.

They're good at that, she thinks. Ignoring.

Especially what gets left behind.

But that's why they're here, isn't it? No man left behind. They're here for Dolls and they're here to bring him home and Waverly can't help chuckling a little at the thought of Dolls hearing Purgatory called home.

She still doesn't know him that well - calling her Earp aside - and she knows even less than Wynonna about the whats and wheres of Dolls before he was there.

Before he was theirs.

She watches out the window and wonders what he'd think of it, of the snow. If he's seen it all before, if he grew up some place where it came every year, like clockwork, where it was soft and light, something nothing ever is in Purgatory. She'll have to ask him, she thinks.

You know, once they pull this off and get him back.

Waverly starts to turn, to reach a hand into the backseat so she can shake Wynonna awake so she can watch too, but then she catches herself, her hand dropping to the armrest and she turns back. Wynonna's seen snow - even snow like this - before. She's seen snow and she's seen rain (and fire too, but Waverly's not going all James Taylor on this shit) and there's a long list, longer than Waverly really even knows, of things that Wynonna has seen. Things her eyes have touched in the way Waverly's fingers have ghosted along the glossy magazine pages or scrolled the mouse through website after website after website, staring at them all in faded, not HD in the slightest, pixels.

"You'd probably just make fun," Waverly says softly. "Something about a kid on Christmas or igloos or some shit and then you'd nod back off and not remember any of it."

Waverly knows that Wynonna wouldn't mean anything by it, she never does and she never did, not even when they were little (meaning something by it was left for Willa) but still… she shuffles back around in her seat and leaves her hands in her lap, watching the snow in silence.

She thinks maybe she likes it better that way. There hasn't been too much of that to be had lately - silence - and it hasn't been until right now that Waverly's even realized just how much she's missed it. It's different now, the silence, than it was when it was just her and her books and her room and even when she was behind the bar at Shorty's serving and flirting and swatting away hands that weren't Champ's (and, usually, ones that were) and there was all the chatter and all the cracking of pool balls and clinking of glasses it was still just so… quiet.

But that was before. Before Wynonna came back and before Doc climbed out of the well and before Dolls barged in and before Nicole…

Before Nicole. Period. Full Stop.

Waverly smiles, thinking of how yeah, it is different now. Now she knows.

The silence will stop. It will always stop.

Wynonna snores in the back and Waverly smiles again, shaking her head with a laugh. "I rest my case," she mutters, but she's glad for the break. There's something to be said for a lack of silence too.

She leans back again, tipping her head against the cold glass of the passenger side window, absently noting the way her breath fogs against it. She knows she's supposed to be watching Doc and not the snow or her breath or the tiny little shapes her finger can trace across the fogged glass. It's her shift and Nicole's off getting coffee and snacks and Wynonna is, clearly, not watching a damn thing and Waverly knows it's her turn.

She knows Doc is over there, in the diner, in the booth closest to the window and not up there, with the flakes floating through the light, or down there in that dusting along the ground and she knows this was all her idea and she's really not holding up her end.

But she can't help it.

This is as far from home as she's ever been, the first time she's been, really, assuming you don't count the one time she met Wynonna at the bus station one town over for her eighteenth (and no, Waverly doesn't really count that at all.) She feels a bit… alien… a stranger in a strange town and, really, she didn't think they came any stranger than Purgatory. But here… here it's all late night diners and twenty-four hour Chinese place and bookstores the size of their house and bridges she can actually cross without worrying (and looking skyward) that the mystical end of the world is about to crash down on top of her.

"God," Wynonna had laughed when they passed a Barnes and Noble next to a Starbucks two doors down from a Target and Waverly's eyes had nearly popped out of her head. "You are such a hick."

She'd wanted to argue but, in so many ways, Waverly knows she really is, but then again…

How many of those big time city slickers (and even thinking that makes her snort back a laugh so she doesn't wake Wynonna) have ever fought a demon or witches or are, at that very moment, on a stakeout with a unicorn, a magic gun, and a sort of immortal gunslinger from the wild wild West?

Yeah… that's what she thought.

Waverly might well be a hick (though not by her choice) but she's a hick that helped save the world and she's working on that again and so maybe she's impressed - a little - by the snow and some big stores and twenty-four hour Chinese but, eventually, she'll get over that.

Maybe she should turn a revenant or two loose or maybe the Stone Witch, just to see if all those slickers could all say the same.

Wynonna snorts in the back, breaking the silence again, and she rolls over, kicking Waverly's seat and as she glances back at her sleeping sister, a car goes by, the driver laying on the horn. There's another guy, one with headphones the size of Waverly's whole head and he's crossing against the light without looking. He flips the driver the finger (also without looking) and keeps on crossing, dancing to the beat only he can hear.

He hops up onto the sidewalk next to their car and turns, seeing her watching him and he gives an extra little wiggle, almost a twerk, as he walks on by and Waverly laughs, again, as his feet shuffle through the dusting, brushing it all aside, exposing the clear cold concrete underneath and then he's gone and the car is gone and Doc is still there, across the way, and Nicole's still getting coffee and Wynonna is still…

Wynonna.

And the silence falls again but Waverly doesn't mind.

It'll end soon enough.

Part Two: Twenty-five

The car smells.

Waverly noticed it like an hour ago, before Wynonna declared nap time and Nicole finished her coffee and ventured out for a refill. Doc was already in the diner, settled into the same seat in the same booth he's been at every night for the last few. She noticed it then, the faintest whiff of it but then she got caught up in Wynonna's snores and the snow started to fall and Nicole's hand found its way to her knee and well…

She might have gotten a bit… distracted.

"He's doing it again," Nicole said, her hand alternating between a gentle pressure and letting her fingers trace tiny circles through the fabric of Waverly's jeans. "The thing with the hat. He's doing it again."

Somehow (and it was a struggle) Waverly diverted (dragged) her attention away from memorizing the feel of each circle, of how perfectly round they each were, how geometrically excellent and glanced up, checking on Doc. He was doing that thing with the hat again. Taking it on and off, back on, back off, setting it on the table in front of him and the moving it to the seat next to him and then back on his head.

"He looks like he's on a remote control," Nicole groaned. "Like someone's running him and they're just fucking with him and he's so gonna get us caught."

Waverly nodded as Doc slid the hat back onto his head and then, in one smooth motion, doffed it and dropped it back onto the table, just on top of his menu. It was ridiculous and it was silly and it did look like he was being controlled (Waverly had a vague recollection of a certain witch though she doubted old Stoney would have been messing with the hat.) But she wasn't all that worried.

She knew they were going to get caught.

Waverly knew that maybe she was the only one who realized it (no) (not maybe) but getting caught was kinda the point. None of this would work if they didn't get caught.

"He's nervous," Waverly said, dropping her hand over Nicole's, stilling her girlfriend's movements cause though she did enjoy them (a lot), they made it hard to think and that made it hard to talk or, really, do much of anything else. "He's used to being the gun," she said. "Not the bait."

Nicole nodded. She flipped her hand over and laced her fingers through Waverly's. "I know," she said. "But it's gotta be him. Black Badge wouldn't talk to any of us, except maybe your sister and let's face it, Wynonna's got no game."

Waverly peeked over her shoulder at her sleeping sister. Wynonna was the strongest person she knew and maybe the bravest (though half her brave was more dumb luck powered by fear powered by guilt but it was still brave anyway) but Nicole was right. When it came to things like this, Wynonna had no game, not when the name of the game was subtlety.

"She's used to being the gun too," Waverly said. "Purgatory hasn't presented a whole lot of problems she wasn't supposed to shoot her way out of."

And that, Waverly knew, was just fine. That was why Wynonna had the gun and not the books, that was why she was the heir and Waverly was the geek (albeit one with a shotgun and a bit too much a of hair trigger) and that had worked out for them rather well so far.

If, you know, you didn't count the (twice) dead sister and the giant tentacle monster living right outside their gates and the three or four days of demonic goo possession that had left Waverly with a scar running the length of her back and memories that came as dreams she thought she'd never wake up from and the whole Dolls getting arrested and the whole town possibly getting hellfire missiled back to the stone age.

But, really, that was all nothing. At least not compared to the smell.

Waverly had picked up on it before but then the distractions (Wynonna's snores and then Nicole's hand and then Doc's hat and then Nicole's lips and then her hand, again) but then it had snuck back up on her, creeping in when Nicole got out and the air had come rushing in, all cold and frosty and smelling vaguely of gasoline and the Chinese place next door.

That was a smell, a good one, one Waverly knew she could easily get used to (the Chinese, not the gas.) It was real, not the kind they had in Purgatory, there was no half-assed panda on the sign and it wasn't run by a couple of paler than Doc white guys from Toronto who called it General Sows on the menu. Waverly had eaten there twice already (even once inside) and, assuming the shit didn't hit the fan in the next two hours and they didn't all, you know, die, she was going back for thirds later tonight.

A twenty-four hour restaurant that served real Chinese with real chopsticks and veggies that weren't microwaved broccoli and snow. Waverly really did feel like a kid on Christmas and she didn't give even one single fuck about showing her hick.

Big city living agreed with her. You know, as long as she had Nicole and Wynonna and Peacemaker and she didn't have to leave the car for very long, it was perfect.

Except for that smell.

It's… it's… fuck all, she can smell it but she can't name it… it's….

Vegetables.

The car smells like vegetables. Good ones, mind you. It reminds Waverly of the gardens Curtis used to plant, the ones Gus buried him in.

"That's just fucking weird," Wynonna said to her one night. They were sitting outside the homestead in their fancy dancy folding chairs, passing a bottle of whiskey back and forth between them (mostly Waverly passing it back to Wynonna) (she'd stolen the less than good stuff from Shorty's and Waves had a more… refined palate.) "I mean, really, you ever gonna eat anything from there again?"

Waverly had to admit that Wynonna had a point there.

"Maybe not," she said. "But you weren't there all those springs, when everything started to grow and sprout." Waverly leaned back in her chair, her eyes drifting shut as she remembered the way it would always happen after the first good rain. "You could smell it," she said, "like it was right there and you could reach out and grab it, like you could hold onto the life that was seeping back into everything."

Wynonna snorted. "Dude, they were tomatoes."

They were. Tomatoes and cucumbers and whatever other seeds Gus could get his hands on that year, whatever he saw at the farmer's markets, the one in Purgatory and the one in Vernon and the one - if he was feeling particularly… frisky… and he could talk Gus into leaving Waverly for a couple of hours - in Berton.

Waverly stares out her window and pretends she doesn't see the tear rolling down her cheeks in her reflection but then she sniffs and… dammit… there it is again.

That fucking smell.

It's like vegetables only not quite like vegetables. Kinda like 'em but with a hint of something else, something Waverly knows, but she can't quite put her finger on it. It's right there, right on the tip of her tongue (or, you know, nose), something earthy and just a little sweet. She tries to place it, like she did with the veggies and Curtis. She shuts her eyes (thinking, for just a moment, that she really hopes nothing happens to Doc while she's playing smelltective but she's gotta know) and breathes deeply.

It hits her then, but it doesn't just hit. It overruns her, invading, crashing down around her like glass shattering from a window, the way the sweet burns as she breathes it in, the way it tickles against the back of her throat as she swallows and Waverly nearly screams.

Daddy.

She knows it then - bourbon - the kind she never saw a bottle of at Shorty's, the good stuff, the kind most of her customers would have had to dip into their retirement accounts to swing even two fingers of. The kind Ward kept stashed away around the homestead. It was a bottle here, a bottle there, almost every one of them a revenant in their own way, a bequest from a man long since dead, left like an apology.

The girls almost never saw the bottles (even then Ward worried about Wynonna), but they saw the glasses, the ones just filled and the ones just downed. Twenty-five of them, Waverly remembers. Willa always kept count.

"One for every one," she used to say. "A drink for every one he sends back."

Waverly almost gags in the front seat, that sweet smell colliding in her head with thoughts of curling up on her father's lap, of Willa and Wynonna watching them from the dark, always there, but always over there, in the shadows and Waverly never quite got that but she was too young and being there, curled against her father, was too warm and too safe and how many nights did she fall asleep with a honey-laced kiss against her forehead?

Oh… that's right… twenty-five.

She closes her eyes and lets the smell - that fucking smell - wash over her, lets Curtis and Ward and everyone else they've lost… even her… swamp her and pull her under and the tears come unbidden. Waverly knows she's supposed to be watching and she knows she's not holding up her end of the plan (and it was her plan, even the parts she didn't tell the others) but it's all just too much.

She'll be OK. In a minute or two. She'll wipe her eyes and she'll get back to work and Doc will still be there, fucking with his hat, and Wynonna will still be asleep in the back and Nicole will come back with her coffee and maybe some goodies (like those crab rangoons) and the past will be the past.

Even if it's still surrounding her with every breath.

Part Three: The Girl Thing

She sits behind the wheel, her tears long since gone and focused on the job at hand but… fuck all… It's been hours and the car still fucking smells because of course it does.

Waverly's pretty sure… no… not pretty… totally completely without question or doubt or even the tiniest bit of confusion sure that she's going to need to go a long time (like the rest of her life long) without ever smelling vegetables or bourbon again.

Maybe longer. She'll have to do research on smells and the afterlife cause no, no fucking way is she spending eternity smelling… that.

Once her tears had come and gone and her heart had settled and she was feeling… normal… again, Waverly went looking. She wanted to find it, the source. She had a fairly good idea where some of it came from (a hint: starts with a Wy and ends with a 'never saw a bottle of booze she didn't like except that bubblegum sake and that was hers anyway so tough titty'.)

It took her a while - like most of the night and a bit of this morning - to track it all down, though the bourbon was easy. There was a half empty bottle of it tucked between the seats, though that was then and this is now, so that's probably closer to three-quarters gone. Waverly found that about five minutes after she started looking (which was a half hour after she stopped crying over memories she hadn't remembered until that fucking bottle.)

The vegetables? That's taking longer.

Nicole didn't seem to notice the smell when she got back to the car and Waverly really didn't want to ask. She'd had to spend close to an hour reassuring Nicole that the tears had just been a… thing… a momentary bit of overwhelmed because new place and out of Purgatory and 'oh, look, Doc's doing the thing with the hat again' and she didn't want to seem any stranger than needed.

'Do you smell corn?' seemed, to her, like it would seem strange. And she was the one who smelled it.

It isn't until her turn behind the wheel that Waverly figures it out. They've been rotating seats, their spots in the car, every couple of hours to - as Nicole put it, in the most adorable attempt at leadership ever - keep things 'fresh' and 'alive' and keep them all 'on point'.

With Dolls gone, Nicole has become… well… Dolls. At least in the whole 'only experienced law enforcement officer on the team' and 'we can't go off all half cocked' and 'yes, I said cock, Wynonna, what are you, twelve?' kinda way.

If it became any other kinda way, Waverly was going to have to reconsider some things.

Waverly's shift behind the wheel coincides with them actually calling it a night - or a morning, really - and heading back to their motel. She's grateful for the break. It's been two days and two nights and they've had no luck and every one is already on edge, tipping just past the point of being stressed and heading full on into ridiculous. It's the worry, Waverly thinks, the concern for Dolls and the panic over their home and that certainty that they're in far, far, far over their heads.

They are, of course, but when the hell has that ever stopped them?

It's her turn as the wheel-woman and that leaves Wynonna in the back, again, and Nicole in the passenger seat and Doc finding his way out of the diner and down three blocks and then into an alley and over one street where they meet him and he slides in next to Wynonna.

"It kinda defeats the point of being sneaky if Black Badge spots us picking you up right outside the diner," Nicole pointed out when she outlined the plan and Doc complained, just a little, about having to do all that walking.

(he might have complained more than a little) (and made mention of having to spend all night in the diner) (unarmed) (and drinking the 'swill that establishment attempts to pass off as coffee and something they call pie but I will believe that only when I actually am allowed to see it being made'.)

They pick him up and he grumbles and he makes mention of exactly how long he's planning to use the shower at the motel and Waverly's grateful for that cause it had been like twenty-four hours at that point and he… well… there's this smell...

No. Wait.

That's not Doc. Or, at least, it's not all Doc.

It's the fucking vegetables and that's the point - right as she pulls the car out of the alley and onto the main road and damn near up the ass of a double parked taxi - when Waverly realizes it's been a while, like hours, since she's smelled them but there they fucking are, like they'd never left.

No one else seems particularly… veggied, and Waverly worries just a little that it's all in her head, that the stress has pushed her mind just a bit too far. She can't understand how no one else even notices, but Wynonna's watching the road out the window in between heavy blinks and yawns (like she hadn't slept twice) and Doc has pulled his hat down over his eyes and leaned back in his seat (and Waverly tries really hard to not notice how closely their hands have fallen on the seat and how almost their fingers are and she shakes her head and gets back to the matter at hand… you know… hunt the fucking vegetables.)

"Baby, you OK?"

Even Nicole doesn't seem to notice but she does notice that Waverly seems… out of sorts…again… and that's sweet and so perfectly her and if Nicole wasn't munching on some chips (again) (seriously, the woman eats like she's a fifteen year old boy trying to put on weight for football season), Waverly would lean right over and kiss her.

She's sorely tempted. Chips or no chips, sister and undead hobo in the backseat or no, she's happy and she doesn't care who sees.

That's another something Waverly thinks she could get used to, something she wouldn't mind spending a very long time doing quite happily (the being happy, not the kissing) (well) (the kissing too.) It isn't that she was never happy before. As hard as that might be for Wynonna or Nicole - or anyone else who had ever spent more than five minutes with Champ Hardy - to believe, Waverly had been happy. She'd been happy with him and she'd been happy with her job and she'd been happy with her friends and she'd been happy with her life.

And if that happy was because she'd thought misery was her only other option and because being happy - being actively, constantly, gotta fucking work at it happy - was what kept the thoughts of bourbon laced kisses and dead or broken sisters and curses and… bobos… away and, really, only because she didn't know that this happy was even a possibility?

Well… she doesn't need to mention that.

Waverly's an old pro at the not mentioning that game. She's a fucking all star. Like when she didn't mention that the plan was for Black Badge to find them (all of them), that the only way to get Dolls back was to get caught right alongside him.

Or, like, you know, right then, cause she smiles at her girlfriend in the passenger seat and instead of saying 'yes, I'm fine, except I might be having a stroke or something cause I smell cabbage', Waverly says "I'm fine. Just tired. Can't wait to get into bed."

It would have been fine. It could have been fine. Even though she and Nicole were sharing a room - a room with only one of those… beds - it could have been fine and it could have gone unremarked upon and it could have gone right on by without Waverly blushing like a fucking traffic light and Nicole almost choking on a chip.

If Wynonna was actually asleep.

"I'd tell you to get a room," she says from the back and Waverly can hear the shit eating grin all the way up front. "But you already did." She sits up then, leaning between the seats, but making sure that she's facing Nicole. "And I'd tell you to be careful and all cause I'm way too young and way too hot to be an aunt but…" She scratches her head, like she's actually thinking. "But it doesn't work that way, right? I mean, I know it doesn't but it's been a while since I did the whole, you know, girl thing and shit changes, am I right?"

There's a moment there - a long one, like so so so long - when Waverly wishes for a revenant to leap on the hood of the car or a tentacle to smash through the windshield or for a puddle of demon goo to -

"Ooooh," Wynonna says. "What is that? Dip?"

Wait. What?

Waverly turns, looking at her sister and her girlfriend (the latter of whom seems frozen in mid bite, a bit of all natural, organic, probably made out of fucking kale, chip dangling from her lip) as Wynonna reaches over and scoops a couple out of the bag and sinks them - fucking sinks them like the damn Titanic - into the tiny tupperware container in Nicole's hand.

"Hummus?" Nicole offers, chip remnant dropping from her lip into the greenish or maybe it was reddish or maybe it was fucking guacamole on acid looking stuff.

Wynonna makes a sound, something like a 'mmmm' crossed with an 'ooooh' with a smidge of a moan that Waverly doesn't ever want to hear again, as she chews "Oh, that's good," she says, reaching back and slapping Doc on the thigh (another sound Waverly could die happily without hearing again.) "Dude, wake up, you gotta try this."

Hummus. Her sister who, moments earlier, had mentioned doing the 'girl thing' and had been like one second away from giving Nicole tips in that… arena… was now having a foodgasm over hummus.

"Seriously?" Wynonna asks. "You make this?" Nicole nods. "Damn, baby girl, you gotta keep this one. She can… you know… you and feed me."

Demon goo. Her kingdom for some fucking demon goo.

"This is awesome," Wynonna says, scooting up closer between the seats to grab another handful - like two handfuls if she was a regular person - of chips. "Waves, have you had this?"

God, even when she wasn't trying…

"Yes, Wynonna," Waverly says, focusing on the road and the car and the wheel anything but the sounds of Wynonna chewing or speaking or just being her. "I've had hummus before. I can't believe you like it though."

"Why not?"

Waverly jiggles her shoulder to shake off the chip crumbs that spill out as Wynonna speaks.

"Because there's no beer in it," she says. "No beer or bacon or grease of any kind. All it is, is…"

Well… fuck.

All it is, is vegetables.

Waverly pulls up at a traffic light, the last one between them and the motel, between her and a bed that she can hide in and hope Nicole doesn't try to kiss her cause she's going to have hummus breath and it's a motel, they're so not going to have a toothbrush at the front desk.

She leans her head on the wheel as Doc asks Nicole for the recipe and 'it's healthy?' and if only they had had such delicacies in his day, why the tuberculosis….

Waverly closes her eyes and waits until horns blare behind her to know it's time to move.

Worst. Stakeout. Ever.

She's never hoped to get caught so much in her life.