They call it the White Witch (because of course they do) and Waverly hates it.

It, a storm, comes to bury them that winter, a cold and blustery bitch of a thing. It swirls down on them from out of the hills, picking up steam and snow from the Barrens, bringing the kind of cold you feel inside your bones, like something dying inside you and no amount of blankets and heaters and hot chocolate can make you feel like you'll ever be warm again.

"When I was little," she says, "Willa and Wynonna, they'd build these giant forts out of every pillow and every blanket we had. " She smiles at the memory, happy (at least a little) that even with everything going on, with revenants and skin walkers and the discovery of Eveilla (whoever she is) she can still enjoy her memories. "They'd stack them so high," she says, "so high I couldn't even touch close to the top, let alone reach the peak."

Waverly burrows down into the cocoon over her bed, the half dozen blankets and (at last count) seven pillows and (best of all) Nicole's arms and she shivers.

She's not entirely sure that's from the cold.

Nicole was just supposed to be dropping by, just checking in on her after her wounding, just the polite deputy doing her duty. And then there were kisses and some talk about more kisses and then there were more kisses and by the time those were done, the Witch had settled in and Waverly realized they had better do the same.

It looked to be a long ride.

The WItch only comes once every few years. "You've gotta watch out for it," she tells Nicole, tucking her feet under the other woman's legs. "If there's an extra warm summer or overly… lively… fall, the Witch is gonna be coming."

They'd had both this last year and Waverly hadn't paid much attention, not with Bobo and company breathing down their necks and the matter of the undead (but not in the vampire way) gunslinger living in their barn. She'd been caught unawares, the twenty five degree drop in temperature and the sky as white as a blank page greeting her two mornings ago and she'd cursed under her breath.

She should have known.

She was the one who had stayed, she was the one who'd called Purgatory home for all those years while Wynonna… didn't… and she was the one who remembered everything else that everyone else tried to forget.

"My daddy used to say it was Mother Nature's way of making a reckoning," Waverly says and she's unbelievably proud that she gets the words out and that they're clear, given that her mind is anything but, not with the way Nicole's fingers are dancing along the bare skin of her back, just under the hem of her Shorty's sweatshirt. "The trees were like gunslingers," she says. "Too old and too proud and too stupid to know when to quit."

"Not unlike a certain family," Nicole says, the words rushing against Waverly's cheek, her breath hot against Waverly's skin, and the youngest Earp thinks she might have to reconsider that whole never feeling warm again thing.

She nods and smiles and burrows closer, her head coming to rest against Nicole's chest, the deputy's arms tightening around her. "The Witch," she says, "well… she would come through to do her duty, to usher them all off, to remind them that nothing liv…" She trails off, realizing that that part of her daddy's story just wasn't right. "That nothing is supposed to live forever."

Technically, Waverly knows that nothing really does, not unless you count Doc and she's not sure he counts since he can still die and since without the Stone Witch (no relation to the White one, she's sure) (maybe) even Doc would be long dead, so she's not really sure if he breaks the rule or if he's the exception that proves it and…

And, it's really really hard to think with Nicole's hand doing that, drawing those circles over and over and over against her skin and with the sound of her heartbeat echoing in Waverly's ear and Wave wonders - not for the first time - what the hell is so wrong with her that she spends so much time focused on the dead, when there's living right here.

She snuggles closer, scooting just a little so that Nicole's hand trails upward, tugging the sweatshirt with it, exposing more of Waverly's skin (cold, what cold?) and she shivers again, but it's more of a shudder and this time she knows it's got nothing to do with the storm.

They stay that way, huddled together for warmth (maybe not just for warmth) as the wind whips outside and the lights flicker and Waverly knows that somewhere - somewhere out there - Bobo and his minions and who the fuck knows what else, are massing and planning and plotting and she's got no idea where Wynonna and Dolls and Doc are and cell reception is already nearly gone and it's clear already - even without all that - that this year's Witch is going to put all the rest of them to shame.

She knows it's not going to end well.

But right then and right there, as Nicole's hand slides across her bare back and their legs tangle together under the mass of blankets and her heart rattles round in her chest like the chains on the Ghost of Christmas Past?

Waverly's never felt quite so safe.

It won't last. It never does.

But it's good enough for now.

The call comes at four am, right about the same time Nicole watches the wind take down the tiny fence in the corner of the yard and the sound of it startles the hell out of her, since neither of them had a signal all night.

It's a miracle.

Except four am phone calls anywhere, much less in Purgatory, are almost never miracles and Nicole stares down at the phone and there's an icy feeling in her heart that's got nothing to do with the Witch.

It's Waverly's phone that rings but Waverly is asleep, wrapped in about six layers of plush fabric and yes, Nicole knows a call from Wynonna is probably important and Waverly would probably want to get it.

But those are just assumptions and Nicole's a cop and she knows the dangers of assumptions and yeah, that's really just a whole shitload of rationalization. But it took Waverly close to three hours to fall asleep and another hour-plus before she stopped talking (crying) (worrying) (fucking panicking) in her sleep and whatever it is Wynonna wants…

There's not much they can do. Not from here. And they certainly can't go out there, not with the way the temperature keeps slipping and the wind keeps whipping and it's been close to an hour since the last time she could even see her truck and it's parked like fifteen feet from the window.

Rationalization or not, Nicole knows one simple truth. Wherever Wynonna is (probably with Dolls and Henry)? She's in the same boat they are.

On their own.

That's nothing new for Nicole. She's been on her own since she was eighteen, since the moment she left home and struck out to make a life, to make something out of her time here that wasn't working in the family store (her sister Lindsay) or going to college to learn how to run the family store (her brother Derek), since the moment she stumbled on Purgatory and Nedley and his need for a deputy that wasn't a drunk or an idiot or both.

She fit the bill and she was 'easy on the eyes' as he told the Mayor and she got the job without much debate and she's been here ever since.

"I like it here," she told him once and she really does and she knows - oh so well - that alone should have made him question her judgement, but she thinks he understood, maybe more than anyone else would.

It takes a certain kind of crazy to live in Purgatory and another kind to like it and when you find someone like that?

Best bet is to keep them on your side, cause surviving here takes all the crazy you can get.

Nicole figures that maybe that explains why she can't stop trying to get Wynonna and Dolls to let her in on it, whatever it is, you know keeping the crazy close and all. And maybe she's still on the outside - though a bit less since… Jack - but she's still starting to feel like one of the gang, a little, maybe, and not quite as on her own as she once was.

And, of course, there's Waverly and yeah, they're not exactly official (sometimes Nicole feels like Waverly's a Black Badge division unto herself) and no one else knows about them, she thinks, but she sorta kinda maybe likes that.

She's not on her own. They are.

The phone rings again - Y popping up on the called ID - and Nicole flips the phone over and over in her hand, tossing one quick glance back toward the bedroom. She won't wake Waverly, she doesn't care what Wynonna threatens her with (and she knows there will be threats), but at the same time, she doesn't want Wynonna worrying, either.

Nicole's not entirely sure - though she's got a few ideas - what it is, exactly, Wynonna and Dolls are into, but she knows enough to know that worrying about Waverly is a distraction Wynonna can ill afford.

She swipes the screen to accept the call before she can talk herself out of it. "Hello?" she says, and there's nothing on the other end, not at first. Nicole says 'hello' again and then again and then, faintly, she can make out the sound of… something… clinking? Like the sound of….

Glasses.

And then there's voices, almost as faint as the glasses and she can't understand, can't make out any of the words but she can hear the drawl, the southern fucking charm soaking the details she can't quite hear and then something like laughter and more clinking and that drawl again.

She's been butt dialed.

Wynonna Earp, Black Badge Deputy and savior of Purgatory (one of those… ideas… Nicole's got) is… somewhere… drinking and laughing and riding out the storm with Henry and probably Dolls and butt dialing her sister at four in the fucking morning.

And maybe it is a miracle.

"Nicole?"

Waverly's voice - one Nicole can hear perfectly - rings out in the other room and the deputy instinctively reaches for her gun, still in its holster on the kitchen counter, mentally running through the list of everything that could be wrong, of everything (and it's all things, another of those ideas) that could be there, could be hurting her, could be -

"Nicole, come back to bed. I'm cold."

She pauses, in the middle of the Earp homestead kitchen (such as it is), one hand holding the phone, the other going for her gun and, not for the first time, Nicole wonders exactly when this became her life.

And as she presses end on the call that wasn't and leaves her gun right where it is, not needing either of them to keep Waverly warm, Nicole realizes.

She's got no idea when this happened.

But she's so very glad it did.