“I like to start with the reason someone decides to get treatment.”
Nicole found just enough energy for a little bit of a glare, fingers tightening down into fists. “It’s this, or my job.” She tried, kind of, a little bit, to keep the bitterness out. Across the room, the man in the chair gave her a mild look.
“You’re saying you’re feeling coerced?”
Silence. The hush enough to hear the buzz of the clock on the wall. Nothing to interrupt the twist of Wavery’s face. The press of her finger tips to her cheek, right over the red mark, and the hate in Wynonna’s eyes. The burning pain in the bones of Nicole’s right hand.
“No.”
The man, her therapist, please call me Craig, nodded. Just like Nicole had made some kind of sense.
“I want-” She stopped. Clenched a fist, just to feel it. To feel real. “I want to feel something else.”
“That’s a great place to start.”
Nicole nodded, looked to the side, didn’t cry.
*
“Hey, baby.” The blanket covered lump spoke with Waverly’s voice, all curled up in the Adirondack chair, flames from the fire circle flicking softly across it.
“Hi,” Nicole greeted back, letting the cruiser door thunk heavily. Shoving her hands into her pockets, and leaning back on the car. Outside the circle of jumping light.
“There’s a whole other chair here,” Waverly jerked her chin towards the second chair, unoccupied and draped with one of the blankets from their bed. Nicole looked out into the black winter prairie, hands balled tight into the pocket of her quilted Carhartt coat.
“Is Wynonna around?”
“It’s my home, too,” Waverly said, and the comfort she put into it didn’t undercut the steel. Nicole looked at her feet, and shoved off the car, dropping into the low chair, and draping the blanket over herself. She held her hands out to the fire.
“Feels good,” she murmured, and in the other chair, Waverly lolled her head over to smile. A Waverly smile, like Nicole was worthy. Nicole had to look away.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Nicole watched the firelight dance across the seal painted onto the door of her cruiser. Integrity, Respect, Excellence.
In her chair, Waverly splayed her fingers out. Open. Waiting. Slowly, Nicole reached across the gap, and laced their hands together, feeling Waverly squeeze gently. After a while, she started to hum. Paschbel’s Cannon in D. Slow, measured.
Nicole closed her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
The humming went on for a bit, then stopped. “You’re mine,” Waverly said. “Nothing else can have you, because you’re mine.”
Nicole breathed out, shaky.
“Last time,” the therapist man said, “you said you wanted to feel something different.” Nicole grunted. Call-me-Craig nodded. “What do you feel most of the time?”
That one was easy. That one didn’t feel like a trick. “Angry.”
“Are you angry now?”
Nicole laughed, mirthless. “18 months, 3 weeks, and 4 days.”
Call-me-Craig cocked his head, smiled a little. “That’s way more specific than most people.”
“Plus about three months.”
“Nearly two years.” The sympathy in his voice wobbled in Nicole’s own chest. She cleared her throat, stared at the corner. “That’s a long time to suffer.”
That one didn’t wobble, it sparked. She snapped her chin up. “I’m not traumatized. I’m a survivor.”
Call-me-Craig steepled his fingers under his chin, considering. “You endured a painful life event lasting nearly two years, and now you’re sitting here with me. Of course you’re a survivor.”
Nicole felt herself deflate, like an old and forgotten balloon. She didn’t want this. She didn’t want it. “Maybe not,” she muttered, enduring Call-me-Craig’s head tip that urged her on. “Maybe there’s a difference between surviving, and thriving.”
“And you’d like to thrive?”
Nicole looked out across the landscape that was between here, now, and the long off there, later. The comfort Waverly had been steadily providing her, and how she was too empty to provide any back. The look on the Sheriff’s face, that terrible afternoon when the house of cards came down. She swallowed. “Yes.”
Call-me-Craig didn’t make any stupid mouth noises about getting started. They hadn’t been together long, but he’d still learned enough to pounce while the iron was hot, or whatever. “Tell me about a memory,” he said.
“It’s not the memory,” Nicole said, hard and fast, angry. Call-me-Craig might be necessary, might have basically been mandated, but they weren’t friends and she didn’t trust him. He didn’t get that. He didn’t.
“A memory,” he agreed, neutral faced, and neutral voiced. Nicole glared at him, but he just looked back waiting, and like always Nicole buckled under the silence.
“I fell, and broke my leg.” Just the words were enough. Ratcheting into her spine, pulling the intercostals tight until she was gasping a little. Just like then. When she’d been dragged inch after inch through the depths of the crumbling BBD lab. Rachel’s dirty hands sunk into the ruff of her coat, the improvised splint jolting and the faint sound of her own bones grinding. Nausea sank into her stomach.
“The feeling, where is it in your body?”
“Spine,” she gasped, “ribs.” Her fingernails made crescents in the palmar crease of her hand, and it was just as real just as real as the slow drag of her broken leg up the stairs to daylight.
“Follow my hand” Craig said, and Nicole did. Darting her eyes in tandem with his fingers. Twenty seconds. “One to ten, how are you right now?”
“Seven.” Craig nodded, and together they moved, his arm swishing through the air and her eyes jumping sideways then center.
“Five.”
“Three.”
“Good,” Craig said. “Good.”
Nicole hid her face in her hand. “This is the worst thing I’ve ever done.”
“You’d be surprised the number of clients who tell me that.” His lips twitched, demure. “Good thing I’m such a rugged personality, or I might need therapy over it all.”
Nicole dropped her hand, eyeing him a little. “Did you just make a joke?”
“It’s not against the rules,” he assured her, a subtle amusement glinting just below his affected primness. Nicole noticed for the first time how cheerful his office was. Facing southward for the sun, and painted a muted yellow.
“How are the home exercises going?”
Nicole did them every day. Alone in the warm emptiness of their room on the homestead. Sitting in her cruiser, a vaguely stale PB&J waiting for the moment her stomach untwisted. Once, sitting outside on a sunny day, the cold biting harder than the memories. She shrugged.
“We have ten minutes left. Would you like to try another memory?”
Nicole looked at the door to freedom, then back at her torture helper. “A memory,” she said, warning, but Cal- Craig just nodded.
*
Waverly was sitting cross legged in bed when Nicole thumped up the stairs. Sitting in a pool of light, laptop open and the keys clacking.
“Hi, baby,” Nicole told her, towing off her shoes. Waverly looked up, and grinned.
“Do you know how many wedding invitation styles there are, out in the world?”
Nicole flopped bodily down onto the bed, making everything on it bounce a little. “Can’t say I do, though I reckon it’s a lot.”
“So many,” Waverly agreed, her smile falling a little. Her fingertips traced along Nicole’s brow, right where the worryline had set in. “Baby, is it helping?”
Nicole caught her hand, kissed the palm. “Yes.”
“Okay,” Craig said, fingers pressed under his chin, the way he sometimes did. Nicole hadn’t kept any sort of account. He didn’t do it every session, but maybe every third? She let it go, focusing back in the room, and Craig smiled a little. “What do you want to work on today?”
“I want,” Nicole said slowly, testing out each syllable, “to work on the memory.”
He lifted one eyebrow about two millimetres. Nicole watched it, and tried very hard to raise her own single eyebrow. Across from her, Craig laughed gently. “As the therapist comes to read the client, so the client comes to read the therapist.”
“Sounds about right,” Nicole said, but oh, her hands were shaking, and Craig knew it. “But I’ve got a question, first.” She was speaking a little too high, and a little too fast, and Jesus weren’t those obvious tells? “I’ve really been wondering. Is transference really a thing, or is that just one of those weird Freud sex thing?”
Craig grinned. “Secrets of the trade, Officer Haught.” He let the moment fade, gentle. “Are you deflecting?”
“Oh yeah.” Nicole smiled a little.
“Do you want to try?”
She clenched her fingers down onto her knee. Keep in the pain there, instead of in her chest. It worked about as well as it ever did.
“Yes.”
“Focus on the memory,” he said. “Tell me where it is in your body.”
Nicole followed his voice down. He’d always led her back before. It was time.
*
“Why are we doing this, again?”
“Prove that we can.” Waverly gently patted Wynonna’s knee. “And because you promised.”
“Fucking mouth of mine, saying words,” Wynonna muttered, slumping down.
Holt was dead. Margot was dead. Nedley was alive. The old blue and white truck rattled as three across, the sisters Earp and a stray Haught crossed the Ghost River Triangle demarcation line, into the city.
Time and tide waited for no man, but it was wedding planning that drove women into perpetual motion, always looking over their shoulder.
“Well,” Waverly twisted to look back, the little stone marker already lost behind them. “That was anticlimactic.”
“Yeah, well, I guess you got all your pro-climaxing accomplished early in the day.” Wynonna muttered, squashed in the middle.
“I’m just happy to see you,” Nicole smirked, hands steady on the wheel. Wynonna glared, and the blessed silence carried them all the way into the city, and found them street parking. Nicole hopped out of the street side, then hustled around to yank the door open. Waverly took her hand, with a grin and a kiss. Wynonna just used the power of her scoffing to scoot across the seat and out, stalking past them towards the shop.
“Cheers, queers, but maybe get the show on the road?” she said over her shoulder, and yanked the door open. Nicole eyed her fate, and held the door for Waverly.
Inside was...bright. And white. “Um,” Nicole said, looking at yards and yards of fabric. Stark white. She stowed her no-doubt dirty hands into her pockets.
“Ladies,” the clerk bustled over, tight slacks and a mandarin collar on his black shirt. Hair a wild curl, and his biceps on display. “Welcome to Stein’s. Do we have an appointment?”
“Yes,” Waverly smiled, her short bob swinging against her jawline in a way Nicole still found new and enchanting. “Earp.”
“Of course,” the clerk agreed. “I’m Nathan, so nice to meet you. It’s always exciting to help someone find the perfect dress.” He shook everyone’s hand, a slightly damp two-handed clasp. His eyes drifted across Wynonna, leather pants creaking as she shifted. Then over Nicole, a plaid shirt, and the slouch of her second oldest pair of jeans. “Would the cheering squad like some champagne?”
Wynonna brightened considerably, and Nathan led Waverly away. On the walls, the mirrors bounced everything back three, six, nine fold. The swish and yank of each dress as Nathan flourished it.
“Okay?” Waverly asked quietly, inside the tiny moment after Nathan made her twirl, and before he whisked her back away, the stiffly full skirt of the latest dress rustling unhappily as Waverly leaned in close. “It’s bright in here, huh. Do you need a minute? Wynonna’s taking pictures, and today isn’t a deciding day, so you won’t miss anything.”
“I’m just gonna—” Nicole said, and tried not to look like she was bolting.
She leaned against the brick wall, gloved hands as standoffs from the chill of the brick, watching the foot traffic go in clumps and starts. Scanning across to gauge the range, the bullet drop at 400, 500, 600 metres. The moment the limbs became definable from the person-blob; the moment the facial definition could be seen. A child darted through someone’s legs, making them stagger. A dog barked. The wind would affect a long range shot.
“Nicole?” A voice, too close, too sudden at her shoulder; she jumped. “Hey, it’s okay,” the voice, Waverly added, but something ran heavy into Nicole’s back, staggering her forward into Waverly.
“Watch it,” a new voice snapped from behind. Nicole spun, hands dropping from where she had automatically steadied Waverly.
He was caucasian, 6 feet, brown hair, dark eyes, red shirt, blue jeans, ball cap. Tall, trim, handsome about the face and in the breadth of his shoulders. Used to people swaying around him, giving him unearned ground.
“Maybe you should watch it, considering we were just standing here,” Nicole said, hand dropping into her pocket. The smooth length of the cylinder under her fingers.
“You’re the one blocking the sidewalk, lady.” He stayed handsome, even with his mouth twisted into scorn, and Nicole knew that he was just another user in the world. Another taker.
“Hey!” Wynonna said, sharp, but it was too late. The flat of his hand was already on Nicole, shoving her back. Nicole’s shoulder swayed back, and she was falling and the fire was crackling in the woods and she was being dragged over her own broken bone and Waverly was gone, she was gone, she was gone for so long.
Nicole blinked. The baton in her hand, and the man on the ground, and Waverly. Holding her hand to the mark on her cheek from a fouled deployment, and the look in Wynonna’s eyes.
In the end, Nedley drove up to get her. To drink a bottle of Jack with his old buddy, and to explain. Nicole looked up at him, when the cell door clicked open.
“Time for a change,” he said. Nicole shuffled forward, shoulders hunched.
“Yeah, okay.”
~FIN