Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Nicole woke on Christmas morning, before she even opened her eyes, she felt a weight next to her on the bed. A warm, human-sized weight. The kind of warm, human-sized weight that she hadn’t felt beside her in bed for almost a year now.

That fact took all the hard-won cynicism she had built up over so many long, lonely months and dashed it against the wall like it was nothing, leaving her alight with the blazing hope for a Christmas miracle.

An angel returning to Earth on Christmas Day. There was something poetic about that. Fitting. Right.

Her Christmas present this year could be sweet reunions with hugs and kisses and happy tears. (And then maybe some more hugs, because god, did she ever need them.) (Not to mention, the thought of three more adults to help shoulder the responsibilities of the Homestead felt like a literal weight being lifted off her chest.)

Maybe this was it. Maybe it was finally over.

Maybe she was back.

“Wave—” she shot upright, one hand reaching out to find— Rachel.

“Sorry, just me.” The teenager was sitting, fully dressed and cross-legged, on the bed, and now looking a bit guilty.

Nicole’s hope crashed to the floor and shattered, leaving her feeling hollow and stupid, but she shook her head as though it were nothing.

“No, it’s okay, I didn’t really think… It was just a reflex,” she lied. It was probably a vain effort; they had both heard the naked desperation in her voice. With difficulty, she tried to wipe the hopeful image from her mind, of Waverly curled next to her, safe and sound and alive and here. “What’s up? Did one of the traps go off?”

Rachel shook her head.

“No, they’re fine. It’s not that. It’s not anything. It’s just…” She couldn’t quite meet Nicole’s eyes. “Christmas, you know?” Nicole fought to shelve her own disappointments, instead turning her attentions to the teenager who had become her… daughter? Niece? Ward? Only friend? Whatever they were to each other, she lay a reassuring hand on her shoulder, and Rachel looked up, fleetingly meeting her eyes. “This’ll be my first Christmas without my mom.”

She looked away again after the admission, and Nicole’s heart found yet another way to break.

Rachel had lost everything to the Garden, just like her, and Nicole shuddered to think what an inadequate replacement she was.

“Oh, Rach…” Nicole sat the rest of the way up, mirroring her cross-legged position. She kept her voice soft. “What kinds of things did you do for Christmas? Back before?”

Rachel’s hands toyed with each other, giving away her restlessness, but after a few seconds of hesitation, she resumed talking.

“It was usually just the two of us. Whoever got up first would make hot cocoa and wait for the other one. We weren’t allowed to open presents until both of us were there. I would always get impatient, though.”

“You? Impatient?” Nicole asked, feigning surprise. “That doesn’t sound like you.”

“I was a lot different a year ago,” Rachel sighed.

“Yeah… me too.” This time last year, she was probably being lovingly kissed awake in the arms of her angelic girlfriend, and the biggest disappointment in her life was that she had to wear elf ears instead of a Santa suit.

“We were never really religious, but my mom had this little nativity scene that had been passed down from her mom— a nacimiento. We would spend so much time setting it up and deciding where all the little people and animals would go. We always did it a little different every year.” A reluctant smile touched Rachel’s face.

“That sounds nice,” Nicole said, matching it. “My parents were… weirdos, kinda. They didn’t have any traditions. They didn’t even celebrate Christmas some years. But here, last year, Waverly and Wynonna’s mom was here, and she was obsessed with putting together the perfect, most traditional Christmas ever for them. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

She could still remember the glow she had felt, sitting around the table with everyone— Waverly, Wynonna, Doc, Jeremy, Michelle. It was the first time in her life she had really felt like part of a family— a whole family. They had been through a lot that year, and a lot had been lost, but there had been so much to be grateful for, and so much to look forward to.

Now, she was alone but for an emotionally damaged teenager, and both of them were distinctly ungrateful for everything and looking forward to nothing.

“Well, come on, let’s get up and check the traps, and then we can get something to eat. Maybe we can even find some cocoa mix somewhere. If you want to.” She didn’t want to step on Rachel’s treasured traditions if it was only going to make things worse.

But after a fleeting moment of hesitation, Rachel nodded.

“Yeah. That would be okay.”

Nicole got dressed and grabbed her shotgun (Well, it had started out as Waverly’s shotgun. She wondered when she had started thinking of it as her own…), and she and Rachel went outside to sweep the perimeter. The traps by the barn were still proving to be hotspots.

“Combining the bear traps and the pits seems to be doing the trick,” she observed. Until recently, they had used both traps separately, with lesser results. They just needed to find something more effective to bait them with.

Their patrol complete, they turned back towards the Homestead. Alberta in late December was cold, and Nicole could feel her leg ache with it, pulsing along the familiar lines of the broken bone. It had healed well, and it didn’t hurt much anymore, thank god, but if it got jarred in an impact, or if she overused it, or sometimes even just when the weather was bad, she could feel it, a reminder of her terrifying fall and the sudden, shocking stop at the end.

“You’re limping,” Rachel noted.

“I’m fine,” Nicole disagreed. “It’s just the cold.”

But as soon as they were inside, Rachel used all her teenage stubbornness to force her into a chair while she searched the cabinets for cocoa powder.

“Still doesn’t feel very Christmassy, does it?” Rachel observed, even when they were successful and a pot of milk was steaming on the stovetop. (Real milk. Nicole tried to buy almond when she could, but it was hardly ever at the store these days.)

The inside of the Homestead was bleak. Nicole hadn’t been in a celebratory mood, and putting up decorations felt somehow like a betrayal, like she was letting herself be happy even though Waverly and Wynonna were trapped somewhere, maybe suffering. It felt like it would be sullying the memory of last year’s Christmas.

But now, watching Rachel eye the room with veiled disappointment, Nicole felt her stomach sink with guilt. Maybe she should have put more effort in, for Rachel’s sake if not for her own.

“You know, I think I saw a radio back when we were inventorying the closets. Let me see if I can find it again.” She eased herself onto her feet, in spite of Rachel’s wary glare at her leg, and managed to walk a steady line to the closet under the stairs. A piece of paper taped to the inside of the door listed the closet’s contents, and indeed, she had written “radio/cassette player” on the list.

The closet was dusty, and full of sparsely labeled boxes and out-of-season clothing, but she emerged triumphant. She set her prize on the counter while Rachel eyed it with skepticism.

“How old is that thing and how sure are we that it isn’t going to explode?” Rachel leaned slightly away from the dusty machine as she stirred the milk to keep it from burning.

It was old— probably from Waverly and Wynonna’s early childhood, if not before. The lurid yellow plastic case was chipped, and the labels on some of the buttons had been worn away by time and sunlight and too many fingers.

“Old,” Nicole said succinctly. “But pretty sure it won’t explode.”

“If we die in an antique radio explosion, that’s a pretty crappy end for both of us.”

“At least it’ll be quick.” Without further ado, Nicole plugged in the radio and, anticlimactically, nothing happened. But when she turned the knob, it crackled to life, burbling static as she sought out any kind of music station.

“Wait, wait, I know this one,” Rachel said sarcastically as fuzzy white noise continued hissing from the speakers.

“We’ve got to be close enough to the City to pick up something, right?” Nicole grumbled, just before she struck gold. A tinny recording of White Christmas suddenly began playing into the cheerless room.

Just like the ones I used to know…

It was such a small thing, but for a second, Nicole felt her spirits lift just the tiniest bit. Rachel raised her eyebrows.

“Well, what do you know? It does work.”

With the hot cocoa ready, Nicole reluctantly dug out the Christmas mugs from the back of the closet as well. She gave Rachel Wynonna’s snowman mug and kept Waverly’s penguin for herself.

They ended up in the living room, where Nicole dedicated herself to building up a fire in the fireplace. There was Christmas music playing, and hot cocoa in festive mugs, and maybe if she got a big, roaring fire going, it would feel a little warmer and less bleak in the house.

Rachel watched her from the couch, cradling the snowman mug in both hands.

“If someone had told you a year ago that this is what your Christmas would look like, would you have believed them?” she asked.

“No,” Nicole admitted, dusting bark residue off her hands after piling another log onto the low flames. She heaved a disconsolate sighed. “I was supposed to be Santa this year.”

Rachel raised an eyebrow at her

“Is that code for something?”

“No. The town had a big Christmas ‘festive fundraiser’ every year, and the sheriff then, Nedley, would always be dressed as Santa.” Just saying his name was still hard sometimes. A lot of people hadn’t made their way back to town, but none of them hurt Nicole as much as Randy Nedley. She’d only just found out about their history together (You’re like a daughter to me…) when everything went to shit, and then he was gone. “I was his elf. It was humiliating.”

“Being the elf was humiliating, but being Santa wouldn’t be, am I getting that right?”

“Well duh, Rachel, who doesn’t want to be Santa? Everybody loves Santa.” Nicole looked at her like she was being ridicuous.

“This is such a weird side of you, it’s kind of freaking me out.” Rachel deadpanned, then ruined it by cackling with laughter at some new thought. “Do you still have the elf costume? Please say yes.”

“No,” Nicole lied quickly. But it was nice to hear her laugh for a change. Maybe, just for that, she could suffer a little indignity… “Well… maybe just the hat…”

As the radio ironically switched to It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas, Nicole dug the costume hats out of the closet. After about four months, as the seasons changed, she had finally admitted that maybe the others might still be gone for even longer than she had feared. And so she had made the pragmatic but somehow still wrenching decision to buy garment bags to protect and store their clothes.

Sorting through Waverly’s wardrobe had been yet another exercise in torture. It had been impossible to resist pressing her face into the garments, remembering how they looked and felt on their owner, secretly praying that they might still carry the faintest trace of her scent, or that they might evoke some old memory of sweeter times.

It was an eclectic wardrobe, and she had tried multiple different organizational methods— color, pattern, weight— before settling on fabric. Faux fur, flirty florals, feminine flannels. This had the benefit of stretching out the process and letting her linger over each garment longer.

Wynonna’s wardrobe had been easier, but still harder than she had expected. The eclectic collection of T-shirts alone brought back so many memories of its owner’s snark and personality. Some of Wynonna’s wardrobe had been long since converted into Rachel’s wardrobe, out of necessity. The rest got folded and packed away. When (… if…) Wynonna returned, they would figure out the rest.

The Christmas clothes had been boxed up with Wynonna’s, and Nicole picked her way through the closet to find the right one. The sight of them stirred that mix of pain and nostalgia, almost like homesickness, that she felt so often these days.

She made Rachel take the elf hat while she claimed the Santa hat. That seemed fair— she was the adult after all. And she had earned that damn hat. Besides, Rachel didn’t seem to mind.

“Woah, what is that,” Rachel said, peering over her shoulder into the box. Nicole followed her gaze to a frizz of black faux-fur. The sight gave her another small pang.

“Oh, that was Wynonna’s.” Wynonna— dark and snarky, but with occasional flashes of warmth and lightness underneath. Her almost-sister-in-law. Her best friend, whether either of them liked it or not.

Rachel pulled the onesie free and gazed at it in awe.

“It’s amazing. Can I wear it?” She turned her best puppy-dog eyes on Nicole, who hesitated. On the one hand, it didn’t feel like her place to gave that permission. On the other hand…

“Sure, I guess it’s not like she’s using it this year.”

“Awesome!”

Rachel raced off to the bedroom to change. Nicole bit back a smile, returning to the box of Christmas stuff. Under the costumes and clothing, there were garlands and tinsel and lights.

“You think we should’ve put up more decorations?” Nicole called back towards the bedroom, looking around the Homestead’s bare interior. They had put up lights around ‘Chez Valdez’ (Rachel’s joke from when they first moved in), but otherwise it did all seem a little bleak.

“Little late for that, isn’t it?” Rachel called back. And maybe she was right. But seeing the decorations, all colorful and shiny, made her spirits lift in a way she hadn’t expected. There was so little color or light in their world these days.

Giving into the feeling, she picked up the storage tub with both hands and hauled it out of the closet, then went back for the rest.

By the time Rachel emerged, only minutes later, decked in Wynonna’s Christmas onesie, Nicole was already sorting the decorations by type.

“You’re going to put them up now?” Rachel asked, sounding a little incredulous.

“No, we’re going to put them up now. Start untangling those lights.”

Nicole took the job of stringing ropes of garland everywhere, winding it around the stair railing and hanging it over doorways and along the ceiling. Rachel, bemused but apparently game enough, stacked miniature Santas and trees onto every available surface. With the Christmas music still playing on the radio in the background, it was starting to feel almost festive.

Nicole thought about calling Jeremy, just to talk. A year ago today, they had all sat around a table together, smiling and feeling more like a family than anything Nicole could remember.

But everything had changed when Waverly, Wynonna, and Doc disappeared into the Garden. She had tried to reach out, but as time had dragged on, he had gotten less and less prone to answering her calls, and less and less prone to returning her texts. She wasn’t sure why. They had never been close, sure, but they were each other’s last connection to their missing friends.

Weeks ago, she had wondered if he might actually come and celebrate Christmas with them. She had planned to float the idea the next time they talked… but then they never talked. She was getting used to that, but it still stung. And worst of all, she still felt this needy instinct to keep calling, even though she knew it was pointless.

Instead, she forced herself to exercise restraint (and to push back her instinct to be just a little passive-aggressive about his ongoing silence) and simply text: Merry Christmas, Jeremy.

He didn’t text her back right away. Of course.

“What’s up?” Rachel asked, as she passed by on her way to get more string lights.

“Nothing,” Nicole said quickly, slipping her phone back into her pocket.

“Do they not have a tree?” Rachel asked, surveying the stacks of decorations.

“I think it’s in the barn,” Nicole said. The tree was too big for the closet, but it wasn’t like the Homestead had room for an attic. Thus, anything too big to store in the house got relegated to the barn.

“I can go check,” Rachel offered. She sounded almost eager, in a way that Nicole hadn’t heard very often. Nicole paused before answering. Putting up some lights and garland was one thing— committing themselves to putting up the whole tree was another. And what, just for one day? Was it even worth the effort?

Then she looked at the gleam in Rachel’s eyes.

“Okay. Text me if it’s there, and I’ll come help you carry it.”

“Yes!” The teenager practically ran out of the room, towards the front door. Nicole shook her head a little and returned to the hall closet, dragging out the boxes of ornaments and tinsel she had left behind. It looked like they would need them after all.

Her phone buzzed as she hauled out the last box.

It’s here. I think I can carry it.

In spite of the message, Nicole started to make her way outside. Rachel was a great kid, but she had a knack for biting off more than she could chew, and Nicole wanted her to know that she always had backup if she needed it.

Setting up the tree turned out to be pretty straightforward once they unearthed the tree stand from the closet. Nicole was in the middle of draping strands of golden tinsel all over its branches, thinking wistfully about how Calamity Jane would have gone bonkers at the sight of it, when her phone vibrated. The buzz made her jump in surprise— it was getting increasingly rare for her to get calls or texts from anyone but Rachel. She looked down at it, and saw a message from Jeremy.

Merry Christmas to you too.

Nothing more than that. Of course. No “how are you” or “hope you’re doing alright” or “call me if you want to talk.”

No “I miss them, too.”

Her thumbs hovered over the keyboard, then typed.

Do you think they know what day it is? In the Garden? Do you think they’re thinking about us?

She didn’t send it. She wanted to. There wasn’t anyone else she could talk to about it— Rachel didn’t know anything about the Garden, hadn’t been there back when they were doing their research. Jeremy was her last link, the last person she could reasonably ask.

Not that he would even know the answer, but at least it would be cathartic, to talk about it, to commiserate, to reassure each other yes, I’m sure they are, even if it didn’t mean anything. It would feel better, even just for a moment, to share that unique pain with someone who understood.

Nicole deleted the message without sending it. The last thing she needed was another needy message out there, twisting in the wind, for him to ignore. She had already debased herself enough in the early months of their separation, reaching out over and over again, desperate for any connection to their previous life. No wonder he had stopped calling back. He probably thought she was pathetic.

“What the hell is this?” Rachel’s voice broke through her momentary spiral of darkness. Blinking away the thoughts, she looked over at where Rachel was holding the menstru-angel at arm’s length, like it might be toxic. Nicole felt herself smile in spite of her dark mood.

“The angel for the top of the tree.” Nicole walked over and took it from her, holding it delicately in her hands. “Waverly made it when she was a kid. She didn’t know what they were for. But she and Wynonna kept it all this time.”

“Right… that’s either really sweet or really weird, I can’t decide.”

“I think it’s sweet. Besides, it’s an angel made by a half-angel. Pretty impressive credentials for a Christmas tree decoration.” Nicole waggled it in her hand, making its wings flap. Rachel looked at it skeptically, but shrugged.

“I guess so.”

As Nicole dug through another storage for the last few ornaments, her hand found something— glass wrapped in metal— and she pulled out a mostly-full bottle of peppermint schnapps.

It was a startling discovery— she’d assumed she had burned through the last of the Homestead’s copious alcohol supply weeks ago. The last drops had been finished off in the course of an unholy binge commemorating her and Waverly’s anniversary. She had wanted to spend that day in particular as numb as possible. She didn’t remember it working… but then again, the whole day was kind of a blur in her memory, and maybe that was the best she could have hoped for anyway.

“Oh sweet, can I have some?” Rachel eyed the bottle eagerly.

“You’re still underage,” Nicole said, mostly on instinct.

“Barely.”

Nicole shook her head.

“Trust me, you don’t want this stuff to be your first experience with alcohol.”

“Are you going to drink it?” Rachel countered, her arms crossed over her chest.

It was tempting, the thought of blurring the day a little. But potentially dangerous. She imagined herself maudlin and sobbing, fantasizing about what could have been. Probably drunk-texting Jeremy some sappy gibberish.

Her internal debate was interrupted by the sound of an alarm going off above the front door.

The alarms were still fairly new, but when they installed them, Nicole had practiced her reaction until it was automatic. She dropped the bottle and ran to the door, shrugging her coat on and grabbing her shotgun where they both lay, ready for action, by the door. Rachel was only a few steps behind her.

“Figures that monsters don’t take Christmas off,” she grumbled as they headed out into the snow.

Nicole returned to the house several minutes later, alone. She was limping again, both from the cold and from an unfortunately aimed blow from their resident monster. At the sight of the creature, huge and clawed and very mad about being caught in a pit trap, she had sent Rachel back to the Homestead for safety and stayed to drive it off herself.

After all her failures— losing the sheriff’s department, not finding Peacemaker, not saving Nedley, not keeping Jeremy close— she certainly wasn’t willing to add Rachel’s death to the top of that list.

The furry, furious monster had broken free, but not before Nicole had peppered it with enough shells that it apparently decided they weren’t worth the hassle. After one halfhearted attempt to tackle her had ended with the butt of the shotgun in its face, it gave up and lurched back into the woods, snarling to itself.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Rachel asked as Nicole re-entered the Homestead, feeling cold and tired in spite of the adrenaline.

It was times like this, when she felt especially worn down, that she missed Waverly the most. She could imagine her fussing over her, gently scolding her for pushing herself too hard, bringing her tea and kissing her head. Telling her that she had done a good job, and that she was proud of her. And then maybe afterwards cuddling her close or curling up in her lap, all warm and cozy and—

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Nicole half-lied, sinking into a chair. “But I think I will take that bottle.”

Nicole was only a few peppermint shots deep, still trying to banish visions of Waverly from her head (the warmth in her eyes, the glow of her smile, the joy in her laugh, the softness of her skin) when she heard a yelp from the other room— the room where Rachel was still decorating. She shot to her feet, already on her way.

“What?! What happened?” she demanded, her brain imagining all kinds of worst-case-scenarios— the monster coming back for Round Two, or a different one showing its face in the window, or some fresh new hell befalling them.

“They do have one!” Rachel said, her voice excited rather than scared. Nicole, her panic fading, looked down at where Rachel was cross-legged on the floor, with piles of decorations strewn around her. Nicole blinked, and finally identified the thing in her hands as a little nativity scene. It looked old and cheap, a wooden box shaped like a barn with little animal and people figurines inside. Regardless, Rachel seemed elated by the discovery. “Can we set it up?” she asked eagerly.

“Sure, of course,” Nicole said, shaking her head, bemused.

It was a tiny set, and the pieces were simple, but Rachel seemed dead-set on finding the exact right spot for each little wooden figure and each little wooden set piece. Nicole gave up contributing after Rachel slapped her hand away when she playfully tried to remove Joseph from the scene (“Come on, it’s just so hetero-normative. He wasn’t even involved.”), and instead mostly sat on the couch, making a dent in the peppermint schnapps.

It didn’t taste as sweet and Christmassy as it had the previous year. The mint tasted sharp and cold, and the alcohol bitter and hot, but she chipped away at it anyway. Whatever its faults, it was making her warmer. But she would need to eat something soon, especially if she was going to keep drinking.

“Did I tell you that last year, Waverly and Wynonna’s mom literally went out and shot a wild turkey for Christmas dinner?” she asked, remembering her halfhearted warnings about seasonal hunting laws and gun licenses before she fully gave up.

“Badass,” Rachel said, impressed. “But I thought Waverly was vegan?”

“She was. Is.” Nicole frowned to herself at the correction. Referring to Waverly— her Waverly— in the past tense made her blood run cold. Waverly was not past tense. She suppressed a shiver.

“Right. Sorry. Is.” Rachel winced apologetically. “Um… so she didn’t mind?”

“Well, their mom had been gone since they were kids, so I think they were just so happy to have her back. And she had just told them about Waverly’s father. And the sheriff had just announced his retirement, with me next in line.” The memories felt so weighty after all this time alone. She tried to remember how it had felt— her sense of eager anticipation, Waverly’s pride in her, Wynonna’s grudging support. Waverly in that ridiculous, sexy Santa dress, trying to show her how much she cared. “There was a lot going on.”

“No kidding…”

Disaster struck: it turned out the nativity scene was missing pieces.

There were, apparently, far too few animals, plus a few missing people.

“Didn’t the wise men show up late anyway?” Nicole argued, not that Rachel listened to her. Instead, she was dragged into a floor-to-ceiling search for replacements.

There wasn’t a donkey anywhere, but Nicole found a little plastic horse that had once decorated Willa’s room before the great Cleansing Of Fire. A cow-shaped salt shaker was also added to the mix, as well as a napkin ring decorated with a rooster.

“It’s not exactly traditional, but it’s better,” Rachel decreed.

“You sure it doesn’t need a bear?” Nicole asked, for the third or fourth or tenth or twentieth time. Their search had uncovered a lightly charred teddy bear that had once been Waverly’s— Mr. Plumpkins— and she had brought it down with them. She hadn’t been big on stuffed animals as a kid, and maybe it was the alcohol’s influence, but it was kind of nice to have something soft to hug. (Given the choice, she would have vastly preferred the bear’s owner, but that wasn’t Mr. Plumpkins’s fault.)

“Yes, I’m sure, please shut up.” The new additions were added to the tableau with disproportionate care and reverence. “Okay, so we really are only one short.”

“Considering how old that thing is, that’s not too bad,” Nicole pointed out.

“But the one that’s missing is Mary. And she’s like the most important one! You can’t have Jesus’s birth without his mother!”

Nicole hummed sympathetically.

“Yeah, admittedly I haven’t really set foot in a church in a long time— unless you count a Vegas wedding chapel— but it stands to reason she was probably involved…” she admitted. Rachel shot her a wide-eyed look.

“Did you say Vegas— nevermind, listen, we need to keep looking. There’s got to be a Mary somewhere around here.”

Nicole pondered for a long, hazy minute, then pulled herself to her feet.

“Wait here. I had something to give you anyway.”

Still mostly steady on her feet in spite of the schnapps, she left the room, retrieved Rachel’s Christmas present from its hiding place under her bed, and returned. Rachel looked surprised as Nicole handed her the small, simply wrapped package.

“Is this for me?” she asked. Nicole nodded, trying to keep a blush from her face by willpower alone.

“It’s not much. I mean, there weren’t a lot of opportunities to go shopping or anything, so I thought I would make something. I still need some practice, but—”

As the wrapping paper fell away, Rachel stared down at the carved and painted wood in her hand.

“Is this…?”

“The Valdez,” Nicole said, a little sheepishly. “That was why I kept asking about her all those weeks ago.”

The current state of the Ghost River Triangle and the Homestead itself wasn’t very conducive to Christmas shopping, so making something had been the obvious option, and “Mayan Xena” seemed like the best option. Nicole’s wood carving and painting skills were amateur at best, but she thought it hadn’t turned out too bad. At the very least, it wasn’t her greatest failure of the year.

Rachel traced a finger up the snake design on the doll’s arm.

“You made this?” she asked. Nicole couldn’t quite read her tone.

“Look, if it’s that bad, you don’t have to keep it. I just—”

“No, it’s really cool. I just… didn’t expect anything.”

It was a sad sentiment, but Nicole couldn’t blame her. They’d spent the weeks leading up to Christmas acting like it wasn’t happening. Yet another thing for Nicole to feel guilty about. She mentally added it to her list of failures.

“Well, now she can be Mary,” Nicole said, gesturing to the nativity set.

With a low chuckle, Rachel set the doll in the middle of the diorama, where it towered over the other figurines.

“I think it works,” Nicole said.

“Well, she’s more important than all these guys, so I think it’s okay that she’s bigger.” Rachel sat back, surveying the scene with what looked like satisfaction. “Very badass. I like it. Thanks.”

“Merry Christmas.”

“I, uh… got you something, too. Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“Um… a friend helped me get them. But I wasn’t sure if you would want them or not.” Rachel rolled up to her feet and disappeared into her bedroom for a moment. “I didn’t wrap them, because… well, I wasn’t sure how, and then I wasn’t sure if I should give them to you at all, but… here.” She thrust a thin stack of papers at Nicole, who accepted them automatically. She looked down and her heart nearly stopped at the sight of Waverly’s face looking up at her. “His family collects old newspapers and stuff from around here, and I guess she was in them sometimes, so I thought maybe you would think it was cool to see them.”

Nicole bowed her head low over the pages, flipping through them, taking in the pictures almost hungrily. Not only were they pictures of Waverly, they were pictures of Waverly she had never seen before— some where she was obviously smiling for the camera, others where she was just caught candid in the background of a shot.

One showed her winning her ‘Nicest Person’ vote. Another named her as her class valedictorian. A stub of an article with a big picture of a town fundraiser showed her standing in the background, giggling with Chrissy Nedley.

She tried to speak. Nothing came out, so she cleared her throat and tried again.

“Rachel, these are amazing. Thank you so much.”

Rachel still looked a little uncertain.

“So… they’re good? I wasn’t sure if it would be harder on you, making you think about her more.”

“I’m always thinking about her,” Nicole murmured, still taking in the pictures and headlines. It did hurt, but in a painfully sweet way. She hadn’t been able to talk to Waverly in months, hadn’t been able to hear her stories or ideas. So learning anything new about her, even old news from before they met, was more than she could have hoped for. “Thank you for these. It means a lot to me that you thought to get them for me. Really.”

Rachel tried and failed to stifle a proud grin.

“N-B-D. I just thought you’d like them.” She looked around them. “Hey, you know, it actually kinda looks like Christmas in here now.”

The whole room was swathed in garland and lights. A decorated tree stood in the corner, with their nativity underneath. A fire crackled in the fireplace. Wrapping paper was crumpled on the floor. They were wearing Christmas pajamas and Santa hats.

“Yeah, I guess it kinda does.” Nicole settled back on the couch to better inspect the newspapers, and after a minute, Rachel came to curl next to her, stealing the afghan off the back of the sofa even though the room was warm. She leaned onto her shoulder to get a view of the newspapers, and Nicole absently wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Nicole nodded to the paper in her hand. “I recognize this one. Wynonna told me about it.”

“She sounds like she must have been wild to live with.”

“You have no idea. This one time…”

Nicole told stories about the Homestead’s former inhabitants, and Rachel made occasional trips to adjust decorations or refill hot chocolate. The snow fell outside. The Valdez guarded the nacimiento. Two untouched wrapped presents lay under Nicole’s bed, waiting for their recipients’ long-awaited return. And all the while, the radio played in the background, making the house feel more like a home and its occupants feel more like family than either of them had experienced in a long, long time:

Someday soon, we all will be together
If the Fates allow
Until then we’ll just have to muddle through
Somehow
And have ourselves a Merry Little Christmas now

Chapter Text

One year later…

When Nicole woke on Christmas morning, before she even opened her eyes, she felt a weight next to her on the bed. A warm, human-sized weight. The same weight that had been there every morning for the past several months, but she still always felt the need to check…

She rolled towards the warmth and reached out, bleary eyes blinking open just to check one more time…

Her hand came to a rest right over Waverly’s heart, which beat steadily under her palm.

The ultimate Christmas present.

Waverly stirred slightly at the unwelcome chill of her hand under the covers, but only reached up and covered it with her own warmer one before settling again.

Sleep in heavenly peace indeed, Nicole thought, closing her eyes again. The air was cold— it always was in the Homestead in winter— but it still felt warm and snug under the covers. Even after all these months, it felt like such a luxury to not have to sleep alone anymore. The picture on her bedside had been replaced by the real thing. The room was her sanctuary again— their sanctuary— not her prison. Here, together, they could just… rest…

There was a series of loud bangs from downstairs, and Nicole stiffened instinctively… until it was followed by Wynonna yelling “Wake up, fuckers, it’s Christmas!”

Followed by Rachel calling back “I’ve been up for hours, go take it up with them!”

Nicole pulled Waverly’s sleeping body against her, cuddling her close and smiling into her hair as she heard footsteps thundering up the stairs. Two fists pounded on their door, making it rattle in its frame.

“Did you lock it?” Waverly murmured, still half asleep. Nicole nuzzled into her.

“Yep.”

“Are you gonna let them in?”

“Nope.”

“Okay…” Waverly squirmed deeper into her embrace and closed her eyes again as the knocking continued and two voices yelled at them to wake up.

Nicole sighed happily.

“Merry Christmas, baby.”