Archive of Our Own ^beta

Holy water cannot help you now
See, I've had to burn your kingdom down
And no rivers and no lakes can put the fire out
I'm gonna raise the stakes, I'm gonna smoke you out

Seven devils all around you
Seven devils in my house

 i. holy water cannot help you now

I hear the devil callin’ me back…

She never asked for this.

She didn’t want it.  Didn’t earn it. 

Didn’t deserve it.

The guy she’s seeing tells her he needs space, and she knows it means he needs time for all of the girls he’s been seeing on the side, because she’s not stupid.  Far from it, in fact.  But she does have her pride, and a little youthful petulance goes a long way, and a desire for revenge leads to taking up with his best friend.

Except then the next thing she knows, she’s wearing a curse that was never meant for her.

The preacherman used to yell about it on Sundays, the veins in his neck standing out and his face going purple as he thumped his Bible against the pulpit, drawing dramatic gasps and scandalized murmurs from his congregation.

But how in the hell was she supposed to know that Jonas Adamson had gone and landed himself on Wyatt Earp’s shitlist?  And who would have thought that her penchant for bad luck with the bad boys and a little wrong place at the wrong time would seal her fate and condemn her to eternal damnation?

So much for a forgiving god.

Oh, if only the preacherman could see her now, smug and vindicated by his zealous piety.

There’s flames and torture.  Endless pain.  Being forced to relive every single one of her mistakes on an endless loop.  It’s enough to drive anyone mad.

But then something happens. 

Something she doesn’t understand.

She wakes up. 

For a brief moment, she thinks it was all just a dream.  A nightmare.  Her worst nightmare. 

Until she realizes that everything is different.  She’s back, but she’s not herself.  Not anymore.  She brought a piece of hell back with her, and now she can feel it, burning inside her. 

And she’s not alone, either.  There are others.  Dozens of them.  Jonas Adamson included.  It doesn’t take them long to hear the whispered rumors of the curse the demon Clootie placed on Wyatt, and now that they have returned, it must mean that the legendary lawman has finally fallen.

The Revenants scatter to the far corners of the Triangle, testing their limits and reveling in their newfound freedom to inflict terror on the innocent.

She keeps a low profile after that, though.  One trip to hell was more than enough for her, thank you very much, and she has no desire to return if she can help it.

She hopes it will be easier for her to disappear since she was just collateral damage, praying that maybe her name will just fade out of the narrative after enough time passes, and that, eventually, the Earp descendants won’t even know to look for her anymore. 

But she doesn’t want to press her luck, so she moves quietly from place to place within the confines of the Triangle, never staying in one location for long, lest whispers of her presence find their way to the wrong ears.  The years pass slowly, and she curses her own existence more often than not, but then she remembers the alternative, and decides that living this life is better than the hellfire option.

So she keeps her head down and she studies and she learns, but even though she’s brilliant, she’s never anything more than a bartender slinging drinks or a cocktail waitress trying to ignore the grabby hands of the sweaty patrons. 

Because no one ever gives a second thought to the harried waitress in a shitty dive bar, and that suits her just fine.

But no matter how hard she tries to shut it out, the curse is always there, calling to her. 

Mocking her. 

When she’s struggling to get by.  Or when the time comes to pack up and disappear, only to turn up in the next hole-in-the-wall apartment beside a truck stop with an opening for big boobs coupled with the ability to also hold a drink tray.

The latter is sometimes optional, but it seems the former never is.

It calls to her, and it’s so tempting.

She could use it. 

Use the hellfire in her eyes and the devil inside. 

She’s thought about it before.  About luring these greedy men to her bed, only to laugh as she puts the fear in them before snuffing them out, picking them clean afterward and adorning herself with the spoils of her labor.

But then she remembers how that has gone for the others that have tried it.  How they flaunt their power and amass their wealth, only to be hunted down like the beasts that they are, watching it all burn as the jaws of hell yawn open beneath their feet and swallow them whole.

Maybe not so tempting after all.

It’s the one semblance of peace she’s managed to carve out for herself. 

The one thing she holds on to, every time she has to endure being groped by a greasy trucker with lust in his eyes and whiskey on his breath in the hopes that maybe he’ll tip her enough at the end of the night so she can afford an order of fries and a cup of coffee from the all-night diner across the highway.

Jonas Adamson is on his fourth trip to hell.

It’s not much, and it certainly doesn’t make up for the fact that she’s still paying for his sins 150 years later, but it’s something.  And she clings to it like the life preserver that it is.  Her only peace from the choppy water that is the hand she’s been dealt.

But now she’s gone and landed herself in a situation that all of the flashy science in the world can’t get her out of.

She’s not exactly sure how she ended up here, to be honest.

One minute, she’s taking out the trash behind her most recent place of employ, and the next, Doc Holliday is standing in front of her, asking for a favor that barely manages to mask the thinly veiled threat behind it. 

She should have known right then and there that it was the beginning of her end.

Because she’s seen a lot of things change in the last century and a half.  Politics and society and medicine and technology.  But she knows Doc Holliday never goes anywhere without there being an Earp close behind. 

He shows up promising protection, but ends up delivering her right into the hands of another Heir.

Turns out some things never change.

It works for a while, and she almost lets herself start to believe that maybe – maybe – she can stop running and find a place to belong, unlikely and fucked up as it may be.  Because she’s not stupid.  Far from it, in fact.  And she knows that being who she is and still sleeping with Doc freaking Holliday – who also happens to be the baby daddy to Wynonna fucking Earp – is all kinds of fucked up.

She tries to believe it, but that’s just not the way things work for her. 

She’s cursed in more ways than one, and no matter how many times she’s tried to convince herself that maybe this time it would be different, she still finds herself across the bar from Peacemaker, loaded with a threat far more dangerous than any bullet, pointed straight at her head.

She feels it calling to her again, the devil inside.  She’s kept it locked away and starving for over a century, but now it’s feasting, gorging itself on her disappointment and devastation and desperation. 

It rears its ugly head at the most inconvenient time possible, leading her straight to her ruin.

And that’s when it happens.  She can’t believe what she’s seeing.  It’s like she’s watching the events unfold from the other side of the dingy glass, helpless to stop them or change the outcome.  She’s lucky that Waverly’s hesitation seems to somehow tip the cosmic scales in her favor, as though bargaining for her life with some unseen force.

She escapes with her life, barely, and not much else.

She never asked for this.

She didn’t want it.  Didn’t earn it. 

But this time, she knows she deserves it.

She’s on the run again, chased by a curse of her own making, the devil within her finally stretching its limbs and taking over for good.

…I hear the devil callin’ me back home.

ii. see, i’ve had to burn your kingdom down

I hear the devil callin’ me back…

He can’t see the future.

Not really.

That would be too easy.

He only gets a feeling.  And sometimes, if he’s lucky, maybe an image or two will accompany it, like the flashes of a camera, leaving him momentarily blind, blinking around the floating spots in his vision, trying to focus quickly enough to make out a face or a location or an object before it’s gone like a puff of smoke.

He doesn’t know why it happens, and certainly not how, only that it does. 

The first time he realizes something is different, he’s at daycare, sitting in his favorite beanbag chair with a lollipop.  One of the boys finds a drawer full of fingerpaints while the teacher is busy talking to another adult in the hallway.  The other kids flock to his discovery, their eyes wide with the sudden possibilities.  A girl asks him is favorite color, and offers him one of the tubs, but he just frowns.

There’s a tingle in his head and a weird pull in his stomach, and he can’t explain it, but he knows the teacher is going to catch them painting on the wall and be very upset.  He just has a feeling about it.

He tries to tell the others, but they don’t listen, already creating their masterpieces on the walls and the windows and the chalkboard with the gold stars next to their names.  He stays in his beanbag chair, arms wrapped tightly around his knees so his stomach will stop hurting, his lollipop long forgotten.

When everyone else loses out on playground time, they all give him dirty looks because he gets to pick the afternoon movie every day for the rest of the week. 

No one ever shares their snacks with him again.

On the first day of second grade, he refuses to leave the house without his shiny yellow rain boots.  His mom laughs, encouraging him to wear the new Toy Story sneakers she just bought him, but there’s a buzz in his brain, and he doesn’t know why, but the rain boots just feel right. 

So he insists, despite the bright sun in the clear blue sky, and when it comes time for recess, laughter bubbles in his chest as he gleefully stomps through the fresh rain puddles while all of the other kids complain about their soaking wet socks and shoes. 

He spends the rest of the year playing by himself at recess while everyone else has their own little groups and teams and clubs.

There’s a bully in fourth grade that likes to pick on him and a couple of the other boys that he’s friends with anytime he can find them alone.  They stick together the best that they can, and dash out the door as soon as the bell rings every day, trying to get away before he gets a chance to corner them.

After a while, they discover a shortcut through the woods.  It seems like no one else knows about it yet, and for a while, they enjoy the freedom of a bully-free walk home.

Everything is great until he gets a weird feeling one day, like butterflies in his chest, and he does his best to convince them that they should stay away from the woods because he thinks something bad is going to happen.  They tell him he’s crazy and leave him behind to wander down the sidewalks through town all by himself, and he eventually makes it home just fine, but he frowns the entire time he’s doing his homework that night, absentmindedly rubbing at his ribs.

The next day when he gets to school, the boy that he plays Jedi Masters with has a black eye, and the one with the brand new chemistry set has a busted lip.  The bully had discovered their secret trail through the woods, and was waiting for them at the old bridge near the creek.

They’re convinced that he’s the one that told the bully where to find them, and no matter how much he tries to explain that it’s not true, they decide not to be friends with him anymore after that.

He curses his damn feelings and all of the friends they keep costing him.  He’d trade them in for a broken nose from a bully in a heartbeat if it meant that he didn’t have to sit by himself at lunch again.

It lasts for a while, but it continues to call to him, and he’s just a kid, and it can be really hard to ignore the feelings when they are sometimes borderline painful.

He’s eleven years old when he tries to convince his mom that they should stay home.

That he doesn’t care about some stupid banquet for some stupid science award.  That he’s perfectly happy with her toasted cheese sandwiches – baked, not grilled – and the tub of Chunky Monkey he knows she’s been hiding in the deep freeze.

But she insists that he can’t spend his entire life in his room with his experiments.  That it’s important for him to make friends with other kids his age.  Other kids like him.  Kids that are smart and good at science and bring home awards to their proud mothers.

So they get in the car and they drive to the community center and that’s the last time he ever sees her.

He wakes up in the hospital, his limbs stiff and heavy. 

He learns later that it’s because they’re full of metal now.

That isn’t exactly what he’d had in mind when he used to dream of being Iron Man when he grew up.

The “doctors” know all about his feelings.  They ask him questions and test his ability and tell him if he learns to control it well enough, maybe one day he’ll be able to use it to find his missing mother.

In the meantime, they give him a lab with shiny new beakers and the coolest computers and his very own crisp white lab coat and goggles.  All he has to do is tell them every time he has a feeling.

It’s fun at first.  All the science he could ever want, and no one to make fun of him for it.  No bullies to break his rulers or steal his goggles or give him a black eye when he forgets his lunch money.

But the longer it goes on, the more he misses his mom.  And the more he misses his mom, the more he realizes that more and more boys and girls are showing up without any moms or dads.  Just like him, and the older boy that has to get shots every day, with the broad shoulders and the serious face and the sad eyes.

It takes him a while to figure out that the new boys and girls showing up coincides with him telling the men about his feelings.

He stops trying to use them after that.  Tells the men that he hasn’t felt anything in a long time.  That the images have faded.  No more view-finder pictures on the backs of his eyelids.

They take away his lab soon after.  Make him do grunt work.  Washing out the trays of the test subjects and mopping the floors and listening to the other children scream as they’re forced to take their strange medicine day after day after day.

The night Xavier tells him that he will still help him figure out what happened to his mom, even though his feelings aren’t working anymore, he cries and promises himself he’ll never use them again. 

Only bad things ever happen when he gets a feeling.

He still doesn’t know what happened to his mom.  Where she disappeared to, or if she’s even still alive.  But he has a new family now, and they like his science, and they don’t ask him to do bad things, and he thinks maybe this is where he belongs.

But there’s a tingle at the base of his skull. 

A temptation.

It calls to him.

It’s been so long since he closed his eyes and opened his mind and let himself feel things in his gut – or sometimes in his groin, but maybe that’s only when it’s Doc – and side-stepped the future.

It would be so easy to never get rained on and always find the best parking space and avoid Lonnie spilling coffee all over him in the break room.

Besides.  He could use it for good now, right?  To help his friends, instead of stealing boys and girls from their families and condemning them to a life of poking and prodding – and worse – in a Black Badge laboratory. 

It calls to him and calls to him and calls to him, and eventually he decides to give it a try.

What’s the worst that could happen?

He can’t see the future.

Not really.

That would be too easy.

He only gets a feeling.  And sometimes, if he’s extremely unlucky, he suffers through a vision to accompany it.

Wynonna giving birth to a beautiful baby girl, only to have it torn from her arms minutes after.  Doc, standing in the fire, surrounded by flames, Wyatt sneering down at him from above.  A desperate betrayal by an ally, a web of secrets that splinters a bond, a catastrophic breakdown born of jealousy. 

Bulshar rising, intent on taking a new bride, his friends – family – bloody and broken in the wake of battle.

The images come, one right after another now, a continuous loop in his vision, mindful of neither wakefulness nor sleep.  Doomed to watch the fates of the ones he loves over and over and over again.

This is his burden.  His curse.  His penance for allowing himself to be seduced by the power he’d once forsworn.

…I hear the devil callin’ me back home.

iii. and no rivers and no lakes can put the fire out

I hear the devil callin’ me back…

Freedom.

It’s a nice concept, but more often than not, true freedom is merely an illusion.

He’s no exception.

One of his favorite things in the world is when his mother reads to him before bed.  He plays with his friends after school, conquering the monkey bars while they cheer him on under the blazing Arizona sun, and he watches football with this dad, yelling at the Cowboys every chance they get, but nothing quite measures up to story time, tucked up under his mama’s arm while they visit all manner of fantastical worlds together.

Sometimes he’s a spaceman, flying a ship with powerful blasters to keep the aliens away from his planet.  Sometimes he’s a pirate, sailing the seas in search of chests full of treasure.  Sometimes he’s a soldier, sometimes he’s a wizard, sometimes he’s a superhero.

But his favorite of all are the ones with the dragons.

He tells his mama that he’s going to be a knight when he grows up, with a noble steed and shiny armor and a giant sword.  Tells her he’s going to be the bravest in all the land and slay the fire-breathing dragon and save the princess.

She grins and kisses the top of his head and tells him he’s already the knight of her heart.

The next time he opens his eyes, he doesn’t know where he is, but there are men in black uniforms with big guns, and men in white coats with big needles, and there’s something pounding inside his head that feels like it’s trying to get out.  He closes his eyes again and tells himself he’s just having a nightmare about one of the stories his mama read to him, but no matter how hard he tries, he never does wake up.

He misses his friends and he misses his dad, but most of all, he misses his mama and her soft smile when she tucked him in at night.  He meets another girl – Eliza, she tells him – that doesn’t know how she got there either, and every time they stab him with one of the needles, he imagines it’s a sword, and that he’s eventually going to steal it so he can rescue this new princess.

There’s a different color medicine in the syringe one day, and when their eyes turn yellow while they tear the furniture in the room to shreds, they’re both terrified afterward when they see what they’ve done.  But the men in the white coats are excited, scribbling in their notebooks, lining the bottles of purple liquid up next to the blue ones that are already on their shelves.

They give him a uniform and teach him how to fight and his dream of becoming a knight falls by the wayside when he realizes he’s in the story about the soldier instead.  They continue to give him the shots every day, telling him that it will make him strong and fast and able to help people.

He supposes that’s not so bad.  He always did want to help people.

Several years later, he meets another boy.  He’s younger and smaller and wears a white coat to work in the lab like the other men, but he misses his mom, too.  He likes it when Jeremy is the one to give him his shots for the day, and later, when the men become angry with Jeremy and kick him out of the lab, he claps one of his large hands down on his shoulder and promises he’ll still help him find his mom someday.

There are days when he wishes he could go back home, but they’ve told him that would only put his mama in danger, and he’s grown big and strong and important, so one of the women that the other men are afraid of gives him missions to go out and fight more things that he used to think only existed in bedtime stories. 

It feels good, this power inside him, when he can use it to help keep innocent people safe.

It feels good, and the more he uses it, the more it calls to him.

When he’s old enough, he joins the Army, because the severe woman’s husband runs a special unit that fights monsters in other countries, and for a moment, he feels like the champion of his mama’s story again.  They’re good at what they do, striking in secret and protecting the world from an evil it doesn’t even know exists, but eventually they come up against something that is bigger and badder than all of them put together.

They manage to temporarily banish it, but four people die in the process, and he begins to question this thing they put inside him all those years ago.

He leaves the Army after that, and the grieving agent gives him a gun and a badge and sends him off to bumfuck nowhere to study 150-year-old demons.

Nothing goes the way he imagines it will. 

He’s loyal to Black Badge, but Wynonna inspires a certain kind of loyalty, too, and for a time, he’s torn about what to do.  On the one hand, Black Badge has taken down countless monsters and given him the power to protect people.  On the other hand, the Earps are flawed, but passionate, and he’s reminded of the altruistic heroes his mama loved.

Maybe cold and calculated isn’t the right way to go about saving the world after all.

The lower he gets on his medicine, the more the power calls to him, and with every twitch of his jaw, he fights the desire to let it out and handle things the old-fashioned way.

Black Badge eventually shows its true colors, but then it’s gone, and he finds himself part of a family now, for the first time since he was cheering for the Cardinals with his dad and reading stories with his mama.

He’s free.

After years of experiments and training, and two tours in the sand, and orders to betray his friends – his family – now he’s free.

Even the beast has been tamed.

No more selling his soul for a means to keep it caged.  Thanks to Doc and Rosita and Jeremy, he now holds the keys in his own hands.  Keys that keep it locked away, and keys that let it out to stretch its wings when he deems it necessary to harness the power in order to help the ones he loves.

It’s the kind of freedom he’s always dreamed of.

At least he thought it was.

There are days when the power boils just beneath the surface, but surely his blood will settle once he has a tighter grip on his control.  It’s an exercise in patience and discipline and determination, and if his unconventional upbringing has given him anything, it’s given him that in spades.

So he sets his jaw – more severely than usual – and he grinds his teeth against the urges, and he wills it back into the cage formed by his ribs, ignoring the way it rattles the bars, the noise echoing through his skull like it did when he was small and the beast was new.

And it works.

He walks a little more stiffly than he used to – and that’s saying something – but he holds his head high, his shoulders no longer sagging beneath the weight of his sins and his bargains and his secrets, and he moves forward as a free man.

It works.

Until it doesn’t.

Until he sees Wynonna struggling, slowly falling to pieces, but before he can reach out to comfort her, Doc is there, wrapping an arm around her to hold the pieces in place, and he can smell sulfur in the air, settling in his lungs until they turn black under the strain of breathing.

He feels the pull in his chest, reminding him of what still lives there. 

He ignores it.

Until she turns away awkwardly from his embrace, settling instead for a clumsy high-five and a pat on the back because she’s still too broken and not ready for anything yet, but later that evening, Doc’s hand rests easily on her waist as he leads her to the other side of the bonfire, where they sit whispering quietly in the shadows of the dancing flames, and he can taste the ash on his tongue, nearly choking on it as it clogs his throat.

The beast raises its head, licking its chops. 

He shoves it back down.

Until the walls she builds get higher and higher, but he eventually discovers that her whiskey bottle isn’t the only thing she’s been falling into when he goes to search for something in the barn and finds she’s also fallen into Doc’s bed, and he can see the cinders floating around him, sparks in a powder keg of his own making.

The power calls to him, a siren’s serenade that makes his blood sing. 

It seeps into his bones, igniting his marrow and making him burn.

He’d forgotten how much he loves this song.

He doesn’t realize he’s given in until the night he wakes up in a crater of scorched earth in the middle of a field, his tattered clothes hanging off of him in shreds, his hair singed and his body covered in soot.  He lies in the ash, staring up at the night sky, scoffing as his breath curls above him, puffs of smoke from his nostrils like the dragons in the stories his mama used to read him at bedtime.

He was never going to be the knight.  He was always going to be the dragon.

Jealousy isn’t the only monster that lives inside him, and the beast has been calling to him all this time. 

That’s when realizes he was never free.  He’s been a prisoner of his own hubris, lulled into complacency while it slowly gathered its strength.

His freedom is as much an illusion as his control over it ever was.

…I hear the devil callin’ me back home.

 iv. i’m gonna raise the stakes

I hear the devil callin’ me back…

Family has never been her strong suit.

Being raised in a commune tends to have that effect on people.  Familial love and unity are secondary to what role you play in the larger picture.  What purpose you serve to the Master.  Just another cog in the wheel.

It’s difficult for her to find a sense of self-worth when everything is tied to how useful she can be to someone else.

She’s never really felt like she belonged, like she never quite fit, but when she’s a little older, she starts to discover some of the other ways that she’s truly different.

Her friends are all giggling, watching the boys do their chores across the compound and whispering about which ones would make quality mates for producing strong children to serve the Master.  She doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about, but she feels her face flush every time one of the girls touches her arm or leans in close to whisper in her ear.

It takes her a while to understand what’s happening, but when she finally does, it’s both exciting and also confusing.

She eventually tells her parents – or more like the adults she happens to live with – and she’s promptly locked in an isolation room for a month for shaming their name and jeopardizing their standing in the ranks with her blasphemous words.

It’s terrifying when it happens, but thirty days is a long time to think, and she quickly moves from scared to angry, and then finally to calculated.  When they eventually let her out, it takes her less than a week to shove everything she owns – which amounts to little more than a few sets of clothes and a dog-eared copy of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe no one knows she has that she keeps hidden between her mattress and the wall and reads by flashlight at night when her parents are having weird meetings – into a pillowcase and find a chance to climb over the wall and disappear into the world beyond.

She’s not sure what she’s expecting – a hellfire and brimstone dystopia or the magical land of Narnia – but what she finds is a noisy city with tall buildings and cars everywhere and so many people.

She doesn’t know anyone and she doesn’t have any money for food, and every time she tries to rest, someone comes along and tells her she can’t sleep there, until a nice old woman in the park buys her a sandwich and some hot chocolate and gives her a flyer with a logo of hands holding a heart and an address in rainbow lettering printed on it.

It’s not easy to find since she doesn’t know where anything is, but she’s smart – she’s always been smart – and she eventually finds a building with the same heart-holding hands on the sign and discovers it is a shelter for people like her with no place to stay.  They give her a hot meal and a cot to sleep on and a clunky phone in case of emergencies and a list of chores to help out around the place.

Chores are something she understands.  She likes chores.  She’s good at them.  She sweeps the floors and folds the blankets and helps serve the food in the dinner line, and for the first time in her life, she starts to feel like she belongs.

A pretty girl with dark hair and bright eyes shows her how to use the computer at the library, and when she ducks her head with a shy thank you, it earns her a kiss on the cheek and a number scrawled across the back of her hand with the name Val and a little heart.

She visits the library every day after that, spending time with the computer and the pretty girl.  She learns that the place where she lived is called a “cult,” and that it’s dangerous, and later that night when she’s in her cot, she clutches her book tightly to her chest and thinks about how glad she is that she left when she did.

Her daily chores become a comforting routine, and she makes friends with a boy named Nathan who tells her stories that make her laugh and teaches her about all the things they didn’t have at the compound, and the shelter begins to feel like home, and she starts to wonder if this is what a family is supposed to feel like.

But family has never been her strong suit, and that’s not the way her luck works, and halfway through the summer, the shelter gets news that their funding has run out and they’ll have to shut down soon.

She’s devastated as her tentative new feeling of belonging slips through her fingers, and she spends long hours in the library trying to figure out what she’s going to do next.  She’s new to the internet, but she finds that she has a knack for investigation, her ever-inquisitive mind easily following leads and turning the pieces until they click into place, and Val squeezes her hand tightly when she discovers that her so-called father has a step-sister that lives in a city called Calgary.

The summer draws to a close, and so do the doors of the shelter, and the next thing she knows, Mrs. Dray – the nice old lady from the park that comes to the shelter sometimes to help the younger kids learn how to read and the older kids learn how to handle money – has taken the information scribbled on the piece of paper from the library, made a bunch of phone calls, and put her on a bus with a pocket full of money and a backpack full of clothes and a brown paper sack full of snacks.

For the second time in a matter of months, she’s leaving behind what little family she’s ever had and setting out in search of a new one.

Her new aunt – why don’t you just call me Linda for now, okay? – is nice enough, but things are awkward in the quiet little neighborhood.  They live in a house that isn’t particularly fancy, but it’s clean and orderly and everything has its place. 

Everything except her.

She has a cousin that’s a little older than her who shows her around the high school, but she doesn’t fit in with Hayley and her friends, either, and every day that passes just reminds her that she doesn’t really belong here, despite what the therapist in the fancy office keeps telling her every week.  She misses Nathan and Val and Mrs. Dray, and she wishes she had a family – a real family – like all of the other teenagers around her.

But family has never been her strong suit.

She’s left alone with her Aunt Linda when Hayley goes away to a big university, and things only get more awkward.  It’s still better than it was on the compound – far, far better – but no matter what she does, she still feels like a guest in her own home. 

 When she finishes school, she gets a job at the local animal shelter and uses the money to pay for night classes at the community college.  She doesn’t know much about this vast world she’s living in now, but she knows she’s good at figuring things out – like piecing together small scraps of information and following the thread until she found her father’s relative – and she knows she wants to help people.

It takes her a little longer than usual to finish school since she insists on paying for all of it herself, but she works hard and she gets excellent grades, and when she graduates with a degree in criminal justice, it’s probably the best day of her entire life. 

Until she gets accepted into the academy, that is.

She has a few months until classes begin, so for the first time in her life, she decides to do something for herself.  As a reward for her hard work.  To celebrate the end results of her persistence.  So she gets on a plane and goes to Las Vegas – it always looks so exciting every time she sees it on television or in the movies – and while she’s there, she meets a girl.  A beautiful girl.  A smart girl.  A girl who likes to climb rocks and who listens to her stories with a gleam in her eyes and who tastes like candy apple lip gloss when they kiss.

One thing leads to another, and they rush into things because she’s always been so alone, and it feels so good to have someone that wants her, and she thinks that maybe this is finally it.  What she’s been searching for.  A family and someone to love that loves her back.

But sometimes it’s true what they say.  Sometimes what happens in Vegas really does stay in Vegas. 

The rush of emotions wears off and the flame fizzles and they’re both left standing there with nothing but regret in their hands.  But neither of them really has anyone else, so even though they part ways, they do so with the understanding that now they at least have someone to speak for them if something were ever to go terribly wrong.  And having someone to talk to isn’t exactly the worst thing in the world, so they keep in touch, and it’s actually kind of nice.

Before long, the time has come, and she’s on her way to the academy.

Staying in the dorms is nice.  She doesn’t feel out of place there like she did at her aunt’s house, and she starts to make some friends – some real friends, not the pity friends she had at school or the kids that hung out with Hayley – for the first time since Nathan and Val.  She eats up everything the instructors have to offer, taking all of the elective courses she can, and it pays off in the biggest way when a gruff man with kind eyes shows up and offers her a chance at a future she never thought she’d ever get.

He warns her that Purgatory is small and kind of backwards and that she’ll be isolated from her family out there in the middle of nowhere, but family has never been her strong suit, so she jumps at the chance for a fresh start.

Things progress slowly at first, and she still feels like an outsider for a long time.  But she also meets Waverly, who makes her feel things she’s never felt before – not even with Shae – and even though she finds out that sometimes things from nightmares are occasionally real, she thinks the way her life has been turned upside down this time is far better than any of the other times it has happened so far.

Because family has never been her strong suit.  But now she has one.  A real one.  One where they risk their lives to keep each other safe.

And she learns that now that she has it, she’s apparently willing to do almost anything not to lose it.

It starts out small.  Sharing files with Wynonna on a confidential case.  But that can’t really be so bad, right?  Because she says she’s been deputized by Marshal Dolls, so technically she should have clearance.

Things go kind of haywire after that, though.  Kidnapping is definitely not the preferred outcome.  So she promises herself she’s going to be stricter with the rules in the future.

It works for a while.  She keeps herself in check and plays the part of the level-headed officer who values the rules and the right way of doing things.  But the desire not to lose this family now that she has it calls to her, and then she’s slipping again.

“I would shoot anyone for you.”

The words are out of her mouth before she even knows what she’s saying.  Which is bad enough in the first place, but what scares her even more is when she realizes how much she actually means it.  She had a gun pointed at Wynonna, for fuck’s sake.

She tries to slow down after that.  To get a grip on herself.  But Tucker is threatening innocent girls – threatening Waverly – and something deep down is calling to her again, and the next thing she knows, there’s a trace on his phone that lets her keep an eye on him any time she wants.

It works out in the end, because she had been right about him.  He was dangerous, and he’d taken a girl, and the only reason they’d saved her is because of what she’d done.  She tells herself that it was okay, that it was the right thing to do, but she can’t ignore the strange feeling in her chest every time she thinks about it.

She has to stop this.  To remember her oath.  To remember the kind of person she wants to be despite where she came from.  She tells herself that was the last time.  That she won’t cross a line ever again.

Except then Waverly is questioning herself, and all she wants to do is protect her.  The results are in, and she knows they are going to break Waverly’s heart, and she knows she should just give them to her anyway and help her through it by being at her side.  

But she can’t ignore that voice in her head that’s telling her to keep the secret. 

It calls to her and it calls to her and it calls to her. 

Because she needs this.  Needs this place where she fits in and this family where she belongs and this woman to love. 

So she makes the decision and hides the truth and she hopes that the shitstorm will pass them by.

Everything catches up to her eventually, though.  Waverly finds out and walks away from her and tells her not to follow.  She nearly loses everything that day – nearly loses her life shortly after – and even though they eventually make up, she can still feel that thing inside of her, waiting for its chance again.

She wonders how long it will take.  How long before it calls to her again, beckoning her to do its bidding under the pretense of keeping this family she’s finally found. 

She wonders how long she has before it ends up costing her everything she cares about.

Because family has never been her strong suit.  And she’s starting to believe it never will be.

…I hear the devil callin’ me back home.

 v. i’m gonna smoke you out

I hear the devil callin’ me back…

Darkness.

Most people can’t see it.  Would never believe it’s there, even if she told them about it.  All they can see is the sun, brilliant and dazzling and blinding.

But light always creates shadows, and sometimes, under the right – or perhaps wrong – circumstances, it’s hard to tell where the light ends and the darkness begins.

She’s carried it with her for as long as she can remember.  Shoved away in the farthest recesses of her heart and soul that she can reach, buried under layers of smile and wave and head cheerleader and Nicest Person in Purgatory.  But still, she knows it’s there.

It’s always there.

She tries to tell herself it’s not dangerous. 

It’s not malevolent or vicious or cruel.  She’s seen that kind of darkness before.  Felt it wrap its fingers around her throat and squeeze until she couldn’t breathe while she wobbled across the beam in the barn, one unsteady foot in front of the other.  Felt it flooding through her veins as she scrambled across the pond until the ice gave way, pulling her under into the freezing depths.

And it may be true.  It may not be malicious like the kind of darkness Willa had clung to until the day it had finally come for her, permanently claiming her as its own.

But that doesn’t make it any less dangerous.

Because this kind of darkness is slow and determined, gradually seeping into your bones until you feel hollow inside.  This kind of darkness is a cloak of isolation, shrouding you in shame and fear until you feel alone even when you’re standing in a crowd.  This kind of darkness is suffocating doubt, shadows rippling beneath the surface until you’re invisible, slowly fading from existence without anyone even noticing.

The danger is there, and it feeds and grows and consumes, until the darkness is all that’s left.

Nicole comes along, shining bright, a beacon of light and hope and love, and she lets herself believe, for a moment, that the darkness is finally gone for good.  That Nicole’s light has filled even her darkest corners with warmth and possibility, and she turns her face toward it like a plant searching for the sun, and she glows.

But then a new darkness comes, oily and thick and sticky like tar, and it paints her eyes with swirling blackness until it creeps into her mind and her heart and her soul.  It takes her thoughts and it takes her memories and it takes her control.  It takes and it takes and it takes, until there’s nothing left to take, and she feels like she’s drowning in the void.

They eventually expel it, crudely and violently and she wretches for days after, but still, it lingers, parts of her permanently stained, inky splotches that will never wash out.  Wisps of shadow have already taken hold, roots tangling through her ribs, blooming in her chest until they bleed into the old darkness, never truly gone, only lying dormant under Nicole’s watchful eye.

Hope had made her naïve, and she had been so wrong.

It’s always there.

Will always be there.

She tries to ignore it again. 

Like she did when she was little and she told herself every night that daddy loved her and mama was coming back home and her sisters wanted her around.  Like she did when she was older and she told herself every day that demons weren’t real and Wynonna would never leave her and Champ wasn’t under the bleachers with a different cheerleader every week while she was holed up in the library seeking comfort from the constant dependability of her books.

It works for a little while, because the world is happening at high speed around them and things temporarily become a blur.  Because Wynonna is pregnant and someone keeps putting them in a coma and the Widows are breaking the seals, and it takes all of her focus just to remain standing.

But in the quiet moments, when Nicole is already asleep, draped across her like a bonus blanket in the night, the darkness stretches across the floor and up the walls and under the covers until it caresses her cheek and whispers in her ear.

Wynonna won’t need you anymore after she has her own baby girl, and you’re not even her sister, and what if half of you is actually the monster she’s been hunting this entire time.

She tries to ignore it, but it’s calling to her.

It calls to her until she’s holding the proof in her hands.

And then she’s definitely not an Earp.  And then she’s kissing someone else.  And then she’s betraying the ones that trust her, until it almost costs them everything.

They make it out alive, but only just. 

But there is a big difference between alive and living.  Because Alice is safe, but she’s gone.  And Wynonna hopped on her bike and took off, like she always does.  And Doc is different, scared and angry and isolated. 

And Nicole.

Nicole is hovering, just around the edges.  Wanting to offer comfort, but not wanting to push.  Against all odds, Nicole’s light is still shining.

But she can’t bear to turn her face toward it anymore.   Instead she turns away, knowing it won’t do her any good now.

It hurts, the look on Nicole’s face when she begins to withdraw, but it’s for her own good.  If she doesn’t push Nicole away now, it will only snuff her light out, too, and she knows she can’t let that happen.

So she slinks away, back into the familiar shadows.  Back into the darkness where she has always felt like she belonged.

…I hear the devil callin’ me back home.

 vi. seven devils all around you

I hear the devil callin’ me back…

The Earps have always been his weakness.

He can’t explain how or why, but he feels like he’s always known, deep in his gut, that when death finally finds him, it will be at the behest of an Earp. 

It won’t be an Earp that pulls the trigger.  There are plenty of others vying for that position.  Enemies he’s gathered, so-called friends he’s betrayed.  Hell, he’s even willing to bet the universe itself has a place in that line.

No, it won’t be an Earp that pulls the trigger. 

It will be an Earp that serves as the bullet, ripping through his chest, tearing him open and leaving him to bleed until he has nothing left.

He knows it.  He feels it.  He believes it.

And yet…

He can’t seem to figure out how to walk away.  He’s tried.  So many times.  But no matter how far he gets, his feet always carry him back. 

Back to his downfall.  Back to his demise.  Back to his ruin.

Back to an Earp, calling him home.

The first time death comes, it’s almost the last.  Squeezing his lungs until he coughs and wheezes and tastes his own blood in his mouth.  He tries to hide it in his handkerchief, but the red spots grow and grow until it’s all he can think about it.  He chokes on his own gurgled laughter when he realizes it’s called consumption for more reasons than one.

Wyatt wants to drag him off on some new adventure to a place called Purgatory, but he knows death will steal his last breath long before they would ever reach their destination.  He tells Wyatt farewell, and knows it is the last time they will ever part.

He tries to outrun it. 

Runs away from the thought of dying in his bed, sick and alone.  Runs away from the thought of never seeing Wyatt again.

Death.  Fate.  Destiny.  He doesn’t even know what to call it, but whatever it is, it follows hot on his heels.

So he sits in a saloon, eyes puffy and red.  He wears his heart on his sleeve and his lungs on his handkerchief and he plays cards like he has nothing left to lose.

A mousy man in spectacles shows up, claiming Wyatt is in dire need of his help.  Begging him to ride to Purgatory.  Pleading with him to be the man that Wyatt knows and loves.  He sends him away with a threat, jealous that he’s already been replaced, even if he knows his time has run out.

But then she appears.

And she offers him things.  Things he knows no man should have.  She whispers promises of life and longevity and love, and he remembers the sorrow in Wyatt’s voice when he’d told him he would see him on the other side, and it calls to him. 

He slips the ring on his finger and waits to be reunited with the man who holds his heart.

Death comes again, not long after, furious that it had been robbed of its due.  It may not be able to take him in the way that it normally does, but he feels it just the same – or possibly worse – when the anger and disappointment and disgust flashes in his partner’s eyes.

When Wyatt walks out the door, his heart follows, and his chest aches in a different way than when he was fighting for air.

She appears again, laughing, and throws him in the bottom of a well, and he spends three lifetimes thinking about the very special brand of death he faced at the hands of an Earp.

But then a miracle happens, and somehow he finds his way out, crawling into the light after so long in the darkness.

The first thing he should do is run.

Run far away from this accursed place and find himself a quiet life somewhere wide open with no walls to close in on him and no witches to deceive him and no Earps to bring him to his knees.

Instead, the moment he is free, something calls to him, pulling at him like the strings of a marionette, and his feet carry him back to that same saloon, where he finds that same gun, and looks into those same blue eyes.

He curses and rails against it.  Makes other alliances.  All he wants is his revenge, and then he’ll leave it all behind for good; Purgatory and its curses and its Earps.

But the spectacled man isn’t mousy anymore and the witch is more powerful than ever and the Earp needs his help, and once again, he feels the earth crumble beneath his feet.

His heart has been missing all this time, since it walked out the door and never returned, but goddamn if he can’t feel it beating again for the first time in a century and a half.

It doesn’t last, though, because he gets his revenge, but he sees her gravitating towards Dolls, and he knows it’s only a matter of time until she sees him for what he really is and walks away for good. 

Another death hand-delivered by an Earp.

Not this time.

He tells himself he’s over it and that he’s changed and that he’ll just step aside and let her be happy.  He makes it all the way to the boundary line before a frustrating old man with a cryptic message sets him on a new path – by way of a little punishment first – and he finds himself back at Wynonna’s side, called there by the danger his feet seemed to know she was in.

The whole town goes to hell, and they barely make it out, but not before something else makes its way in, and that is another war altogether, but they eventually come out the other side with everyone still accounted for.

Or rather, more than accounted for, as it seems their number has now increased with an extra addition among them.

It scares the hell out of him – the literal, actual hell – and he thinks about running again.  From the burden and the responsibility and the potential of failing yet another Earp in his endless lifetime.

But it calls to him, this thing that he’s a part of now, and he lets himself wonder if maybe this is it.  Maybe this is his redemption.  His salvation.  Maybe this is how he stops the cycle, and for whatever it’s worth, he scrawls the words across the paper and seals his own fate.

I am all in.

As if he had any other choice.  As if he could ever walk away from an Earp.  As if it would not call to him and call to him and call to him until his feet carried him back to this place once again.

Things move in a blur after that.  Wynonna is gone and he’s back in the well and then he’s out again, but in a world that’s not real. 

Unfortunately for him, the bullet is real, though.

And so is the hell that follows.

Death comes calling again, and gleefully latches on to the loophole granted by the Iron Witch’s spell.

It’s not an Earp that pulls the trigger, but it’s certainly an Earp that got him into this mess in the first place.

He never feared hell before.  Always thought he’d already been living it.  Dying since the age of fourteen, losing Wyatt, years and years and years of solitary darkness.  There was no possible way things could ever get worse than what he already knew.

He’s never been so wrong in his unnaturally long life.

Hellfire and brimstone.  Torturous flames licking at his skin, leaving blisters in their wake.  Never has he wished for the cold damp of the well like he is now, but it never comes.  Only Wyatt’s face swimming before him, calling him a coward and an abomination and a memory that he surely hopes to forget.

This time when he feels the call of an Earp, he can’t follow it fast enough.

He’s discombobulated upon his return, struggling to reconcile his new surroundings with reality, but then Dolls appears and sets him straight and he doesn’t have time to process what just happened because they’re off to face a bigger threat.

They do what they can, but it’s not enough.

It’s never enough.

She’s beautiful.  Delicate and dainty in blue.  Strong and innocent and pure.

Everything that he’s not.

And once again, he watches his heart walk away in the hands of an Earp.  Watches it disappear into the sky until it fades completely and all he has left is an empty ache that leaves him numb.

He hears death’s laughter in the whirring of the blades as they dull to a soft thump in the distance.  Knows it has scratched another tally mark in his column.  He may have denied death from taking him the first time, but it has gotten its revenge, over and over and over again.

He’s lost everything.  His immortality and his family and, after that little stint in hell, he’s even lost the promise of being reunited with Wyatt again someday.

He has nothing left, and if he was smart, he would leave this place and never look back.

But then Wynonna is there, making plans to take on the devil himself and making promises to break the curse so they can get their baby girl back and making pleas for him to stand next to her in the fight, and he knows. 

He knows.

He’s trapped here every bit as much as any of demons that hunt them.

Because the Earps have always been his weakness.

…I hear the devil callin’ me back home.

vii. seven devils in my house

I hear the devil callin’ me back…

She’s always been a failure.

It’s in her blood.

Carrying a curse isn’t the only thing that runs in her family.  Wyatt managed to put down the demon twins, but he failed to kill Sheriff Clootie.  Josiah managed to help with the early version of the Black Badge Division, but he failed to keep Teddy Roosevelt from using it for his own personal purposes.  Edwin managed to put down more of the Revenants than anyone else, but he failed to evade The Seven’s hunting party, still unable to complete his duty.

And Ward…  Well.  Ward failed at being a father.  Failed at being the Heir.  Hell, he even failed at making a deal with the devil to sell out everything they stood for.

It’s really no surprise that she follows in their footsteps.

She can’t keep her daddy from drinking, and she can’t keep her mama from leaving.  She can’t keep Willa from getting taken, and she can’t keep the barrel of the gun straight enough when she shoots at the monsters.

Even when she tells the truth about what happened – about the demons that came and took everything, leaving only the blood of her father on her hands – all it does is land her in the psychiatric ward until she learns to play their game.

It doesn’t take her long after that for her to figure out that telling the truth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and she begins to live a carefully constructed lie, which people believe easily because everybody loves a good scandal so long as it doesn’t affect them.

Pretending like she doesn’t give a fuck is so much easier than the alternative, because letting herself feel something – anything – only leads to pain, and she’s already had enough of that to last her ten lifetimes.

So she lets herself get into trouble just for the shits and giggles of it, because it helps bolster the lie she’s selling, but she doesn’t mean for it to lead to real trouble when the man that’s supposed to be helping her stay in line turns out to be Purgatory’s own Walter White.  She lands in juvie for real this time, and she can’t even tell the truth because she’s forced to protect him, and it turns out to be the last straw with Gus and Curtis.

It’s not like she’s really surprised, though.  Because failing is what she does.

She sticks around for as long as she can after that.  The years are filled with a biker gang full of Banditos, and an alter-ego named Aphrodite, and a string of B&Es involving the Bleekers, but she’s there.  She tells herself it’s for Waverly – because Waverly needs her; because Waverly can’t lose another sister – but deep down, she half wonders if anyone will ever see through the mask she’s been wearing for almost twelve years.

When Waverly blows off her own graduation – her Valedictorian speech – to watch Champ fucking Hardy play video games, she knows it’s time to go.  As much as she’s tried to keep her distance, she’s still clearly proving to be a bad influence on her sister, and this family doesn’t need more than one failure at a time.  So Aphrodite works extra shifts for two weeks straight to save up enough tips for a bus ticket out of town, and then she’s gone.

For three years, she runs from it.  All of it.  Her name.  Her past.  Her demons, both figurative and literal.  She drinks her way through Europe, falling into a different bed every night, and tells herself it’s better this way. 

There are moments when she almost forgets. 

Almost forgets Willa’s screams, and the shot from Peacemaker ringing out like a crack of thunder in the night.  Almost forgets the doctors in their white coats, and the group of older girls from her juvie wing that beat her up every night for her chocolate pudding cup so they can use it as currency.  Almost forgets the look in Gus and Curtis’s eyes when they tell her she’ll be staying with foster families from now on, and the waiver in Waverly’s voice the first time she calls after she realizes that her sister isn’t coming back.

Almost forgets what a failure she is.

But it’s in her blood, and when she’s at her most vulnerable, it calls to her.

At first, it comes in the form of an e-mail from Curtis.  They’ve caught up with me.  The irony of that statement isn’t lost on her, but still, she finds herself on a bus in the middle of nowhere, just the same.

It’s too late for Curtis, but that’s only the beginning.  The failure in her blood calls to her, and she racks them up one by one after that, so fast it makes her head spin.  She fails to save Shorty, delivering the killing blow herself, which is becoming a pattern she could definitely do without.  She fails to save Suzie Novak, even though she’s standing right in front of her with Peacemaker at the ready.  She fails to keep Nicole from getting taken and left for dead.  She fails to keep Bobo from taking over Shorty’s.  She fails to be what both Doc and Dolls are looking for.  She fails to notice the biggest thing happening in Waverly’s life.

And Willa.

She continues to fail Willa over and over and over again.

No matter what she does, it calls to her the loudest when Willa is involved, and she’s helpless to resist, falling under its spell as easily as she falls into a lover’s bed.

The next thing she knows, she’s pleading with Willa down the barrel of Peacemaker, and then she watches herself pull the trigger – it happens in slow motion, like she’s floating under the crystal blue waves on a beach in Athens again – and for the third time in her life, she fires the shot that kills someone she loves.

The blow it delivers is so strong it brings her to her knees, and it’s weeks before she can stand again.

There’s no time to recover, though, because failure is a jealous mistress, and her dance card is already filled with it.

It reaches new heights, in ways that she never even dreamed were possible.

They rescued Dolls, but now he’s missing, and there is nothing she can do to save him.  Doc is pushing her away, because even a man with his heart in his hands eventually needs to feel some dignity again.  There are new evils in town – some worse than others – and she feels like the answers they’re searching for are constantly just out of reach.

And Waverly. 

Something is wrong with Waverly – really wrong – and she’s too jealous of Nicole to notice until it’s too late. 

But even that pales in comparison to the revelation they’re about to discover.

Fate is cruel, and determined for her to pay for her failures, and because they live on a fucking Hellmouth, she doesn’t even get a choice in the matter.

She’s not expecting for her ragtag family to close ranks the way they do in the coming days.

Nicole’s support is unwavering, first keeping her secret, and then later being the only one she can trust with the most important decision she’ll ever have to make.  Waverly does all of the research she could ever ask for and then some.  Jeremy is excited beyond words, talking about names every chance he gets.  Dolls is awkward at first due to the circumstances, but even he comes around, making sure she never misses an appointment.

And Doc is the most surprising of all.

Because against the overwhelming odds, he is all in.

For a brief moment, beyond all reason, she begins to feel like this might be a fresh start for her.  Like maybe she can set all of her failures aside and actually do things right.  Like maybe this is her one chance to prove that she is better than her name and her blood and her legacy.

But she is an Earp, and failure is in her blood, and it’s the real curse she’s doomed to repeat over and over until the day she dies. 

Maybe even after, she thinks as she watches the heartbeat blip on the screen at the doctor’s office.

The failure calls to her when she realizes that it might not be Doc’s baby, but possibly the spawn of a Revenant instead.  It calls to her when she learns that even her own sister couldn’t trust her enough to save Nicole in time.  It calls to her when she’s erased from existence, helpless to stop the final seal from being broken. 

It calls to her when she learns that the Widows have released their husband and promised him her child as an offering.  It calls to her when she discovers they only have enough ammunition for one shot, and then she has to use it before they can even reach Bulshar.

It calls to her when she’s desperate and vulnerable on a pool table in Shorty’s, only to end up betrayed by a woman she was trying to learn how to trust.  It calls to her when she has to hand over her daughter mere minutes after she’s born, preparing for the horde of demons she knows are already on the way to her doorstep as she pleads with Waverly to believe that she’ll always be her sister, no matter what.

It calls to her when she sees the helicopter fly over the streets of Purgatory, knowing that she may never see Alice Michelle again.

It calls to her and it calls to her and it calls to her.

Because, above all, there’s one thing she’s learned in her life.

Failure is the one thing at which she never fails.

…I hear the devil callin’ me back home

i'll be dead before the day is done