you did your worst, you tried your best

[pacificator]

Who: Wynonna Earp & others

What: October catchall for closed & open starters

When: Throughout October

Where: Multiple locations 

 

Content Warnings: General Wynonna warnings of alcoholism, mentions of past traumas and violence including accidental patricide and child abduction, others tbd. She's so very fine, y'all.

 

 

Comments

[pacificator]

[ She doesn't look up at him for a long moment, her glance still dropped to her hands, but her brow puckers and smooths and twitches into a frown again, her lips pressing together and her throat working. You were enough.

She's never been enough. Not for anyone, not for anything. The only reason Dolls cares is because of Black Badge. The only reason Doc stays is for Wyatt and his own revenge. Even Waverly — who is maybe the only person in any world who loves her completely, without reservation and without apology — thinks she shouldn't have been the Heir. She was never meant for any of this. You are enough.

But maybe only Edward Little, who has his own worries and sorrows and regrets, can understand it. Maybe only he really knows how much it means to have someone, anyone — but especially someone whose good opinion, whose respect, for whatever reason, she craves — say those words. To tell her she's enough. That he's grateful for her. And not just then, when she'd tried so hard to save his life, but now. He wanted her to come in. He wanted her to stay. He'd said please, like he knows exactly how much she's always needed someone to wish she were around. To want her nearby.

Her throat is tight, and it aches, the way it does when tears collect behind her eyes. She doesn't cry much, never has, and has swallowed it down time and time again here; it's too cold, and tears won't make anything easier. But Little's sincerity, the way he opens his heart to her like he can't imagine her simply taking aim at his most vulnerable point, tugs, as it so often does, at her own softer feelings, the ones she stows as deeply and distantly as she can.

She doesn't cry now. There's small curve to her lips when she looks over at him, taking in the way he watches her. ]

Bet you never could have imagined saying that to me when we first met.

[ But the teasing tilt to her lips and in her glance fades after a moment. Right now, despite all the ways they're different, he reminds her of Doc, who so often flummoxed her with sudden and wholehearted sincerity. He feels... stronger when she's around? She's the biggest fuck-up Purgatory has ever seen, and it's not like she's going to win any 'most helpful person' sashes here. But he means it, and because he means it, something in her own head and chest slips into place, a realization clicking like a seat belt.

It's not like with March, who makes her feel like all he ever wants her to be is herself, the best parts and the worst. She thinks Little does like her for her, now that they know each other, now that they've spent a year in and out of one another's company, but being with him makes her wish she were the person he sees in her. The person he believes her to be. He's helped her navigate her way through the thorny paths of her own thoughts, the waiting traps of her self-loathing.

And, in his own gentle way, he bolsters her. Supports her. If he were to be ripped away, she thinks she'd lose her balance all over again. ]

You make me stronger, too.

[ Certainly her fury and heartbreak at seeing him fall had sent her into a murderous frenzy, and she's pretty sure she could have taken out almost any number of Forest Talkers. But it's not just that, is it? It's this. He makes it safe for her to say things like this, to bare her own heart — warily, and only a sliver at a time — to him in return. He lends her a different, quieter kind of strength. ]

You're... important. To me.

[ That feels like far too much, and not nearly enough, but her eyes and mouth are still soft, lacking most of their usual edge, as she looks at him over her shoulder. ]

I'm really glad you're okay.