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Her mom flees Purgatory as soon as she discovers she's pregnant. She runs far, far away and hopes to God it's far enough that even if one day he finds a way out of the Ghost River Triangle he won't find them.
She marries a good man and gives her daughter a nice life, raises her to be good and strong, teaches her to be kind and soft.
She names her Nicole.
Eventually, Nicole finds her way back to where she came from, and her mother realizes broken-heartedly that you can take the girl out of Purgatory, but you can never take Purgatory out of the girl.
Nicole's mother thinks it's her curse; Nicole thinks it's her legacy. Neither of them is wrong.
She gets the tests as soon as she's eighteen and they confirm what the dimples in her cheeks already told her: the man who raised her isn't her biological father.
When she's eight her mother mentions a city named Purgatory; when she's twenty-five their Sheriff tries hard to recruit her and Nicole knows in her heart that it has to be a sign. Being a Deputy allows her to research about her father, to look from what her mother always seems close to tell her but never eventually finds the courage to share; Nicole sees something in her mother's eyes when she asks about it at eighteen that makes her think she should never ask again.
She likes it there. The people are nice, her colleagues are fine and every store in town sells booze. It's even nice enough that she gets kidnapped and doesn't immediately run for the hills. She discovers the entire city is flooded with demons and still doesn't run for the hills. There's something about Purgatory that just feels right to her. That feels like home to her.
Her mother says it on the phone and she understands what it means in a way she couldn't when she was eight. You can take the girl out of Purgatory. But you can never take Purgatory out of the girl.
Something inside Nicole has been asleep away from the Ghost River Triangle.
Something has been scratching at her chest from the inside, begging to be noticed, begging to be freed. Nicole hears it scream the first time she sees a Revenant's eyes turn red and black. She wants to hear the words “this crazy shit is scary but it's not going to drive you insane”, but that's not what the voice inside her says. It says: “this is where you're headed, this is what you're here for” and it sits wrong with her for a number of largely problematic reasons, not least the fact that the voice doesn't seem scared and she doesn't feel scared. The voice inside her sounds content and it's the wrong place to be feeling like it all makes sense.
“We started a new species. We're the new Adam and Eve,” Jonas says, but he also says there are rumors. That it happened before.
Nicole knows. She thinks maybe, deep down, she has always known. But it still surprises her and shakes her in a way that leaves her breathless. She doesn't know how to say it out loud, she can't even begin to imagine which words she should pick first or foremost.
She calls her mom and listens as she talks about the weather and the family. On the first chance she gets, when her mother pauses, she interjects.
“Did you know what he was?” Nicole asks.
The pause that follows is long. Nicole checks to see if the line dropped, but the call is still running. She searches for a way to clarify without sounding crazy in case her mother doesn't know about demons and Revenants and curses, but she doesn't get the chance.
“We were in love. We never thought it would be possible, for a child to be conceived.”
It's what she dreaded most to hear, but once she has, she can't unlearn it. The words play and replay in her head for days.
Nicole feels lost, she feels home, she feels lost again, like a switch inside her is being flicked on and off randomly by a noisy, curious child. Or most likely, one half of her is trying to control the other. Her problem is that she's not entirely sure which one is going to prevail.
You can take the girl away from her Revenant father. You can raise her to be good and strong and kind and soft; you can give her a nice home and a different surname. You can even hope she never finds out, you can try to forget it yourself, until you convince yourself that maybe you just imagined it all, that demons can't be real. That, even if they are, she isn't one because she's good and strong, kind and soft.
But no matter what you do, you can never take the Revenant father away from within the girl. It lives inside her, it heaves her bones.
Nicole Haught is special. Unique. A race of her own.
The hybrid they are looking for is hiding in plain sight. They look for shades of red and black in someone's eyes and Nicole doesn't know how to tell them there won't be any.
The baby, the Earp baby, she thinks, will be like her. She will have someone to share this fate with. She won't be alone forever, she hopes.
How wrong she is.
It's Doc's. They don't know that and they don't have the time to find out, they need to take the baby somewhere nobody would think to look for them, somewhere the little Earp can be safe for many, many years. For twenty-two years to be specific.
Wynonna takes her to 1995 and puts her own daughter in her mother's arms, says: “Protect her until I can do it myself.”
The Earps raise the baby as their own, even let little Wynonna choose the name.
Bobo never sees the woman pregnant and he just assumes Waverly Earp, his guardian angel, isn't an Earp at all. He remembers the rumors, an hybrid baby being born, and he knows his angel is special. He looks for darkness in her and sees it, he sees shades of a parent's immortality, time passing the wrong way, in her. She must be the hybrid, then. He makes sure Waverly thinks so, too.
Wynonna works it out, they do more tests, Waverly discovers her heritage. She looks relieved and happy and like finally, finally, she believes she belongs, she believes she's an Earp.
Nicole looks at the sociopath, egomaniacal, evil man who wears a furry coat unironically and for the first time she sees, under all the weirdly dyed facial hair, the dimples in his cheeks. She feels like dying, or at the very least vomiting.
How can she ever look at Waverly again after all he did to the Earps? How can she ever look at herself again?
“Officer Haught.”
“Bobo del Rey.”
Nicole isn't afraid of him and she can see it bothers him in a way he doesn't understand.
“You came here thinking I wouldn't kill you. My pledge to protect Waverly doesn't apply to friends.”
Nicole almost dares him. Almost tells him “Shoot me and see if I care,” but she honestly doesn't doubt he would.
“The hybrid. Do you know who they are?”
“Why would i tell you if I did?”
Nicole hums. He doesn't know.
“Do you know who the Revevant was? The father-”
“I'm not the kind of man who shares that kind of knowledge.”
“This time, you would if you did,” it slips out before she can catch herself.
Bobo's eyes sparkle just a little. He understands she knows. He also understand she's not going to share with him.
He lets her go and shows up to the Homestead two nights later with a smile that Nicole is starting to hate, tries to touch Waverly's cheek from across the fence before Nicole steps between them.
“Don't force me to kill you, little girl.”
“Don't force me to cut off your hand, old man.”
Nicole stands her ground. Waverly pulls her arm and tries to get her to step back.
“I'll make you a deal,” he offers.
“We don't make deals with demons,” Waverly pulls harder when she speaks.
“I'll never ever come here again. Never even look at Waverly again. If you tell me who the hybrid is.” Something flashes in Waverly's eyes. “Oh, don't tell me your girlfriend didn't know, Officer Haught, that you know much more than you're given credit for,” he smiles again and Nicole feels the coldness of his smile right into her heart.
A second later Wynonna is beside them, Peacemaker pointed at him. He disappears before she gets to shoot. Waverly doesn't ask, because Wynonna is there.
Nicole gets into her car and drives away, she bids her time, she looks for words that won't come.
She's at Shorty's, talking to Doc, when Bobo strolls in with two of his minions. Doc points his gun at him but he doesn't falter, he walks to her, takes her face in his hands, looks deep into her eyes. Time never passed as slow, it feels like he searches forever. Whatever he's looking for, he eventually finds it there.
“Used to think you were a boring cop. You're not boring.”
The whisper in her ear makes her close her eyes to keep the angry tears from falling, she shoves him off, points her own gun at him.
“You wouldn't.”
“Leave right now or I swear I will.”
“You wouldn't shot your own fath-” the shot rings in their ears before he even finished the sentence.
Nicole knows she can't kill him, but she can make him leave and right now that's going to have to be enough.
“There's not a single boring thing about you,” Bobo confirms, almost proud, almost in awe.
Nicole hates the feeling. Hates the look in his eyes. Hates him.
Doc pretend he hasn't heard a thing.
She walks into Black Badge with Doc on her heels and, to hell with it, if Dolls wants to charge her with treason and have her executed she wouldn't care that much. She walks right up to Wynonna, like the rest of the room it's empty – it's not, Dolls and Waverly are there. Nicole is beyond the point of giving a damn.
“I need a favor.”
“Anything-”
“Shoot me.”
“-but that. Anything else but that. An Earp already shot you, don't feel like Waves would like to see that again.”
“Willa didn't shoot me with Peacemaker.”
The implication is clear: she thinks the gun would work on her. The silence settles. Nicole waits but she knows once the doubt is planted Wynonna would want to verify what happens as much as she does. She unhostlers her gun. Points it at Nicole's chest.
They wait and wait and nothing happens.
“Well, after the way you walked in this was very anti-climatic,” Wynonna snorts.
Nicole snatches the gun from her hand and waits for the pain she is sure is about to come.
“Are you done now?” Wynonna snatches the gun back, then looks at her waiting for an explanation.
Where does she even start? Her mother being from Purgatory, falling in love with a Revenant, fleeing when she got pregnant? Why she took the job there? All the things she has uncovered looking for answers? It all matters to her but isn't enough. So she leads big and hopes nobody asks her to say anything else.
“Bobo del Rey is my father. I'm the hybrid.”
Nicole came to Purgatory looking for answers and a legacy.
Now she has to live with the fact that this is her legacy.
You can take the girl away from the Revenant. You can't take the Revenant away from within the girl.
Waverly watches her for days, catches her helping an old man with his groceries bags, helping a child rescue his cat from a tree, helping a woman get to the doctor in her cruiser without having to walk all the way through town. Waverly watches that dimpled smile, the sparkly eyes and the kind heart of the woman she knows as if she expects to see a change, once the words are uttered.
The change doesn't come.
The darkness has always been there, Nicole knows this. She has been fighting to keep it at bay for her whole life.
She tries to be good, better than the average Purgatory resident Deputy, so that nobody can suspect a thing, certainly not that she's constantly fighting a part of herself, a voice inside her, that says: “This is your legacy. Own it and let it own you.”
Nicole smiles at the darkness, smiles in the face of the man who wants her to cave in, says: “Nobody owns me but myself.”
Tucker gets to Waverly and Nicole gets to Tucker.
When she digs her nails in his neck and lifts him off the ground, everything goes still. Wynonna isn't calling for her anymore, Dolls isn't shouting orders at them, Doc isn't whispering for her to step back. His eyes scream the fear he cannot utter by voice and Nicole feels the thing inside her push past her chest to fill her limbs, her head, her eyes, her mouth, until she feels it on her lips that curl in a smirk, until she knows there's no one who can help Tucker now.
When fingers curl around her arm and Waverly's soft voice whispers her name, she hears it like a scream.
Her hand retracts quickly and Tucker gasps for air, but it's too late; she knows what she's capable of. She knows her eyes were filled with red and black.
She sees Wynonna's hand hover on her gun and flees before she is forced to know if the gun would work now.
The voice she used to fight scratches her insides. Says: “This is your legacy. Own it because it owns you already.”
Nicole walks until her feet hurt and she's lost, she walks until she's over the line and out of the Ghost River Triangle, she stops outside and looks behind. She can't walk fast enough, far enough, because wherever she goes it won't leave her alone. She can leave Purgatory, she can leave the curse. But the curse won't leave her in return.
Nicole sits there for hours. He founds her and sits on the other side of the line.
She hates him, hates the part of him that lives inside herself. And, goddammit, it's quite a big part of oneself to hate.
“I swore to protect Waverly Earp as long as I lived. I know now, it was fate. Because Waverly will protect you for me, when I won't be able to anymore. Where I won't be able to anymore,” he stomps on the line to make his point.
Nicole hates this. Hates him. Hates herself because of him.
“You might be half of me, Nicole, but you're my better half. Half the man I was before I died, perhaps. Because now I'm all hate and revenge and you don't have an ounce of hate in you, you don't have an ounce of bad in you.”
“I'm half a demon.”
“You're nothing other than what you're choosing to be. As much as it pains me to admit this, you choose everyday you don't want no part in this. You're half Revenant, you're half human, doesn't matter. You're a whole lot of other stuff, too.”
Nicole wants to hate him. Wants to hate the part of him inside herself.
“Why aren't you trying to use this to take me to your side? You wanted the hybrid to help you.”
“It was before I knew you were my daughter. I'd never condemn you to share my fate.”
“I'm not good enough.”
Bobo scoffs, lies on the damp, cold ground, stares at the stars. “You're more than good enough.”
Who would have thought, Nicole smiles a little to herself, Bobo del Rey has a heart.
Maybe you can't take Purgatory away from the girl. So you take the girl back to Purgatory.
Maybe being half Revenant helps when she's fighting Revenants, when she's a Deputy, when she, eventually, is the Sheriff. Maybe being a little stronger and more resilient helps when she decides that it's a good idea to talk to one of the Earp girls and finds out Waverly Earp is more than a smile and a wave, she's strong and stubborn and Nicole thinks it's a good idea to marry that girl.
Maybe it's not even a curse at all.
Maybe, Nicole understands later in life, her legacy is her strength. Those dark corners are what makes her appreciate the light so much. Being half Revenant is what makes her want to be better and braver and stronger; it's what makes her want to love everything just a little harder.