#marcue

Zepheera's Family

Most of the relevant OCs from this point on are more borrowers (shocker, I know) and relatives of Zepheera, a list that can and will only grow because I am insane. Most of them are featured in Zepheera's Origins, and some also appear or are mentioned in various BTaS stories.

Tack - Father; In life, he was kind and forward-thinking for his time. A man full of so much love in his heart for his wife and especially his infant daughter that it ultimately killed him. Though he carried the healing factor that he passed down to his daughter, he was fatally injured in an inadvertently devastating release of energy from the entity symbiotically linked to Zepheera.

Klerida - Mother; Devastated by the loss of her husband and without the tools to cope with any of it, she turned all that hurt onto her daughter. Blamed her for being the epicenter of the catastrophe that caused Tack's death. She spent Zepheera's childhood swinging between being cold and detached from her, and lashing out aggressively, leaving her child to feel at fault for Klerida's and her own hurt.

Author's Note: While I don't regret taking this angle with Zepheera's mother, I acknowledge that at the time of writing Episode 2: Memories, I didn't have the tools to write an abuser in a way that wasn't extreme and over the top. In what I now consider to be the proper canon, Klerida did put her hands on her child in anger, but never went so far as to break Zepheera in the way described in the Episode.

Boston - Uncle; Though he did not witness and wasn't aware of what Zepheera went through at home, Boston took it upon himself to take the girl under his wing since his brother couldn't. He taught Zepheera about borrowing, despite it being a traditionally a man's skill at the time, and kept her company when she needed a friendly presence. He loved her like his own, even if Klerida kept him at arm's length.

Baycliff - Stepfather; He and his family lived in an entirely different part of the house Zepheera's family occupied. Baycliff met Klerida in passing once or twice before Tack's death, and then properly go to know her years afterward. After their marriage, Klerida's more physically abusive tendencies toward Zepheera died down in favor of the cold detachment; Baycliff fussed more over his wife and...

Kernel - Half-Brother

art by the wonderful @mythical-cupcake (left) and @creatorofuniverses (right)

Kernel was born when Zepheera was 7 years old, and she fell in love instantly. He was a curious, high-spirited boy who looked up to his big sister, a bright light in the family that was snuffed out all too soon. While out borrowing with Zepheera, he met with a terrible fate outside of both of their control.

Klerida was none too happy about Zepheera once again being seemingly responsible for the loss of someone else she loved with all her heart, to put it kindly.

Orrick - Husband

art by quackghost

Orrick is a kind soul, a sweetheart through and through. He found Zepheera outside of his home after she ran away from hers. He and his family took her in, and their relationship blossomed over time. They made a life and a home for themselves and were happily committed to one another for over twenty years. Then Zepheera discovered she wasn't aging and, in a moment of panic, fled from the wonderful life they had. He was given no explanation, and could do nothing but despair in the wake of the disappearance of his wife.

His story is tied to Zepheera's Origins, mentioned in a few others in which Zepheera opens up about her past, and he has recently resurfaced in the Donna Trilogy story, If I Could Turn Back Time.

Day - Daughter; Shortly after Zepheera left Orrick, she discovered she was pregnant. By then, it was too late for her to be able to find her way back to him, and the notion of outliving her child was twice as painful as it was for her spouse. So she found a lovely couple to raise her daughter: Ceillo and Toffer. The two men couldn't have children of their own, and she grew up with incredibly loving parents.

(left to right) Toffer, Day, and Ceillo by the fantastic @guaxinimraccoon

Marcue - Grandson

Art by quackghost

When Day was still quite young, she met and married Brine, and the two of them had a son. He was a quiet, thoughtful boy growing up, especially with his parents' relationship growing more and more contentious over the years. He met a young girl named Laitina who lived in another part of the house, the same age as him, and the two of them hit it off. First as friends, then as something more than that. But one day, after a particularly bad fight, Brine took his son and left for another house. There he remarried and had another child, a daughter. Marcue quickly became protective of the girl, and though he longed to reunite with his mother and Laitina, he stayed to make sure his half sister would be okay.

Zepheera jumped, startled out of her thoughts. She turned around to find a young man with dark auburn hair, still dressed in his sleep clothes as he leaned against the threshold of her room. 

Doing all she could to resist withering under his indigo gaze, Zepheera nodded. "I'm sorry, I just… I have to know what it all means."

Marcue gave a slow nod, but she could tell from the look on his face that he still didn’t fully understand. “Gran, are you sure–?”

“Shh!” Zepheera hissed, closing the distance between herself and Marcue. She listened down the hall for a moment, relieved by the silence she found there, then whispered to the young man, “The children could’ve heard you.”

She counted herself incredibly lucky that her family had been understanding of her unique situation. When she’d discovered that she didn’t seem to age at all since she became an adult, her husband stayed by her side til the moment he passed on. Their daughter was as supportive as she could be while remaining her own individual. 

Having a grandchild was a slightly different experience, as Zepheera didn’t feel comfortable explaining to the boy that she was in fact his grandmother until he was a little older. It wasn’t necessarily that she was worried about Marcue accepting that fact, but she didn’t want him confused to meet other kids with normal grandparents that did not look like Zepheera, and to start asking questions that raised alarms. Zepheera wasn’t one to announce to others outside of her family that she was significantly older than she looked.

She took a similar approach with Marcue’s children. They were still quite small, even the oldest. In the meantime, Zepheera was seen as a friendly neighbor to them, a sort of adopted auntie that loved spending time with them when mum and dad needed a little breathing room. She had every intention of explaining the truth to them, but tonight was not the time.

Marcue sighed and insisted under his breath, “They’re asleep. But really, do you need to go this alone?”

Zepheera didn’t have an easy answer. Ever since her dreams started, she had this feeling that they were calling her somewhere far away, and left a lingering feeling when she awoke. Like there was something she needed wherever it was leading her. She couldn’t begin to explain that, and couldn’t bear to drag her family around for the sake of finding answers.

It didn’t make the decision any easier.

Overcome, Zepheera reached up to wrap her arms around Marcue’s shoulders and dragged him down into a tight hug. This startled him, but he soon hugged her back.

“I’ll be back,” she vowed, giving him one more squeeze before pulling away. “Please…tell everyone that in the morning.”

Blinking quickly, Marcue nodded with more confidence than before. “I will. Be safe, Gran.”

~~~

It was incredibly lucky that the human beings that Zepheera and her family borrowed from had decided to take a trip to London. That journey would have been exponentially longer for a borrower on her own. Once there, the real hunt would start.

Part of her dreams that stuck with her when she woke up was the image of a massive clock tower, which she later learned was named Big Ben. It was a city landmark, so Zepheera hoped it wouldn’t be overly difficult to find and get to.

More than that, she hoped that all this was worth the risk of proximity to human beings. They were a troublesome lot; recent technological advances made it harder and harder for borrowers to remain hidden like they could in the old days. And if that weren't bad enough, one of them had decided to unleash a horde of mechanical monsters all over the world years back. It was all over the news, even borrowers were aware of the threat of the Cybermen. They were spread out enough that the humans could put up a decent fight against them, but borrowers? No chance in hell against those things. 

Most, like Zepheera and her family, found safety in the country. The chances of cyber-attacks weren't zero, but slim enough that they could hope to live in peace, the traditional borrower way. Zepheera would be mad to try and get to the city, let alone on her own.

And here she was, doing just that.

Thankfully, the borrowers who had chosen to remain in the city had a decent handle on navigating it safely. She got very helpful tips to point her in the right direction, and once she was in the actual building, she could make her own way around the walls.

Zepheera stuck closely to them, as it appeared Big Ben was full of scientific and government types, both of which were up there in the types of humans she did not want to find her. If they did, she might never fulfill her promise to see her family again, lost to experiments or goodness only knew what. Still, she’d come this far, and couldn’t turn back until she could find a way to figure out what these dreams of hers meant.

The sight of a tall, slim, wild-haired man giving the other humans a fair bit of sass sent a jolt through Zepheera that felt like lightning running up and down. That was the man in her dream! He dressed a little differently and didn’t have the coat she saw, but he looked and sounded exactly the same otherwise. Maybe if she caught him alone, she thought, he might be willing to hear her out.

It was a risk, especially since he seemed to be one of the scientific types, but he was her only lead.

Lucky for her, it seemed that he spent quite a lot of time alone in his personal lab. Unlucky for her, that was all the way at the top of the clock tower, a hell of a climb for a borrower.

The lab was cluttered enough that Zepheera could make her way around easily without being detected. This human, referred to by the others only as ‘the Doctor’, seemed a bit of a volatile personality. If that was how he was with humans, she couldn’t help being a bit nervous about how he might react to her. But she steeled her resolve and snuck ever closer to the towering man.

He was hunched over his work, muttering to himself all the while. She took solace in the fact that it mostly seemed to be technological tinkering and not so much to do with anything biological, and she hoped that was a good sign. Biding her time, Zepheera seized the opportunity after someone brought him a cuppa and it seemed he was taking a break.

Zepheera stepped out into the open near the corner of the man’s work table, took a deep breath and cleared her throat. “Excuse me,” she said, doing her best to keep the nerves from putting a tremble in her voice.

Brown eyes turned quickly to lock onto her, going through an incredible range of emotions in a few seconds. At first he looked almost annoyed by the interruption to his day, then surprised by the sight of her, and finally an expression of deeper realization and a hint of awe.

“Zepheera??” he exclaimed, setting his tea aside and leaning in for a closer look at the borrower. 

She took a few steps back from his sudden approach, but stood her ground. There was something to all this, to this man, that she had to understand!

“How do you know my name?” she demanded with a much stronger tone than she thought she had in her. “Who are you?”

“Ohhh, well…” The man leaned an elbow on the work top and rested his chin there as he considered the tiny woman before him. “The answers to those questions are…complicated.”

Not one to put up with such an enigmatic non-answer, she crossed her arms and fixed him with a stern glare. “I’ve got all the time in the world.”