#orrick

Zepheera seemed to understand that, because she fell completely silent. It wasn't until well after they'd climbed down below the floorboards that she managed to whisper, “I'm sorry…”

“You've said that,” Orrick pointed out as they reached the main entrance to the home. 

The door was a lid they'd repurposed from an old tin. The hinges were intact to use like a proper door, swinging inward with a firm push and unable to do so in the other direction. To keep pests and strangers out, they'd installed a couple of small hooks to either side of it on the inside, onto which they could drop a sturdy bar (usually a pencil) that would hold the door in place.

Orrick let the door swing inward and once again glanced back at Zepheera. In this space under the floor, a little more light was able to slip between the cracks. Now the shadows couldn't hide the flush of contained emotion in her cheekbones, the way she could barely maintain eye contact with Orrick for more than a second before her gaze lowered in shame. 

The way that, though he wasn't barring the way inside, she simply stood behind Orrick. Almost waiting to be invited into the home they'd built together.

“You still haven't explained why you needed that answer. Why, of all things, that was the mystery to you.” Orrick's tone stayed even and calm, not wanting to come off as accusatory. She hadn't gone into any detail, but he knew that something had happened to Zepheera since he'd seen her last. Something that changed her.

Zepheera took a deep breath in and out, though Orrick noticed the slightest hitch, like a second small inhale before she let it slowly out. As she did so, her gaze met his and stayed this time.

“I told you, it's a long story,” she said, though to Orrick it didn't sound like an excuse. Zepheera wasn't dodging his question. No, she was simply warning him that the answer to it was far from simple.

Orrick slowly nodded in understanding. Then, with just as much care, he reached out a hand toward Zepheera, who blinked at it before looking back up at him.

“Tell it, then,” he invited.

In the dimness, Orrick thought he caught the briefest glimpse of a smile flashing across Zepheera's lips before she lifted a trembling hand to take his.

Learning that Zepheera couldn't age, while unexpected, wasn't too difficult for Orrick to accept. She had always been an unusual one, able to recover from injuries incredibly quickly compared to the average borrower. She took that in stride, and so did Orrick.

They crossed the threshold together.

~~~

When it came to time travel, however…

It wasn't the easiest topic to simplify for a borrower, let alone one who had lived his entire life in the 20th century. Space travel was only just becoming a more prominent reality for humans, and even that felt very far away and foreign to the smaller folk, who had no such ambitions. And apparently, Zepheera had taken part in that as well!

Zepheera hardly claimed to be an expert on the matter, but she explained it to the best of her understanding. Though she had clearly prepared something that would be easiest for him to swallow, it was an intense shift in Orrick's worldview.

He was still processing it all hours later, lying in bed and staring up at the underside of the floorboards that were their ceiling. Thoughts swirled in his head in so many circles that his eyes traced them as though they were visible in the darkness of night.

At the time, he understood just enough of what she told him to be able to nod along with it. Now, hours later, all attempts to let it actually sink in kept him awake.

What struck him the most in the moment was that Zepheera had traveled with humans.

It wasn't that it was more strange than the time travel, really, but it was one of the cardinal rules drilled into every borrower's head from the moment they were born. Never be seen or heard. Human beings were powerful simply by the nature of their being, well over a dozen times the size of a borrower more often than not. Even the weakest human could do the strongest borrower great harm with hardly any effort.

Whether a given human would treat the smaller folk that way was beside the point. They all had to be considered capable of such things by every borrower as a matter of caution.

Zepheera insisted that these humans were of a good sort. Well, one of them was actually not human, but was “close enough to practically count,” which was another notion Orrick was still grappling with. The Doctor, the non-human one was called. He'd saved Zepheera from a bad situation, and that was all she could say on the matter.

She went distressingly quiet when Orrick tried to ask about it.

Most of the time spent between making and eating dinner was filled with Zepheera’s stories about this Doctor and the human woman Donna Noble. How the unnamed terrible thing that happened affected her intensely, and her companions helped her recover from it. How they inspired Zepheera to take on a more active role in bettering the lives of others where- and whenever they went. 

Orrick could tell they had been close, and the way Zepheera talked made it seem like this was a rarity for her. And he could see glimpses of the heartbreak in her eyes as she told him about how she was separated from them.

With a deep sigh, Orrick brought up both hands to rub at his eyes. He was making himself dizzy trying to understand time as something non-linear, but it was so intertwined with everything Zepheera had told him about her life.

The Doctor had a machine, she said, a vehicle of some sort that allowed them to go wherever they wanted at any time. She'd described it as something quite fantastical, far bigger on the inside than it appeared from the outside. It could disappear from one time and place, and reappear in another. 

And even with all its magics, it still rendered the Doctor helpless to find Zepheera when she was lost. This was apparently due to the nature of said separation, her being somehow flung through time to the past, well before Zepheera's own birth.

“Wait, so…” Orrick had piped up at that point. “If you were in the past, and knew about things that hadn't happened yet…why didn't you try to change them?”

Zepheera had blinked at the question, one of Orrick’s few interruptions to her story. He wasn't casting judgment on her, and the sadness that crept back in behind her eyes told him she understood exactly what he meant.

“It's…quite complicated, being in the past. Especially your own past. Time can be rewritten, yes, but the effects of that are impossible to predict.” At that, her gaze lowered to her wringing hands. “And everything that happened to me… everything I've done… It made me the person I am today. Made me better. If I tried to change even one line of my own history, then the me I am now wouldn't exist anymore. Or worse. I couldn't risk that.”

Zepheera glanced back at him then. “Do you understand?” she’d ventured to ask.

Orrick had listened to every word, but that was the point where it all started to scramble in his head. Just like he would do later in bed remembering the feeling, he buried his face in his hands. “I regret asking…”

Back in the present, the sound of quickened breathing to Orrick’s left caught his attention. He let his hands run down his face as he turned to look at Zepheera's deeply sleeping form beside him.

There really was no place for her to sleep other than the bed they used to share. She tried to insist she had something in her travel pack that she could set up, but Orrick couldn't let her just sleep on the floor. Even after everything…it didn't feel right.

It wasn't like it was before. Orrick lay flat as a board on his side, while Zepheera had started out curled with her back to him on the other. A solid inch of their makeshift mattress was left cold between them, a significant distance when the tallest between them couldn't quite claim five inches in height. Though Orrick had been too overcome with his thoughts to move, Zepheera had long since fallen asleep and began stirring more than he ever remembered her doing in the past.

He gently rolled to his side to face her. She'd writhed enough to end up lying on her back. It was dim, but not dark enough to hide the sweat on her twisted brow. The grimace on her lips as she sucked in air between clenched teeth. How one hand clutched the covers and the one nearest Orrick, tossed up near her ear, twitched as though grasping at something that wasn't there.

Before he could think twice about it, Orrick slid a hand up to gently wrap around Zepheera's and give it a squeeze. 

He understood then just how much pain Zepheera had kept to herself. From what he could tell, she had been truthful with everything she'd shared, and yet she'd glossed over the darker aspects before they could sink in. Now, it seemed like she couldn't hide it as easily in her sleep. Or hide from it.

Zepheera's hand automatically clung to Orrick’s. He froze, caught up in the feeling of her grip twitching in his; a feeling that gradually calmed down. After some time, he noticed a change in the rhythm of Zepheera's breathing and saw her shadowy shape turn his way.

She was awake. He couldn't explain how he knew that, but he did.

If she looked at him, he was only vaguely aware of it in his peripheral vision. He stared at their joined hands as his thumb gently traced along her palm, as though the new questions he had would be answered there.

“How long have you been gone?”

Zepheera stayed quiet a moment, recognizing the repeated phrasing. Now Orrick understood exactly why she'd asked, and that her own answer was not straightforward and very different from the one he gave. He waited while she momentarily pondered the answer.

“I think…” she whispered, “between when I left and when I met the Doctor, and then how long ago I was sent back in time… almost two hundred years.”

Orrick’s gaze snapped up to meet hers, something in him clenching to hear such a number.

“And…in all that time, did you…” Orrick hesitated; it suddenly felt quite silly to ask, but he'd already started. “Was there ever anyone else?”

Either the darkness was playing tricks on him, or Orrick caught the tiniest sparkle of hope in Zepheera's eyes. It was gone in a flash, and she slowly shook her head no.

Orrick scoffed at himself for forgetting. “Right. ‘Course, it wouldn't change anything, would it? You'd still be worried about outliving them and–”

“Nobody was you,” Zepheera emphasized.

His breath caught in his chest, along with any more words. 

Outside of his control, the hand holding Zepheera's pulled it closer. It stopped a hair's breadth from his lips, and with the slightest pause, he angled his wrist to instead place the back of her hand against his cheek.

Orrick's eyes squeezed shut as he basked in the warmth of her skin. So many times since her return, he'd avoided such intimate contact with Zepheera. Like there was some wall between them after what happened, a line that he couldn't be sure was safe to cross. For his own sake or for hers. Over the past few hours, she'd chipped away at that wall with her honesty and openness about her completely mad life, and he could feel his resolve crumbling. 

There was only one thing Orrick needed to hear to make it real.

“Do you still love me?” he breathed.

Zepheera's grip went slack in his hand and twisted its way out of it. Before Orrick could fear the worst, he felt her hand gently slide in to hold his cheek. His eyes shot open just as her thumb tenderly brushed away his tears.

With her own eyes welling up, glinting in the barest light that made it into the room, Zepheera spoke with more conviction than he'd heard yet. 

“I never stopped.”

Orrick kissed her. The barrier shattered.

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.

~~~

One of Zepheera's usual haunts was the attic. There wasn't much of anything to borrow, but there was a small window with just enough room on the sill for a borrower. The humans’ junk made a nice and neat climbing trail up to it, and they hardly ever went up there so it was peacefully quiet most of the time.

She kept a sitting cushion hidden up there to make the hours spent up there more comfortable. And as the months grew colder, Orrick brought his own cushion so he could join her in the relative warmth.

The far-off look in Zepheera's eyes was quite familiar to Orrick when he found her curled in the corner of the window, staring out into the sky. If she noticed her husband's arrival, she didn't react, too lost in her thoughts.

Orrick followed her gaze to the outside world. The sun had recently set and the moon hung low, an asymmetrical orb floating just above the distant treetops. Very nearly full but not quite. The rest of the night sky was clear, dotted with the occasional patch of stars.

“Nice night,” he uttered, doing all he could to keep any tremor out of his voice.

In the corner of his eye, he watched Zepheera blink and glance his way, knowing she was still only half-seeing him. When she got that deep in her thoughts, she was slow to completely come back down to Earth. She offered him a small smile before letting her eyes drift back to the stars.

“And we can't even see half of what's out there,” she sighed. “Still, could be a worse view–,”

“Zepheera.”

The unusually firm tone in Orrick’s voice drew Zepheera's attention, and this time she focused on him properly. Her gaze dropped to the hand hanging by his side, holding in a white-knuckled grip a bundle of fabric that she immediately recognized. Her olive complexion paled.

Orrick's tone remained eerily even as he asked, “What's this?”

Forcing a sheepish smile, Zepheera shrugged and tried to assure him, “I was just practicing. Bit rusty with my quilting, and I was hoping to borrow another sock to make us a new duvet–,”

“Please,” Orrick cut in, his desperate tone wiping any attempts to save face out of Zepheera's expression. The hand clutching the tiny blanket lifted to press into his sternum, and its folds shifted so that a section of the back was visible to her. “You promised you wouldn't keep any more secrets.”

Blood rushed back to Zepheera's cheekbones, pinkening them with barely concealed emotion. She slowly pushed herself up to stand and stepped tentatively closer to her husband. Her own trembling hands hovered briefly over the blanket Orrick held before wrapping around his clenched fists. They wavered under her touch as though fighting back against the natural comfort it brought.

“You're right,” whispered Zepheera, who hadn't broken eye contact with the one small word she'd embroidered on the back of the tiny blanket. 

Day. 

“Just…please, sit down. I'll tell you everything.”

He let himself be guided to take a seat on the sill across from his wife, who did the same.  Rapidly blinking violet eyes met his light blues, and he watched her steel her resolve to just come right out and say it.

“Orrick. I… When I left you, I was pregnant.”

The thickness in the air left behind by that statement was palpable. 

Zepheera was quick to add, “I didn't know. Orrick, I swear to everything that is good that I didn't. Not until I had run too far away to even begin to find my way back here, because I never meant to take that from you.”

Orrick shook his head, not to dismiss Zepheera's words, but to silently beg her to stop. She held her breath as she watched a cycle of emotions flash across her husband's face. Hope. Heartbreak. Longing. Confusion. All of them perfectly understandable reactions to what Zepheera had just told him. She could only sit and wait, uncertain of what would come at her first.

Finally, his expression settled. His brow and cheekbones lifted, and his eyes were full of tears when they focused on Zepheera again.

“I'm a dad…?” he breathed.

The spark of joy in his smile opened the floodgates for Zepheera, too, and she grabbed his shoulders to pull him into a tight hug. 

“Yes, you are,” whispered Zepheera in the steadiest tone she could manage. “We have a baby.”

After they had a good cry into the crook of each other's necks, she pulled back to look him in the eye and explain.

As Zepheera had said, she only learned of the pregnancy after she ran away. The realization that she wouldn't age and would outlive her husband was still raw and terrifying, and it was a far worse concept to consider with their child. The pregnancy itself probably didn't help her emotions on the matter. 

The only way she managed to get through it was by finding help. She traveled aimlessly until she came upon a new house, and met incredibly kind and understanding people within. There was a woman only about a decade older than her at the time (though obviously Zepheera didn't look it) who had delivered several babies in her life. She was passionate about making sure Zepheera had as healthy a pregnancy and birth as possible.

She had a son named Ceillo who lived with his long-time partner, another young man called Toffer. They rather quickly grew fond of Zepheera, who they saw as a peer in need. She wasn't about to correct them, finding tremendous comfort in their kindness and willingness to help her even though they knew next to nothing about her.

The more Zepheera thought about her new circumstances, the more she saw the serendipity in it all. At the time, the world was still too vast and dangerous for her to have the first clue how to get back to Orrick even if she wanted to. No matter how unfair it all was to him, it wouldn't be safe for her or her child to try and travel with a newborn. 

The best Zepheera thought she could do was give the baby as good a chance at life as possible. And her new friends just so happened to be a young couple, unable to have children of their own but desired them all the same.

Zepheera slowed down her story when Orrick shook his head again, once again needing time to recover from and process the onslaught of information. The joy of parenthood fell away to the grief of knowing she had given their child up.

“I don't understand,” Orrick finally spoke up, voice thick with emotion. “Why did you keep this from me? We could have tried to catch up to you before it got this cold–,”

“We can't do that, Orrick,” Zepheera insisted.

“Why not?” A frantic edge began creeping into his tone. “We're together now, and it all hasn't happened yet, so maybe there's a way we can fix it!”

“It doesn't work like that!”

Orrick froze when he saw fear in Zepheera's eyes. He never raised his voice like that, and it briefly shook him up to think he'd frightened his wife. 

“Going after me, the old me, won't fix anything,” Zepheera asserted. “Even if you found me and convinced me to stay with you and the baby, my life would completely change. And it might be wonderful for a moment, but reality wouldn't be able to cope.”

It dawned on Orrick, with relief and unease in equal measure, that he wasn't what Zepheera was afraid of.

“Because if I stay with you, then what happened to me might not happen. I might not meet the Doctor and end up in the past to see you again. And even if I do, I might not feel the need to see you again if we had a fulfilling life together. Then you would have no reason to find me and the baby in the first place. It's a paradox, you see? And it's not just a thought exercise that doesn't make sense. There are real consequences when you mess with time and create a paradox. It's never good.”

With a sigh, Orrick let his head hang to press his palms to his eyes. His head hurt just listening to it, but he could at least follow her line of logic. It didn't lessen the hurt in his heart to learn he was a father, but his child was out of his reach.

Then he felt Zepheera's hands gently curl around his wrists, and her forehead press against his as she spoke gently.

“We will see her again,” she promised. “I have a plan.”

That had Orrick's head perking back up, misty eyes meeting hers. Zepheera's vow spun the roulette wheel of his emotions once again to land this time on hope. “Her…?”

With a tearful smile, she gave a small nod. “Eighty years, Orrick. I had eighty years to think about this before I could safely come back here. To make sure I knew exactly where everyone was, and remind myself of exact timelines so we can avoid that paradox.” Her hands slid up to take hold of his and give them a squeeze. “Once the baby is born and the old me leaves, there's nothing stopping us from going there to see her again. To be a family.”

Orrick let out a shuddering breath to hear those words. All tension left his shoulders, and he let his (and by extension Zepheera's) hands fall onto the heap of fabric the baby blanket had become over both of their laps. He stared between them and the blanket for a moment before his gaze lifted once more.

“Why didn't you just tell me all this?” he asked as his gaze bore into Zepheera's. He didn't demand this of her like before, but he still didn't understand why this was the last secret she chose to cling to.

Zepheera's face fell as the guilt washed back in like the tide, but she held eye contact and answered honestly.

“For one thing, I just…wanted to spare you the pain as long as I could. I would have told you all this when the time came, but I was hoping to give you a much shorter time with it. The feeling of knowing someone is out there and wanting to see them but knowing you can't without risking everything? It's not easy. It hurts.”

He gave a slow nod of understanding, but his brow quirked when he took note of her initial phrasing. “And…?”

It was Zepheera's turn to slump, and her focus dropped to their laps. Their hands. The blanket. “And, I was afraid that if I told you, warned you about what might happen if you went after me, and if you went anyway… I don't know if I have the will to stop you. Or the right.”

Orrick's heart sank. As scrambled as his emotions were about this new revelation, he'd spent the last six months working through the feelings of betrayal he'd felt when Zepheera vanished. They'd taken it slow, re-established boundaries and trust, and he could safely say that a good majority of those negative feelings were melting away. 

That month without her left him incredibly broken up, but it was just that. A month. Zepheera had been away for nearly two hundred years. All that time, she'd carried the burden of guilt for leaving him– and leaving their child, he now knew– and had probably come up with a million and one worst-case scenarios that might occur if she got a chance like this.

He removed one of his hands from her loosened grip, lifting it to gently cup her tear-stained cheek. When he saw those violet eyes again, he simply smiled and brushed her hair back to tuck behind one ear.

“You've got it all worked out,” Orrick recalled. “How long ‘til we can go see her?”

Zepheera blinked up at him, but let herself smile back and lean into his touch.

“The baby is born next month. I stay with them for a little over a year to make sure she's fed and properly weaned, and a little after that to make sure we're both okay, so…I think we're safe to start making our way there the spring after next.”

She took his hands again and tugged him to lean a little closer to the window, pointing out toward the shadowy shapes of the outdoors. “They live in a village in that direction. There's a road that leads out of this one, and eventually a brook that will take us pretty close to their house. It'll be a long journey for us, with a lot of camping out to do, but there should be plenty of places along the way to take shelter.”

Orrick gave a nod, finding that it all added up. Though it obviously wasn't ideal to have to wait for so long, knowing they had a plan did help. Now they simply had more time to prepare for it all.

“What about your friends?” he asked haltingly. “I-I mean, I want to see her, of course, but… You promised her to them, didn't you?”

“I did,” Zepheera acknowledged. “But they didn't know anything about me. About why I couldn't keep her, about why I was alone. They're very kind people, and… if you're okay with it, I think that if we get there and explain everything to them, they won't mind if we come together to raise her. Y'know, we could all be her parents. We'd all get to be there for her, help her grow up, and no one has to lose her.”

Orrick took a moment to breathe into the idea. It wasn't a terrible one, just…an unusual way for a family to work.

Sensing his hesitation, Zepheera guided one of Orrick's hands down to the blanket once more, this time laying it over the word embroidered on the back of it. “I know it feels like we're gonna be chasing this, catching up to it, and there's nothing we can really do about that until the time comes. But if it helps… you get to be the first person to know your daughter's name.”

Light blue eyes widened and dropped instantly to the stitched letters. He'd suspected it was a baby's name since he found it, but in the maelstrom of information he'd been given he nearly forgot about it.

The joy started flooding back over him as he reread the short word over and over, then clutched it to his chest.

He was a father. He had a daughter. Her name was Day. And he so looked forward to meeting her.