A/N: For those of you who wanted Lorna to come back... I have good news and more good news! She's in this chapter! She's in the next chapter even more! Hoorah! Thanks for all the comments. You guys are the best.


"My sister would like to know why 'tits' has become a part of my two year old daughter's vocabulary?"

Nicky smirks, cradling the phone in the space between her ear and her shoulder, one arm around Maria, the other making a toy pony gallop about the bed, "eh, what's that supposed'a mean? You immediately come to me? I'm hurt, Morello, truly deeply hurt." She can practically see the look on Lorna's face and it makes her heart ache. She chuckles, "naw, seriously, I didn't do it on purpose. Kid just has super senses. Maybe she's gonna grow up to be a dyke like her momma too."

Lorna ignores that comment, "she's at your place now then, yeah?"

Maria's sitting on the bed, trying to chew the head off a plastic cow.

"Yeah, we're playing farmyard animals."

Lorna laughs, and t's such a beautiful sound, one that Nicky's missed so so much, that she can't even bring herself to be defensive. The whole situation still seems so fucking ridiculous, even all these months later. If she were Lorna, she'd be laughing too. If you'd told her a year ago – a few months ago, even – that she would be spending her days playing mommy to a two year old, she'd have laughed her ass off, asked you what drug you were taking. It was so implausible.

And yet, here she is.

"I'm sorry, I just can't even begin to imagine that," Lorna says, still laughing.

"Well, you better believe it, because right now I've got a sheep in one hand, and a My Little Pony in the other, and your kid is trying to consume Daisy the cow in much the same way as you inhale Red's not-quite-beef lasagne."

"I would pay to see that," she says, and there's an underlying sadness in her tone that sucks the laughter out of the moment. The less time you've got, the longer it feels, and the next four months feel like a lifetime.

"Hey, you will soon, kid. It's just a few more months, y'know?"

"Yeah," Lorna says quietly.

Maria interrupts the empty silence by shoving her soggy cow in Nicky's face, with an indignant "icky play-a moo!", catching her straight on the nose. It takes every bit of willpower Nicky has not to swear as she wrestles the giggling toddler, finally prying the toy out of her hands. She lifts Maria onto her lap, careful to keep the phone wedged next to her ear, and bounces her on her lap.

"Your demon child just hit me in the face with a cow," she says, but there's a smile on her lips as she watches Maria's whole face light up as she bounces around, "I'm telling you, I'm beginning to think she's possessed or something."

"Nicky!"

She shrugs, stops bouncing the toddler, ruffles her hair, "no, I mean it! She's always tryin'a beat me up with something or other. I wouldn't be surprised if by the time you get out of there, I'm bald, the amount of my hair she yanks out on a daily basis."

"You really see her every day?" Lorna asks.

Swallowing, Nicky nods, adjusting her grip on the phone so she's holding it rather than doing a balancing act. Maria leans back against her, her thumb in her mouth, the toys discarded at the side of her.

"Sure... near enough. I know, I know... but I don't have any friends my own age out here, y'know? And it helps Franny out, cos she works all the time and your dad ain't exactly the most hands-on grandparent so... yeah..." she feels awkward explaining herself, knows her cheeks are warm with embarrassment. She promised Lorna she'd check in on the kid every now and then, not practically adopt her.

"Thanks, Nick. I mean it... thank you. It means the world, knowin' you're out there, keeping my baby girl safe."

She gazes down at the toddler who is trying hard not to fall asleep on her, smiling softly, "nah, I think she's doing me as much good as I'm doing her, y'know?"


Nicky should have known that inviting Piper along for one of her days out with Maria was a bad idea.

She might have not have a single maternal bone in her body, but that's still more than Piper does. She whips her hand sanitizer out after she clips Maria into her baby seat, practically gags when Nicky changes the kid's diaper (something she's become an expert at now; she's had to do it so many times), and spends the whole half hour journey worrying over the seats of her brand new car getting baby goo on them.

"Stop being so uptight. She's a baby, Chapman; a tiny human, not a dinosaur."

"Uptight? I am not being uptight. I'm just being cautious."

Nicky smirks, "about your car, not Lorna's kid."

Piper rolls her eyes, and tries to force herself to stop fussing over everything, but it's Piper, so it doesn't really work. Luckily, Maria's being pretty well behaved, babbling happily on the back seat, talking nonsense to her toys, and barely paying any attention to the foreign environment. Piper is lucky – she's caught her on a good day. They're called 'the terrible twos' for a reason. This week alone, Nicky's had food thrown at her, been hit in the face by more soft toys than she can count, and had the kid throw a full on tantrum whilst out grocery shopping, resulting in them leaving before Nicky had even bought anything.

"I still can't believe she's Lorna's. It seems so crazy to think of Lorna as a mom," Piper says after a moment.

"Wait a bit, get to know her, and believe me you'll know she's Lorna's. Never seen anyone else stuff their face like those two. And I swear to god, sometimes I look at her, and the kid's expressions... it's like looking at a tiny version of Lorna."

Smiling, she glances in the rearview mirror and looks at the little girl, "bet she's got you wrapped around her finger then. You never could say no to her mom, either."

Nicky scowls, rolls her eyes, but there's a smirk on her lips because she knows Piper's right. So, she spoils the kid? Who cares. What else is she going to spend her money on? Her own mother feels the need to deposit huge sums of cash into her account to ease the guilt inside of her, and Nicky has no use for it now she's not wasting it all on her next fix. So, Maria gets the occasional toy... a stupid giraffe hat that never stays on her head... ridiculous tiny sunglasses because what toddler doesn't need tiny sunglasses? It's easy for her to get carried away. Lorna's family can't always afford things, so Nicky makes up for it.

"It's just so weird... thinking of her in there still, with this little version of her on the outside. It doesn't seem... right, does it? She'll come out, and this little girl is going to know you better than she knows her own mother."

As ever, Piper's ability to say just the wrong thing astounds Nicky and she has to bite her tongue not to snap at her, knowing that her friend's heart is in the right place, even if her mouth isn't always. She feels guilty enough as it is, knowing that by the time Lorna is reunited with her child, Maria will have this whole personality built around people who aren't her mom. She already does. She already has this connection with someone who should be a complete stranger, more than she does the woman who carried her for nine months. But there isn't anything Nicky can do about that, and she reasons that it's better for the kid to be loved in Lorna's absence, than to go without.

"How's Alex?" Nicky says, in an attempt to change the subject. She enjoys the way Piper's eyes narrow, the way her grip on the steering wheel tightens.

"Do we have to talk about her?"

She grins, "sure we do. You wanna keep talking about how fucked over my relationship is, I gotta bring up yours."

"You realise you just swore in front of a two year old," Piper says, raising an eyebrow.

"Don't change the subject," glancing into the backseat, Nicky shrugs, "she's not listening. And besides, we have an agreement, don't we kid?"

Maria looks up from her toys and grins, looking more like Nicky than Lorna for a split second, and Piper can't help but laugh.

"Hey, Maria, what's your favourite word at the moment, huh?" she continues, pulling a face at the girl, and then gesturing, trying to prompt the word, but ultimately failing when Maria decides her doll deserves more attention than Nicky does.

"Please tell me you haven't been teaching that child curse words," Piper says, wearing her best lecturing face, one that Nicky has seen countless times.

"Eh, not curse words... just a few anatomy words, y'know. Harmless stuff," Nicky turns back to the road, taps her fingers on the dashboard, "anyway, back to Alex..."

The look on Piper's face is so typical of her that Nicky laughs, and when she doesn't respond, they let the subject drop. In all honesty, she's just really fucking glad to have Piper around. It feels good to spend time with someone who she can be herself around. As much as she loves being with Maria, interacting with the Morello family is exhausting. She feels like she's constantly having to bite her tongue not to say something she shouldn't, and that's not really a feeling Nicky's familiar with, primarily because she's never cared enough before. She's always spent so much time alone, being in a full house, trapped in a room with noisy kids, Maria on her lap, Sesame Street on the TV, whilst Franny does the ironing still feels kind of like it should be her worst nightmare, and the fact that it isn't is still troubling. But, it's still difficult. It's so difficult being immersed in Lorna's family, and not being able to talk about her truthfully. It's so difficult spending so much time with people who know so little about you. At least with Piper, she's exposed her whole self to her before. Piper knows her better than anyone else, besides maybe Lorna, and it's a relief to just be around her, to be playfully bickering with her, to know she has no expectations. It feels like home in a completely different way to how being around the Morellos does.

They finally reach their destination, and Piper pulls into a parking space near the edge of a cliff-top, and for a moment Nicky just takes in her surroundings, the sea air, the blue expanse in front of them, where the sky meets the sea. There's little boats on the horizon, people surfing. It's the first time she's been to the beach in over five years. The first time Maria will ever step onto the sand. It seems like a monumental event, and all of a sudden Nicky's overwhelmed by how much she wishes Lorna were here to share it with them.

"Up! Up! Peese up!" Maria chants from the back seat, dragging her out of her thoughts.

"Yeah yeah yeah... patience is a virtue, kid. One you and your mom definitely do not have."

Once she's got Maria out of the car, she finds Piper gathering things out of the trunk. Nicky slips Maria's diaper bag over her head, grabs a bag with a towel, bucket and spade in it, and leaves Piper to carry the huge cooler box of food that she insisted on bringing. Maria babbles away, wriggling about in Nicky's arms as they walk down the steps onto the beach, and Nicky watches Piper wrestle with the wind to lay out a picnic blanket, laughing at her rather than attempting to help.

"Hey, I've got my hands full," she says when Piper shoots her one of her signature looks.

"Moo!" Maria chimes in, grinning.

"See, even the baby sees through your lame excuses, Nichols."


They spend so long at the beach that Maria tires herself out. When Piper drops them off at the house at the end of the day, Nicky has to scoop the sleeping toddler up off the backseat and carry her inside, saying a quick bye to Piper, with the promise of calling her later in the week. They've missed dinner, but Maria is so zonked out that it doesn't really matter, and when Franny opens the front door, Nicky tells her she's going to put the kid straight to bed. It's a routine she's done so many times now that it's second nature, and Franny doesn't bother to tell her where things are, just lets her get on with it.

Once Maria's safely tucked up, Nicky sits down heavily by her crib, leaning on the bars, her head resting in her hands. She watches the kid sleep, and sighs.

"You look just like her when you sleep, y'know? Peaceful,"she whispers, gently tucking the blankets in around Maria, chuckling softly, "it's the only time she quits moving about. You share that one, too."

She's met with silence, and after a day filled with noise and laughter, it feels particularly empty. There's still a buzz of commotion coming from the living room, but it feels a million miles away, and it's a noise that has nothing to do with her, that's just as lonely as being in this room is. Still, she doesn't want to leave, because her own apartment is cold and abandoned and soundless, and at least here holds potential. She stares down at Maria and thinks that maybe all those promises she made, all those things she dreamt of with Lorna, aren't so far away.

"I love her... your mommy," she says quietly, realising it's the first time she's said it aloud, the first time she's admitted to it. Nicky Nichols doesn't love people. She fucks people, uses people, breaks people, but she doesn't love them. But Lorna isn't like anybody else, and it makes sense that she loves her, really loves her, because she's been different since day one. And if she didn't love her, she wouldn't have devoted her time since she got out of Litchfield to looking after this tiny human that is in every single way a part of her.

"It's not even like I meant to fall in love with her, y'know? I thought we were just havin' fun, and then you had to come along and change everything. And she's not an easy person to love, your mommy. She doesn't think she deserves it. She does. She absolutely does. She's this incredible person- just you wait, kid, you'll love her. You will because there's no fuckin' way that you could not love her. I don't understand how there are people who aren't madly in love with her," she laughs, "well... I mean she is pretty fucking racist. So maybe I do understand. And she says so many stupid things. And she's always convinced she's right, but she never is. So, yeah, she's not flawless, y'know?"

Why am I even talking to you about this, she thinks, shaking her head at her own stupidity. This whole playing mom thing has made her soft. Maybe this is how Red feels. Except Red cures most problems by slapping Nicky around the head, and that's not exactly an option in this situation.

"You shouldn't keep swearin' in front of her; she's already started picking words up."

Nicky almost jumps out of her skin, turning to find Franny hovering in the doorway, a smug little smile on her lips. Shit, how much did she hear?! Quickly standing, Nicky runs a hand through her hair, which is particularly messy, the sea air not doing anything to tame the frizz.

"It's all good; she's asleep."

Crossing her arms, Franny nods, "yeah, you seem to have tired the poor thing out. Did she behave herself for your friend?"

"Yeah, good as gold."

Well, besides eating a handful of sand, running off multiple times, and screaming her head off when she dropped her ice-cream, making Piper go buy her another one, she had behaved, Nicky supposed.

"Good. Hey, feel free to stay over if you want. It's late. You can take Lorna's bed?"

As much as the idea of being engulfed in Lorna's belongings sounds appealing, Nicky shakes her head. She knows she wouldn't sleep, wouldn't feel right being in there without Lorna beside her. She probably won't sleep, anyway, but she would rather attempt to in the safety of her own home, curled up on the couch, an old black and white movie on the TV.

"Nah, it's cool. Thanks though. But, uh, hey, you're right, I oughta get going," she gazes down at Maria one last time, before grabbing her bag and heading for the door.

"Nicky?" Franny's voice is so soft she almost doesn't hear it.

"Yeah?"

She looks like she's going to say something, but changes her mind at the last second, "night."

"Yeah, night."