A/N: Sorry for the delay and thanks for your patience everyone.

It's an hour before Lorna comes out of the bathroom. Her eyes are rimmed with red, even though she's re-applied her whole face of make-up, and seems more composed.

Nicky spends a good part of that hour sitting with her back flat against the toilet door, listening to Lorna sob, with Maria chattering away to her aunt in the next room over. She's almost angry at the kid for so quickly falling back into normal behaviour, but she knows it's no more Maria's fault than it is Lorna's, or anybody else's for that matter.

Eventually, she gives up on calling Lorna's name through the door and receiving no response, and relocates to the living room to relieve Franny of a now very over-energetic toddler. By the time Lorna creeps into the room and sits down beside her on the carpet, she and Maria are halfway through a jigsaw puzzle, Maria's sticky little chubby fingers trying to force pieces into the wrong places. Nicky glances in Lorna's direction, before returning to Maria, ruffling her hair.

"Hey, kid, you wanna let mommy help with this? You're makin' a mess of it."

Maria twists to look at her, a piece of puzzle clutched in her hands, and then looks at Lorna. For a moment Nicky holds her breath, scared that it's all going to kick off again, but then Maria hands Lorna the puzzle piece and it's such a tiny gesture but she knows how much it means to Lorna by the teary smile she offers, the way she moves ever so slightly closer.

"Your mom ain't so good at jigsaws either, mind you," Nicky says, smirking, and Lorna elbows her softly in the ribs.

"Whatever, I'm better at 'em than you, Nichols."

"Yeah? How about that time you tried to put a piece of sea in one of the trees? Even though it didn't even fit so you tore off one of the corners squashing it in."

Lorna frowns, "in my defence, it was a very green bit of sea!"

"Yeah, yeah," Nicky says, but she can't stop grinning, and Maria prods her hard in the arm, with an indignant 'Icky!', trying to get her attention as she shoves a piece of monkey face onto a zebra's ass, "the kid has obviously picked up your talent," she says, chuckling as she tugs the piece from the toddler's fingers, much to Maria's annoyance.

Lorna's quiet, and it isn't until Nicky looks at her a long moment later, after quietly putting pieces of puzzle together with Maria, that she realises she's crying.

"Sorry," she whispers, and Lorna shakes her head furiously, forces a small smile.

"No no... don't be. I'm fine."

Before Nicky can challenge her on that, Franny appears with a coffee cup which she puts into Lorna's hands, smiling softly as she watches Maria continue to play with the pieces of puzzle, finding it more fun to see how many she can pick up at once than putting it together.

"Lorna used to have quite the appetite for puzzle pieces. Y'remember Lorn? Ma went absolutely nuts at you for swallowing one of the pieces of the Empire State building. When she was three or four she'd to try and eat just about everythin'," she grins, and Nicky can't help but smirk, imagining Lorna shoving objects into her mouth in much the same way she plucked apart Red's cooking and crammed it all in.

"I guess that's somethin' else Maria gets from you," she says, and when Lorna smiles, it reaches her eyes for the first time all night.

Maria flakes out around seven and Nicky puts her down for a nap. Lorna hovers awkwardly in the door way, not daring to go in, but unable to stay away.

It's so weird watching Nicky with Maria. Surreal. Nicky's always been there to look after her, but seeing her acting maternal is something else entirely. It's bizarre, and Lorna hadn't been convinced that it existed until she saw it with her own eyes, thought that Franny must have been making it up. But she wasn't, and it's real, and she can tell, even from only seeing them together briefly, that Maria adores her, and that the feeling's mutual.

She feels inexplicably sad. She knows she shouldn't, that her first day of freedom, of being reunited with her daughter and her family and Nicky should feel overwhelmingly joyful, but she can't avoid the aching emptiness she feels instead. It's looking at the world and realising how far everything has moved on without her. How big Franny's kids have gotten. How big her own daughter has grown in the time she's been away from her. The lack of familiarity. The way she could stare at Maria all day and still not feel any closer to knowing her.

Even Nicky's different, she thinks. Softer. Warmer.

Franny calls her 'Nic'. She laughs at Nicky's jokes and smiles more than Lorna's seen her do in years. They have inside jokes that Lorna doesn't understand. When Maria cries, they know exactly what she wants, exactly what to do, and Lorna just stands there, helpless, disconnected.

Lorna is as much Maria's mom as she was Christopher's fiancé.

"She's completely out," Nicky says, snapping Lorna out of her thoughts.

"Guess it's been an exciting day," Lorna replies, but she doesn't think she means it. Today has been like any other day in Maria's short life, and she isn't ignorant enough to think otherwise.

"Sure."

They stand there awkwardly, in the doorway, not talking for a long moment, and Lorna wishes the silence would swallow her. She doesn't remember ever feeling so uncomfortable with Nicky, and it makes her feel sick, makes her want to cry. Most of all, it makes her want to go back to Litchfield, to curl up in a ball on her bunk and never leave.

"It'll get better," Nicky says quietly, as if she might have been reading Lorna's thoughts, and Lorna lifts her head quickly, widens her eyes, nods even though she doesn't believe her.

Nicky stays over. She sleeps on the couch. Lorna would rather have her curled up in bed next to her, but it feels weird, so she doesn't suggest it.

She doesn't sleep, anyway. She leaves the light on because she's forgotten what it's like to be in the dark, but her bed's too springy, her sheets too soft, and it feels foreign to be sleeping inside instead of on top, and the duvet's too heavy. There's too much going on in her head to sleep. It feels like her first night in Litchfield all over again; every sound puts her on edge, and every time she closes her eyes, she starts to panic.

Her old bedroom feels like it's swallowing her. She can't blame her family for leaving it as it is; the old Lorna would have gone absolutely mad if they'd so much as laid a finger on her things. Still, she feels like it all serves as nothing but a painful reminder of everything that's happened, everything she's tried so hard to forget. The once comforting pictures and slogans suddenly seem sinister, terrorizing. Like they're taunting her to go back into that headspace, into that pit of illness that she's been trying so desperately hard to climb out of.

They started giving her pills in Litchfield. Red, who had always sworn never to deal with any kind of drug, legal or otherwise, had gone against all her morals to sneak them in, and Lorna had taken them out of some twisted sense of loyalty. Though they made her feel lousy to begin with, made it impossible for her to sleep, made her stomach church every time she ate something, once her body got used to them, they started to help. After a while, she was taking them because they made her feel better, quietened the voices, eased her growing sense of anxiety. She made Red promise never to tell Nicky.

Now that she's out, though, she has one strip left and then that's that.

It plays on her mind as she stares from one poster to the next, stares so hard at the red and pink lettering that her vision starts to go fuzzy.

Eventually, after lying awake for an hour and a half, she slides out of bed, tugs a sweater over her head, and pads quietly through to Maria's room. It's not like she really intends to; her feet take her there by themselves, and it's only when she quietly opens the door and inches closer to the crib that she really realises what she's doing.

It isn't as though she hasn't spent enough time around babies to not be phased by them - Franny's boys were always as much work for her as they were her sister – but everything about Maria perplexes her. She knows there's so much for her to worry about, so much about their future together that's uncertain. But, when she gazes into the crib, and looks down at her daughter's sleeping face, the way her tiny thumb is in her mouth, her other arm clutched tightly around her stuffed giraffe, she can't help but feel this warmth in her heart that she doesn't think she's ever experienced before. It feels like hope, she decides. Finally, in this sleeping child, she has a real hope for the future. Until now, everything's been built on fantasy and illusion, but Maria is unquestionably real, and she's hers, and for as long as she has that, maybe Lorna can build a proper future for herself.

In the morning, Nicky finds Lorna asleep in the chair next to Maria's crib, and she can't help but notice how content they look, sleeping side by side.

"Unusual for her to still be asleep at this time," Franny says, appearing quietly in the doorway, "did you sleep okay?"

"Yeah," Nicky replies, but doesn't draw her eyes away from the figures fast asleep across from her.

She didn't, actually. The couch is as uncomfortable as it looks, and she spent most of the night too worried to sleep, eventually giving up entirely. If anything, it's a relief to see that Lorna has been more lucky.

"Guess we'd better wake sleepin' beauty," Franny chuckles, and when Nicky finally forces herself to look at her, she can see a warm fondness in her that hasn't been there before.

They wake Lorna and she goes to her room to clean up before breakfast, whilst Nicky takes Maria downstairs, and Franny goes to get the boys ready for school. The routine comes far too easily, but Nicky doesn't miss the sadness in Lorna's eyes as she walks away from Maria. The kid's had a good sleep and is wide awake and bouncy as ever as Nicky takes her down to get started on breakfast, depositing her in her high chair, much to Maria's vocal disapproval. She's just starting to mush up some fruit for the kid's breakfast when Lorna appears.

"Oh, hey, let me just finish up with this and I'll fix you some toast. I ain't much good in the kitchen, but I can almost always do toast okay," she grins, deflates a little when Lorna just stares back at her.

"I'll get some cereal," she eventually says, stiffly, and she heads over to a cupboard, opens it to find nothing but jars and cans. Another cupboard, and it's nothing but biscuits.

"It's in the top-"

"I can do it myself!" Lorna snaps, and Nicky tightens her jaw, picks up the bowl of banana and sets it down in front of Maria.

"I was just trying to help," she mutters, sitting down across from the high chair, and picking up Maria's spoon. The toddler's had her breakfast for less than a minute and it's already smeared across the tray of her chair.

"Well, don't, okay? This is my house, not yours. You've already taken my daughter from me, at least let me try to function like a normal person for five minutes and make my own food."

Nicky stares at her, and Maria babbles, but they both ignore her. Tears are gathering in Lorna's dark eyes as she shakily grabs a packet of cereal, and, Nicky's eyes not leaving her for a second, reaches into the dish washer for a bowl. Her hands are trembling so much that flakes are falling to the tiled floor, and when she bends to pick them up, she knocks the bowl off the edge. It clatters on the floor and smashes into pieces, and the shock of it even makes Maria fall silent.

"I haven't taken her from you," Nicky says hoarsely, around the lump that's formed in her throat.

"Icky look at 'nana!" Maria chimes in, shoving a banana-smothered hand in her face, and Nicky silently curses her for choosing the worst possible moment to interrupt.

"Yeah, not now, kid," she whispers, turning her back on her to re-engage with Lorna. But Lorna's looking away, tears dribbling from her chin, and Nicky doesn't know what to say to fix things anymore.

She knows it isn't Nicky's fault, but she's never been the best at controlling her temper, or the things she says but doesn't mean. After breakfast, she fully expects Nicky to leave and never speak to her again, so when she hears the faint tapping on her door, long after Franny's gone to work, she thinks she must be imagining it. She's been curled up on her bed, face pressed into her pillow, tears streaming her cheeks, for at least an hour if not longer, and she doesn't have the energy to get up, so she croaks a 'yes?' half-expecting no reply.

The door opens, and she looks up to find Nicky awkwardly standing there. She's changed out of the clothes she slept in (does she actually leave clothes here? Has she just moved in and they're not telling her?) and is wearing a fresh t-shirt, and a short black skirt. Lorna realises she's never seen her wear a skirt before, thinks it's odd, had never imagined Nicky to be the kind who even owned skirts. It suits her though, accentuates her long skinny legs, which are bare, a bruise on one of her knees that Lorna can't draw her eyes away from.

"Wanna go for a walk?" she says, and of all the things Lorna was expecting to hear, she'd never anticipated that, puts her immediate nodding response down to the surprise, "cool. Maria's with her grand-pops. I'll see you in a bit."

She closes the door behind her and Lorna slowly drags herself out of bed, looks at herself in the mirror for the first time since getting out, and finds that she can't bear what she sees there.

It's a good half an hour before Lorna descends the stairs and they leave the house. Nicky finds herself pacing back and forth, running her fingers through her hair until it's even messier than it was when she woke up. She can tell Joe's getting agitated with her. He doesn't like being left on baby watch as it is, and her constant plodding back and forth isn't helping, especially since Maria keeps trying to escape him to join her.

When Lorna finally appears, she's wearing a cream lacy crop top with a high waisted matching skirt that leaves only the slightest band of skin across her middle exposed. Her hair's perfectly curled, and her face is fully made up, and Nicky thinks she looks more like she's going out on a date than a walk around the block. Then again, this has always been Lorna's way of dealing with things; she knows that. If nothing else, she can control how she looks, how she dresses, how her hair is. She's been searching for something to cling on to to keep her grounded, and she's found it. Any other time, Nicky would be aching to peel those clothes off of her. It's been so long since she really even touched her let alone anything else, but there's so many more important things for her to worry about that she pushes any feelings of lust to the back of her mind.

"Ready to go?" she asks, and Lorna nods, forces a smile.

They walk in silence for a while. Lorna's neighbourhood ain't exactly the kind of place for going for a walk, and there's constant noises from the other houses, from people leaning out of windows, from kids playing in the street. But, eventually, it gets quieter, and they find themselves stopping at a bench overlooking a kid's play park. Nicky slips a cigarette out of the packet in her blazer pocket, but doesn't light it, and after a moment slides it back in.

"I'm sorry for what I said this mornin'," Lorna says faintly, dragging her eyes away from the children playing below them, and meeting Nicky's gaze, "I know you ain't purposely taking her from me. I just... all my life I've dreamt of having someone who loves me. That was my one purpose, y'know? Find a husband, have kids, settle down. I completely fucked that up, Nick."

Nicky swallows, furrows her eyebrows. She wants to hold Lorna like she used to when they were in Litchfield, brush her tears away, make her feel safe. But everything's changed now, and she's not sure she'd be welcome.

"Maria's that family. That person who loves me no matter what. That's what she was supposed to be but... she doesn't love me. I'm not a mom to her. I'm a stranger, someone who she doesn't recognise, or like. Someone who smells funny and talks funny. She screams whenever I go near her."

"That isn't true," Nicky tells her, finally giving in and resting a hand gently on top of Lorna's, "she don't know you yet. But when she does, she'll love you. You're her ma. She just has to get used to you."

Lorna's mouth twists into a side smile, "no. She'll get to know me and she'll love me even less. I'm not cut out for this. I mess everything up. I'll mess her up."

"Hey, no, you won't," she links their fingers together, squeezes tight, "you think I know anythin' about raising a kid? I've had to learn it day by day. You'll get there. You have more maternal instincts than I've ever had. And you want her. You want to love her, and look after her, and be a mom, and that's more than some kids ever get."