Chapter 1

A chance Encounter.

"Sometimes life has a cruel sense of humor, giving you the thing you always wanted at the worst time possible."

Lisa Kleypas.

"I know it's not likely," Larry said, a nervous grin adorning his face as he inspected the waiting area of the airport with wary eyes. "I mean, in the last ten years there's been, what? Four Transatlantic crashes? If you take into account the sheer amount of daily flights, the percentage of accidents has to be insanely low, right?"

Flying to France for a quick getaway had been Larry's idea in the first place—Piper had been reluctant to accept, but she had agreed eventually; mostly because she had been unable to come up with a good reason not to—but now the reality of a seven hour flight over the sea was starting to catch up with him, and his nerves were beginning to show.

"Besides, according to every statistic the drive here was the most dangerous part of the journey, and we rocked that, didn't we Pipes?"

Piper nodded distractedly, her eyes focused on the linoleum tiles in front of her as they made their way towards a cluster of free seats located on the far side of the room and her mind a million miles away from the conversation.

Larry was about to launch into a comparison of the chances of a car crash versus a flight one—he had spend a good chunk of the night digging information about it on the net—when he noticed Piper wasn't paying attention, so he stop talking and let out a quiet sigh. While he had grown more anxious the closer they came to the flight Piper had turned more absentminded, prone to get lost in thought at all times.

It was annoying sometimes but at least it provided Larry with plenty of chances to have some fun.

"Hey Pipes? I think there's a woman checking me out." Larry continued, making sure to keep his tone even. "She's tall, leggy, with a cute pair of glasses and hasn't taken her eyes off me since we arrived, so I think I have a good chance. What do you say, should I go for it?"

Piper nodded again before doing a double-take as her jealous streak kicked in and she finally registered what her boyfriend had said. "Wait, what?"

"You weren't listening." Larry replied, shrugging innocently. "I figure that would get your attention."

Piper sighed, lowering her head in regret. "I'm sorry honey, I was distracted."

"So I noticed, what's on your mind, oh girlfriend of mine?"

My ex, Piper replied automatically inside her mind, though she was wise enough to keep that thought to herself.

"Nothing," she said instead. "Like I said, I was just… distracted."

It was true. This was the first time that she had set foot on an airport since the day she had decided to fly away from the life she had build for herself and the woman with whom she had shared it, so it was turning out to be damned near impossible to keep all the memories at bay.

"Well, you didn't miss much." Larry informed her, sitting down on the nearest free spot and inviting Piper to do the same with a hand gesture. "It was just my latest freak out about the flight, so it was probably for the best that you didn't hear it."

Piper had to fight the urge to roll her eyes. It wasn't like it was Larry's fault that she had gone through this same song and dance enough times to become immune to flight nerves. The first time she had gotten on a plane she had been more than a little scared herself, though that panic had died out quickly.

Back in those days doubt and fear hadn't had a place in her life. Not with Alex Vause around to chase them away.

"Relax, kid. I do this all the time." Alex whispered in Piper's ear as she wrapped her hands around the blonde's waist, pulling Piper's body flush against hers. "It will be okay, trust me."

"I used to do this all the time," Piper echoed, trying to infuse her words with the same confidence that Alex used to exude all the time. "We'll be fine, trust me."

"Right, I forgot I'm traveling with a veteran here," Larry teased gently. "You've been to France before, haven't you?"

Piper had lived in France before, but that was another thing that was probably better left unsaid. "Yeah it's one of the places I visited."

"I bet you're looking forward to staying in a nice hotel this time. It couldn't have been easy finding places to crash with a backpacker's budget."

Piper laughed awkwardly and shifted her eyes away from Larry's face. She had shared most of her adventures in the old continent with him, but she may have blurred the details a bit.

Somehow, back when Larry had first asked about it, Piper's first panic induced instinct had been to tell him that she and her 'friend' had been traveling with the kind of money that one would expect from a backpacker. It wasn't until she had talked to Polly later that day that it occurred to her that it would have been easier to say that her 'friend' was stinking rich.

In her defense she had been a bit busy trying to cover up the fact that she had done all her traveling on the pocket of a very, very wealthy drug dealer that had happened to be her girlfriend to worry about the details.

"Yeah, it wasn't… pretty." Piper agreed, trying to keep her face straight and telling herself over and over again that it wasn't technically a lie. The place that Alex had found for them hadn't been pretty, after all. Gorgeous or breath-taking, sure, but certainly not 'pretty'.

Bullshiting herself had always been a particular talent of Piper's.

"You'll have to show it to me, once we get there."

"It might not be there anymore," Piper whispered before narrowing her eyes and changing the subject. "And don't think I have forgotten about your little joke about that woman checking you out. It wasn't funny."

"It wasn't a joke," Larry replied, the smile on his face vanishing when he caught sight of the glare on Piper's face. "I mean, the part about me hitting on her was, of course, but there really was a woman checking me out."

"What!? Where is she?" The: I'll kill her, was left unspoken but Larry heard it all the same, so her forced an awkward laugh out to try and defuse the tension. Piper had never been good at sharing.

"She was over there," Larry pointed out, waving a hand towards a particularly thick portion of the crowd. "She and her friend couldn't take her eyes off me and really, can you blame them?" He joked, flexing his muscles in jest.

Piper, however, was not distracted by his antics; too busy scanning the crowd for a woman that matched the rather brief description that Larry had given to pay attention to her boyfriend. Just when she was about to give up and call Larry a liar (there were a rather surprising lack of women with glasses around), her eyes caught a flash of black and blue hair that made her heart clench inside her chest.

Piper jumped to her feet in an instant, but the crowd had already shifted and the owner of the hair had vanished from sight, leaving her to look wildly around the airport for the hint of something she didn't dare to think about.

"I think she's gone, honey." Larry said tentatively, grabbing hold of Piper's hand and guiding her back to her seat.

Piper sank down in the seat with a weariness that felt out of place considering the hour of the day. It wasn't even dark out and she was already exhausted.

Alex had been gone for years now and if nothing else, her break-up with the woman had taught her that time truly healed all wounds, or at least did a rather fantastic job at scabbing them over—even the impossibly big ones. Nowadays Piper usually went months without sparing a thought for the dark haired beauty that had once been the center of her universe, going through life without wondering what had become of such an important part of her past.

And yet…

"Yeah," Piper muttered. "She's gone."

Alex saw Piper the second that the woman entered the room.

She didn't looked that much different despite the years, and even a different haircut wasn't enough to hide the blonde from Alex's gaze. Not when the woman had once been as much part of Alex's life as her own reflection.

Once second Alex had been joking around with Nichols—describing in vivid detail all the things they could do once they landed in Paris—and the next, like something out of a dream (or perhaps a nightmare), Piper-fucking-Chapman had waltzed back into her life; dressed like the WASP-y bitch that she had always been and nodding along to whatever the idiot beside her was babbling about.

And make no mistake; Alex knew the man was a fucking idiot. It took a severe mental disability to even consider dating Piper-fucking-Chapman, and there was no doubt in Alex's mind that the guy beside her was Piper's boyfriend. (The idea that the man could very well be Piper's husband did crossed Alex's mind, but she killed that thought as soon as it arrived. A married Piper wasn't something that she was ready to deal with. Ever.)

After all, Alex knew all too well what it looked like, to be in love with that girl.

"What's going on, Vause?" Nichols asked, moving around her petrified friend to peer at the couple that was walking towards them. "You look like you just saw a ghost."

"You could say that." Alex whispered, squaring her shoulders and wrecking her brain for the perfect witty one-liner to use in the imminent encounter.

An encounter that never occurred, because a second later Alex got to watch with something that felt a lot like shock how the couple passed beside them without sparing them a single glance.

Well… Fuck.

Nichols let out a guffaw, barely managing to contain herself until the couple was out of range before doubling over in her mirth. "Oh man! You should see your face, Vause!"

In another moment Alex would have bantered back something witty, but right now she was too shocked to manage to do much more than let out a raspy: "Shut up, Nichols," never dragging her eyes away from Piper's retreating form.

Because fuck. This wasn't how their reunion was supposed to turn out. Not at all.

Alex had always imagined that when she ran into Piper again, (and that had always been a when, because even at her worst Alex had always known that she and Piper would cross paths once again sooner or later) it would be something monumental.

Their eyes would meet across the room—any room they happened to find themselves in—drawn together by the same magnetic force that had always defined their every interaction and Alex would finally get the chance to rub on Piper's face all the things that she had missed out on when the blonde had decided to walk out of her that day. It would be something beautiful, and then… well, the end to that particular fantasy had never been set on stone, forever changing along with Alex's current mood.

Sometimes it became a steamy: 'I have seen the error of my ways, take me now!" sex fantasy and sometimes it turned into a revenge fueled daydream that ended with Alex walking away from a crying, broken Piper, vindicated at long last.

Either way it was a nice dream and Alex really should have known better than to trust it. For all the countries that she had visited and all the people she had known, Alex had yet to find someone more self-absorbed that Piper-fucking-Chapman.

She should have known that the bitch wasn't even going to notice her.

"That an Ex, Vause?" Nichols asked with a grin.

Alex nodded silently.

"Aww, don't feel bad buddy." Nichols said, tossing one of her arms around the taller woman's shoulders in a display of camaraderie. "I don't think she saw us, though I could be wrong. Maybe you're just not as memorable in the sack as you think you are."

"First of all, that's the Ex," Alex clarified, shooting Nichols a meaningful glance over the top of her glasses. "And second, there's no way anyone could forget sleeping with me, Nichols. You should know."

"There's a reason we only did that once, Vause." Nichols bantered back absentmindedly, suddenly keenly interest in the couple. "And you're telling me that the blonde over there is the infamous Piper?"

"It's Piper-fucking-Chapman, you know that." Alex sighed. "And yes, that would be her."

Nichols studied the woman with a critical eye. Back when Alex had first told her about Piper—a night confession after a few hours filled with a lot of booze, drugs and their one and only hook up—Nichols had pictured the woman as a super-model. Some so beautiful and special that even Alex had not dare to try and turn her into a drug mule.

Now, while the woman was undeniably pretty, Nichols had seen Alex hang around women far more beautiful and exotic. It was startling to see just how normal the woman that had managed to snare the wild heart of her friend really was.

"What are the odds that we're on the same flight as them?" Nichols asked after a few moments of silence.

"Statistically? I would say one in twenty or something along those lines." Alex drawled, pulling her glasses into her hair and rubbing the bridge of her nose in an effort to ward off an oncoming headache. "In reality? I would bet my entire fortune that she's, not only in our flight, but also in the same class and sitting no farther than five seats away from us."

"Way to be optimistic, Vause."

"In my line of work you don't survive by hoping for the best." Alex replied, turning on her heels and shrugging off Nichol's arm in order to walk to a more secluded corner of the room. The last thing she needed was for Piper to finally get her blonde head out of her ass and look around to catch Alex staring. "Besides, it's always a mistake to underestimate just how much the universe hates me."

"True," Nichols acknowledged, staring at Piper for another second before turning around to follow Alex, finding her friend leaning against a column that blocked the woman from Piper's view. "Now, what's the plan Vause? Are we going to hide out here until she boards, or do you want to change flights, just in case?"

The last option was tempting but Alex's pride wasn't about to let her run away from anyone, least of all from Piper-fucking-Chapman.

"She's always one of the first persons to board." Alex sighed, letting her glasses fall back onto her face and casting her eyes towards the ground. "We can get in right behind her. She'll be too busy checking out her seat and taking a peek out the window to notice us."

Nichols refrained from commenting on Alex's knowledge of Piper's habits, but a smirk appeared on her face all the same. "And what if she sees us?"

"She won't," Alex growled.

"Hey, you're the one that told me that we should be preparing for the worse."

Alex let out a weary sigh, unable to battle against her own logic. "Then she sees us and you get to be my girlfriend who I'm taking out for a romantic trip to Paris.

"Lucky me," Nichols chuckled, grin firmly in place as she stepped of their corner and leaned against the opposite side of Alex's column, watching Piper with barely contained amusement.

The blonde had jumped out of her seat and was now looking around the airport wildly, no doubt looking for someone, and Nichols had a pretty good idea who that person could be.

It seemed their flight had just become that much more interesting.

I really should be working on my school work or the other project I'm juggling (one that actually pays some bills) but I couldn't get this paring out of my mind, so here you have it. It will be a quick adventure and sadly I don't think I'll be able to give it half as much attention as it deserves (so please forgive any mistake you encounter, but feel free to point them out on reviews and I'll fix them as soon as possible) but I hope you enjoy it all the same.

As always, thanks for reading.

Valkyrium.