A/N: Posted this on AO3 back in June 2015, but never got it over here. I'm kinda glad, because what I posted over there was a shitshow. All lowercase and unedited. Fixed it up (ish) and here we are!

Pls enjoy

The day Piper arrives back in the States, it occurs to her that she no longer has a home.

Previously, she'd have considered her shitty one bedroom only five minutes away from Smith home, or maybe her parents' house with the green door and thatched roof, and at the very least Alex's third-storey apartment just off the side of Brooklyn, but now she has none of those places. She's long since been evicted, and she can't even look at her parents after everything that went down. The thought that they have no idea, that they're still going around talking about their perfect little Piper, the Smith grad, kills her inside. and Alex's apartment ... she can't even think of her without bursting into tears.

She ends up at Polly's doorstep with a bottle of five dollar wine and an apologetic smile. The girl looks different; older, somehow. Piper isn't sure if this is all in her head or real life, but she's sure of one thing: it's a direct result of Piper's abandonment. Her bags are right behind her, making her look desperate as fuck, and so Polly lets her in warily.

"What happened?" she asks after she sees the bags under Piper's eyes.

She looks unhappy. Piper's never looked unhappy when she's with Alex as far as Polly's aware.

And she cries then at the thought of Alex, with her raven hair and her secretary glasses, and of the stench of alcohol and weed that lingered on her every night.

"I don't even know, Pol. I don't even know. one minute it was so good, and she loved me like she always did, and then the next ..."

Polly actually looks sympathetic, which is a first, and for once it isn't about Pete or what colour her wedding dress should be, or the flavour of the cake — it's about Piper and her real fucking problems. "Are you okay?" she asks.

And fuck, of course she isn't okay. What kind of poor assumption is that? That she's okay? She just lost the love of her life.

But with a tight-lipped smile and glassy eyes, she opens the bottle of wine and pours it into their glasses. It tastes like acid and burns her throat, but fuck if it isn't comforting to keep drowning in it.

"Hey, Pipes," Polly says as she watches her best friend pour her fourth glass whilst she is only on her first. "You might wanna slow down there."

"No," Piper says. Her vision is bleary and the room is spinning, and she always was a fucking lightweight. There's a voice talking to her, distant but there nonetheless, from New Hampshire to New York.

And in this light, with the weight of the world on her shoulders and heartbreak in her eyes, Polly almost looks like a good friend.

\.\

It's much too easy to move on from.

She'll lay awake at night wondering, listening to the sound of her own heartbeat, wondering if it was ever really love — if it was adoration or infatuation. Because if she can do this so easily, if she can kiss girls and kiss boys and fuck them without a second thought, and if she can smile with her cheeks and dance the night away, how could it have ever really been love?

And on other nights, on the bad nights, she'll cry for the way things used to be.

For Alex's fingers tangled in her hair, and her voice in her ear whispering reassurances that calmed her down no matter what the situation. For gunshots outside and sirens blaring while Alex holds her tiny frame closer to her than ever before and wipes away her tears with the hem of her shirt.

And that's how she knows that it was real: the way that her mouth can't wrap around the name Alex without breaking down, and the fact that whenever she sees someone tall with black hair her stomach ties itself into a knot as she hopes to fucking god that it's her, just for a second, before the dread kicks in and she hides behind the closest object.

\.\

It takes years to find someone that can make her feel even a fraction of the happiness that Alex did, and when she finally does, he's so fucking boring.

He's nice and reliable, and he wears sweater vests and asks before awkwardly pawing at her breasts over her shirt, and his mouth tastes fresh like soft mints and colgate toothpaste. He has a fucking jewfro, for God's sake.

But he's so sweet, too, and he can make her laugh so easily that nothing else matters.

And with Larry, that's the thing: nothing else has to matter.

In all of Piper's relationships, they'd been hot and fiery and fucking amazing, but there was always something nagging away at them. The undercurrent of something wrong whenever they'd kiss, or walk down the street hand-in-hand.

With Larry, it's simple.

She almost forgets that she's never wanted simple.

And god, Alex would be so ashamed of her. she'd think that even if they couldn't be together, even though their time has since passed and they're two pieces of a jigsaw that no longer fit together, that Piper should be with someone who lights fires in her heart. Someone that could make her feel alive with the softest brush of a hand, whose smile would send shivers down her spine.

Alex always was unrealistic about love. Grand gestures were so easy for her to pull out of thin air but never easy to follow through on, and whenever Piper would let herself break at the promise of more, Alex would break her heart with another promise again.

All Piper wanted was her, forever.

It's a surprise to herself, to be thinking about Alex after all this time. It's been so many years, and she's aged in ways she never thought she would at such a young age.

She thought she would have forgotten Alex Vause by now.

And not forgotten in the way that she's forgotten about Tyler Hawkins in the third grade who'd been her first official boyfriend, and who was so sweet to her and had held her hand and made her paper flowers yet whose name she can never recall for the life of her, but forgotten in the way that she'd forgotten her daddy's mouth on that strange woman outside of the movie theatre.

Repressed, almost.

She keeps a photograph of the two of them tucked between the pages of Jane Eyre, for old time's sake, and they look so happy in it she can't bare to look at it.

She's sure that Alex doesn't think about her anymore — that she's moved on to bigger and better things. And she fucking hates her for everything she put her through, and for that smile that made her feel alive when nothing else did, and yet she knows that could never forget Alex Vause.

She's unforgettable.

\.\

There are officers at her door, armed and stony-faced.

Larry's confused and she's so fucking upset, and she's crying and she won't stop and it's all Alex's fucking fault and Larry was never supposed to fucking find out about this. She's made a good life after Alex, a good life with a fiancé and an artisanal soap business and a pregnant best friend and now she's going to prison.

And although it's her fault too — nobody forced her to carry that suitcase — she can't help but blame Alex. This is some sort of fucking payback for leaving, for not giving her another chance, for not saying goodbye to her mother.

Her mother with the sad eyes and four jobs, who loved Alex more than anything in the whole fucking world. Who was so excited when she finally met Piper, who she'd heard so much about beforehand. Her eyes looked happy for a brief second when she'd looked on at Alex and her together, smiling and silly and happy. Before all of the shit, when they were happy and in love.

When they had the world in their hands.

\.\

Prison is so different from the real world.

There are girls with red lips and girls with big hair and cruel laughs and heart attack survivors and cancer patients and the food is shit and there are scary Russians with sadder eyes than Diane and then there's Alex.

And Jesus, when she sees Alex all Hell freezes over.

She looks the same but so, so different, and her eyes are still soft but rough, and her voice is the same deep and husky it always was, but it's like a lullaby to Piper after all this time.

And she screams and screams and screams, but nobody hears her.

\.\

And somehow she falls in love again. Alex isn't the same anymore, though. There's a layer of sadness on top of everything she says, and she's cheeking antidepressants when she should be taking them.

But she picks Larry.

Because he's safe and dependable, and Alex would never wear a sweater vest. She picks Larry but her heart picks Alex, and she yearns for the girl with the secretary glasses and the smell of weed late at night.

And then Nicky gets her, she gets her hand down Alex's pants and she gets her to smile and she gets her to come, and she doesn't know which hurts most.

\.\

On and off, off and on, maybe it's better this way.

Alex never really was one for forever. Adventure and excitement were her game, not lifelong commitments and labels that made everything oh-so official.