A/N: Wooooooow it's been a while. I wanted to deal with the heavy blow that season three dealt us, but it took me a while to put into words how it left me feeling. I was hoping to post this all in one go but I feel like this first chapter has festered long enough.
"I think about dying but I don't want to die. Not even close. In fact my problem is the complete opposite. I want to live, I want to escape." - Matt Healy, the 1975.
That I love you had been for Red. She couldn't bear to empty her heart out to Lorna again, to not have it reciprocated. Fuck, she couldn't even bear to look at her. Red was disappointed. Red's disappointment, Nicky could deal with. That, she had experience with. Years of it, in fact. But Lorna was something entirely different because Lorna – sweet, beautiful, fragile little Lorna – was falling apart, and that? That Nicky couldn't deal with.
Especially knowing that even after everything they'd been through, everything she had done, every wound she'd sewn back together, it had all been for nothing. And she was stupid to have ever thought this would end up any different.
She'd meant it for them both. Deep inside, she knew she meant those words for both of them. She fucking loved both of them, in different ways, yeah, but both meant just as much. Both of them, she had fucked up. Both of them deserved better.
Lorna had said 'I love you, too'.
I love you, too.
It had felt like Nicky's heart was splitting in two. She had pretended it fell on deaf ears because it was easier than having to cope with the fact that the first time Lorna ever said it would probably also be the last. It was easier to feign nonchalance, to go back to that brash, uncaring teenager who didn't give a shit about anyone but herself, who would have fucked anyone over for a couple of bucks, a hit. Wasn't that what had landed her in this mess in the first place? She'd gone against her instincts. She'd trusted the wrong people.
And Lorna had trusted her, and look what she'd got back in return.
Nicky might as well forget all about them. About her. Once you went to max you never came back. And if you did, it was years later, and the world had changed outside of the iron doors you were stuck behind. Lorna would be gone. Red would be gone. This wasn't like going to the SHU. She wasn't going to get welcomed back with toilet paper streamers and a wry 'I told you so' smile. Nicky had fucked up a lot of things in her life, but this was in a completely different ballpark. She might as well have kept the heroin, overdosed on it, been wheeled out of Litchfield in a body bag. It probably would have been easier. Hasn't that been the inevitable outcome anyway? Isn't that what the whole fucking problem is? That she couldn't just let go of it. That she never will be able to.
I love you, too.
She doesn't want to keep focussing on those four words. She doesn't want to think about the desperation in her voice. She can't bear to think of the way her fingers feel against her skin, or the smell of her, or the sound of her sleeping, or the way her eyes shine and her cheeks flush when Nicky tells her she loves her (not in so many words, but in gestures, and verbal algorithms, metaphors that are lost on nobody; in touches in the dark when no one else is looking). She wants, desperately, to forget that Lorna Morello exists, in the same way she's longed to forget about heroin, because they both get under her skin in just the same way, and they're both as dangerous for her.
Once she's in max, she needs to keep focussing on it. The essence of Lorna Morello is the only thing that keeps her sane, keeps her going. Nights in max are filled with screaming, crying; noises that Nicky was once able to drown out with her radio, but now she doesn't even have that. She doesn't have anything. The days are just as long and bleak too, but she learns to drown out the noises. For the hour she's let out every day, she keeps to herself. She sees a glimpse of Miss Claudette one day, but she's gone before she can try to make conversation, whisked around a corner by a CO, and Nicky realises she wouldn't have anything to say to her anyway.
She'd thought the SHU was torture, but this is so much worse. This is all she's ever going to have.
Some nights, she dreams of home. Home in't her apartment in NYC, or the place she grew up. Home is lying curled up in her bunk with Lorna, arguing over lipstick and scrabble. Home is bickering with Red over a pot of yogurt, and rolling her eyes at Piper and Alex's latest bullshit, and watching Norma and Gina play cards, her radio blaring through her earbuds.
She wakes up, alone, and shaking, and feeling like a chunk of her is missing.
This isn't what Nicky Nichols does. She isn't sentimental. It doesn't matter who she leaves behind because isn't looking after yourself all that matters?
That's the front she's hidden behind for so long that she's almost believed it's true. Having a 'family' was a mistake; getting invested in Lorna and Red and everybody else, was a mistake. It's only ever when she opens herself up, when she lets people in, that this happens. Every relationship she's ever had – platonic or not – she's fucked up. She's better off alone, where she can't hurt anybody but herself. She should have learnt that years ago.
Days in max trickle by slowly. Everything that came before it feels so long ago, so distant, like she made it all up. It's not that it's quieter in max – it's anything but – but it's emptier, lonelier. The noise buzzes around her like static, and she stops listening to it, stops caring about any of it. She isn't a person here. She doesn't matter here.
Before max she'd made the decision to live. Isn't that what she'd said, as she handed over the wads of heroin, promised not to touch it anymore? But living doesn't hold much appeal anymore, and she knows, faced with the same decision now, she'd choose the high. All this just isn't worth it.
She doesn't really sleep, which is fortunate, because she's never been a morning person, and there's a CO yelling at her to get up at some ungodly hour one morning. She hasn't been keeping track of how long it's been, but it's been long enough to fall into a routine, the days blending into one, feeling like she's barely there but at the same time like she's been there forever. She doesn't understand when the guard roughly pulls her out of her bed, cuffs her, and begins to march her out the place, other inmates hollering from their cages. Normally – before this place knocked the fight out of her – she'd have thought back, argued, but she doesn't have it in her. Instead, she thinks what did I fuck up now and grates her teeth against the pain of handcuffs rubbing the skin on her wrists.
She doesn't know where she's going until they're out in the yard, and she sees the prison van in front of her, and she thinks fuck this, I'm getting transferred? and then the realisation dawns on her that she doesn't care, that there's nothing left here for her anyhow.
"I think she can be let out of cuffs given the circumstances, Grainger."
The cuffs are taken off. Nicky drops her arms to her sides, flexes her wrists, her fingers. She's never seen this guy before but there's something about the way he's smiling at her that she doesn't like. It's barely light out, and they're standing awkwardly in the yard like it's some kind of hostage situation, and she wonders whether she's ever going to find out what's going on, or if she's just going to wake up someplace new tomorrow morning, no explanation.
"It's your lucky day, Nichols," the new guy hums as he puts her into the back of the van, and he reminds her of one of the boyfriends her mom had when she was a kid, always trying too hard.
Behind the wheel, a latino girl sits quietly, flipping through a magazine. For a second, familiarity floods Nicky's senses, and she's remembering Lorna sitting in that exact spot, rambling about the latest celeb fashion mishaps, and she feels overwhelmingly homesick.
"Come on, Ramos, back up the hill."
As soon as she lowers her magazine, recognition sparks through her, and no, this isn't just a latino girl, this is one of ours, she's one of ours. She's taking me home.
"Hey? Nichols? Welcome back," she says, softly, and though it's unmistakably her, she's also different somehow. Her eyes are hollow. Her hair isn't as immaculate as Nicky remembers, her make-up rough around the edges. Nicky can't tell if it's her memory playing tricks on her, or if it's been longer than she thought.
They drive in a silence that's only broken by the CO's fingers tapping tunelessly against the dashboard, and Nicky doesn't know what to make of any of it, doesn't even really know how she's supposed to feel. This has to be a mistake. She was never supposed to go back. You go to max, you don't come back, that's just how it is. She hadn't prepared for any of this.
Nicky walks back on familiar soil, and she's reminded just how insignificant she is. It's not that she was expecting a party, a flurry of unwanted attention, but she also never expected this slow, quiet walk through a space that used to be home but seems to have changed with the tide to a place she no longer recognises. Physically, it's the same, but there's an odd atmosphere, something she can't quite put her finger on, and she doesn't know if it's just because she's been away for so long that the Gen Pop her head painted doesn't match up to the reality, or what. Maritza is walking a step or two behind, and Nicky forces herself not to look at her, because there's something in the way her voice falters, in the way her walk doesn't hold its old spring, that makes Nicky want to be sick. What the hell has happened to this place?
"No it can't- Nicky?"
She clenches her jaw and fights a losing battle to escape Red's hands on her face, squeezing her cheeks, holding tightly to her shoulders, and she wants to pretend that she doesn't feel a weird sense of relief. She wants to ignore the warmth that settles into her stomach, that feeling of coming home after a long trip.
"Yeah, yeah, don't okay. I get it, you never thought you'd see me again, you'd all but given me up for dead... yada yada yada... can we skip to the part where everything's back to normal and you're swiping me around the head for being disrespectful?"
There's a hint of hopefulness in her voice that she fails to disguise. She knows there's an uncomfortable conversation, looming somewhere in the distance. She fucked up. But for now, Red just seems overwhelmingly happy to see her, and as much as she might pretend to hate it, it means everything to her.
"Oh, Nicky, so much has changed since you've been gone," Red gushes, and her neatly groomed brows form a frown as she smudges her fingers again against Nicky's cheek, "but there will be time for all that. Come, you must-"
"Hey, Ma, y'know where Morello is? I didn't exactly expect a welcome home cake, but..." she trails off. In all honesty, she doesn't know what she did expect. There's an antsy feeling in her stomach, jitters that make her hands shake, that mean she can't stay still. It's just sunk in that she's going to have to address those last words, and she doesn't want to say she's excited about it exactly, but there's some kind of feeling there, and honestly, it beats the numbness that has resided inside her for the past few months.
Red's face goes from disapproving to... well, Nicky's not quite sure.
"Nobody's told you," she says, slowly.
"Well, I just got here, and they don't exactly have the same kinda verbal channels over in max, y'know?" she looks over Red's shoulder, down the corridor, her heart pounding as her mind goes over possibilities. It had never occurred to her that she might get back to find Lorna-
"Lorna got... married."
Red looks weary, and Nicky hopes the expression on her own face isn't the cartoon look of shock and horror that she fears it is. (It is) She feels like she's been sucker punched in the gut.
"Holy shit, how long have I been gone? A fucking decade?" she runs her fingers through her hair, and she knows she's raising her voice, because she can feel the anger boiling through her, and if she was the type to punch walls, she'd be doing it now, "fucking married? Lorna got married. Eh, fucking excellent, congratulations to her, ayy?"
"Nicky..."
"Where is she?"
Red looks like she wants to touch her, but even she is scared of accidentally flicking the detonator, "I don't think..."
"No, where is she? I want to... congratulate her."
Nicky paces. She thinks maybe if she can just pace long enough she can get out all her anger and frustration and self-loathing and jealousy before she has to face Lorna. Her tread is heavy, and her fists clench and unclench as she takes long, deep strides, up and down the corridor, like it's some kind of a ritual. (In all honesty, it's nice to have the space to walk, after being cramped up in max).
She doesn't want to say that the one thing that got her through max was the memory of those words, of Lorna's tear stained cheeks and smudged lipstick, of Lorna's tiny hands bunched around her uniform, of Lorna's laughter, of the way she always looks away, closes her eyes every time Nicky drops her a compliment. She doesn't want to say it, but she knows, deep down inside, that the reason she's living, breathing, still sort of sane, is down to all those things. And now... now, reality has decided to catch up with her and knock her right on the ass, and she feels like she's scrambling about, unable to get back up.
This isn't what Nicky does. There's a reason she doesn't let her heart strings get tangled up in somebody else's. You only get once chance to break my heart. She scoffs, interrupting her ritual, scuffing her shoe on the ground and letting out a hollow laugh. Yeah right.
She gets an odd sense of deja vu as she eventually moves towards the glass, positions herself against the ledge, runs her fingers over familiar territory. Nicky thinks she has always had this primal need to hurt herself, and this feels like further proof. A part of her hopes that it's all a lie, a fantasy Lorna's constructed, another Christopher...
It makes her feel sick admitting it to herself.
She grits her teeth and raises her eyes to the glass, searches the room for the tiny figure drowning in a plastic chair too big for her, and finally finds her. Her mouth feels dry, tears pricking at her eyes, and she has to fight not to bang on the glass, get her ass thrown to SHU, or worse.
Lorna, she acknowledges, looks happy. And she can't bring herself to be angry at her for that. So, instead, she turns and walks away.
Red saved her radio, looked after it for her. It feels heavy in her hands, but a nice heavy. She doesn't listen to it right away, wants to soak in the familiar sounds of her not-quite home. She likes the faint rumble of rusty generators, has longed to hear people bickering playfully rather than screaming, wailing, fighting in the corridors. She's especially grateful for the absence of the lockdown alarm. Parts of here feel quiet, but parts are comfortingly loud. She's not quite sure she could ever put it into words, but thankfully nobody ever asks.
It's a couple hours before she sees Lorna again, and thankfully she's had time to work on her game face.
Still, it falters as Lorna presses her body firmly against hers, wraps her arms tightly around Nicky's back, her curves melding perfectly to Nicky's. She lets herself enjoy the comfort and warmth of it for a moment, the distinct feeling of home, and then lets go, tells herself this is the last time.