Title: Veni, Vidi, Flevi (I came, I saw, I cried)

Author: h-bomba

Rating: M

Summary: Piper's stint in The Shu becomes a defining moment.

Spoilers: Up to 1x09 - "Fucksgiving"

A/N: Title taken from Dorian Cirrone's Prom Kings and Drama Queens

Words: 1375

"Crying is right at hand in the smothering dark, closed inside someone else, when you see how everything you can ever accomplish will end up as trash."

― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

Piper Chapman wasn't a crier. Not under most circumstances. When she was younger, she would cry to get what she wanted and it worked for the most part. She learned from an early age that crying made her father, and men in particular, uncomfortable and to that end she learned to get what she wanted from them. As her relationships matured, she still used the tact to her advantage.

Even as Larry raised his voice when they were discussing Piper's incarceration, Piper felt the tears coming. An instinct honed so fine that it sat upon a knife's edge whenever she was cut. In contrast, she had cried to Alex only once before. That night in Brussels after Alex had so nonchalantly told Piper her life was riding on that suitcase. The suitcase she waited hours for, agonized over because she was doing as Alex asked. The subject of her life being worth the fifty grand stuffed in that suitcase did not come up, however, and Piper's eyes were now wide open to Alex's business.

The jet setting, the sex, the unfettered life of having money without the responsibility of earning it. It would be so easy to look back on that time in her life with a sense of romance if she didn't feel so much shame. Shame over becoming a criminal, of knowing what she was doing was wrong and ignoring the sick feelings in her gut. Shame for loving someone as she did Alex and for abandoning her.

As she sat, lay and pace in that tiny room they called The Box, Piper felt the futility of prison acutely. Some asshole with a vendetta against lesbians throws her in solitary. Is it legal? Doubtful. Was she still sitting on a mattress that reeked of urine wondering how many hours had passed since Pornstache had slapped the cuffs on her wrists and hauled her away? Most assuredly.

As she slid down to the floor in front of the door, the wailing of the other guests of solitary began to overwhelm her and for the first time tears prick her eyes unexpectedly. Her lip trembled and her eyes teared and Piper Chapman began to cry. It was an honest to goodness sobfest. Piper cried for every horrifying experience she had been through since walking into The Litch, she cried for Larry and for Alex and her own inability to understand what was happening between them. Larry seemed so far away when Alex's lure seemed so great.

And when Piper was through crying, she straightened herself up and splashed her face with the cool water that dripped from the taps. She straightened up because she had learned that all those clichés you think about prison are actually true. And show no weakness was rule number one.

So later when the voice came through the vent she engaged because she was lonely and bored and the voice seemed sane enough.

And as Healy smirked at her as she raged at him, Piper felt something snap. She would not be sexualized by the man that controlled her immediate fate. She would not be a part of his fantasy. She would not be controlled by an unseeing hand. She would do her time however the fuck she wanted.

Only later when the voice in the grate gave Piper a greater understanding of how prison works did she regret those oh so bold words. This time she cried for regret. For fear of having to stay weeks or all fifteen months in that tiny grey room. She cried for all the crow she'd have to eat to get back in Healy's disgusting good graces.

So when that door slid open and Officer Wells looked at her, she stood in disbelief, tears pricking her eyes once again but this time she would not cry. Marching through the door that had caged her, she was led into the general population and Piper came to terms with her time away. The flashy show of power by Healy had been an eye opener. She knew he wielded power heftily but she never dreamed he could be angered so easily. And because of Healy's haste to wrongfully imprison Piper, something had been awakened by her stint in The Box. It had nurtured a sense of rebellion. One that was now hell bent, strutting through the masses on a collision course with Alex.

She had never felt so lonely as she did in The Shu, so deprived of all human contact and basic needs. Just a box in a wall, a toilet, a sink and a bunk. It was hell in concrete grey. And so when Piper had begun to awaken, meekly slinking through the hallways, she only ever had one destination: Alex. Dragging her away to the chapel made Piper feel all-powerful and when she turned in Alex's arms and kissed her for the first time in ten years, Piper was reborn. It was as it always had been. And Piper and Alex were forging something forbidden in the flames of Healy's ire.

As they lay together behind the pulpit, Piper never once considered the sacrilege she was committing, only the swell in her breast, the thrill of old love. Alex touched her with the same assuredness and expertise that she always had and Piper, having put her lesbian lifestyle behind her when she walked away from Alex, instantly remembered the way Alex liked to be touched. It was easy, being with Alex. Her black eyeliner, those glasses and legs that go on for miles. It was no wonder Alex was her last, after all, what woman could live up to that?

When her orgasm came, Piper wasn't ready for it to end. Her hips moved in desperation, softly jerking as she came quietly in the chapel. Piper Chapman was not a crier so when she cried for the third time twenty-four hours it alarmed her. Alex hushed her as they hastily dressed, then held Piper against her breast as she let out a shaky breath. When Piper looked up at Alex, she expected to see that same panic she had in Brussels but instead found serenity in her eyes. A curl of her lip and then she spoke: "Come on kid, let's get you cleaned up."

"Five more minutes," Piper pressed closer.

Alex smoothed her hair. "We'll miss dinner."

Piper sighed. She did not need to bring a shit-storm down on their heads so soon after her stint in The Shu and she was actually looking forward to Red's cooking after the moldy bologna and 3-meal-loaf she had been served there. She pulled away reluctantly. Alex stood and reached a hand out for hers, helping Piper to her feet.

"So I see you learned your lesson in The Shu-"

Piper smiled weakly.

"Sorry Pipes, but this was a little unexpected. I'm not complaining, it's just-"

Anything Piper could say in that moment would have sounded like an insult. What started as a way to get back at Healy, at the establishment, at life had left her with little satisfaction. Reuniting with Alex, however had opened the flood gates and now all she wanted was more.

"Surprised it took you so long, actually," Alex teased, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

"Me too," Piper said quietly as they made their way down the corridor.

And like that, things were as they were before. The terrible, albeit better-than-Shu-food, the raucous women's voices filling the dining hall all made bearable by the warmth of sex still coursing through her body, and Alex, sliding a hand under the table to squeeze her knee unbeknownst to the guards or their tablemates. She didn't let herself think of Larry then, only wanting to hold one lover with two hands for awhile longer.

Fin.