It's quite an undertaking to start loving somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment right at the start where you have to jump across an abyss: if you think about it you don't do it.

– Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

[day one]

Piper used to blame Alex for a lot of things – the tears that fell in some other country, the prison sentence ripping apart her future, and all those slender chances slipping through her fingers – but, somewhere along the way, honesty turned into white lies and rules were meant more for bending than following and Piper realized that there was enough blame for the both of them to carry.

Doesn't change the fact that Alex drives her crazy, though.

Doesn't change the fact that Alex is really fucking bad for her and that she is probably really fucking bad for Alex, too; they are the hurricane in each others lives, demolishing whatever was built and leaving the land in ruins.

All the blame in the world doesn't change a force of nature, after all.

And yet here they are, masters in the art of loving to the point of insanity – protection masked as pain, selfishness in the midst of sacrifice – and Piper has no clue what comes next.

But it won't be wearing Tevas in Vermont, that's for fucking sure.

/ /

[day six]

Alex wants to hold onto her anger.

Anger keeps the blood flowing hot in her veins, keeps hard-ass inmates out of her way, keeps her head from pondering anything that smacks of sentimentality.

Anger is a sweet little tool and Alex wants to wield it with skill.

But her muscles have their own agenda and her damn arms still ache to pull Piper close, her legs forever shake with all the moving she is not doing – to Piper's cube, to Piper's side, to Piper at any cost – and suddenly talking to Piper in Chicago seems like the stupidest of actions.

Because that door was near to closing, wasn't it?

Slammed in Paris and then spit upon during her heroin days, dealing and doing as a means of nailing that fucker shut for good, but goddamn if it didn't just swing right open the very second that Alex saw her face again; not as carefree, not as golden, no, but it was still... it was still Piper Chapman...

And it's always been Piper Chapman, hasn't it?

It's always been Piper - knock, knock, knocking against the surface of Alex's dumber than dumb heart – and all the anger in the universe cannot keep the woman from just waltzing right in.

/ /

(tbc)