A/N: A couple people requested a Piper companion piece to "After Effects". Obviously, it's not as involved and lengthy, and I wrote this one pretty quickly, but just kind of think of it as a DVD extra.

"Please don't leave. Not now."

You've never, ever seen Alex like this.

Even when you know you've hurt her - like the way you hurt her last night, and in every excruciating moment since - she spins that hurt expertly into anger. Every time.

But now. Now, when she actually has reason to be angry, when she could very rightfully call you selfish or cowardly, could easily ask what the hell you you meant when you asked What can I do? if you were still planning to walk out two minutes later...now, there's no anger. She can't even reach it.

Alex - the great, untouchable Alex Vause - is begging. Begging you to stay.

You leave anyway.

You leave.

Not because you don't love her. Not because seeing her like this doesn't rip you into shreds.

It's because you do. Because it does.

And you're suddenly full of a marrow deep certainty that if you stay for one more moment, you'll never be able to leave. Your precarious, painstakingly constructed conviction is one look away from crumbling into dust.

You shut the hotel suite door behind you and go to the elevator, fingers shaking as you press the button for the elevator.

There's a noise from inside the hotel room, a sound you wish you'd never heard, like a scream cleaved in two. It catches in your ears, stays there. You press the button again. Keep your eyes on the doors.

When you first started college, you took this freshmen seminar on Greek mythology, wanting to become an expert, the sort of person who could rattle off stories and point out literary references. But the class had been early on Fridays, and as a result only a few lectures had made an impression. Like the story of Orpheus, who journeyed into the underworld to rescue the woman he loved. She was released to him, allowed to return to Earth, under one condition: he must walk in front of her and not look back until they reached the upper world. Orpheus couldn't help it, couldn't resist the pull, and he made the mistake of looking back too soon, losing her forever into the depths of Hell.

It's what you find yourself thinking about while you train your eyes on the button of the elevator, even though you know this is completely different.

Alex is going to go through hell either way. And the only person you're saving is yourself.

Still, you don't look back.

Polly's waiting for you at baggage claim, and it's so, so good to see her, to have her rush over and wrap you in a tight hug. Your throat narrows and your vision blurs and you're a breath away from finally bursting into tears when Polly says, "Thank God, Pipe. I've been waiting on this phone call formonths."

You pull back to look at her, swallowing stubbornly against the lump in your throat. "What?"

"Well, c'mon. I know you got some awesome free travel out of it...and 'mind blowing sex'." She rolls her eyes like she always does, the air quotes implicit, like Polly doesn't quite believe the rumors about lesbian sex. "But at a certain point it can't be worth all that time with her."

Resentment surges in your gut, and it's entirely unfair. You know Polly thinks Alex is an asshole, so you've always downplayed the relationship. Made it an experiment, a study in recklessness, a chance to do something daring. Never let on that you also happen to be wildly, desperately in love.

Even the phone call to Polly, the one you made last night after booking your flight, was so carefully performed: I'm over this. I can't deal with her anymore. I'm ready to come home.

You'd told her the bullet wound was a paper cut, and now you're angry she isn't offering you a tourniquet.

Polly picks up on your mood. "What? You know I'm right."

"It was just...hard."

My mom died.

"She...didn't take it well."

You're still leaving? Right now?

Polly makes a scoffing sound. "Fuck her. You're finally back where you're supposed to be."

Please don't leave.

You're starting to feel sick, and there's no way to make that anyone's fault but yours.

In the car, Polly seems to remember proper best friend protocol for break up aftermath, and she asks what happened.

You don't tell her about Alex's mom. You are already revising history, deleting the scene, tricking yourself. You make yourself the hero of the story, smudge away the grey areas and tell it in black and white.

Polly makes a scoffing, appalled sound when you say Alex hid your passport; you leave out the part where she looked like a scared, desperate little girl resorting to childish measures so she wouldn't be left alone.

You sleep on Polly's couch, feeling homesick for hotel rooms, wearing a V-neck T-shirt of Alex's you must have accidentally packed. The smell makes you cry, but you deny the red eyes in the morning when Polly asks. She acts like you should be perfectly fine, and you're relieved to be given that role to play.

You google obituaries in Alex's hometown, and it takes two days before one comes up for Diane Vause.

She is survived by her daughter.

You tell yourself it's true. Alex will survive this. Of course she will.

"What are you doing?"

You shut the browser before Polly sees. It's okay that you haven't told he the truth. Polly doesn't want to think of Alex as someone with a mother she loved, a mother she called every few days, a mother she sent expensive gifts to from every city. She doesn't want to think of Alex as someone who held your hand every time a plane took off, who was the first to say I love you, who called you babe and Pipes and sounded like no one on earth had ever used the endearments before.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I was just thinking about driving down to Northampton tomorrow. I need to pick up some stuff from the apartment."

Tomorrow is the funeral. Which means there's no chance of running into Alex there.

You wish you could be the type of person to show up at the church, sit beside Alex and hold her hand through the service, or even just hug her in the receiving line, then turn around and go home again.

But you're not, and there's no point in pretending. You were gifted one singular moment when you were strong enough to walk away from her, and you don't have another one in you.

Polly offers to come with you, but you want to do this alone. You rent a car and drive for the first time in months. At first it feels good: the windows down, the radio up, the looming trees lining the roads a nostalgic sight after a year of cities and beaches. But then some chord change of some song hits your chest at just the right angle, and the hurt breaks through again, leaving the road blurry and your hands shaking on the wheel.

You cut off the music so it can't make you feel anything.

An hour and a half into the drive, your phone in your purse on the seat beside you, rings, and you reach over with one hand to dig for it. The second ring cuts off abruptly, and your eyes skid over just in time to see Alex Calling transition to One Missed Call.

Your heart leaps for your throat, and you have to pull the car over to the shoulder of the road. The phone feels hot and dangerous in your hand, a grenade with the pin pulled out. You stare stupidly at the screen, like you expect the call to come back. It doesn't.

It should be almost time for the funeral.

Her mother's funeral is about to start and Alex is calling you.

But she hung up. She changed her mind. Maybe it was even an accident.

You turn off the phone like the spineless coward you are. You shift the car into drive and continue on. You aren't thinking about Alex at the funeral alone. You aren't wondering if she's giving a eulogy, if there's an open casket, if she'll allow herself herself cry in front of other people. You aren't thinking about how much she was shaking the last time you hugged her.

You're really, really not.

The apartment smells like her. Of course it does.

Longing stabs through you and wedges between your ribs, aching. For just a second, you wish the two of you had never left this place, that maybe it all would have been okay if you'd just stayed behind, waiting for her. If you both hadn't been so greedy for each other.

But the truth is you loved the traveling, loved following Alex around the world. She was, is, the most beautiful thing you have ever seen, but she never dimmed the beauty around her, merely brought it out. She belonged in the magic flickering of city lights or the sunlight of saturated island landscapes. Like any other setting wasn't quite worthy of her.

You stuff the clothes you left behind into boxes and try not to linger. You don't take anything that isn't unquestionably yours, not the lamp you picked out or the toaster you fixed or even the books Alex gave you.

You brought back her T-shirt, the one you've been sleeping in, but when you pull it out to return to her drawer, your resolve falters. You worry the soft material between your hands, bring it up to your nose and inhale deeply, like a drug. She won't miss it. You could hold onto it, just to get through this worst part, this beginning. A nicotine patch to wean you off the addiction.

But that doesn't fit with your plan. You're not meant to be holding onto any part of her.

So you fold the shirt and put it in the drawer, wondering if someday she'll make it back here and put it on and wonder why it smells a little like you.

The shirt out of your hands, you sit on the bed, her side, and skate your fingers across her pillow before stretching out and burying your face into the soft cotton. You cry, and you tell yourself that's okay but this is the last time.

You go see your family, and they're thrilled you're home. They don't ask about Alex because they have no idea who she is. They don't ask if you're okay because they have no reason to think you aren't.

You wonder if you did this on purpose, made sure there were fractions of your life she never touched. If you were always preparing for the day you'd be removing her completely.

You pack her up, too; put her in a box and label it "Alex", fill it with two years worth of memories and broken shards of love, seal it shut. Over time the label changes: you cross out her name and write "Post-College Adventures", "Rebellious Piper" and then, eventually, "Lost Soul Phase".

It gathers dust. Whenever you're tempted to open it, you add new layers of duct tape, shut it even tighter.

But you always know it's there, taking up space, blocking out light.

"Wouldn't have pegged you for a tattoo kind of girl."

You're with a man. Polly set you up with him, you don't remember how they know each other. He's smart and successful and very, very good-looking, just as she'd promised. This is date six, you've got a generous buzz going, and you've finally invited him to stay the night.

His fingers are big and calloused as he traces the skin on the back of your neck. All at once the tattoo is practically pulsing, and you barely feel his hands; you're thinking of Alex's lips, the way she always went to that spot, like she was proud of herself for facilitating your first and only tattoo.

"Is there something special about the kind of fish or something?"

"I don't know. I just thought it was pretty." You sound ridiculous, but you don't know how to talk about it without talking about that day: the crystal clear blue of the water, ocean swirled with sunlight, Alex's hand in yours, wrinkled from the water, Alex's eyes squinty and straining from behind her scuba goggles, you laughing and pretending to guide her. The silence down there, the way it seemed like you were the only two humans on some strange, beautiful planet.

"Did it hurt?"

Another flash: Alex with both hands wrapped around yours, partially crouched down so she could make eye contact even while you bent at the neck, discomfort on top of pain.

"No. Not much."

He shrugs and goes back to kissing you, but you're not in the mood anymore. You do well, most of the time, Not Thinking About Her, but there are triggers, and sometimes you brush up against one by accident, and it always leaves you disoriented and shaken and sad.

You're just glad the fucking tattoo isn't somewhere you can see it.

You do fuck him eventually, only a week later, at his place. It's underwhelming, and things fizzle out after a few more dates. Maybe you do just prefer women.

So you go out with a few girls, and sleep with them sooner than you normally would, trying to test the theory.

It's still different. It's still less.

It's been a year.

You wake up knowing it, feeling it snarling in your chest. You've been aware all week - you remember the date from the obituary, and you tell yourself that's normal.

This should be a point of pride: it's been a year and you are okay. You are your old self again. Back to your normal, stable life. Everything's fine. You're okay. You're doing good.

Your mom and grandmother have driven up to visit and take you out dinner, and that timing is horrible, because you don't want to think about mothers today. It already already feels like you're driving over a road sprinkled with glass, too many hazards.

But you're in a restaurant, and your mom is trying to sell you on the son of a friend of hers. He's a lawyer, just finished school, hired right away, great starting salary, good looking young man, whatever, whatever, whatever. Your phone rings.

Your mom stops mid-sentence to give you an admonishing look. "Piper. Rude."

"Sorry, sorry..." You fish through your purse, intending to simply silence it, but your eyes land on the name: Alex Calling.

"Is that Polly? Tell her she's still welcome to come join us."

Your mouth is dry, heart pounding too hard. There's a good chance she's in a different time zone, probably somewhere in Europe. Which means she's calling you in the middle of the night.

"Piper, who is it?"

You don't know how to answer. The call drops, and it's not so much that you made the decision not to answer; more like the mere fact of the call was the whole point, you can't even fathom there being a next step. Just the fact that Alex is out there, somewhere, at this exact moment, making a choice to dial your number...it's too much to absorb. Your hands are shaking and you're skidding on glass.

"I don't know. I was trying to remember if I recognized the number." Your voice sounds strange and disconnected, but your mother accepts it. Your grandmother arches a curious eyebrow but doesn't protest. You leave the phone in your lap, waiting for a voicemail notification, but none comes.

You have to wait fifteen minutes to excuse yourself, so the exit won't be connected to the phone call. You hurry to the bathroom and let yourself breathe too deep and too hard. Your phone is in your hand even though you aren't even considering doing something with it.

You feel oddly panicked and guilty, like you've been caught in a crime. Like this is Alex finally calling to yell at you, to force you to remember the thing you do. not. think. about. You don't have to answer, of course you don't, she can't make you, but you still feel scared as hell.

She doesn't call back. You walk back to the table, put on your smile. Pretend today means nothing.

Two years later, Polly's father dies two days after Thanksgiving, and it fucks you right up.

Cancer. Slow, expected. But still Polly is wrecked; this is a brutal, undeniable confirmation of adulthood, and yet it reduces her to a small child crying for her dad. You're there for her.

You're there for her.

For the first time, you see this up close, the brutal, relentless grief over a parent, and you're thinking about it, about the thing you don't think about. The memory feels awful in your whole body.

The day after the funeral, you throw your suitcase in the car to drive back to Brooklyn, but instead you find yourself heading in the opposite direction.

You stop at a florist's, feeling oddly exposed even though you're almost certain she's not in town. You wonder if it's the same shop Alex used to call, insanely long distance, to order delivery from on Mother's Day. Maybe, maybe not, but either way you remember her order.

While you wait, you call information, and then dial the office of the cemetery, make sure someone's there and they know you're coming. Half an hour later, you're being handed a map, the index number and location of the correct grave circled in red.

It's a nice headstone; Alex would have sprung for that, probably spared no expense for the coffin and the funeral and anything else involved. Your chest hurts thinking about it. Or thinking about Alex here, watching her mom get lowered into the ground while you cried into her goddamn pillow in Northampton.

You shouldn't have come here; Polly's dad's funeral is too fresh in your mind, it makes everything too easy to picture. Except Polly had her mom and her sisters and her brother, and countless extended family members she's close to.

And, of course, Polly had you.

You set the red and yellow tulips in their vase next to the grave, then crouch on the balls of your feet, one hand braced on the top of the headstone. A memory breaks loose, achingly vivid:

Alex, on the phone with her mom, the look she'd get on her face when they talked, lit eyes and smirky, teasing smile. You, your head on her lap, stretched across the hotel's king sized bed, happy to listen to Alex's side of the conversation.

Yeah, Piper's good. Wanna say hi?

She'd passed you the phone; Diane's loud, warm voice already greeting you like she always did: like you're her best friend she's been dying to hear from.

Pipe! How are ya, kiddo? You lookin' after my girl?

You'd laughed a little, with pure, genuine surprise. Like you couldn't quite imagine Alex needing to be looked after.

There are tears rolling down your cheeks, and your chest heaves in a rapid series of convulsions; you haven't cried over any of this in so long, but now you're sobbing with your forehead resting on a headstone, choking out what you'll never, ever say to Alex: "I'm sorry."

You use Polly as an excuse to leave your parents house early on December 26. Your mom tries for a guilt trip, but you tell her Polly's heading back, too, that she's had a sad, stressful first holiday without her dad and could use the company. It turns out to be true enough. Polly's already calling you from the road, adamant about going out in the city tonight, and you're more than willing to get drunk and unwind from the stress of spending four days in a confined, high pressure space with your family.

You get ready at Polly's apartment and take vodka shots before getting a cab. You don't drink tequila anymore.

The nightclub is flashing and spinning and the music's thrumming all the way down to your blood and bones. You and Polly dance, and when a guy comes up behind you and start grinding, you don't move away. You like his hands, the heat of his body, his breath hot on the back of your neck.

Polly goes off to let a guy buy her a drink, but you're already good and tipsy, you want to keep dancing.

But then the throng on the dance floor shifts just enough to give you a glimpse into one of the corner, velvet roped VIP booths, and you see her.

Maybe.

"Alex..." her name slips out, murmured, pure reflex, lost beneath the music.

You move away from the guy without explanation, shouldering your way through the gyrating masses, staying hidden while improving your own eye line.

It's definitely her. She looks the same, all black hair and glasses and red lipstick and leather; it's so unlikely, that she should be as gorgeous as you remember. There's a girl on her lap, some petite redhead, and you shouldn't feel anything about that, it's idiotic that you do, but your stomach knots up anyway.

Something's off. You've seen Alex in clubs about a hundred times, but there's something about the way she's sitting, a sort of looseness, that's unfamiliar. She isn't talking, not commanding the group with charismatic hilarity, but there's a wide, lazy smile on he face, like she doesn't have a goddamn care in the world.

You're dazed and dizzy watching. It's like some hologram from your past, semi-mythical, it might dissolve if you take a step too close. The redhead puts her hand on Alex's cheek and kisses her, and your lips form her name again, Alex, the syllables collapsing on your tongue, and it guts you. She can't be here. She can't be real, that's not how it works.

You spin around and move toward the bar, find Polly leaning on her forearms and flirting hard, not even with the guy she followed off the dance floor, but you grab her shoulder and say urgently, "We have to go, we have to go now."

"Pipe, I'm kinda busy."

"Polly, now. Emergency."

She looks at you, and your expression must show how serious you are, because she apologizes to the guy and follows you toward the exit, slurring out almost-annoyed questions, "What the hell, what are we doing?"

"Just c'mon..."

You burst out into the night air, it's really cold and Polly's stumbling behind you. You feel unsteady on the sidewalk, but then your eyes land on a couple emerging from a cab, so you grab Polly's arm and tug her toward it, the two of you ducking into the backseat in front of another group heading toward it. Slam the door. Blurt out your address. It's like a chase scene in a bad movie.

"What the fuck, Piper? What happened?"

"Nothing." It's a reflex, even though Polly's the only person you could maybe be honest with. But you haven't talked about Alex even to her since two months after you got back from Paris. Polly had been perfectly prepared to write the whole thing off, and you always tell yourself it's better that way.

Your phone rings, and your face freezes in panic. Polly reaches for your clutch and grabs it before you can.

Alex Calling

"Holy shit." Polly's mouth actually falls open. "Was she in there?"

"Yeah." You're staring at the screen, but Polly isn't handing the phone back. You don't want her to.

"What'd she say?"

"I didn't...I didn't know she saw me."

"Fuck." Polly presses the End button, silencing the phone before handing it back. "No wonder you ran. Completely legitimate use of the emergency exit."

"Yeah." You feel split down a seam: half trembling with relief over keeping your life undisturbed, half twisted with regret because, fuck, it's still there. That goddamn magnetic pull that makes it impossible not to want her. That girl touching Alex's face, her hands in Alex's hair, kissing Alex. How dare she?

It's been three years. You won't let this happen. One look at her does not get to unravel all the work you've done to forget.

So when Polly asks why you still have Alex's number, you force yourself to shrug and delete her name like it's nothing.

You and Larry have one of those dates that turn into a swapping of romantic and sexual history, and it's like you're handing him a book with the entire middle torn out.

You linger on a boy that broke up with you your sophomore year of college, your first real heartbreak, whom you haven't even thought of since maybe six months after it ended. It all sounds so flimsy, the few instances of adolescent puppy love followed by a string of dates and flings that barely left a scratch. You sound like a person who doesn't really know love, who hasn't been inside it, gotten to know every contour and feverish pulse point.

It's such a lie, and you're not exactly sure why you do this, why you erase her from history. You tell yourself it's the drug ring element, that it makes you sound crazy, or at least a lot wilder than is accurate these days. But that explanation doesn't feel quite right.

You don't have to tell Polly not to mention Alex to Larry, because Polly is naturally complicit in your strategy to pretend those two years never happened. She'd rather not think of you that way, as that person, so she doesn't. Simple as that.

Most days, you're pretty good at following her lead.

Fuck her.

It's the only thought you can form when you end up in an interrogation room, waiting for Larry's dad to show up, feeling like you've stumbled onto the set of a television procedural.

Fuck her fuck her fuck her.

A dry, humorless yelp of a laugh leaps from your throat. You're thinking about Larry's reaction, his words nearly tripping over each other as he insisted, over and over and over, that they must have made a mistake.

Hot, frightened tears sting your eyes again, and you blink furiously to keep them back.

Of course she did this. Of course this is your punishment; you don't get to pretend Alex fucking Vause doesn't exist. She's just hurled a boulder into the center of your life, making it impossible for you not to acknowledge her.

You have to tell everyone: Larry, your parents, your brothers. The lost story, the unpublished work, has finally been forced into the public eye.

But somehow, you get the sense you're telling it wrong.

You hear the way they they talk about it, kind of the way Polly always did: you as this naive little girl, wanting to rebel and getting more than you bargained for, taken in by this woman, this criminal. Her using you. You playing right into her hands.

Their version of the story makes you sound ridiculous and stupid and cliche, a naive victim of your own life, no control over anything that happened to you.

There's no love in that version.

You keep wanting to tell them No, no, you got it wrong, but then you remember they've only heard it from you.

It feels beyond strange to hear everyone else talk about Alex, even though no one says her name. It's always "That...woman." The word dripping with contempt. As if they know her.

What you can't say is that somewhere at the core of the anger, there's a touch of genuine hurt.

She must really fucking hate you.

You've trained yourself to pretend you don't know why.

"Piper, don't you go! Don't you fucking leave me!"

The words slam into your back and embed themselves in your spine, send you tripping back in time, almost a decade.

Please don't leave. Not now.

You don't think about that. You never let yourself.

It's not the reason for your prison sentence, but it's the worst thing you've ever done.

You're both in hell no matter what. But this time you look back.

This time, you stay.