Hi everyone! This story starts where season 2 left off, so obviously it contains spoilers and you shouldn't read it if you haven't finished the new season yet! This will focus a lot on Alex/Piper but I really love all the characters, so I'm also going to continue to plot line from all the drama that we saw unfold with the other characters in season 2. The first chapter starts off with Piper thinking to herself, but things pick up in the next chapter. Any reviews would be greatly appreciated!

Chapter 1 - More Than A Memory

Piper Chapman wasn't the boldest individual. As she laid flat in her bunk staring at the ceiling and listening to the sound of Red sawing logs in the next bunk, her mind was racing with thoughts. Thoughts of regret, thoughts of worry. Thoughts of hope, thoughts of anticipation. Piper Chapman wasn't the most consistent individual either.

It had been just six hours earlier that she had made the call to Polly to tell her that Alex had been violating her parole. It had been something that she had done on a wimp, out of desperation. Though she had hidden behind a facade of cold, bitter resolve for the better part of the past few months, there had been a bitter, aching loneliness chipping away at her for the entire time.

It had begun the second that she'd had that dreadful call with Larry just after she had told Alex that she was done with it all. In her mind, she knew that she wasn't done with it all. Even as she had picked up the phone to call Larry that day, though she had told Alex with her words that she picked Larry, she felt a tugging in her head that pulled her right back to Alex. The uncertainty of it all had gotten the best of her. It was something that had happened to her before. It happened the first time that she left Alex, and it had been running through the back of her mind the entire time that she began to reconnect with Alex.

It all terrified her. The thoughts of giving up on her engagement which she had been so excited about upon entering this damned prison. The thoughts of everything that she had become over these past ten years seperated from Alex-slowly chipping away as she fell harder and harder for her all over again. The thoughts of this new, old person that she was becoming. The thoughts of what would happen after her time in this hellhole was all over.

Piper knew she wasn't the best at handling high stress situations. The impact of every little thing that had happened inside and outside of these walls had begun to show from the second it all began. From the moment she first saw Alex on that first week of her sentence. It seemed like no matter what happened to Piper, everything always came back to Alex. At least, that's how it had been recently. She had worked so hard for ten years to build a new life after she left Alex in a furry of frustrations and tears, but she knew once she was sentenced to serve time for their escapades together that this woman had changed her life once again.

There had been a time when Piper saw nothing but good in Alex. A time when they had first began dating and Piper thought that Alex's remark about working for an international drug cartel had just been a sarcastic remark to get a reaction from her on their first encounter. Piper had believed her when she first said it, but when Alex laughed, she had all but forgotten her words as the days went on and she'd gotten to know her. They went on seeing each other for about a month before Alex finally told her that it had been the truth. During that month, Piper felt herself begin drawn into Alex's world at warp speed and she didn't want to pull away.

There was something mysterious and mystifying about her, something so drastically different from Piper herself. As she spent more and more time with her, she fell fast, and she continued to fall until everything came crashing down as Alex began to get sucked further and further into her work. Piper felt herself growing further apart from Alex everyday, and it seemed that everything came to an end all at once.

It had hurt, but Piper had felt defeated over the entire situation at that point, and she found the strength to move on. From that point until she received the news of her sentence, Alex Vause had been nothing but a memory. Now as she sat here inside these walls with Alex's stack of letters at the foot of her bedside, it felt as if Alex Vause had become her whole world again, and she held the thought of her close as she drifted off to sleep.

That's it for the first chapter! Keep reading - like I said, the following chapters are less inner monologue and more action and drama. ;)