So this is a new story I've been working on for a while. Piper and Alex have such an interesting history together that I decided Nicky deserved one too. This story takes place beginning of season two and follows through until season three.
Hope you guys like it.
Disclaimer - I don't own OITNB.
My breath caught in my throat. The lights illuminating the electrical room flickered, and Luschek's words rang in my head.
"It's hers!" he said, pointing to Nicky. He glanced at me and pointed to me next. "Or hers - fuck, it's not mine! I swear! I mean, I once smoked pot, and sometimes meth, but fuck no, not heroin!"
Caputo's narrowed eyes studied Nicky and I as Officer Donaldson held the small baggie of heroin. I knew Nicky had originally kept some of Vee's stolen candy for herself, but fuck me if I ever thought she'd hide it here.
"It's mine," I said. Nicky frantically looked at me, but my eyes remained dead set on Caputo. "It's mine, sir."
"And how do I know that isn't a load of bullshit?" he said, gesturing to Nicky. "Trying to save her ass?"
"Because I told you it was mine," I deadpanned. "It's my heroin. I hid it."
Caputo blinked at me, pausing to look back at Nicky before he motioned to me. "Take her down the hill."
Officer Ford and Officer Donaldson approached me. One of them handcuffed my hands and the other gripped my shoulders, pulling me towards the door.
Nicky was yelling something. I glanced over my shoulder at her as they ushered me out the door. She was shaking and her eyes were locked with mine, and for a moment I caught the regret filling them, but the door closed before my mind could register any of her words.
Officer Donaldson led me through the halls of Litchfield. Inmates left and right blankly watched me, but I kept my eyes straight ahead of me. My wrists wiggled in the handcuffs, and he jerked my body forward. We passed a corner and I saw Red and Lorna quickly approach me.
"Wait!" Lorna said. Red quickly moved in front of us and he yelled at her to step aside, but she ignored his works and cupped my cheeks.
"Jamie, where is this coming from?" she asked, pinching my cheeks together with her hands. "You know could have come to me. Why didn't you come to me?"
"Tell Nicky I love her, okay?" I said. "Tell her I love her and I fucking hate her."
Officer Donaldson was pulling me away. I quickly told her I loved her, and she was calling something out to me, but it was only her sobs that registered in my mind.
The sun outside glistened in the sky. He tucked my neck down as he guided me into the van, and I positioned myself in the seat. The handcuffs were choking my wrists, and I felt like I was suffocating in the van.
"Spencer," Pennsatucky said, grinning as she adjusted the mirror to look at me. She started the car up as one of the guards told her to take me down the hill. "Looks like you're finally getting out."
My lips pressed together, and she flickered her eyes back up to the mirror.
"Look at it this way, things can't get any shittier," she said, smiling as she shrugged her shoulders. "Right?"
"I don't know about that," I said, thinking about Nicky and what she would do. Fear settled inside me when we approached the max facility, but if it meant saving Nicky's ass, I would survive. I had to.
Because it's what I always did.
Five Months Earlier
Sirens were blaring in my head, and my movements slowed. Blood dripped off my knuckles, down onto my bare legs and eventually to the ground. My pulse was racing with adrenaline.
When the police cars pulled up to the curb, I was leaning against a building with my heart beating a million miles. Two police officers approached me and immediately handcuffed me, another one checking on the limp body lying helplessly on the ground.
They didn't ask any questions. All the evidence was present - the blood on my knuckles, the limp body, not a visible bruise on me. He didn't fight back and didn't try, not until the third punch.
He didn't get very far.
An ambulance soon arrived to the scene. They began lifting him onto a stretcher and rushing him into the back of the ambulance. A police officer ducked my head as they pushed me into the backseat of the car.
I didn't glance behind me at the ambulance driving off in the opposite direction. My body ached with a mixture of fear and agony.
We arrived to the station shortly, and the police officers roughly jerked me around the building until they led me to an interrogation room.
I sat in the chairs stiff as a rock for hours. Maybe it was only a few minutes. The lights above me flickered, and my foot tapped impatiently.
A lady police officer eventually entered the room and closed the door behind her, sitting across from me with a cup of coffee.
Silence filled the room. Maybe I was supposed to start talking first. Maybe she was waiting for me to spout some bullshit about how innocent I was and how I didn't deserve to go to prison.
"Tell me what happened," she said, brushing her hands over a folder lying in front of her. She took a sip of her coffee and arched her eyebrow, but my lips remained sealed. "Alright. I'll do the talking."
She opened the folder and skimmed through some pages. "Casey Brookes. Male. Thirty years old. Correct?"
Her eyes flickered up to me from the papers, and my head nudged enough to nod.
"When we arrived to the scene, you didn't appear to be attacking him anymore," she said, taking another drink of her coffee. "Something made you stop because he still had a pulse. I need you to tell me everything that happened, because it might just guarantee less time you'll spend in prison."
My lips twitched with a response just dying to escape, but I only pressed them together. She closed her folder and rested her hands atop it, leaning over the table with squinted eyes.
"It was self defense."
"There wasn't a sign of a fight," she said, leaning back in her seat. "You're in perfect condition. Clearly it wasn't a fair fight to begin with."
My tongue slid across my teeth. "I was defending myself, he was.." My eyes drifted down to my hands resting on my lap before I cleared my throat. "He didn't get very many hits in."
She squinted her eyes at me again, but nothing else ever left my lips. The silence was returning and it was deafening to my ears.
"Well, even if you claim self defense in court, they won't give you less time unless you provide details," she said, sighing. It had to of been past midnight. "You're likely to get ten to twenty years for assault or attempted murder."
She stood up and walked towards the door. Her hand brushed against the knob, and she glanced over her shoulder at me.
"Silence might just buy you more time," she said. "I have an inkling of what really happened, and I pray nothing stops you from telling the truth in court. It's your life that's at stake here."
I was alone in the room again. The flickering light stopped and shut off all together, and I looked at the mirror to the side of me. Someone had to be watching me from the other side, and had my hands not been handcuffed, I would have flipped them off.
My trial was a week later, like she had assumed. They questioned my motives for attacking him, reporting that he was still in the hospital. When they asked me about that night, I decided against spending two decades in prison and told the truth.
My lawyer was a woman. I was only being charged with assault, so she managed to snake me out of ten years and bring my sentence down to five.
They kept me in a holding cell until the next morning. A bus brought me to Litchfield Federal Prison. It wasn't far from my apartment I had shared with Casey, and it wasn't far from Casey.
A guard led me to a white van and ushered me inside. In my arms were my new belongings given to me, including a pillow and shoes. I was outfitted in orange from head to toe, and a heavy jacket was around my shoulders.
A guard sat in the passengers seat. He buckled his seatbelt and glanced over his shoulder at us inmates. One sat on either side of me.
"Take us back to prison, Morello," he said, staring out the window now. She nodded and we began driving onto an empty road. I clutched my pillow inside the netted bag holding everything and kept my eyes low.
When we arrived to the prison, the guard got out of the van and opened the doors. The blonde sitting beside me stepped out first, and I followed after her.
"This is the prison?" one of the inmates asked. "Oh my god. This is actually happening."
She had dark hair and pale skin. Her wide eyes studied each and every aspect of the building.
The lady who drove us - Morello - stepped in front of all us new inmates and patted her chest. "Alright, well before panic sets in all of you, I'm Lorna, but you can just call me Morello," she said, leaning in. "We go by last names here."
She began leading us to the prison, and I kept my eyes straight ahead of me, ignoring the stares from other inmates leaning against the fence. Lorna patted the blonde on the shoulder and pulled her in for a quick hug.
"I've missed you, Chapman," she said, patting her back and pulling away from the hug with a smile.
She turned around and heaved the door open, motioning for us to step through.
"In you go," she said. We all walked inside and she started a quick tour of the prison. "You got your visiting room over here, which is where your mommy or daddy will come and visit you. You gotta put their names on the list. This area down here is out of bounds, until you get assigned down here.."
She walked us past a group of inmates standing on stairs, and one with short, dark hair approached us.
"Oh, they must've locked you up for your own good," she said to the inmate who almost freaked earlier. "Hey, don't be afraid, little girl. Daddy can protect you from the criminal element."
I almost started laughing from the back of the group. What a load of bullshit.
"Alright Boo, keep it in your pants, okay?" Lorna said, wrapping her arm around the girl's shoulder. The group started to move again and I followed along.
Lorna dropped most of the inmates off at their temporary bunks, and the last one she stopped at she ushered me inside.
"Piper Chapman, looks like it's your lucky day, hun," she said. "Jamie Spencer, Brook Soso, you two are in here, too."
Lorna pointed to the top bunk and I set my stuff on top it. Piper hugged two other women in the room and Lorna soon left the room.
Green eyeshadow and Piper started reminiscing again. Brook, after indulging in a story about how her parents named her, sat defeated in her top bunk.
Five years was a long time to waste in prison, and no doubt others had more time than me. Five birthdays I would lose. Five Christmases, five Halloweens, five everything.
It was surreal, to say the least. The world outside would continue to change without me. Hell, the world could start to end and I would remain clueless inside these walls.
I didn't bother thinking too much about it, as I had a meeting with my counselor, Mr. Healy, before lunch would start.
My hand knocked on his door, and he lifted his eyes from his desk. A hesitant smile tugged at his lips and he motioned for me to sit. I closed the door behind me and sat down, resting my arms on my lap.
"Jamie Spencer," he said, raising his eyebrows and pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He picked up some papers and skimmed through them momentarily. "You've been charged with assault and sentenced to five years."
"Sounds about right," I said. He can tell me something I already fucking knew - quick, someone get this man a medal.
He squinted his eyes at the paper. "Five years?"
Of course they didn't include it was out of self defense. The system will fuck you up no matter who you are.
He set the papers down on his desk and took his glasses off. "Let me tell you something, Spencer. Prison is no joke, and neither are the inmates. No one is gonna bother you unless you let them. Your sentence will go faster and smoother if you don't make friends, and avoid the lesbians at all cost."
I laughed until I realized he was being serious. "Um, what?"
"The lesbians," he said, leaning in as if he were telling me a secret. "This prison is crawling with them. You'll ride this roller coaster in peace if you don't talk to them."
I bit my lip to keep more laughter from spilling out my lips. I never considered myself either or, because I never saw the need to label it. More recently I had boyfriends - Casey being a past one. But a few years ago I was so fucking madly in love with another woman.
Nicky Nichols.
She turned my life around and yet ruined it. For two years we were together and deeply in love. We traveled the world using her mom's credit cards, we went on adventures at one in the morning, we once even turned our apartment into a pillow fort for two days.
She was the love of my life, until she found something else to love. Heroin.
When I first met her, we were at a concert. I was in college, my friends dragged me to a concert for someone I had never even heard of. I had left my friends to use the bathroom, and chatted Nicky up waiting in the long lines. Cut to a year later, we run into each other again.
She was addicted to drugs and it drew me in. I had to help her, and we just hit it off afterwards. Drugs pulled me in to her crazy life, and it's ultimately what made me pull away.
"Spencer?" Mr. Healy said, waving his hand around. "Am I being clear enough?"
"Yes, sir," I mumbled. "I won't make friends with lesbians."
"Good," he said, smiling. "My doors are always open if ever need listening ears."
I nodded, and he went on to discuss what I was being charged for. When he finally said he was done, I bolted from the seat and out the door. He was definitely the kind of man I would avoid on the streets.
Lunch was starting, and my head was spinning. Maybe everything was finally soaking in. As I walked to the cafeteria, I tried not to think about Nicky, or what she was even doing this very second.
Maybe she met someone else that helped her erase drugs from her life and then fell in love with them. Maybe she was doing fine as an independent woman and ran a successful business. Maybe she fucked her life up as much as I fucked mine up.
I walked to the queue behind all the women dressed in orange and beige. My clothes felt scratchy on my body and I almost felt naked in this room full of women. We were all in here for the same reason, and yet the differences ranked high.
My hands grasped my tray and I turned around, facing the crowd of women sitting at tables. I found an empty seat somewhere in the middle and set my tray down, staring down at my food.
The food looked revolting, but edible. This was my new life, after all. For five years. Eventually I would have to accept that. There would be a new president when I got out. The iPhone ten would probably be out.
What would be the same?
At the end of the table sat two women, one with a gnarly scar up her neck. I didn't pay them much attention until a faint redhead sat across from them.
For some reason my eyes couldn't look away. The two women must have said something nasty when the redhead stood back up, disappointment washing over her face. She grabbed her tray and turned around to examine the rest of the tables until her eye caught mine.
I blinked but didn't look away. She looked pitiful until her expression changed into irritation, pissed even. Pissed that she had caught me staring. My expression didn't change, my eyes only looking away when she turned her back and walked to a different table.
Voices were booming around me, but not a single one I could make out. My vision suddenly grew blurry, like I could barely make out what was even on my tray.
I missed my life years ago, being crazy and a young adult with Nicky. I missed having my freedom and having choices, but I made the choice to fuck things up.
But this was my life. Like every single women here, I was a criminal. I was of the criminal element.
Lunch was over and I left the cafeteria before the crowd of women followed. My mind was still a whirl of thoughts as I walked to the E dorm bathrooms. It was fairly empty when I walked around the corner, and I stopped in front of the mirror.
My reflection stared back at me. Already dark circles were forming. The past week had been complete torture. I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me I was already in hell, doomed to relive this horrifying experience over and over.
I looked down as I quickly washed my hands, and when I heard footsteps approaching behind me, I glanced back up at the mirror with a horrified expression.
Fuck. With widened eyes and water dripping off my hands, I turned around to face a piercing gaze.
"Jamie Spencer," Nicky said, raising an eyebrow as her eyes dipped over me before snapping back up to mine. "We're making a habit out of this, huh?"