WARNING: This chapter does contain fairly graphic details regarding self injury. I decided to make Nat a self harmer so she could relate to Nicky's addiction to drugs on a personal level. If you feel as though this chapter will trigger or influence you at all, I urge not to read beyond this point, or at least enter with caution. Self injury will be a frequent theme throughout this story, therefore this is the only message I will post in regard to it, as otherwise I'll be writing warnings every other chapter…

Anyway…I hope you enjoy the chapter and please feel free to leave reviews!


The day I arrived at Litchfield was a damp one, filled with the scent of clean grass and moisture. The whole of the prison was veiled with a thin blanket of morning dew, the first of the spring shrubberies were beginning to sprout from beneath the harsh concrete and the melody of bird whistles cut through the awkward silence that filled the prison van with the surety of a blade. Morello, the surprisingly enthusiastic inmate who spoke with a strong Jersey accent and whom also was in charge of driving the van, had put the heater on, but I can't say that it made much of a difference to the airs bitterness.

"I'd crank it up higher" Morello said "But it smells like shit if you go past a certain mark, and personally, I don't think the smell of mouse crap is anymore appealin than the cold!"

We didn't laugh at her attempt at humour, me and the other juvy transfer who sat beside me, and I think this made her feel awkward. I knew I should feel bad. The old Nat would have felt like a bitch not to laugh. But the old Nat had died a long time ago.

Suddenly, the door to the van is flung open and in comes another woman, this one significantly older than the two of us, wearing prominent black glasses and a bored expression. I don't know what it was about her, perhaps the tattoo's that dotted her exposed arms, or maybe the coolness of her attitude, but something told me that it wasn't her first time in the back of a prison van. Intimidated, I offer her a small smile, which she returns with a slow, unreadable blink, before turning her head towards back towards the front of the vehicle.

"Alex!" Morello cries as soon as she recognises who the woman is, whipping herself round to face the three of us. "What you doin back so soon?"

Alex shrugged. "The outside world had nothing on this place." She replies ironically, smiling fondly at Morello.

"These two just came from juvy." Morello explains, motioning at the girl and I. "That's Nichols…" She points to me "and this is…hey, what's your name again hunny?"

"Veil." The girl beside me mumbles

"Right!"

"Hey, we've already got a Nichols, so you better think of a new name, kid." Alex informs me. "You look kinda like her too…same hair." She motions at my hair, untamed and coiled in to a series of inaccurate ringlets. One hundred percent natural. There was no legitimate reason for criminals to be supplied with straightening tongs.

"Yeah, come to think of, so ya do." Says Morello, tilting her head to one side.

"What are we fuckin waiting for? Why can't we get goin already?" Veil snaps suddenly, leaning forward in her seat and tapping her foot in an aggravated manner.

"We just gotta wait for the CO, then we'll get movin" Morello tells her, obviously as taken back with her sudden forwardness as the rest of us "Nothin I can do about it."

"Fuckin CO's can kiss my ass!" Veil mutters.

Alex sniggers.

Then, as if on cue, the passenger door beside Morello swings open. A young man, no older than in his late twenties, gets into the van, his efficient uniform conforming what I had already expected. He had a friendly face and broad shoulders which in my eyes made him handsome, but not Joel handsome. He passes Morello a clipboard that holding together several scraps of paper.

"Hey Bennett!" Morello says, starting up the van. "Took ya time, didn't ya?"

"To right he fuckin did!" Grumbles the increasingly irritating Veil.

"I had to fill out some paperwork." Bennett explains as he fastens his seatbelt. "And don't speak to me like that inmate!" His stern voice sounds wrong, like it doesn't quite belong to him.

"Yeah or what?" Veil challenges.

"Or you'll go straight from this van to solitary!"

That shut her up.

We resumed back to quietness until we reached the prison gates, when Bennett got out of the van to inform the officers inside to open up. The threatening iron bars fling open almost immediately, almost but not quite hitting the van, and on Morello drives us, leaving the CO behind us.

Crowds of women roam around the facility's opening, all of different ethnic backgrounds, body structures and maturity. Some of them looked more like men, with their buzz cut hair styles and cheap tattoo's, whereas others seemed so ordinary that could of just of easily been a housewives. One thing was for sure; this place was defiantly a step up from the familiarity of the detention centre.

Morello leads the three of us through the prison doors and down a bleak corridor, halting us as we reach what seems to be a CO office as she studies the contents of the clipboard. "Okay, Vause and Nichols you're in with DeMarco so we'll carry on along this block to deliver you there and then" She says tucking a strand of hair behind her ears "We'll go on a little way down the block where you'll be stayin Veil and…"

"Hey Vause!" Yells someone from behind us. A familiar someone, a someone I can not quite put my finger on, but definitely someone I knew.

"Nicky!" Alex squeals, and that's when I knew.

Knew that that someone wasn't just anyone.

That that someone was in fact my sister.

Before I can say anything, I turn around and the realisation hits her too. Her eyes, alert and shining like two summer chestnuts, widen and her lips form a perfect circle.

"Fuck!" She says with arched eyebrows, making her way slowly towards me. "Nat? Is that you?" I nod pathetically, not quite sure of how to tackle such an unexpected situation.

"Wait" Alex says, still stood between us "You two actually know each other?"

Nicky and I nod in union.

"Well fuck me!"

"Seriously?" Morello chips in.

"Yeah, she's my baby sister…" Nicky explains, her gaze still fixed on me, bewildered.

"You never said you had a sister, Nichols, why didn't ya fucking tell me?" Morello sulks.

"You never asked." She says as she makes her way towards me. When she reaches where I am stood, she just stares at me for another moment or two, before putting her hands firmly on my shoulders and saying "What the fuck are you doing here, Nat?"


Morello told Nicky we had to finish the tour before she spoke to me, so soon after our little reunion she took off back down the hall with a petite blonde woman whom, according to the row that commenced between the two of them, was presumably Alex's 'traitor of a girlfriend'.

The bunk in which Alex and I had been assigned to was basic, to say the least. Three twin bunk beds stood in all but one of the rooms corners and unlike my living space back at the detention centre, there was no personal lavatory area. Morello explained to me that there were only three bathrooms at Litchfield, one for each ethnic race, which seemed a little racist and unecercerry if you asked me, but of course, nobody did. The walls and concrete flooring were the same colour as the dull sky outside and there were no windows in sight. As I begin to make my way to the top bunk assigned to me by Morello, above the infamous DeMarco, I feel someone tap me on the shoulder.

"Here" Says Morello, thrusting a toothbrush and a tube of paste in to my hands. "We look out for our own in here. And seeing as your Nicky's sister n all…" She fumbles in the pockets of her jacket, retrieving a small container. "Shampoo. They don't give you any till ya get assigned, so…"

"You got any for me, Morello?" Alex hints from across the room. "I could really use me some shampoo!" Morello tuts, but throws the same set minus the hair product in her direction. "Sorry. Aint got anymore at the moment, that lot was meant to be a lil extra for me…" Suddenly I feel the wave of guilt I had longed for earlier come crashing against my stomach.

"Thank you." I say softly. "You didn't have to."

Morello grins. "Any family of Nicky's is family of mine. Don't worry about it, I got more." And with that, she friendlily pats me on the shoulder and exits the room. I make my way up to my bunk, throwing her gifts up there first and then hoisting my fatigued body over the metal railings.

"Don't make ya bed, kid." DeMarco warns me from below. "We do that. We know how to do it right."

"How to do it right?" I repeat.

"Yeah. So we pass inspections an shit."

"Okay…" I say, caution lacing my voice. "Anything else I should know?"

"Yeah. Don't sleep in the bed, just under the blanket provided." Alex adds.

"What the…why?"

"Why do they always ask that?" DeMarco groans.

"Go easy on her, Anita. She's Nichols baby sis." Says another inmate who Morello referred to as Harrison whilst making the introductions.

"I don't give a shit. I aint liked Nichols attitude, not since last year when she got all antsy with me when Red got socked!" Says DeMarco.

"What the fuck, she did not!" Harrison argues.

"Did fuckin so!"

"Can ya fuckin blame her even if she did?"

"Course I fuckin can!"

I catch Alex's eye from across the room. She winks at me, in a way that even my heterosexual self cannot describe as anything other than suggestively.

"You should go see Nicky when you can. She'll be worried." Alex says from across the room, raising her voice so I can hear her above the squabbling ladies below.

"Will she?" I inquire. From what I knew of Nicky, worrying wasn't really her style.

"Yeah. She's all heart, that one."

"Are you being sarcastic?"

"Nope!" Alex replies, swinging her legs over her bunk so she can make her way back downwards.

"Where you going?"

"To verbally beat the shit out of Piper some more." She singsongs.

"Is Piper the blonde lady?"

"Yep. She'll be bitching about me to Nicky, I bet, so feel free to tag along." I shake my head. I wasn't ready to face her. Not yet. I needed time to think. Time to relieve myself.


Dinner is at four thirty. I don't think I'd ever had a meal so early in my life, and I was far from hungry for one, however doubting I had a choice in the matter, I follow DeMarco and Harrison down into the dining hall. They hadn't stopped bickering all afternoon. It stopped being about Nicky after a while and began to revolve around topics such as laundry and DeMarco's 'loud ass sleeping machine'. I had managed to create four gashes in that time, all significantly deep and slightly gaping open. As I file in behind the other women into the cafeteria, I feel for my wounds, craving their comfort.

Getting the blade in wasn't easy. I'd only been given a weeks' notice for my transfer, but common sense told me that I was likely to be moved around the time of my eighteenth birthday and therefore I had been preparing smuggling it in for a while. I'd gotten it from my former roomie, a violent yet strangely lovable fourteen year old charged with second degree murder. She'd always have a weapon of some sort hidden under her bed, claiming that she could never let the threat of a CO molesting her looming. Her name was Lea and she'd slit her step fathers throat in his sleep to stop him raping her. Fairly common stuff in a maximum security juvenile centre, but unsettling even so.

Anyway, Lea had given me the blade in return for a packet of Twinkies my Mother had brought for me during one visitation, way back when I was still in contact with her. After finding out about my parents ongoing divorce, I'd cut my ties with her completely, and therefore neglected the Twinkies in protest. My father didn't come to see me either. He hadn't since I was sentenced.

A month before my eighteenth birthday, I began to gather supplies. A sealed plastic pocket stolen from CO headquarters, trades of cotton wool and coco butter from Candy, the centres known beauty freak. Just a little under two weeks before my predicted transfer, I had everything I needed. Wounding cotton wool around the steel rectangle carefully so as not to unintentionally cut myself, I stuck the ends of each pad together with coco butter. I'd to this four or five times over, to create a substantial amount of padding, and then, to finish, I slip the object into the plastic pocket. Then, aided with several cups of water from the canteen and Lea persistently prodding it with a straw , I manage to swallow it down, and about twenty four hours later, I endure the excruciating pain of shitting it out. After retrieving it from the bowl of the lavatory and thoroughly scrubbing it under the bathroom sink, I took my creation apart and redid this whole ritual again nine days later. I consumed it on my birthday and retrieved it a day later, just as the coach pulled into the administration centre for Litchfield prison a day later, way after all the searches had taken place. It was a bit of a lengthily process, I admit, and conducting a trial run may have been going a little too far even for me, but I couldn't last a day without that god damn blade, let alone the rest of my god damn sentence, so I had to refrain from taking risks.

She's already there when I arrive, squashed between Piper and Morello on one the centre benches, her tray loaded with what seemed to be potato's and stale baloney. Trying my best to dodge her attention, I quickly make my way to the back of the line, huddled up between a huge black woman and an elderly Thai one. Once we reach the front of the queue, the black women turns to me as she picks up a plastic tray.

"Hey, you da new gurl? She drawls. "Yano, the one who's Nichols sister?" I nod apprehensively . "Well fuck me!" Says the woman, as the young Latina girl behind the counter piles baloney on to her tray.

"Jesus, Cindy!" Says another, smaller yet just as busty, black girl a couple of spaces in front. "You can't just go round asking the new recruits to fuck ya!"

"Especially not ones as baby faced as Nichols junior here!" Chips in the girl on the other side of Cindy. She is too Afro Caribbean, but a slightly paler brown than the other two, with a slim, boy like figure and a shaven head.

"Shut da fuck up muddafucka's!" Says Cindy, playfully shoving aside the woman whom had just spoken. "You know what I mean!"

"We sure do!" Says the first women, wiggling her eyebrows up and down in a mocking manner.

"Fuck you, Tastee, seriously man."

"Na your alright hunni boo!" Tastee teases.

By this point, I am so engrossed in the women's banter that I have no realised that the Latina woman who had served Cindy is now eyeing me up impatiently, waiting to take my order.

"Just a couple of slices please." I murmur.

"A couple?"

"Yeah, I'm not really that hungry…"

The girl sniggers. "Ya get what you given muddafucka. Dis aint no fuckin five star restraint, ya hear me?"

"But um…everyone else has got more than two slices…" I dare to bring up.

"Everyone else aint new meat. Everyone else aint Nichols sista. I aint neva liked Nichols. N-e-v-a. She aint neva been eating any of us Spanish girls pussies, I tell ya!"

Just as I'm about to back down, about to pass up on the baloney, that is the colour of flesh and looks as though it may be as old as the Thai woman waiting in line next to me, Nicky's suddenly behind me, draping her arm casually over my shoulder.

"How do you know that, Flaca?" She says coolly. "You don't know shit!"

"Fuck off Nichols, you got ya baloney!"

"No seriously, you don't know shit, I was screwing one of ya girls just this afternoon!" Nicky sticks out her tongue between her two middle fingers, wagging it wildly from side to side, just as another, older Latina woman comes to the counter.

"Run along, Nichols, Flaca gave you ya baloney, what's the fuckin problem?" Says the older woman, who I presume to be head chef.

"Flaca's not giving her any baloney, she's had a long fuckin day and she could use some fuckin food!" Nicky protests, gently pushing me aside and slamming her hands on the counter. I squirm at her protectiveness. Depending on your junkie older sister really didn't seem like the way to make a good first impression here…

"Its fine." I mumble. "I don't even want the damn baloney."

"Good to hear, cos now ya aint gettin none!" Concludes the older lady as she makes her way back in to the kitchen, leaving Flaca with an irritating smirk spread across her face. Nicky presses her hand against the small of my back.

"You can have some of mine baloney if you want, kid."

"I'm good." I mutter, nodding for yet another Spanish girl, this one taking me by surprise with her swollen stomach and glowing skin, to pile my plate with potato's.

"Right, well, come sit with us when you're done, or whatever." Nicky murmurs, twisting her fingers together as if uncomfortable.

"Thanks, I will do." I reply, avoiding her gaze. Instead I watch a handful of vibrant green pea's fall on to plate. Nicky leaves, and I pick up a undersized muffin before apprehensively joining her back at the table. As soon as the girls see me hovering, they practically pull me down with their enthusiasm.

"Hey!" Squeals Morello "Look who it is!"

"At last!" Says Piper "The girls haven't quit talking about you since you got here."

"Not like we got anything betta to talk about!" Morello replies. Piper extends her hand to me from across the table.

"Chapman."

"Nat." I reply, gripping her hand in mine.

"Well, it's nice to meet you, Nat." She concludes, letting go of my hand.

"Likewise."

"Oh can we cut the fuckin formalities?" Nicky says, but with a prominent cheerfulness in her tone. Alex, whom by this point is perched on the far side of the bench, next to an overweight lady with a masculine crew-cut, laughs at this comment.

"Yeah, let's get to the interesting shit!" The overweight lady jeers, leaning across the table as though to see me better. "What did ya do, kid?"

"Um…" I begin, taken aback by her forwardness.

"Hey, shut the fuck up, Boo." Nicky intervenes. She turns to look at me, sincerity in her eyes. "Don't worry, you aint gotta tell her nothin."

"Hey you're the one who told her to quit the fuckin formalities!" Boo argues.

Nicky smirks. "That's because I'm her fuckin sister. You? You're just some dyke who wants to get into her panties."

I gasp at this comment, earning me a series of amused looks from Morello, Chapman, and the various other women that sat on my side of the bench.

Boo chuckles. "You can't fuck family! And, unfortunately, any family of Nichols gotta be family of mine!" She bends a little more forward across the bench, eyeing me up intently. "Damn shame though, with titties like those!" Boo licks her lips and everyone at the bench, apart from me, erupts into laughter. I feel my cheeks tinting crimson.

"So, seriously" Says Alex when the laughter had died down "What did ya do?

"Fucked a llama whilst holidaying in Mexico" I say sarcastically, aggravated by her persistence "What about you?"

"Seriously?!" Morello gawped.

"Fuck no, she's just kiddin with ya!"Says Nicky, although even she seems a little unsure.

"I worked for an international drug cartel. Smuggled drugs around Europe n shit." Alex replies bluntly. "Piper over there was my bitch."

I try to suppress a bout of nervous laughter, and fail miserably.

"It's true." Chapman admits solemnly. "The asshole turned me in."

"She can't have done much." Boo chips in. "Lil scrap like her."

"You'd be surprised, I mean, look at Morello!" Nicky mocks, triggering Morello to give her a half hearted shove.

"Was it drugs, was that it?" Guesses Boo. "Do ya take after Nichols?

I shake my head, then lower it to disguise the burning of my cheeks.

"Ya steal shit?" Pipes in the woman who sits on the other side of Morello.

"Hey, stop it!" Nicky warns. "If she don't wanna tell ya, she don't have to."

Boo mock gasps. "Did ya rape someone? You a bit of a pervert like ya sister?"

"Shut the fuck up Boo! Just because I get better screws than you!"

"Did you kill someone?" Someone from the far end of the table suddenly asks. From the limited view I have of her, I see that she is older, with a petite structure and a mop of short blonde hair.

A dozen pairs of eyes look at me expectantly, waiting for me to dismiss this suggestion like I had the others. But of course I don't. Lying isn't something I like to make a habit of. Which is exactly why I had pleaded not guilty. Needless to say, they hadn't brought my honesty, and officially, according to the state of law, I had killed someone. I had formally been charged with Manslaughter a couple of days prior to my seventeenth birthday, almost a year ago now. I'd have to serve at least six years, maximum fourteen, and that was only because my father could afford to pay for a good lawyer. Apparently I should have been looking at a minimum of fifteen, giving the 'grotesque' circumstances of my apparent crime taken into account with my age. If I had been a year older, and had some shitty state lawyer, I'd been told I could been doing life. I suppose this is meant to make me feel grateful, but I feel anything but that, as the only crime I ever committed was allowing my fragile heart to be broken and my naïve nature to be influenced. Nothing more, nothing less.


I can't stay there. Not after they see the truth in my eyes and begin to gawk at me in horror, suddenly fearing for their safety whilst in my presence. Even Nicky can't look at me. After seeing my revelation her compassion for me has vanished, the ties of our relation broken. I get up from my seat and run from the cafeteria, past the line of on looking guards, past the now almost nonexistent dinner queue and back into the empty halls.

It takes me a while to find my way back to my bunk, but the promise of a release motivates me through.