A/N: Sorry for the wait, guys, having trouble getting writing time in between work. Hope it was worth it.
This chapter takes place around Christmas, which is where we are in the vague timeline I've been keeping in my head (assuming the show's season ended around the end of July/beginning of August). This means we've probably surpassed where season four would ever actually go, linearly, but whatever. That was inevitable.
General Fic Warnings: PTSD, depression, lightly evocative of self-harm
I'm so hard to handle (I'm selfish and I'm sad)
The water in the shower runs blue and black around her feet, swirling toward the drain; Piper looks away from it, scrubbing at her thigh with a bar of soap but not watching the words disappear.
She's been using the pen on her skin the past few days. She likes seeing words there, even though they won't stay. Sometimes the smooth, painless glide of the pen isn't good enough, and she presses too hard and ends up breaking the skin. It makes her think of when she was a kid, Cal coming home from school with boredom induced scribbles all over his arm, her mother sighing heavily and warning him against ink poisoning.
She chances a glance down, checking her progress. The tattooed list of insults and the arch of help's are the only visible words on her leg, but the ink is smeared and faded around them. It makes her look bruised.
Piper's stomach starts to clamp up, she's already forgetting everything she'd written last night. She closes her eyes and tips her head back under the hot spray, reminding herself that Alex is back in the cube, waiting for her. Piper can see her in five minutes, she keeps telling herself that, even bargaining it down - five more minutes, maybe three if you hurry - just trying to get herself calm.
So she rinses off fast then towels herself dry and puts on clothes in the tight space of the shower stall, tired of having to hold the towel just so to hide the tattoos. Her hair drips water onto the shoulders of her khakis as Piper moves out of the bathroom and back to the dormitory, heading straight for Alex's waiting smile.
She's okay, then, and she stays okay through breakfast, but fifteen minutes into work Piper's staring too hard at the needle jumping on her sewing machine, wishing there was a way to dismantle it with no one noticing.
Piper finds Alex in the library when she's done with work for the day; she likes seeing Alex here, surrounded by books, relaxed and easy and hardly ever doing actual work.
"Hey." Alex grins when she sees her, and the book she's holding gets folded shut, silenced without a second thought. Piper settles down beside her on the floor, their backs against the bookshelf. Piper still doesn't read any of the books Alex brings her, but it doesn't matter so much lately; there are fewer of those long, silent stretches between them, when they needed open books in their laps to stare at it to make it okay that they weren't looking or talking to each other.
"Hi."
The edges of their boots are touching. Piper shifts so her shoulder brushes Alex's.
"How was work?"
"Okay. Felt long." Piper pauses, talking herself into the next question, "You never told me how Berdie's was yesterday."
She makes herself ask now, every few days.
Alex's eyes go soft, recognizing the effort. "It was okay. Whatever. She asked me if I'd been outside yet. I told her no one's going outside unless we wanna freeze our asses off."
Piper makes a humming sound in agreement; winter has descended early and harshly on New York, clearing the yard and filling the prisoners with restless, unspent energy. There have been an uptick in fights the last few weeks, from loud curse ridden verbal altercations to actual throw downs. Not that any of that affects Alex and Piper; they've been completely contained and entirely isolated for months now.
She changes the subject from Alex's counseling sessions too fast. "People in the sweatshop kept talking about their auditions."
"Oh, fuck, is that today? We should go watch that train wreck."
"I don't think we can get in if we aren't auditioning."
Alex smirks, eyes flashing suggestively. "What? I didn't tell you about our Baby, It's Cold Outside duet? You have to take the high part."
Piper ducks her head and smiles. "Not that it matters."
"What does that mean?"
"You're tone deaf. At either part."
Alex laughs the way she always does when Piper says anything remotely lighthearted, the kind of laugh that's more about being happy than amused.
Piper's scratching her fingernails back and forth across her knee. Alex habitually picks up her hand to stop her; she keeps hold of it, letting her thumb slip absently across Piper's knuckles. It feels nice. She wants, for a second, to rest her head on Alex's shoulder, but she doesn't.
Alex doesn't like Christmas. Not since her mom died.
For most of the Decembers since, she'd been traveling, which made it easier to pretending the holiday didn't exist. A few times - definitely the first year after, and a few more that coincided with relapses - she'd been high enough that she hadn't even noted the actual day while it was happening, can't even remember a single pang of awareness.
She'd been all too sober last year, days removed from the double blow of being dumped by Piper and then watching Piper get carried off, bloody and unconscious.
She's not sure what to expect from Christmas this year. Thanksgiving had come and gone without much notice; it was during that long, frightening period where Piper was barely there. Alex can't even be sure if Piper realized why the food was a little better that day.
Now, though, only a few weeks removed, there's a lot more to be thankful for.
They're unlikely to pull an invite into anyone's Secret Santa pool; she and Piper have become a closed unit, even more so than they were before. She can't get very far in trying to figure out a gift, always getting tangled in the memory of Piper's birthday, painstakingly choosing between songs without realizing she was picking lyrics for Piper's ribcage.
And anyway, she's afraid what Piper wants for Christmas is another goddamn back alley tattoo gun.
It's been almost three weeks since Alex smashed it, and everything is better than it was, but she can still see Piper craving. Still thinking she needs it.
But she's been there, helping Alex emerge out of nightmares, three times so far. And she smiles sometimes, and doesn't usually stiffen when Alex touches her. She sounds like talking takes less effort, and she can hold eye contact for lengthy stretches.
She is getting better, in small steps and inching progress. It makes Alex feel better, too, like she has finally proven she is not too weakened and fucked up to help. Just knowing that makes her feel stronger, more herself, and it's more helpful than any of the pills or advice Berdie has provided her so far.
The Christmas pageant is schedule for the night before Christmas Eve, and Alex has a pretty good idea of what to expect: Lorna's taken to giving a running commentary every time they're in their cube, griping endlessly about how she was downgraded from the role of Mary to "some sort of fuckin' goat".
Alex has been cranky and on edge the last few days, and she's sick of the minimal, pathetic attempts at holiday decorations pasted throughout the prison, alternately stuck thinking about last year's Christmas and, more vaguely, her mom.
Both Berdie and Piper notice her mood and ask about. Berdie sounds like she genuinely wants the answer, Piper sounds, as always, like she's nervous about it, but Alex gives Piper more anyway.
"Christmas in prison doesn't really change, right?" She says to Piper one afternoon in the library. "I just keep thinking about last year." Guilt shadows Piper's face, and Alex quickly clarifies, trying to keep her tone light, "Your stint as a prize fighter."
"Oh, right..." Piper looks a little startled, like she'd forgotten all about that.
They're quiet for a moment, and then Alex hesitantly adds, "You know, I never told you, but...I saw you, after."
Surprised, Piper looks at her. Her voice is small. "Yeah?"
"There was a whole crowd outside...you were all sprawled out in the snow." Alex presses her lips together. "Scared the shit out of me."
Piper isn't looking at her. "Yeah...I kinda know what that's like."
Before Alex can work herself up to asking, Piper says, forcing a casual tone, "Actually, you know what I never told you? Pennsatucky never knocked me out."
"Wait, what?"
So Piper tells her about Suzanne coming outside, obviously confused and out of it, and knocked Piper out beside an already unconscious Tiffany Doggett.
"She probably stopped me from killing her," Piper finishes grimly, her eyes unfocused and far away. "I just...I couldn't stop."
"Well, I'm glad you didn't kill her, Pipes, for the sake of your criminal record. But she was the one trying to kill you. She fuckin deserved to get her redneck, homophobic ass kicked." Piper nods, but she still looks troubled. "And, hey, she got new teeth out of it, so I actually you did her a favor."
A smile ghosts across Piper's face. "Yeah."
Alex can tell Piper's stuck on something about that night, locking herself into guilt somewhere. This is usually where Alex would push, make her talk about it, but she's tired, and she doesn't want to keep thinking about last year. So Alex smiles and nods at the surrounding bookshelves. "Wanna pick out some books? I'll sneak 'em out for you as a Christmas gift."
It takes a second for Piper to get her full attention back on Alex, but she smiles when she does. "It's prison, Alex, you don't have to get me anything."
"I might not," Alex says honestly, smirking a little. "We're kinda down to the wire and I have no ideas. I'm not crafty, and commissary's shit for shopping."
"True. Everyone ends up with the same stuff."
"I may just re-gift you a Snickers."
Piper gets a few Christmas cards, including one from Polly and Larry, a photograph of them on the cover with the baby she's never met, looking like a family, like she or Pete never existed. The thought of them adding her prison address to the list of recipients of their joint Christmas card would have yanked Piper into an indignant fury six months ago, but now she stares at the photo with a sense of detachment from both of them. They feel like people she knew when she was someone else, someone who was barely real and doesn't matter, and whatever life they're living right now has nothing to do with her.
There's a handwritten note on the inside, just from Polly, the phone number Piper already knows and an entreaty to call, arrange a time for Polly to come back and visit - just me again, she'd promised.
Piper's immediate instinct is that she won't do it, but then she realizes Alex might actually tell her she should. She touches her collarbone and then her stomach, tracing words she'd stolen from Alex's letter to Polly.
Alex joins Piper in her bunk soon, her hair wet and smelling like generic shampoo. She glances at the green and red envelopes stacked in Piper's lap. "Your family coming for Christmas?" There's a cautious note to her voice; she knows no one but Cal has come back since her birthday, and that Cal stopped shortly after the panty business did.
"Yeah. Christmas Eve." Her mother had written we in talking about the visit, but Piper's never sure if that includes her father or just Cal and Neri. She's not sure if she wants to see him; she maybe doesn't want to see any of them.
She can feel Alex watching her. "Are you glad?"
"I don't know. I don't know how to be around them now." She stops, rattled by how selfish this is, talking about her family's visit when Alex has no one coming for her.
Piper stays quiet, but Alex pushes it. "What do you mean?"
It takes a second for her to answer. "I'd just been really pissed at them, for how they were reacting to this whole prison thing. But now it's like...what did I expect? Why do I think anyone should give me free passes?" She has to look away from Alex, then, the scar on her face. "And they don't even know the worst things I've done. I'm the problem, not them."
"Fuck that, Piper," Alex says immediately, and for the first time in awhile, she actually sounds angry. "Jesus, I hate your parents."
Piper looks up again, surprised. The statement sounds off somehow. "You've never met my parents," she reminds Alex, not without self-reproach.
"Fine, whatever, then I hate the way they make you feel. Like you need to be good enough for them."
The words slam, unexpectedly heavy, into Piper, and she feels the impact somewhere between her chest and throat. Her eyes tear over, and she feels an instant and alarming sense of desperation, the need to catch the words somehow. She wants to hold them in her hands, turn them over and examine them. She needs a needle, or at the very least her ink pen.
Of course she is not good enough. But Alex is saying -
What?
That she shouldn't have to be?
The skin on her leg starts tingling.
Alex is still talking, oblivious. "You find out your dad cheated on your mom when you're, what? Twelve years old? You didn't treat him like shit for his worst mistakes, but he can't show up at a visitation room and do the same for you? And from what you've said about your mom - "
"You remembered that?" Piper asks, slightly delayed.
"Of course," Alex makes a face like that was a dumb question.
For a second, Piper feels like telling Alex that she remembers things, too. She remembers what Alex picked out to wear the one and only time she met her asshole of a father, and she remembers the restaurant where Diane Vause worked, the way Alex would sit in a corner booth during her shifts, occupied with a stack of library books and an occasional milkshake.
But thinking about Diane just makes Piper remember all the reasons why she's awful, so she just shakes her head. "It's not really on them. It's me."
The irritated rant is gone from Alex's voice. She meets Piper's eyes, very deliberate, and brushes back a section of Piper's hair. "Why do you think that?"
Piper feels her jaw clenching, tight enough that it aches. Her face feels hot. "You know," she says through her teeth. She spreads her palm across the top of her thigh, right over the last tattoos she gave herself. "You know, Alex."
Alex's expression is blank. "What do I know?"
Piper's throat narrows. She and Alex have been having so many talks lately, and she's genuinely listened to everything Alex says about intent and circumstances and how all of it makes a difference. She doesn't feel anymore like she's a breath away from destruction. When she's around Alex, she feels okay.
But it also feels a little like living with her fingers crossed behind her back, spitting out white lies of omission.
"I know everything you've been saying, Alex. I didn't mean to put you in danger. And I acted like you were crazy because I didn't want you to be right. But that doesn't make it okay - "
"I never said it did - "
" - and what about how I cheated on you?" Alex flinches automatically, jerking her gaze away. Piper's voice thickens with sudden, threatening tears. "We never talk about that, because there's no excusing it, right? We can't make that okay." She huffs out a sad, lifeless laugh. "I'm not good enough for them, okay, Alex?" she clenches out, voice breaking on the last word. "I'm not good at all. It's hard to love someone like that."
Alex's eyes are shining. Softly, she says, "Always came pretty easy to me."
A crooked, tear soaked sound jumps out of Piper before she can stop it, and Alex reaches over to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. Piper can barely look at the tenderness on her face. "Don't."
"Don't what?"
Don't love me, she thinks but doesn't say, can't actually bring herself to wish for that. But she doesn't want to hear it, just like she doesn't want to hear forgiveness. "You don't understand."
Alex shakes her head impatiently, like she doesn't believe there's anything about Piper she can't understand. She looks at her in that way that makes Piper feel see through, but she still doesn't acknowledge the darkest parts.
Piper presses the heels of her hands over her eye. More truth is scratching at her throat, wanting out.
She hasn't let herself say this, has let it sit lodged in her chest like a bullet it would do more damage to remove, but she doesn't feel like she can stop it anymore.
"I love you, Alex." It comes out small and weightless, even with her whole heart in her voice.
Alex's eyes warm, melting her whole face into softness, and she smiles even as she opens her mouth to say it back.
"Stop." Piper barely restrains herself from physically putting a finger to Alex's lips. Her voice unravels into protests, increasingly panicked. "I mean it, Alex, don't, please, I don't want you to say that - "
"Okay, okay." Alex puts a hand on her arm, conciliatory. "I got it, Pipes."
Piper draws a shaky breath, nodding a little. "I love you," she says again. Alex starts running her fingers the length of Piper's arm, gentle and soothing. "I love you so, so much Alex..." Her voice breaks, and Alex moves even closer. "And that really fucking scares me."
Alex touches a curled finger to the corner of Piper's eye, brushing away a tear. "How come?"
Swallowing against rising sobs, Piper closes her eyes and, for just a second, rests her head against Alex's.
Alex doesn't understand, she can't understand what it felt like when Piper thought she was dead. She'd never been so achingly aware of how much she loves Alex, how deep it goes, to her veins and marrow and nerves. She'd thought Alex was gone, and that there was nowhere for that love to go.
She doesn't understand that it's what makes Piper hate herself the most.
"Pipes?" Alex whispers.
"If I love you that much, more than anyone...and I still hurt you like that, over and over...what the hell does that say about me?"
A long, heavy silence follows this question, and then Alex sighs shakily, "You're killing me, Pipes."
"See? There's not a good answer."
"Okay, you know what..." Alex holds her eyes, sad and serious, and Piper can see her thinking, getting the words together. "No one's ever hurt me like you, Piper."
Piper knows that, she does, but it knocks the wind out of her anyway. She bites her tongue so hard it draws blood, and she thinks about breaking the needle off her sewing machine at work tomorrow, breaking her pen open, she can figure something out, she just needs to get the words on her.
But then Alex finishes, "But that's only because no one else has ever made me as happy." She lets that linger for awhile before touching Piper's cheek gently, making her look again. "It all counts. Okay?"
Piper has to blink her vision clear to look back at Alex, and she says, "I love you," again because it's all she's feeling or thinking.
"I..." Alex starts slow, and she seems to see the fear take over Piper's face, because she finishes, "I have a very important question." Nervous, Piper waits. Alex smiles at her. For her. "Will you go to the prison Christmas pageant with me?"
Piper drops her head to wipe her eyes on Alex's shoulder. She feels Alex's lips on her forehead.
She can't help but believe Alex. The truth of it's there in her smile, and in every smile she's given Piper over the past few weeks, pure unfettered delight whenever Piper offers her any effort.
"Are you asking me on a date?" She mumbles into Alex's shirt.
Beneath her, Alex shudders once with one of those happy laughs.
Piper makes Alex happy.
It all counts.
She pictures the words on her chest, trying to trick herself into thinking she can keep them. She knows exactly where they'd go.
Alex makes a big show of picking Piper, two cubes down, to walk to the chapel. She plays the date joke too big to disguise how stupidly happy it makes her.
They sit toward the back, and Alex keeps snarking to Piper about the casting or the set - "Do do they know that's a fucking palm tree? Was Jesus born in Miami?" - and she's gratified every time Piper grins in response, enough to completely evaporate the last traces of Alex's bad mood from the past few days.
The lights go down, and there's applause and a lot more catcalling than is typical for a Christmas play.
When Poussey and Taystee sing Silent Night it makes Alex's chest hurt, reminding her of her mom for no real reason besides Christmas. Her mom still has claim to most of Alex's memories of the holidays; she's never had a good one without her.
Until, maybe, miraculously, this year.
The past year has been awful, one of the worst of her life, maybe only topped by that first year after Paris, both Piper and her mom gone, though she'd gotten through a lot of that in a haze of drugs, carrying oblivion around in her pockets.
But somehow, here at the end, they've ended up like this. Alex turns away from the stage to look at Piper, right beside her, her face calm and okay and familiar. A few lines of the song pass before Piper seems to sense her looking; she turns and gives Alex this small, soft smile that makes her feel like the whole sun is in her chest.
Piper's arm is draped over the thin wooden armrest between them. Facing forward again, smiling slightly to herself, Alex carefully nudges her arm beside Piper's, just the outside of their pinkies touching. She takes her time, slowly easing over, before finally weaving their fingers together, feeling like a thirteen year old kid, the kind she never actually got to be.
Piper squeezes her hand.
All day, Piper's been stuck in the memory of last year, and it's left her nervy and scared of whatever monster inside her had roared to life and nearly killed Tiffany Doggett.
Mostly, though, she's remembering what Doggett said to her:
You ain't worthy of nobody's love.
Piper knows Doggett was dangerous and delusional, insisting that she was an angel of god, trying to kill her. And yet somehow, even she had managed to zero in on that fundamental truth about Piper, and in every moment since she said it, all Piper's done is prove her right.
But worthy or not, Alex loves her anyway.
Piper makes Alex happy, and Alex deserves to be happy.
Somehow, Piper is still capable of that much good.
Alex is sitting to Piper's right; she usually goes to the other side, the scar hidden in profile, but she'd forgotten tonight, and Piper knows that probably means something good, that Alex isn't taking care to hide anytime there's a chance.
When Alex takes her hand, something loosens inside Piper's chest.
She feels overwhelmed, all of a sudden. There's something howling inside her, something trying to break out of a cage inside her chest, but it's not a monster this time. It's something better. It's maybe even something good.
"C'mon," she whispers to Alex just before standing up, keeping their hands together.
Alex follows Piper out of the chapel. Piper goes out the same door where she disappeared from the last pageant, knowing she got away with that before. Only when she steps outside does she remember coming here right after Alex came back
"Fuck," Alex hisses when the door closes behind them. Piper turns toward her, questioning. "Wasn't expecting the cold." Alex smirks, a little sheepish. "Haven't been outside in awhile."
"Oh, shit, Alex, sorry - "
"No, Pipes, it's okay. Can't even see the greenhouse." Alex looks at her, expression folding into concern. "What's going on, you okay?"
"I'm fine." Piper pulls her coat a little tighter around herself, lifting her eyes to Alex's and amends quietly, barely believing it, "I'm good."
The worry fades from Alex's face, and she tilts her head a little when she smiles, confused.
Piper reaches for the edges of Alex's coat, pulling her closer. "Merry Christmas." She says it the way people do when they're giving a gift, then she leans forward to kiss Alex.
Alex's hands are cool on her cheeks but her mouth is hot and eager. Piper tightens her grip on the coat, keeping herself steady, but it feels off-balance and unnatural. When the kiss deepens, Piper lets her hands give into their instincts, and reaches up to carefully cradle Alex's face, her fingers barely brushing the edge of scar tissue, like it's delicate and breakable. She feels Alex's fingers circle her wrist, as if she's scared Piper will move away.
They kiss out there in the dusting of snow until their hands are shaking and their lips are numb, until they keep moving closer as much for warmth as anything else. When they pull away, sharp breaths puffing into the air between them, Alex smiles; her nose is red and her eyes are bright and Piper's hands have done a number on her hair. She looks so beautiful it hurts.
"We should go," Alex says. She takes Piper's hands between both of hers, warming them up. "Before someone checks."
"I'll take the shot."
Alex grins at her, looking almost dizzy with her own happiness. "Such a delinquent." Her eyes soften, and she kisses Piper again, fast and soft and cool. "I'm glad you're back."
"Yeah..." With only a moment's hesitation, Piper pulls one hand free and touches it to Alex's cheek, her thumb gently tracing the crack of the scar. "You, too."
There's no work detail on Christmas Eve, and Piper and Alex spend the morning in Piper's cube, playing cards in socked feet and talking in lazy circles, swapping old Christmas stories.
It's actually nice, talking about her mom, and a few times Alex catches Piper smiling in soft recognition, eyes flaring in anticipation of mirth before Alex even gets to the funny part of a memory, and she guesses she's told Piper these stories before, but Piper lets her keep talking.
They go on like that for hours. Alex is in the middle of a story, the time she was seven and her mom had taken a fourth job at a 24 Hour Wal-Mart, just for the holidays. She'd worked Christmas Eve, and brought Alex with her, made her wait until midnight before sending her off to the toy section with a pocket calculator and a grocery cart, making it a timed race to pick out her own gifts, sixty dollars worth. To Alex, it had seemed like an unfathomable amount of money.
She's still telling it when Piper gets called for visitation, and guilt washes over Piper's face. "They can wait..."
"Don't be stupid. Go."
"Okay..." But Piper doesn't move to get up, pure anxiety chasing the guilt away.
Alex watches her carefully. "Hey." Piper looks at her, big eyed and worried in a way that makes Alex instantly protective. "If you're totally dreading this...you don't have to go."
"Yeah, I do. I should."
"Okay."
Piper gives her a limp, apologetic smile. "Sorry. I'll be back soon."
"I'll be here."
Alex watches her walk off, worry prickling on the back of her neck. She has a brief, unhelpful fantasy of following Piper to the visitation room, leaning against the glass window and keeping watch, maybe sending the senior Chapmans her most intimidating, scarred glares.
She's pretty sure that'd do Piper more harm than good.
Piper's legs feel heavy when she moves to the visitation room. She hasn't seen anyone in her family in months. Her skin feels tight and buzzing.
She's expecting Cal and her mom, probably Neri, but when she walks into the room, her parents are alone at the table. Both of them.
She catches her dad's eye and her heart pinches, just like that.
One of Piper's earliest memories: three years old, at her older brother's T-ball game. Danny was six, and Cal was a baby, or maybe her mom was still pregnant, but either way her dad was home more back then. He was an assistant coach for Danny's team, which didn't mean much - half a dozen of the dads held the title. They couldn't make it to all the practices, but they all wore team shirts and stood around the field and in the dugout during Saturday games.
It was after the game, the families flooded onto the field, and Piper had spotted her dad standing along the first baseline with his back to her, so tall in his purple Hurricanes T-shirt and matching baseball hat. She'd gone running eagerly to him, slamming into his legs and wrapping her arms around his knees, squealing, "Daddy!"
Then she'd looked up to find a complete stranger, one of the other fathers slash assistant coaches, staring down at her with a bewildered expression.
The simultaneous rush of panic and embarrassment had made the memory stick, even for a three year old. But ever since the indictment, Piper thinks about it almost every time she sees her dad, when she's filled up with the childish urge to run to him for safety, all too aware she might not recognize the disappointed, distant man looking down at her.
Her mother's tight, uncomfortable smile is at least familiar, so Piper focuses on that first because it hurts less, but when she gets close enough to the table she sees something almost like alarm kick the smile away just before her mother gives her a dry kiss on the cheek. "Darling, you look..." She can't seem to find a word. Piper waits; she's been wrecked a dozen or so times over since they last saw her, and she has no idea what she looks like. Carol settles on, "...tired."
Piper ignores that. "Merry Christmas, Mom." Then, hesitant, she adds, "Dad."
Bill nods and gives her an obligatory hug that's fast and stiff, like Piper's covered in spikes.
"Where's Cal?" She asks as they sit down.
"He and Neri are out of town seeing her parents...he said to tell you he'd stop by when he's back. Next week sometime." Carol reports, glad to have something to say, and Piper feels a pang of panic, already missing her brother's buffering, joking presence.
"That's good. It's uh...it's been awhile." She regrets that, immediately. She hadn't meant to bring that up, can't blame them for staying away, but now that they're here it feels strange to pretend it hasn't been six months.
"Well," Carol says with a barely perceptible edge to her voice. "Last time we were here, honey, you were so convinced your life here was so perfect, it didn't seem right to intrude."
Piper remembers that, remembers insisting that prison was good for her, making her a better person, but it feels so distance. She remembers saying it, but she can't remember ever being a person who thought like that, who believed that about herself.
She also remembers kissing Alex after that visit, and wishes she didn't remember everything that happened after.
Across the table, her dad is repeating his strategy from before: avoiding her eyes, not even pretending to listen, looking like he'd rather be anywhere else.
Last time, she'd been hurt but also angry, puffed up, little kid anger about how unfair he was being. Today, she feels like apologizing.
But Alex's voice is in her head, exasperated, telling her she shouldn't have to.
"So what are you guys doing tomorrow?" It must be a strange Christmas, the first since her grandmother died and Cal got married. Not their first without Piper, though. They're used to her absence by now.
Her mom seizes on the subject, letting her know about plans, which aunts and uncles and cousins are still coming, how their usual lunch had been pushed to a dinner and Cal and Neri would be back just in time - "apparently Christmas Eve is big for her family, you know how marriage is, have to accommodate two different traditions, although I suppose if you'd married Larry we wouldn't have had to worry about that on Christmas" - and how much she's cooking and who likely won't contribute.
It's mindless talk, but Piper's glad for the noise. At least her mom is talking. Piper feels like apologizing to her, too. She feels like apologizing to everyone.
She doesn't call her dad out this time, not like his last visit, not like her furlough, but she can't help wanting something from him. It's painful, how much he doesn't want to look at her, and with a jolt Piper realizes she was doing the same thing to Alex until very recently.
For a second, Piper's genuinely afraid she's going to start crying.
"How's work, Dad?" she asks when she can talk again, like they're distant relatives at some once a year family reunion.
"Busy," he says, a little gruff, addressing the edge of the table. Then, almost satirical, "And yours?"
"They've got me out of electrical, actually. You know the prison went private -"
"Oh, yes, your father read an article about that."
"Right, well, there's this lingerie company they work with now." Piper smiles and lightens her tone, pretending her parents are the kind of people who might find prison absurdities amusing. "So they've actually got me making panties." Her mother makes a soft, distasteful sound. "It pays a dollar an hour instead of ten cents, so it's considered a pretty high honor."
She's joking, but her father actually lifts his gaze and fixes her with a hard stare. "So you're working in a sweat shop for seven bucks a day...that's what passes for success for you right now?"
Piper can feel herself shrinking. "I...I don't think of it as success." Her voice comes out so tiny, like she's regressing back to childhood.
"Should hope not," her dad mutters. He sounds exhausted by her.
She thinks, suddenly, of the panty business. She had considered that success. She feels a wave of something like revulsion.
Then her mom gives her dad a look, not reproachful, but like she's reminding him of something. He sighs, then with visible, reluctant effort makes himself look at her again. "Do you remember Todd Blakely? One of our biggest clients?" Piper nods, not because she remembers but because she knows it doesn't really matter. "Well, his receptionist is having a baby around the time you're released...I spoke to him about your situation, and he agreed to see you for an interview when you're out."
Piper just blinks at him, not comprehending. "What?" Her initial, idiotic thought is that she can't be a receptionist from Litchfield.
"You've only got a few months left, Piper," he says in this stern voice that makes her feel like a teenager who isn't studying enough for her SATs. "You need to start thinking about a plan."
A few months.
Piper's stomach folds sickeningly in on itself.
She hasn't thought about her release in so long. Not since that day. Not since Alex -
She can't even picture it. Walking out of Litchfield, going...where? Her parents house? Covering her tattoos with business attire?
Alex still has years left.
Piper's the one who doesn't deserve to get out. And not because she carried some suitcase.
But her parents are watching her expectantly, and she wants to say the right thing, but all she can manage is, "Yeah, maybe."
"Maybe?"
"I just mean...it's still a few months off. I haven't really thought about it - "
"Well it's time to start thinking," her dad says harshly. "Jesus Christ, Piper, you wouldn't have an opportunity like this at all if I hadn't called in connections. Do you have any idea how lucky you are?"
"Yes," she says immediately. She knows she's lucky. People here remind her of that all the time.
"So you say yes, and then you say thank you."
"I...I'm not saying no." Piper feels stressed and overwhelmed. "I mean, I know it's what you want - "
"Oh, no, don't make that mistake, Pipe. I didn't want to have to speak to a client about giving my daughter a chance in spite of her prison time. I don't want to have to hope that your expensive Smith degree will be put to use sitting at a front desk answering phones, but that's the position you'veput me in."
There's nothing Piper can say to that. Shame rises on her skin like blisters, and now she's the one who can't look at him.
She will get out of here - in a few months, fuck fuck fuck - and continue to disappoint them. There is no coming back from this, she's fallen too far to aim for the heights they expected from her. This look in her dad's eyes is all hers now.
And this little bit of good she's discovered she has in her, the ability to make Alex smile, to make Alex happy, will be no good to either of them when Alex is stuck here without her for another few years all because Piper made a phone call.
She always ends up leaving her, one way or another.
