"I love you, too. But we both know I don't have the guts to freefall through life with you."
"No, you don't."
How could she ever have believed otherwise? The truth was that Piper had had a fiancé since before she had set foot in that prison, so why inform her that she was getting married? Alex had challenged her to say what she really meant by that, and now she had an inkling that Piper had been given an ultimatum; everything -including the blonde's proclaimed "I pick him"-, pointed towards it. The blonde had gravitated back to her when she'd thought she'd lost Larry, because she'd had no other choice. However, Alex sensed that the guy had used the marriage card -marriage or nothing-, and Piper of course had leaped at once towards solid ground.
The weight that people attributed to a piece of paper was dumbfounding, as if it could create a pair of shackles around the other person's wrists, but that was another matter. The important thing was that, if given a choice, the blonde would take the easy way out -the road to security- every single time, which meant that Alex and her unscripted future would never be considered a real option. Not having the balls to do something was just the scapegoat way of saying that one didn't want it enough. That feeling of rejection burned inside and made her eyes sting, but it also shook that protected fragment of her into wakefulness, and that part of her was pure spiteful responsiveness. She wanted nothing to do with Piper. She wouldn't let her get close enough to risk getting hurt by the blonde ever again, because that woman was like the radiating waves of an explosion, an explosion which had originated many years ago, but it nevertheless kept generating ripples.
Not that Piper was a vampire, someone who consciously went around deceiving other people and ruining their lives, but she was fucked up, and that fucked-up-ness of hers had consequences. Like a malfunctioning traffic light, one tried to follow its confusing, ever-changing signals but one only ended up crashing and burning.
"At least I made a decision, right?" Piper said, almost smiling. "Aren't you proud of me?"
"Piper…" Alex shook her head and breathed out a tiny, incredulous laugh. She was about to tell her everything that was ridiculous and wrong with that statement and that question, as would be her custom, but she stopped herself. No. Of course Piper knew that it was bullshit, or she wouldn't have smiled. She knew, and she was still doing it. Besides, Alex wasn't going to explain a damn thing anymore. She was done. There was just… "Fuck you."
Perhaps she had been wrong all those years ago, presuming to really know who that blonde woman was and what she had truly wanted. She'd believed that she'd seen the core of Piper's being during their travels, at her most alive, climbing a mountain or swimming in the sea, huddled next to her in front of a volcano, crawling into a sleeping bag with her and letting her touch the wick of her soul. Maybe she had been wrong more recently as well, thinking that they were very slowly moving forwards instead of in circles, but the supposedly straight line leading to a shared future had only ended up being another curve, another spin.
Alex felt completely stupid for having allowed herself a glimmer of hope, but she couldn't allow it to drag her down like it had done before. Just like with any other compulsion, she had been an absolute fool to believe herself capable of remaining in control, but she had already kicked an addiction before, and she could do it again. Thankfully, she had her survival instinct to take care of her, and this was just a reminder of precisely why her own endurance needed to come first.
In no mood for the Christmas pageant, Alex leaned against the short wall of her cube, with the pillow behind her back. Just about everyone had gone down to the chapel, stupid and childish as pageants were, since any kind of diversion was welcome. She glanced at the book she was balancing on her knee, tired of having read the same sentence about thirty times and having not yet understood it. So now she wasn't even able to read, which was very annoying, as was this dumb, sporadic urge to cry.
Nichols had been her own distraction earlier, and vice versa, and a very welcome one at that. She had needed the pleasure, the seconds of complete oblivion, and the bubbly subsequent sensation. There had been no thoughts for a while, no pain, and none of those bothersome waves of sadness, even though Nichols had witnessed several of them already. She was the closest thing to a friend she had in that fucking hellhole, and it was easy to act naturally around her, while remaining as detached and subdued as necessary around the other inmates. They seemed to share a sardonic sense of humor and a certain instinctual understanding without needing to tell each other their sob stories, which weren't such a big mystery anyway. There was something else they shared; they had each been discarded by an engaged, straight girl.
Piper had burst her bubble of pleasantness, though, calling her name and marching towards her while Nichols was still sitting next to her on her bunk. Alex had told her to get fucking lost and, with Nichols's contribution, she had effectively sent her packing with her tail between her legs. She did not know what the blonde had wanted to say to her, although it didn't really matter, since the ditch between her and Piper was now in place, and it would hold, just like Alex hadn't lowered her eyes until the blonde had turned to leave, even though the sight of Piper's distraught expression was now engraved in her mind. The appearance of strength was as important as strength itself, and the necessary beginning of said strength.
One could speculate that Piper had had trouble with the fiancé, that Alex had ruffled Larry's feathers a bit by giving him a taste of the truth. Maybe he had started doubting that getting married would mark the end of their troubles; the poor guy had been nursing the absurd hope that marriage would make Piper feel more his, which was atrociously similar to Piper's desperate groping for security. It was funny, really, that now that she didn't have to go after Piper calling her on her bullshit, she was telling her boyfriend what was what. She hadn't been able to help herself, though, because she was not going to stand being blamed for playing games or casting some kind of spell on Piper, not after being jerked around. She wouldn't survive another spin on her merry-go-round, and so there would be no more spinning.
Now there was just her sentence, there was just her time. She leafed through the book, trying to remember what had happened previously before reattempting to read it, when suddenly, she heard what sounded like an underwater commotion, muffled as it was by the thick walls of the block. What the hell was going on? Had someone stolen fucking Baby Jesus from the manger? Alex tossed the book away and stood up, instinctively searching for a window…