You wake up in a terror, confused about where you are and why it's dark and who is making those noises.
Soon you discern that it's you who's gasping. And the other noises, the shushing and the cursing, seem to come from all around.
You sit up halfway, heart pounding, but a hand presses on your upper arm—it's Fahri, it has to be. "Don't touch me," you hiss, jerking away. In your panic, your shoulder slams into the wall.
The pain is what finally yanks you back to reality.
It's not Alex's old boss squatting beside your bed. It's Lorna Morello. You're in your bunk, not the back room of a French nightclub, and it's dark because it's still nighttime.
Fuck.
"Shitballs, shut up," calls a muffled voice from the far side of the block. Grumbled agreements follow.
You feel the hand on your arm again, and this time you don't jolt away. The touch is stronger than before—but gentler, somehow, more familiar—and all of a sudden you comprehend that Lorna is still holding both her palms up in a bewildered apology. She can't possibly be touching you. You whip your head to the side to find Alex crouched at the head of your bed.
"It's just me," she says softly, pressing you back down to your pillow. She glances at Morello, who takes the cue to tiptoe out.
Your eyes are wide as they dart around the cube, from Alex to your books to the window to Taylor, who glares at you from her bunk. Alex shifts to block Leanne from view.
You're panting, you realize, and your forehead is damp with sweat. "Alex, Fahri, he—"
"Shh." She cuts off your anxious ramble with a whisper. "It was a nightmare, Pipes, that's all."
You had dreamed of that night in Paris, of walking in on the dead mule. Only as you stood in the doorway, it wasn't a waifish Russian girl with a long bob. It was Alex. And it wasn't strangers who stood all around, laughing over her body. It was Fahri, holding a pistol, and the drug lord you'd angered, and all the others. Her clothes were torn, and her blood seeped into the toes of your shoes as you screamed. She did it for you, Fahri had said, smiling. Wasn't it worth it?
You swallow, fingers clenching in your sheets. "But he—"
"It wasn't real," says Alex firmly.
Alex who is upright, who is breathing—who is very much alive. A strangled sound escapes your lips. You reach out to touch her face, to feel the warmth under her skin that was absent only moments ago. She captures your hand before it finds her cheek, but she keeps your fingers tucked in hers as she brings them back down to your blanket.
While she holds your hand, you study each rise and fall of her chest. After many white-knuckled minutes of watching her, your own breathing finally slows to match.
"Go back to sleep, kid, okay?" The dread must show on your face, because she squeezes your hand and leans closer. "Did you know Fahri kept hamsters?" she whispers. "I went to his house once, and it was just a maze of custom-built hamster palaces."
You give her a tentative grin in spite of yourself. "It was not."
"On my honor." She smirks. "And they all had names. His favorite was Samson."
A laugh bubbles through you both. You have to stifle the sound before you wake the Suburbs all over again.
Too soon, though, the laughter dies away. And when it's gone, you're left feeling even more adrift than before.
Maybe it's the days of accumulated sleep deprivation, or the uncanny stillness in the block—or maybe it's the fact that you've already hit your rock bottom for vulnerability today, so why quit now?—but you roll over onto your side to face her. "Alex," you say. Your voice is small and wounded and so faint you're afraid she won't hear. "Why did you give me up instead of him?"
Her chin dips low to her chest, dark hair falling around her face. You know you've hurt her, and that adds another layer to your pain. A long silence stretches out between you, until you're sure she isn't going to answer. Until you're positive your question has shattered the fragile truce you've built over the last three days.
Fahri hadn't been in the indictment. You'd looked for his name in each statement, each brief, but it wasn't there. You read every report on drug busts you could find online while you waited for your surrender date. He was never mentioned. Alex did protect some people, you'd learned. You just weren't one of them.
"It wasn't an either-or situation," she says at last, her eyes on the floor. "And Fahri was there for me when no one else was."
You nod against your pillow, trying not to let her see how stricken you feel—how crushed—that a felonious colleague had cared for her better than you had.
"But he wouldn't have given a second thought to having me killed in prison for shitting up the ladder instead of down it," she continues. An urgency enters her voice as she looks up at you—a need for you to understand. "He wouldn't have hesitated to put out a hit on you to pay me back, whether you were locked up or not. I was pissed at you, Pipes; I didn't want you dead."
Alex had risen so rapidly through the organization while you were together—well above the level Fahri worked at when you first met her. In your anger and hurt after your arrest, you'd forgotten that he had almost certainly been climbing the ranks, too. That despite her considerable power, he probably still had more.
"It wasn't supposed to be like this," Alex says, her glassy eyes catching the moonlight. "You were supposed to go to trial and get off with some bullshit story about how I'd brainwashed you. If you came here at all it was supposed to be quick and painless. I never meant for..." Her voice trails off, unsteady and distressed.
You flip the hand she still clutches, tangling your fingers together. "I know," you whisper.
And you do. No matter how furious you were when you found out she'd named you, you believe that she didn't want any of this. Pennsatucky. The SHU. Both your hearts broken all over again from scratch.
As Alex clears her throat, you grasp that she really didn't want to be having this conversation, either. She's already withdrawing into herself, blinking the wetness from her eyes, and you wonder how you were the one who got the reputation for running from emotional chaos. The two of you could co-captain the Olympic team.
But you're not ready to let her go yet. You're not prepared for her to sneak back to her bed and pretend none of this ever happened. When she begins to loosen her hand from your fingers, you grip it like a lifeline. "Will you stay?" you say. "I mean, just a little longer?"
Like how about forever? your mind screams. Does forever work for you?
She purses her lips as she considers it, leaning out of the cube to check who's in the bubble tonight. If she were really worried about the COs, though, she would have returned to her bunk long ago.
Alex shifts her weight on the balls of her feet, as if to stand. You tell yourself this is just her way of coping, but it still feels like being slugged in the gut when she shakes her hand free from yours.
But she's not standing up, you realize. She's shifting onto her hip, tucking her legs to the side. And once she's settled, her hand comes to rest on your stomach.
Your blanket fell to your waist when you sprang up from your nightmare, so all that separates your skin from hers is a white cotton t-shirt. It's way too much, and not nearly enough.
She used to touch you this way when you were together. Whenever you were sad or scared or angry and there was a horizontal surface nearby, she would pull you into her as her little spoon—one arm curled under your neck, the other hand pressed against your stomach, pinning you to her body. It was comforting. Grounding.
Now, though, her hand makes your muscles jump. It's been so long since she touched you—really touched you—and you pray she can't see your nipples hardening through your shirt, or the way your cheeks flush.
She doesn't tease you, though, or smirk, so maybe your body's traitorous reactions have melted into the darkness. Or maybe she just isn't ready to joke about the fact that still—even after all these years and everything that happened at Litchfield, even after a day of emotional turmoil and a night of terror—all it takes is one well-placed caress from her to send you flying off the carnal handle. You're not sure you're ready for it, either.
"Sleep," she says, her thumb stroking the tension from your abs. It's clear she will brook no arguments.
You close your eyes out of obligation, but they suddenly feel too heavy to hold open. As your consciousness slowly fades, you can't help the smile that tugs at your lips.
Because this is the first time, you realize. The first time in eight years you've fallen asleep beside Alex Vause.
Sorry for the delay with this one! I meant to edit and post the next chapter last night, but I accidentally left my laptop at work D: Thanks, as always, for your lovely comments! :)