Alex entered the chapel with caution, it wasn't often that anyone went into the chapel by themselves, and despite having a pretty good idea that Piper was alone; she couldn't be certain that Piper hadn't found someone to spend time with in the chapel. All their friends were at canteen, so this whole scenario wasn't making much sense to Alex.

Alex looked around, finding all the pews empty, but a dull buzzing noise filled the room. It could be heard all around, it was probably a loosely fitted light bulb that Nicky would no doubt have to fix soon. Alex began walking towards the stage down the aisle noiselessly when she heard Piper's distinctive voice say at various points 'Jesus' and 'motherfucker' coming from behind the pulpit. If things didn't make sense before, they certainly weren't adding up for Alex now. If Piper had at some point become religious, interspersing what seems to be silent prayer with Jesus and mother fucker surely didn't follow any kind of organised religion that she knew.

This was all getting a bit awkward for Alex, if she was with someone back there, Piper was adding new words into her extra curricular activity vocabulary.

What was the polite protocol in this situation? Clear her throat to announce her presence? Or just straight up start talking. Alex was getting dangerously close to the stage when thankfully the decision was made for her as Piper got up from behind the pulpit, rearranging her prison shirt Piper stepped forward onto the stage, in a world of her own Piper had taken a fair few steps to the edge of the stage before she looked up and saw Alex.

"Jesus! You scared me." said Piper.

"So I see." replied Alex.

Alex had come to see Piper with all the gumption that Jones had given her, but she couldn't for the life of her figure out what was going on in front of her.

Alex leaned to the side to look past Piper, and Piper too turned to look at what Alex was looking at, or better put, what Alex was looking for.

"Is there someone back there, cause they can come out now y'know. I mean fool me once right?" said Alex.

"What? No! There was no one back there, there is no one else." Replied Piper quickly.

"So...You were just behind the pulpit muttering to yourself, coming out rearranging your clothes by yourself...? said Alex, she was seriously confused.

Piper didn't know how best to broach this topic and the silence between them grew longer. It was in that moment that Alex also realised something.

"Do you hear that?" asked Alex.

"Hear what?"

"The buzzing noise has stopped." said Alex.

Piper began to blush, and it didn't escape Alex.

"There was no buzzing noise Al"

"Yes Pipes, there was."

Alex looked to Piper and really studied her face and how shifty she was being.

"I thought it was the lights, but now -" there was a glint in Alex's eye as she smirked and raised her signature eyebrow, "Pipes have expanded your panty empire and snuck in a vibrator?"

Piper looked horrified, yes they had spoken since Aydin had failed, but it was always so emotionally charged.

"No! Of course not, no no no, that would be-"

"That would be..." prompted Alex.

Piper knew what she wanted to say, and that was unnecessary. But instead, she found herself saying. "That would be the most embarrassing contraband to find myself carted to Max for having."

"So what do you have?" replied Alex.

Piper had been foiled, admitting she had something.

"It's not really mine," replied Piper. "It was Stella's."

Alex stared out Piper trying to work out what the fuck it could be and whether she would even want to know what it is or if she could live with not knowing what Piper was holding onto that was Stella's. Piper could read Alex's internal struggle and turned on her heels to retrieve the home made tattoo gun from from a under loose board in the base of the pulpit. Brining it forward to Alex, "It's a tattoo gun" Piper explained.

Alex examined the rudimentary machine for a moment or so, before she looked up at Piper.

"Show me." said Alex.

Piper acquiesced to Alex's request, she got off the stage and down to Alex's level. Raised her top with one hand and lowered the side of her bra, covering her ribs.

Alex leaned in to take a closer look, the silence was too much for Piper.

"I was just touching it up - I know it probably looks fucked." said Piper.

Alex straightened and up and Piper let her uniform drop, Piper chanced a quick look at Alex before she knotted her hands together and stared at a spot on her shoes.

"Why did you get that?" asked Alex.

"You know why." replied Piper.

"Did she tattoo it on you?"

"No, I told her it was just a design I wanted. She didn't approve."

As many questions as Alex was finding out the answers to, more questions were popping up. It was like fucking Pandora's box for all the luck she was having.

"When did you ask her to do it?"

"Probably around the time I was being the worst to you."

Alex removed her glasses placing them on top of her head, and sighed audibly closing her eyes and raising her hand to her face, trying to massage the frustration out from over her eyelids. Alex felt Piper remove her hand from her face with one hand, and bring her other hand up to cup Alex's cheek, before bringing her lips to Alex's with the most delicate of kisses, and leaving herself there, open and exposed for Alex to respond in kind or back away.

It took Alex a moment to consolidate all this new information with the reason why she'd even attended the fucking chapel in the first place.

Heartbreak is so intensely personal, the feelings one has when they realise their life is no longer following a path they aspired to have. That the person they wanted to live in that plan with is no longer willing or able to want it, and by extension them. It has the ability to cause a pain that cannot be quantifiable. It doesn't have an expiry date, and it certainly doesn't have a remedy. And its a sick and sorry state of affairs that the world finds it important to keep turning, that new days turn into new nights. When that love and the feelings that come with it have no place to go, no one to give it to and are stored so close to the surface, staying perfectly still, keeping the brain away from any and all stimuli for fear that they'll spill is an immediate stop gap. Alternatively, having those feelings buried so deep down that when they do, which they will emerge, normally at the most inauspicious of times have the capability to cause us to do and act in way that feels so out of character, that questions have to be asked. 'What kind of person am I? Who would want me how I am, and with what I've done?'

Alex Vause had felt these feelings she had watched her life change before her very eyes against her control with Piper, with her mother, and then with Piper again and again.

Alex liked to paint herself as a realist, not everyone had a soul mate, that those who believe the best is yet to come are clinging on to a belief that in the end everything is going to be ok. Because realistically that probably isn't going to be the case, the most likely situation is that whatever shit hole you find yourself in will become the new standard by which one relatively marks all new events against. So yes, that same shit in a different bucket does look appealing.

But God help her if all those feelings of rationality didn't leave her at that moment.