Author's Note: It's hard to believe I've picked up my pen again after pretty much signing off after the last chapter of Segment 4C. As hard as I try, these characters keep tapping my shoulder, begging me to write more. Huge thanks to my beta, IrishViking20.

Of my 32 stories, only two are in canon. I haven't written canonical Alex/Piper since 2018, but I hope that doesn't show in this one. There's always been a swirling dervish in my brain about what happened after Piper decided to move to Ohio to be closer to Alex. This story is my take on that. It'll be told from both points of view. As with all my stories, this one is complete at roughly 150 pages, including an Epilogue. I'll post a chapter every two days except on weekends for the most part. I do not own these characters. I hope this one gives you all the feels.

Come with me.

What?

Come with me to Northampton. They're putting me up in this farmhouse…

My mind immediately flashes back to the last time I heard those words nearly 15 years ago, but instead of it being a request to join Alex in Bali, Zelda is asking me to go with her to Massachusetts. The feelings that stir within me upon Zelda's request doesn't hold a candle to the exhilaration I felt when Alex asked me to join her on an island halfway around the world.

And you could use some adventure, right? Now that you're a free woman.

The last time I agreed to go on an adventure, it ultimately landed me in prison. Maybe I should learn a lesson and be done with adventure, but Zelda is my second chance at the good life—she has an interesting job, makes a decent salary, has a great apartment, attends swanky events, and seems well-adjusted. I could've had all that with Larry, but prison got in the way; at least that's what I've told myself for years. Maybe, though, it wasn't prison that disrupted my good life with Larry—it was Alex. It has always been Alex.

I'm impulsive. I've known it for years, but it's part of my DNA—when I need to make a choice about something exciting, I react without regard for consequences. It was impulsive to accept Alex's offer to travel to Bali; it was impulsive to carry a bag of drug money for her; and it was impulsive to sleep with another woman after finding out my wife had fucked a prison guard. Usually when I find myself in a predicament, it's because I act impulsively on feelings instead of using logic.

The reason I walked three aimless miles and ended up at my old apartment was to avoid acting irresponsibly. I could've easily made the decision to go to Northampton with Zelda without consulting anyone, but something was weighing me down—grounding me to the sidewalks of New York like I had lead in my shoes. I hadn't set out to show up on Larry's stoop, but before I knew it, there I was, blinking up at the two-story building and wondering if there was a greater force leading me to this place—a homing instinct for the comfort of what used to be and what could've been.

I don't know what I expected from Larry of all people. I had no intention of spilling my guts about what Alex means to me, but it all came spewing out and I couldn't find a plug to stop it. Sometimes I wish my mouth was like a wine bottle where I could just cork it to keep my verbosity at bay. I didn't need to hear him psycho-analyze me. Larry doesn't know me—at least not post-prison me.

All I could think about on the walk back to Cal's place, which I still can't bring myself to call home, was her. Maybe Larry was right—she hadn't broken up with me; rather, she'd set me free. That's a selfless thing to do. But she slept with a prison guard. She fucked a prison guard. How can I be with someone who can't control her sexual impulses? I'm not sure if I should criticize anyone for acting on impulses, but it's easier to point the finger at Alex than to take the blame for my own fucked up situation.

But Alex…it's like we met, and I grew another limb. And like she's a part of my body.

I enter Cal and Neri's place thankful no one is home and plop on the sofa, feeling emotionally drained. I love Alex; like really love her. Since we made amends in prison all those years ago, I've wanted to be with her. Isn't that my answer? I hoist my feet onto the cushions, lay back and toss my arm over my forehead with a sigh. One thing I'm certain of is I don't love Zelda, but perhaps one day I could. She's smart and nice and charming, but she's not Alex. There's no substitute for the woman with whom I traveled the globe, knowing I was risking my life while my girlfriend worked for an international drug cartel. The sick, twisted thing is, I'd do it all again just to be with her. I'd never admit that aloud.

I'm not sure who startles me first, my crying niece or Cal's voice asking if I'm ok. I shoot up, give him the best smile I can muster, and head to my room with a meek, I'm fine when really, I'm anything but.

I wake up in an awkward position on top of my bedsheets rather than under them, having no idea what time of day it is. The house is quiet, so I assume it's the middle of the night, but sunlight streams through the paper-thin curtains. I glance at the glowing numbers on my alarm clock, noticing it's after eight in the morning. I overslept. I take a five-minute shower, and then stare at my puffy eyes and reddened cheeks in the mirror. I look like shit—I feel like shit, but that's no reason to call in sick for work—at least not in my father's eyes. The last time I took the day off ended with my parole officer tacking on 10 Narcotics Anonymous meetings to my schedule. I should've never listened to Cal about those bloobs.

My dad's words ring in my ear like a gunshot. Alex is broken. Don't you want someone whole, Piper?

Of course I want someone whole, but I also want Alex. I want a whole Alex. That's never going to happen—she's never again going to be the carefree, adventurous woman I fell in love with in my 20s. Hell, I'm not that woman either. We're both fractured not only because of prison, though that's enough to break even the strongest woman, but also because we've intentionally hurt each other over and over again. It's a sick cycle we've been through for more than a decade; it's unhealthy at best and destructive at worst.

I was tired of being on her roller coaster until she unexpectedly broke up with me behind a thick, plastic wall in prison. It was then when I realized I wanted to be on that roller coaster even if it made me nauseous and scared. How fucked up is that? That I want to be with a woman who has hurt me to the core. Who I've hurt to the core. I could count on one hand the number of normal experiences we've shared. But maybe that's it—maybe I don't want normal; I don't want a ho-hum life with the four-bedroom house and a white, picket fence. I find myself once again yearning for adventure, so I guess Larry was partially right.

You've always wanted to be with Alex. I reflect on Larry's statement, wondering how awful it must've been for him, knowing I was in love with another person. Not just any other person but a felonious woman who was solely responsible for landing me in prison. That alone would be reason enough to hate her. I can't imagine what it felt like for him to know that despite what horrible, traitorous thing Alex did to me, I still loved her. The real kicker was when I fell in love with her all over again behind bars. That must've wounded him to the very soul.

There was a time when I did want to be with him—very much so. If it weren't for running into my ex-girlfriend at Litchfield, perhaps Larry and I would've made a go at it. Maybe we would've had a successful marriage. Maybe I would've been happy.

Then again, maybe not…probably not.

Alex was your ticket to special.

When I'm with her, there isn't a word to describe how she makes me feel. It's like I'm the most precious thing on earth and no one else exists. The way she looked at me, especially when we had sex, was mesmerizing. She didn't need to tell me she loved me—I could see it in her eyes. The same eyes that stared at me through that smudged, plastic partition and set me free. I don't know how she could be so brave to allow me to walk away; to expect me to be happy without her.

Go do what new Piper would do. I never thought my ex-fiancé would offer such salient advice.

As I sit behind a desk in my dad's office, it hits me square in the chest like I missed a softball with my glove: I want to be with Alex. That nagging feeling of doubt—of wondering what's best for me—disappears into the pit of my stomach. It would be impossible to be happy with anyone else. I've left Alex too many times to count, but this time is different—I'm going to choose her after using logic as well as feelings. This doesn't feel like an impulsive decision, though if anyone had suggested I haul ass to Ohio right then and there, I wouldn't have looked back. Instead, I open Google and begin researching things to do in Columbus, Ohio.

It doesn't matter if I'm in Upstate New York, suburban Chicago or bumfuck Ohio—prisons are all the same: dark, damp, disgusting places with the stench of expired food wafting through the recirculated air. The water pressure sucks, the cells are overcrowded, and the gangs vary only in titles not in ethnic breakdown. I can't dwell on the three years I have left on my sentence; I've never focused on how much time I have yet to serve. If I did, it would break me. Who am I kidding? I'm already broken.

Even these first two weeks without Piper is enough to make me cry like a fucking pussy every day. I hate it. I hate that I was the one who ended things, but I couldn't live with myself if I asked her to wait for me. I've never been a selfish prick before, and I couldn't be one then. That isn't to say it was easy. It was the hardest fucking thing I've ever done. If she would've begged me to stay before I hung up the phone and walked away, I probably would have changed my mind on the spot. And I would've hated myself for allowing Piper to choose me over her own freedom. Her freedom is more than just escaping the walls of prison, and I needed to give her the space to choose her own path without feeling like she was tied down to the weight of me. I refuse to be the ball and chain that holds her back.

"Inmate 667552?" a guard calls.

"I've been here for 13 days." I lift my head out of a ratty copy of East of Eden that I'm reading for the third time. "You know my name is Vause."

"And you know that's not how we do things around here." She unlocks the cell and steps aside. "As far as I'm concerned, you don't have a name."

I step out of my cell. "Where are you taking me?"

"Looks like you're getting a job assignment."

"Finally." I've worked my entire life even before it was legal to do so and having a job has always been meaningful to me. Not that prison jobs are meaningful per se, but they do keep me occupied.

We arrive at a nondescript room that looks like it was once a closet but has now been converted into a tiny office. The guard knocks on the already open door. "I have Inmate 667552."

"Thanks, Gellar." A woman with a tight bun on top of her head gestures to one of the metal folding chairs. "Have a seat."

The room smells like cigarettes, and while part of me thinks it's disgusting, the other part of me would kill for a Marlboro right about now. I pull the chair back and am greeted with the sound of metal against tile. It's almost as bad as when someone runs their fingernails down a chalkboard.

"State your badge number and name, please."

"667552, Alex Vause." In my younger years, I would've mouthed off and said something like, Can't you read my fucking badge or are you blind? But I'm older and wiser now. Besides, from here on out, I'm going to be on my best behavior. Maybe karma will be kind to me, and I'll get released early. A girl can dream.

"I'm Officer Durant; I have a job for you."

"Great," I respond with mock enthusiasm.

"How are you at electrical stuff?"

A small smile crosses my face as I think about Piper's first job at Litchfield. "I've never done anything with electrical wiring…" I pause, feeling my smile stretch a bit at a fond memory. "That's not true. I got stuck in a dryer once trying to fix it."

She gives me a look.

That was the first time Piper chose to stay. It wasn't some grand gesture or anything, but prior to our time in prison, the last time I'd seen her was when she left me in Paris after I learned my mom had died. When I was stuck in that dryer, asking her not to leave me, she said, I'm here.

I look away. "It was more meaningful than it sounds."

"Our last inmate working in electrical was released two days ago," the officer states. "Now they're backed up pretty bad and need someone to start right away." She flips a page in a folder. "For now, you'll probably be on the clock eight hours a day until everything gets fixed. When things settle down, you'll work the morning shift—8 a.m. until Noon."

"I don't mind working more hours." I glance at a splotch of chipped paint on the wall behind her. "It's not like I have anything better to do."

"I'll make a note in your file." She jots it down. "Gellar, the inmate is ready."

The same guard who escorted me to what I assume is the prison's human resource office steps inside. "Let's go."

We walk down the long corridor and turn down a hallway I haven't been down until today. "They're putting me in electrical," I say.

She looks at the file in her hand. "I can see that."

"My wife—" I pause and think better of referring to Piper as my wife. She doesn't have that title anymore. "Someone I was close to had electrical as her first assignment."

"Good for them." She clicks her gum as she turns into the second room on the left. "Officer Creighton, this is your newest employee, Inmate 667552."

An overweight man with saggy pants turns around. "Welcome. You do any electrical work before?"

"No."

"Read this manual." He plops a book on the desk. "You can read, can't you?"

I contain an eye roll. "Yeah."

"Good, because I don't know where those audio instructions went." He scratches his untrimmed beard that has a few orange crumbs stuck in it. "You have an hour to prep, then I'm going to need you to fix the buzzer near the visitation area."

I pick up the book, flipping the hundred plus pages. "I don't know if that's something an hour of reading is going to prepare me to tackle."

He looks annoyed. "We'll find out, won't we?"

The day goes by faster than the past 13 days have, and I only shock myself with a live wire once. It takes me two hours to figure out how to fix the buzzer, but a feeling of satisfaction washes over me when it finally works.

I'm told my day is over just before six o'clock, which is when my dinner shift begins. The food here is worse than the food at Litchfield, which is saying something. As long as it's not a second night of green ham, I'll try to stomach it.

My cellmate, who goes by Teeny but who in actuality is anything but teeny calls me over to her table. "Yo, Vause, want to join us?"

"Thanks." I place my tray of what loosely passes as a Cobb salad on the table.

"I heard you got a job."

"Word travels fast." I smell a piece of bacon, and it doesn't smell all that terrible. "I'm in electrical."

"My old bunkie had that job before she got out," a black woman with what appears to be a fresh weave states. "It ain't all that bad."

"Good to know."

"I'm Lakeisha," she says. "Teeny told me about you."

"Nice to meet you."

"How long you been up in here?"

I pour salad dressing onto the greens, then dab my finger to taste it. It's something between blue cheese and ranch, so again, not all that bad. I ignore the fact that the blue cheese stench might just mean its spoiled dressing. "Tomorrow will mark exactly two weeks."

"That's prolly why I haven't seen you around," Lakeisha says. "I only have this dinner shift on Thursdays. Every other day, I'm working in the warehouse tearing down boxes and shit. They gave me a raise from 12 cents an hour to 20, so you know, I'm ballin'!"

"They ain't gave me no raise," Teeny complains. "And I know I work harder than your ass, keeping these prison grounds up."

If I stop and think about the pittance prisoners get paid, it'll depress me. Piper used to get all riled up about the topic. I smile at how animated she'd become when discussing how unfairly we were treated. She'd vow to do something about it when she got out. I wonder if she remembers that; she's never been particularly good at follow through.

"Good for you," I say with sincerity.

"You got a boyfriend or somethin' on the outside?"

"Or something." I eat a piece of wilted lettuce with a chunk of boiled egg. "I was prison married."

"What's that mean?" Teeny asks.

"Before I was transferred here, one of our friends married us while we were in the same prison." I swallow a bite. "So, it wasn't legal or anything."

Lakeisha tears off a piece of bread. "Y'all broke up?"

"Yeah." I keep my head bowed as I search for another piece of bacon. "She's out, so…"

"You into women?"

I blink at her. "If you're asking if I'm gay, the answer is yes."

"You not gonna have a prolem finding your next prison wife in this place." Teeny glances around. "A lot of hos be gay for the stay."

I drink a sip of lukewarm water. "I'm not looking for anyone, but thanks."

"You eatin' yo roll?"

I learned long ago that the way to make friends in prison is by sharing food even if you don't want to. "It's all yours."

Lakeisha gets to her feet. "I'm gonna see if I can scrounge up some butter."

"Your prison wife," Teeny begins. "She's the blonde lady in the picture you have hanging above your bed?"

"Yeah." I eat another bite of salad. "Her name is Piper. Piper Chapman." Just saying her name feels like an anvil landed on my heart. I realize I haven't said it aloud since I've been here.

"Piper's a cool name."

"It is." I smile nostalgically when I think of meeting her for the first time in that bar. She was so young and naive. I wonder if we hadn't met what Piper's life would've been like. Would she have married Larry? Would she have been a waitress? Would she have been happy?

A bell chimes loudly.

"Dinner is over!" A guard announces through a megaphone. "Report to your bunks for roll call."

I take the last two bites of salad, then stack my tray with the rest of them.

"We going to movie night," Teeny announces. "They showing Booty Call with Jamie Foxx. You wanna come?"

"I think I'll pass." I follow her to our cell.

I never thought I'd miss the minimum-security cells at Litchfield, but I felt less like a caged animal there than I do behind literal bars here. At least these cells are a little more spacious than the ones in the last hell hole. Those were the worst. Well, the SHU was the worst, but I only had the privilege of solitary confinement twice over the years.

Instead of going to movie night, I decide to read the little slips of paper Piper sent me after she was released. They bring a tear to my eye, which I expected, but I'm glad my cellmate isn't here to see me cry. Unlike the other times when I've tried to hold back tears, this time I let them run down my cheek. Sometimes it's nice to feel the burn in the back of my nose as I start to cry. It reminds me I'm still alive—not much else serves as such a reminder.

I go to sleep that night, dreaming of Piper and hoping that with every day that passes, she's healing better than I am.

My alarm clock chirps just after 6 a.m. and I quickly shut it off. I learned the hard way that Teeny likes to sleep in and doesn't enjoy being woken before eight. I head to the shower where there's already a line, but at least at this hour the water is moderately warm. I made the mistake of trying to shower after seven once, and it was ice cold.

"I'm going to be in here longer than usual," the inmate in front of me states. "My boo thang is visiting today, so I want to be extra clean."

"You better not take longer than seven minutes," someone replies.

A few others chime in with similar remarks.

I wince at what went down at the last visitation session when I broke Piper's heart. I wonder if she thinks mine wasn't broken right along with hers. She has to know how difficult it was to let her go. A terrifying thought crosses my mind that I'll never see her again. My heart sinks. That can't be true; then again, I told her to have a good life. I'm the one who set her free.

Now that I'm in Ohio, there's no chance of her popping in for a visit. I wonder if she'll write one last letter—that would be a total Piper thing to do. She'd say she needed closure and writing to me was the only way to make that happen.

A naked woman steps out of one of four shower stalls. "It's all you."

As I wash my hair under subpar water pressure, I wonder if I'll ever get over her. I'm reminded of a song my mom used to love by Ronnie Milsap:

You can tell everyone we're through

You might even believe it too

But darlin' there ain't no getting over me

It might as well have been Piper who penned that song because I believe it's true—no matter what I tell myself, I'll never be over her.

My first full day in electrical gets off to a rocky start when I connect two wires in a light switch that clearly don't belong together. I have a feeling I'll have to start getting accustomed to getting shocked throughout the day. Thank God I'm not working with high voltage things.

"Got it, thanks." Officer Creighton hangs up the phone. "Inmate 667552?"

I return a screwdriver to the woman in the tool cage. "Yeah?"

"You have a visitor."

I crease my brow. "Me?"

"You're Inmate 667552?"

I lift my badge and read it to ensure that is, in fact, my number. "I am."

He places his hand on the phone. "I can call 'em back and say you're not interested."

"No." I take a step forward. "I'll go."

Who on earth is here to visit me? There are only three people who know I've been transferred, and none of them live in Ohio. Maybe my friend, Rachel, decided to take a road trip. She was my only regular visitor at Litchfield during the early years.

I silently follow Officer Gellar down the corridor until we reach the visitation room.

"Sign in here." She points to a clipboard. "You have 15 minutes."

Another guard takes it from there, bringing me into the spacious room with about 20 small tables, each of which is filled. I scan the room for anyone I know, but I don't see a familiar face. As a man sits across from an inmate, I see her. My eyes must be deceiving me.

"Piper?"

Author's Note: In order to write this story, I "had to" watch the Alex/Piper scenes (and Zelda/Piper scenes as well) one or two more times. Piper's nonchalance when Zelda asked her to go to Northampton struck a chord with me-it was odd. I expected more of a reaction from Piper, but it was as if Zelda had asked her to go to the grocery store. In other words, she had no noticeable reaction to traveling with Zelda. That was in stark contrast to her behavior after Alex asked her to go to Bali. I think the writers missed a flashback opportunity to show the difference.