"I didn't black out at first," Alex said, Piper's head on her stomach. "I think maybe it was shock...I'd landed on the pieces of wood from the ladder. They sliced my arm up pretty bad."

Almost as a reflex she reached down and touched the scar. Even though years had passed she still shivered at the feeling that ran through her when she did so. She didn't think of it often, but when she did, it brought up a lot of mixed emotions. Still, when Piper had shown up and asked to hear the end of the story, she'd obliged. Anything to avoid asking the hard questions. Anything to avoid watching her leave, again. Last night was one of the hardest in a long time, playing that last argument in her head for hours on end.

Piper stared ahead blankly, feeling numb as Alex's fingers raked through her hair. She was being as gentle as she always was. When she found out, she would probably want to rip her hair out.

"I hadn't hurt my legs, so I brushed myself off and went home. I thought maybe if I didn't say anything, I wouldn't get into trouble. But even when I went home and washed it off, it didn't stop bleeding."

Piper looked up. "Didn't it hurt?"

"Oh, yeah," Alex said, as if that much should have been obvious. She let out a little laugh. "Adrenaline, you know...one hell of a drug."

Piper nodded, thinking back to how she'd felt the adrenaline coursing through her veins earlier on. She'd still felt the chair digging into her back, though, when Vee had pushed her. Maybe adrenaline didn't work so well for her.

"Mom took one look at me and knew something was wrong, so I showed her," Alex said. A faint smile crossed her lips. "I thought she was going to pass out. She didn't, though."

Piper reached for Alex's hand and tangled her fingers into hers. Alex looked down at the mess of blonde hair in her lap.

"She didn't want to take me to the hospital because she thought it would hurt her custody case," Alex recalled. "So I just agreed. I didn't wanna live with my Dad."

Piper looked up. "That looks like it would have needed stitches."

"It did," Alex said. "When I went to my Dad's that weekend he took me. I had to tell the doctor that I was too afraid of needles to tell anybody." She let out a little laugh.

"I can't imagine that," Piper murmured. Her eyes closed, she sighed. She drew her legs up and hugged them. "I wish things had been different. I wish things were different."

Alex shrugged. "Well...if it had been different, I would have been different. And then we might not have met. And I don't regret this. No matter what happens, I don't regret this."

She looked over at Piper and her eyes widened as she caught sight of a flash of red on Piper's leg. "Pipes, your leg," Alex squeaked. "What happened?"

Piper opened her eyes and stood up, frowning at Alex.

Alex bent to take a closer look. "It's bleeding."

"Oh," Piper murmured. She looked down to see a long thin gash cutting across her ankle. Blood oozed down to the sole of her foot and she lifted it, turning it to take a better look. Scarlet blood glinted in the light from the window, but still she didn't move. Most of it was dried now, but it still looked pretty nasty.

It must have happened when Nate pushed her up against the car, she reasoned. His wheel well had been pretty rusted up and jagged, though it only started to sting when she spotted it for the first time.

"Sit down," Alex said. "Let me get a tissue or something."

"Don't you have a first aid kit?" Piper asked, leaning down to poke the wound. She hissed as a bolt of pain shot through her skin.

Alex shook her head.

"We do. It's in the medicine cabinet," Piper said.

Alex nodded, although she already knew that. Though she wouldn't have admitted it, she'd nosed through it the first time she'd stayed the night. Not that there was anything all that interesting in it. Unless you counted the Disney bandaids that she assumed were leftovers from when Piper was a kid. She liked to imagine what Piper had been like back then; back when she wore pigtails in her hair and laughed without worries. Alex's life had never been like that. She'd been more of an at-home-haircut, will mom be home to make dinner or will she still be working, kind of kid.

Alex squeezed her hand. "Don't worry. I'll find something."

Piper waited patiently whilst Alex rummaged through the bathroom cabinet. An old bottle of antiseptic sat on a shelf and she held it under her arm whilst she looked for a band aid or bandage in a drawer somewhere. When she found a strip of bandages she went back through to the living room, holding them up in victory. She also held a paper towel and a little bowl of water.

"Sit down," she told Piper, who did so. She knelt at Piper's legs and gently cleaned the dried blood from her leg. "Sorry," she said as Piper winced. "How the hell did you manage that?"

Piper shrugged. "Must have caught it on something."

Alex frowned but continued cleaning it up. When all the blood was gone, she dabbed on some antiseptic.

"You didn't do that to yourself, did you?" she asked warily.

Piper frowned. "No."

"Well then how did you do it?" Alex asked again. "Because I know things are bad, but they're not that bad-"

"I did it on Nate's car," Piper cut in.

"Nate's car?" Alex's voice was small. "Why were you in Nate's car?"

"I kissed him," Piper blurted out. She looked at Alex, stricken, and then covered her mouth with her hands, as if she couldn't quite believe what she'd just said. "Nate. I kissed him."


Red loved the kids but playing Agony Aunt to a troubled teen wasn't the way she wanted to spend her afternoon. She'd spent most of the day dreaming of sinking into a bathful of bubbles later, cracking open a book and a bottle of wine and not emerging until she felt so relaxed she would drop off to sleep straight away. Bliss. It had been the only thing keeping her going.

In short, it had been a long enough day already. So when Lorna walked through the door looking for Nicky, Red had to reply honestly that she thought Nicky was probably at Joel Luschek's house. She seemed to spend most of her free time there now, if she wasn't with Alex or Red herself. No doubt the blonde would be back at some point, but she wasn't about to tell Lorna that.

Joel wasn't exactly a model student but Red had found he wasn't a bad kid. He also always ate what she offered with exactly zero complaints, which was always a bonus. The look on Lorna's face said it all, though. It was set in an angry glare.

"But she won't answer any of my calls," Lorna complained. "She blanks me if I message her and if I go to her house she just says it's not a good time. I'd want my friends there if it wasn't a good time!"

Red threw a smile Lorna's way. Though she felt sympathetic, she also understood why Nicky had started putting walls up. Being rejected time and time again had its impact, even if Nicky pretended that it didn't. Despite Nicky's bravado, she knew that each time Lorna snubbed her for another boy must have chipped away a little more at her self worth.

"I just want to be there for her," Lorna cried. "It's like she's shutting me out. Doesn't she know I want to help?"

"Well, you know what they say," Red said as she locked up for the night. "The same water that softens the potato, hardens the egg."

"Thanks, Red, but I don't want any food right now," Lorna replied with a little sigh. "You know Joel is a druggie, right?"

Red tried to hide her smile. "I'd figured out that he smokes pot, yes."

It didn't take a genius to figure that one out, even with Nicky kicking him under the table to be quiet.

"That's a gateway drug, you know," Lorna insisted. She crossed her arms and glared at the floor. "She spends all her time there. It's only a matter of time before...you know."

Red didn't know if she meant hooking up with him or getting high with him. Besides, she was pretty sure the only gateway for Joel Luschek was to another can of soda and another bag of chips. If she didn't know him she would have been more worried. She wasn't happy about Nicky smoking, but understood that she could be doing worse things. More to the point she hadn't noticed that she had been smoking lately. If she brought it up she was concerned that it would be like a red rag to a bull and she would push her to that or worse.

"Honey, what are you so worked up about?" Red asked, leaning against the counter. "I thought you were spending a lot of time with Christopher anyway."

Lorna twitched at the mention of his name. "Well, we're taking a little break..."

"Mm," Red replied.

It was beginning to click into place now. She didn't blame Nicky for not replying if she was being treated as Lorna's back up, her plan B.

"What?" Lorna asked. "What was that noise for?"

"Well," Red said. "Now that Christopher's out of the picture, you want to hear from Nicky again. I'm just saying, maybe she feels put out."

"Christopher isn't out of the picture," Lorna said, her voice high. Then she said nothing for a moment. "And it isn't like that. Nicky knows that."

Red sighed. Candles flickered in her mind's eye as the chances of her relaxing evening soaking in the tub ebbed away.

"Does she?"

"Yes," Lorna returned immediately. "Of course she does."

But when Lorna left ten minutes later, she made sure to ring Nicky on the way home. "You know," she said to Nicky's voicemail. "I always want you around, Nicky. No matter what. Give me a call when you can. Okay. Bye."


Alex's hand paused over the cut. Then she nodded, and with the delicateness of somebody placing the top pair on a house of cards, smoothed the bandage out. "Yeah."

Piper looked down, her forehead creasing. "Did you hear what I just said?"

"Yeah. I heard."

Piper swallowed hard. "It wasn't-"

"I'm not sure I want the details." A beat passed. "Did you do it to get even?"

"No," Piper said, looking at her. "Do you believe me?"

"I don't know," Alex admitted.

"Would it be better if I had done it to get even?"

"I guess not."

"Alex, I-"

"Let's build a fort."

Piper blinked. "A fort?"

Piper didn't have the heart to disagree, so a half hour later, string lights twinkled above their heads like stars in the night sky, strung up on the backs of chairs. Huddled up together inside, Piper and Alex said nothing for a moment. They simply looked at each other, both wary, both weary.

"Why did you want to build a fort?"

Alex shrugged. "It feels safe here."

Piper's brow knitted together. "You don't feel safe?"

"Not really."

"Oh," Piper murmured. Hearing that made her feel a little less able to breathe. She cleared her throat and waited for Alex to continue, but she didn't. "Do you feel better now?"

"Not really," Alex admitted. She huddled underneath a blanket even though the temperature outside was nearing the 90s. "Do you?"

"No."

A moment of silence passed between them, and when Alex couldn't take it any longer, she broke it.

"Do you think we can get past this?"

Piper snorted. "Isn't that kind of up to you? I'm the one who kissed him."

"I don't mean just that. I mean everything. Vee, Nate, the whole fucking situation..." Alex sighed, her head in her hands. "How did this mountain of shit build up so quickly?"

"Maybe it was more like a volcano," Piper offered. "Always there, but now it's bubbling over."

"Yeah," Alex said. "Maybe. That doesn't make me feel much better though."

"Would anything?"

"I can think of some things."

"Oh yeah?"

"Mhm."

"Like what?"

"Running away from all this," Alex said. "Getting out of this town. With you," she added, because she wasn't sure if Piper knew that's what she meant. "I feel like I can't breathe here anymore."

"I didn't realize how much I felt like that until I met you," Piper admitted. "Maybe we should just run away. Just the two of us. Bonnie and Clyde."

"That didn't end so well," Alex said with a little laugh. She rested her chin on her knuckles. "Running away never does. It always seems like a good idea, until you're doing it."

"You've done it?"

Alex shrugged. "I thought maybe I could live in my treehouse."

"Oh," Piper said. "I'm sorry, Al."

"Don't be," she said. "It's all in the past. I promised my mom I wouldn't go back there, not after I broke my arm. And I didn't. It sounds stupid now I'm older."

Piper paused. "Do you want to? Go back there, I mean?"

Alex thought for a moment. The treehouse hadn't even crossed her mind in years, not until she told Piper the story. Then she gave a quick nod. "Yeah, I do. I really do."

It had been the last place she felt safe, really safe. There was something to be said about solitude, but sharing that safe place with the one person she wanted to be with most seemed like it was on a whole other level.

She took Alex's hand, and Alex wrapped her fingers around Piper's.

"Let's go then," Piper said quietly.

A/N:

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed. Thank you to Guest, whenaspritemeetsaunicorn and Juliette45 for the reviews, I really appreciate them. This fic will definitely be over in less than 40 chapters (I'm aiming for maybe 30ish) so if there's any requests, let me know. Hope you're all good.

- Star xoxo