One of those "how shitty was Alex feeling after Piper left?" stories, which turns into a trip through the 7 seasons (of hell). I changed things around, canon-wise, because this is what this Alex wants, not necessary what Jenji and Co. do (or even other Alexes). My first post in this fandom, hope you enjoy because I have a shitload of Vauseman one shots and longer stories if there is interest (yea, I discovered OITNB like a minute before it ended, so maybe y'all have migrated to less orange pastures by now). Anyway, I thought "The Curse" was a good place to start, so you get a more panoramic feel of how I roll ;-) Most of my other stories are AU.

Alex's mother died on a Monday morning. By Monday evening, Piper had waltzed out of her life and before the close of play on Sunday, Fahri was well on his way to becoming deluxe worm food, too. You could call it the event of a lifetime, how that year Spring cleaning effectively swept away her entire emotional support system. Although Alex was ambivalent about these things and would never admit to them in public, there was a powerful lunar eclipse that week, falling smack dab in her 7th house.

A swap of scenery had always been her knee jerk reaction to change – good or bad. Since she was on autopilot now, her knee jerked in the direction of Africa. By knee we mean her good friend Nicky called out of the blue from somewhere within the depths the tropics. Apparently she was in trouble. But Nicky was always in trouble, so no particular surprise there. Except that Alex had started to believe everyone associated with her was suddenly in mortal danger (well, except for fucking Piper, who had managed to escape Alex's seemingly deadly proximity, but then Piper had always been different… and deadly in her own way).

"This is a matter of life and death," Nicky had confirmed through the cracking line. Alex had to admit there was nothing in that dry voice that even remotely reminded her of Nicky's humorous nature. Still, Alex's emotional energy was so depleted, she could only joke.

"Of course it is."

"Well, I'm not joking. God help me for saying so but you're the only one I trust with this. You're not gonna like it but I swear, Vause, if you don't come through for me now, we might as well say our final goodbyes."

"What makes you think I'm not gonna like it?"

Stuck under a flimsy banana leaf roof in the middle of a relentless downpour that turned visibility into a milky extension of the thick sky above, she was ready to reconsider her flippant question. Dorino had dutifully paid up but once the exchange was done, his last good deed of the day was to put her in an armored Cadi and send her on her merry way. Considering who Dorino was, you'd think the local airport at least had a strip of tarmac and a terminal building.

In reality, the Cadi driver had deposited her in front of a glorified lean to in the middle of the bush. Sure, the vegetation had been cleared half a mile long and 100yards wide around the shed but it was still bumpy red dirt that had become sticky, slippery clay. And here was Alex, with nothing to account for (the satchel technically wasn't hers), not even a damn pair of shoes on, since Africa, stuck between two modes (sweltering sun or steamy rain) favored flip-flops.

It was almost a joke, how, in spite of the string of abysmally rotten luck, Alex felt perfectly fine physically, even when ankle deep in red clay. She had always thought that if things were to go wrong (and her imagination never quite reached the apocalyptical depths of her present reality) she wouldn't be able to withstand the blow without some major physical damage. Yet here she was, no fainting, not even a sneeze, not even after the drug fuelled bender that had, indirectly, landed Fahri on the other side of this precarious life.

She was dazed and confused, yes. She was also angry as fuck – with Piper, specifically, then with Kubra, for offing her last remaining parental figure and for practically suspending her for the time being. How the fuck was she going to get better without emotional support or a job to keep her slipping mind busy? Fuckin' "I got you into rehab" Kubra… She didn't need fucking rehab, she needed to find meaning again… So fuck him, and fuck his shitty, crumbling business.

There was absolutely nothing in the way of dry goods in the shed. All it contained was an old broken fridge and a microwave with its extension cord missing. But neither would have worked at the best of times, because there was no trace of electric lines for like 50 miles around. Which was probably just as well, considering everything, herself included, was covered in a thin but grimy film of moisture. She pushed her glasses into her matted hair and rubbed the back of her hand over her sweaty face. All this wetness and not a bottle of water in sight.

Watching carefully for vermin and trying to ignore the filth, Alex ran a hand along a shelf lining the wall to the left of the door. In a far, dark corner her fingers finally nudged something free, sending it to the ground. It was a sticky, rat chewed tarot card. Alex rolled her eyes. The fucking Star.

"Are you sure?" A voice came from just behind the door. Alex was startled but managed to keep her face calm and surreptitiously toss the money satchel on the shelf. She could feel the weight of her gun, tucked as it was at the back of her cargo shorts.

"Sure about what?"

"You don't seem to trust your luck very much right now."

Alex had to laugh at this. A deeply bitter laugh. The man stepped inside the shed, leaning against the wooden plank of "Captain Morgan Original Spiced Rum" that served as makeshift door, in a way Alex recognized very well and thus felt a bit unsettled by. Going for casual, she sat on the window sill. If worse came to worst, at least she could jump through it. And hopefully not slip face first in the mud, like fucking Piper would.

"You do have a point," the man grinned, baring a very nice set of teeth. His skin challenged Alex's in fairness, though his hair was tightly curly and his eyes very –very – dark. "The last couple of weeks have not gone exactly how you'd have hoped, am I right?"

"You seem to know a good amount about me," Alex observed, crossing her arms over her chest. A large bead of sweat was making its way down her back, followed quickly by another one, causing her thin, once fashionable, newly sleeveless shirt to stick to her skin in a deeply uncomfortable way.

The man nodded. His expression was mocking but not entirely unkind.

"Welcome to my… office," he smiled, pulling the microwave closer and taking a seat on it. "How can I help you?"

Alex opened her arms in an exasperated gesture. The whole thing was surreal but since the man wanted to talk about her horrible time as of recent… well, it was not like she had a string of people ready to listen to her woes anymore. If this was madness… again, at least someone, real or imagined, wanted to listen, so why be choosy in the middle of a crisis?

"I thought you knew my predicaments."

The man laughed, lifting a long index finger.

"I know the situation. What I don't have access to are your intentions. There is such a thing as free will, you know? It's not just a religious thing," he continued, noticing Alex's impatient look, "psychology agrees with me as well: it's your attitude towards shittiness that counts," he grinned, nodding towards her tattoo.

"Yea, well, that was a joke," she commented dryly, grimacing slightly at the perennial reminder of Piper's effect on her life. This one wasn't aging so well. What's free will good for if you're using it to make mistakes?

"Sure was," he replied, "that's just your way of dealing with life. Make a joke of it and it'll hurt less. So how about a game?"

"Ok, I appreciate you trying to keep me company in this shitty season but I got a plane to catch."

He scoffed, pointedly looking around. Alex had to admit her comment would have made a lot more sense in the VIP Lounge at O'Hare or Heathrow.

"Trust me, there's no plane leaving this place without my say so."

She sighed, pulling her satchel next to her on the windowsill, recomposing her expression into her well rehearsed version of I'm ready to humor you if it gets me where I'm going.

"So what's the game about?"

"Pain."

She lifted an eyebrow, once again feeling unsettled. She lowered her glasses back on her eyes, as if seeing him in sharper detail would put her at an advantage. For now, what she could see in Technicolor was a small, fuzzy spider making its way up his thin, bare shin. Instinctively, she checked her own equally bare shins. No spiders or any other vermin, though a lot of mud spatter, all the way to her frayed shorts.

"Pain?" she asked, and her voice came very close to cracking. He nodded. "How does one play a game of pain?"

"Many ways to play this game," he grinned, changing his position slightly. "Well, technically, only two ways: you're either feeling it or inflicting it, the rest is just variations on a theme. I'm sure you're more than familiar with the way it works."

"Right. So you're saying…" the gun felt solid against her hip. All it would take was a quick hand flick… if she had been practicing, which she had not… ever.

"I'm saying I can help you, let's say, be in charge rather than on the receiving end."

"So we're not playing against each other," she thought especially important to clarify, with an inkling of relief. He laughed. It was a slow, warm laugh. She tried to gauge whether it was safe to let out the breath she had been holding since she'd realised how useless she was with a gun. Warm laughs could be used to deceive; she should know.

"Of course not. Like I said, I am here to help. I don't dish out pain or happiness or anything else, for that matter. I simply help others achieve what they already want. Think of me as an intermediary to The Source. Like Amazon or Google," he smirked. "You know when you google something, the answers you get are closely related to your previous searches."

As wishful thinking went, the game had value. Maybe she could make Piper feel the hurt she had been feeling, and would continue to feel, for the foreseeable future, because love was shit like that: you couldn't simply banish it, it left in its own time. If it did, at all. Deep down in her heart, Alex was terrified she was that fucking soppy kind of lover who could never get over a broken heart. The thought disgusted her, causing her to feel a mixture of bottomless despair and blind anger. She had to close her eyes for a moment – squeeze them shut – and hold onto the rotten windowsill. Then pain subsided enough for her to become present in her own life again. Yes, she admitted to herself, watching the… kindly? man, who was waiting for her to acknowledge his offer, she would've liked Piper to reach the depths of despair she had felt right after the bitch left – and was still feeling, at least once a day, though, thankfully, for shorter intervals…

"Ok, so suppose this game works. What's the catch?" she asked in a low, even tone.

"The catch, as you call it, is nothing more fantastic than a yearly fee."

She matched his smirk.

"Paid into your Nigerian prince account?"

"I'm not Nigerian but my name is Prince," he grinned.

Alex laughed, looking away, as if to say the game wasn't so funny anymore. Her eyes scanned the strip of dirt behind her. Rain poured on and there was no sign of a plane or even a bird. Of course not, she thought, he isn't done with his game yet. The absurdity of the thought seemed revolting and she sighed heavily. Healthy in flesh, sick in the brain.

"I know it sounds like a particularly harebrained scam but here's the deal: you don't have to pay anything until you start seeing results. Things that would be solid proof to you that the game is working."

"Like what?"

He shrugged.

"You're the judge. Once we shake hands, the power is yours and I'm just a modern age genie."

It didn't start right away.

Piper spent a few months as a liberated woman about town, partying in the company of sexy women and sexy men, doing a piss poor job of waiting tables but caring little about it, in the charming way gap year rejects often do. Then she met Larry – at Polly's, of course – and fucked him as an after-thought (just in case she got rabies and died unfucked). Not even Polly and Pete thought they'd last but somehow they did. If you'd have asked Piper, she'd tell you he was kinda… there. Then again, everyone knows location is everything, so that thought held a certain amount of merit. Piper had once (after downing half a bottle of tequila) explained how that very logic (because it's there) had conquered the Everest, only to usher in an endless stream of Goretex fashion victims, who couldn't climb to save their lives (often literally) and whose chief gift to the world was acclimatizing litter at high altitude.

Everest simile aside, Larry was clean-cut and inoffensive. He didn't have a job but it was always a matter of "not just yet", plus his parents let them stay in their beautiful Park Slope flat, so nagging seemed a bit mean spirited. And he was really serious about "honing his writing craft", which Piper admired, absent more sophisticated intellectual qualities.

So Piper waited tables some more until one day a genius idea dropped on her heavy with creative promise like bird poop after a bird berry-binge: Polly's artisanal soap making hobby could be turned into a business! She wasted no time bullying her best friend into making things happen, even "quitting my job for this." Polly went along with it, the way everyone always went along with Piper's crafty ideas.

Clouds start gathering on Piper's perfect skies

As surprises go, pregnancy has historically been a risky investment. It's a bit like Russian roulette: when it goes wrong, it goes spectacularly wrong and when all is well and a healthy baby finally arrives the rush of endorphins quickly subsides, given all the sleepless nights, surly teenage years, broke and aimless twenties and the mutual resentment that comes next.

The new and liberated Piper was still willing to place her bets in the baby basket but Larry put his foot down for once. Unsurprisingly for a man in his late twenties, he wasn't ready… just yet. I mean, he really liked the idea – in theory – but the reality of a little Larry or Piper eating up all his spare time… and who could blame him? Well, Piper could, because she had this nagging feeling that it was now or never for her, given the darkening skies. And right now she really would have liked a little Larry or Piper to eat up all her spare time – and – only occasionally, of course – Larry's. It wasn't like their conversation was so riveting or their sex life anything that couldn't easily be forgone for 9 months to a few years (perhaps forever?). He could make her cum, sure, but he could also successfully assemble an Ikea bed if Piper patiently read him the instructions a few times. And which one of those was more useful in the long run? Piper often mused. So, for the sake of their inoffensive relationship Piper had to give up women's most common dream: children.

In the middle of a lonely evening, after Larry had fallen asleep on the couch like the studly 20 something without a job he was, Piper had finally succumbed to that dreadful curse known as rambling drunken call to an ex you can't quite forget. The truth was, Alex had been in her thoughts all day long. All right, she had been in her thoughts for quite a while now. And when freakin' Larry had to fucking get a tattoo… ironically, of course… it suddenly dawned on her that she didn't want to get a matching one again. Because there was only one person she wanted to match tattoos with. And it was too late now…

Alex had milked that drunken phone call memory for all its worth and was still replaying it all these years later. It had stung a bit at the time – she was still harboring feelings for Piper... – but later she'd started to call it her highest achievement, romantic relationship-wise. She wasn't the only idiot in this stupid game; Piper loved her, too, even though she was a needy, selfish fucking cunt… with a semblance of feelings. It was still pathetic, Alex had to admit, that she was secretly hanging on to a drunken phone call from a petulant, self centred... But it was better than nothing. It was better than having been discarded by the one person who'd wormed her way past all her carefully constructed walls. It was a kind of closure.

Then someone had to fucking name Piper in one Kubra Balik's drug smuggling investigation. That had turned into the biggest humiliation of Piper's life. She had to come clean in front of her entire family, plus all the images of her law abiding past selves, watching her in innocent horror from the prime location of her parents' coffee table of honors. How could she explain to her earnest middle school self that she really did not do it for the money she'd help launder but because the person who had asked her had been too hot to resist? Perhaps her grandmother was right: she didn't even have money to show for her troubles. Sheer "I did it for the nookie" selfishness. Though in her heart of hearts she knew it wasn't just nookie. If only. But how was she even going to start explaining that part to her family (Larry included)?

And let's not start with the humiliation du jour: explaining to her family (Larry included) the intricacies of the sexual spectrum and steadfastly avoiding to pinpoint her exact position just to satisfy their outdated curiosity.

Ok, so it was one thing that she had omitted sharing with her parents her liking for women on occasion and for a certain woman on quite a few (repeated) occasions – at the time, of course – but keeping Larry the long term boyfriend out of the loop had been… a bit less empowered than desired. Her modern woman card was duly revoked for a few months, not that she had time to notice. She was too busy freaking out at the prospect of landing her yoga-toned ass in jail – no, scratch that, prison – and reading up on proper correctional facility etiquette. Because by now it was official: the day would come when she would be quizzed on how to correctly squat and cough and the command "strip" would gain a whole new connotation. At which point she would, albeit with more humility, accept the exotic card. All those people who'd laughed behind her back at her clumsiness would now develop a sense of awe at her newly gained street cred.

Although Larry's father, as her defense lawyer, had had access to the full files, the name of the person who had named her rang no bell for Piper. She had fully expected it to be Alex but nope, Piper was denied even the satisfaction of throwing this in her smug fucking gorgeous face. It would've truly relieved Piper to be able to get this punishment after leaving Alex the way she had. Still, it seemed like Alex was the bigger person.

Life in prison was only surprising in how much worse than expected it turned out to be. As a start, she immediately pissed off the cook and was served bloody tampons for an entire week. Then the local chief meth head born again chased her yuppie ass with a Jesus shiv in a fun combination of the name of the Lord and class struggle, which in turn landed her in the "Stew" (bless Cal, her little brother, the only soul left in the universe with empathy for her plight) when she defended herself by knocking out the meth head's rotten teeth (she did her favor, didn't she?!).

Later, when she was shipped over to Chicago for her trial, she reverted to her good girl ways and took Larry's father advice and admitted she knew who Kubra Balik was and that, yes, he was right there in the courthouse, and that she had been present numerous times when transactions had been discussed (she hadn't but Piper's zeal always got the better of her)… only someone had fucked up again and Kubra walked out on a technicality. Which meant she spent the next few months fearing for her life whenever she got a "message rat" or a new guard appeared. She had visibly lost weight and, worse, even, her lively blue eyes had lost their shine.

This was the moment when Alex came closest to feeling that, perhaps, the game had gone too far. Especially when Aydin got a job with the prison and the only way Piper escaped was because he completely failed to recognize her. Alex had to shake her head at how useless the both of them were. Morgan had to remind her that everything that happened was of her own volition and if she felt ambivalent, it was probably time to consult a Western therapist… That redirected Alex's focus back to her pain. She stayed put.

In the end, it was this punk ass little Aussie Justin Bieber who almost did Piper in, after fucking her without finesse (still a step above Larry's Kool Aid Man technique) and siphoning all her hard earned "tough bitch" cash from her Green Dot account. It was with a hardened rainbow jellybean shiv, no less, which only reinforced the old stereotype of "murderous, crafty, sugar addicted dykes", something everyone under the age of 50 had long forgotten.

Luckily, by then she'd learned a thing or two about being a prison Alpha and had assembled her own "crew" of questionable characters who beat the Bieber off of the Aussie's face. In order to confer a thoroughly clear message, she then used her extensive collection of makeshift weapons to land the ex-Bieber wannabe in the nearby maximum security by "hiding" them in easy to access places around the woman's bunk. She never quite explained how she ended up with the swastika prison tattoo on her arm, but on the bright side, it endeared her to the very active white supremacist group, the right ethnicity to be associated it with, given the current political climate.

"Seriously?!" Alex had said upon viewing this particularly unfortunate chapter in the Saga of Inmate Chapman. Both eyebrows had gone up and she'd shoved her glasses to the top of head. "Did I come up with this subpar twist? Must've been residue from the bad trip from hell. Or malaria and dysentery combined. That was a right pile of horseshit. The only bits I cop to are the rainbow jellybean shiv and the defacing of the Bieber assassin. That felt good. I mean, it felt good to have Piper fucked over but watching her make out with someone with "earnest" tattoos and shitty hair… sometimes I think I'm a bit of a masochist. Also, Kubra hire someone like that to off her? He must've had a particularly low opinion of Piper… or the business did suffer after I left…"

When the riot went down, Piper had to somehow insert herself into the latest excitement, if for no other reason than to make sure that her ethnicity was represented in the common struggle for bettering the lot of incarcerated women. Or as the black and Latina women saw it, "sticking her fucking privileged whitey ass again, trying to steal the fight of the women of color". That involvement duly landed her in maximum security, where a strange thought occurred to her for the first time: where is Alex?

It did not make sense that fucking Kubra was put on trial, most of his associates lined up in the merry jig of ratting each other out with riverdance abandon, even Piper got a prison sentence for once (one fucking time!) carrying a bag of money she couldn't even claim as her own, yet smug fucking (gorgeous) Alex was nowhere to be seen. Now where was the fairness in that?!

That part was much better, according to Alex, whose face had finally broken into one of her goofy grins once only reserved for Piper. She and Voodoo Morgan toasted to that bit and re-watched it several times – all of it. She was very tempted to send Piper the message "Alex is right here, can't you feel the love?"

"You can, you know?" Voodoo Morgan grinned. "Later, when she's in the… Stew and her antennas are attuned to what you guys call out there. She'll receive it like it's the CNN."

Piper's constant whining about Alex and the general shittiness of her fate incurred the wrath of her crassly humorous, less-privileged white cell mate, who lost no opportunity of humiliating her, until Piper was transferred to fucking Cleveland for her own safety, effectively ending her family's sporadic visits.

Still, the question remained: where the fuck was Alex?

"Do you know Alex Vause?" she one day heard a voice through the hatch of her "Stew" cell. She had been talking to herself, loudly, for the past… who knew how long anymore? As usual, the chief subject was Alex and the unfairness of Piper's incarceration in the great scheme of international drug smuggling.

She jumped from her bed so quick she saw stars. Her fingers feverishly clawed at the hatch.

"Yes! Do you know Alex?"

"That you, blondie?" the voice on the other side, now starting to sound a little familiar, asked in a raspy drawl.

"Nicky?" she remembered Nicky, she was one of the good lesbians. In fact, she was the Super Lesbian of Cleveland Prison (Piper had been so long in the Stew, she couldn't quite recall the proper name of the facility; also, did it matter? Prison was fucking prison) and a nice person, although she'd pretty much lost interest in Piper when the blonde had taken up with the pink panty wearing Bieber-faced failed assassin.

"The one and only," Nicky had laughed, taking her voice down a few notches. "Listen, what do you want to know about Alex?"

"Like… anything? Where the fuck IS she?"

"Wait, wait… what do you mean, where is she? She's never been in prison."

"Exactly my point! How the fuck do I spend over two years in here and Alex fucking Vause is still free?"

Nicky's dry laugh echoed against the walls of the corridor, causing a couple of inmates to start banging loudly. An expletive or two made its way inside Piper's cell.

"Chapman, prison is not lesbian Tinder, you know. Unless we're talking about me, of course. Back in the day… when the grass was green and Morello was… not in Psych," she finished in a mumble.

"That's… you're taking this in the totally wrong direction."

Nicky scoffed. She leaned on her mop and let old memories come to the surface.

"Listen, blondie, I've known Vause for a looong, long time. And by known, I mean we worked together. Well, she worked, I usually fucked up, kept her jolly company while she cleaned up my mess. Anyway, you're exactly her type: middle class, blonde, naïve, self involved. If you two have ever been in the same room at the same time, there is no fucking way –"

"It's not fair!" Piper wailed, banging on the steel door. A muffled oof and fuck were then heard, as Piper apparently forgot she was wearing Toms and not boots. Nicky finally took pity on her.

"Last time I spoke to her she was in Africa, hanging out with some witch doctor types."

"What? Can you say that again in English?"

"That woman knows when to jump ship," Nicky said, thoughtfully. "As soon as the grassing started, she found a new drug lord. Heard she'd ditched heroin smuggling altogether and was into the Tramadol business now."

"Tramadol?!"

"Big fucking gig in Sub-Saharan Africa. And less illegal, at least last time I checked."

"Nicky!" Piper shouted, banging her fists against the door.

"Shhhh! Keep it quiet or they'll take you to Psych," Nicky whispered, looking up and down the corridor.

"I gotta get out of here," Piper replied in kind. "I gotta find Alex."

"Sure you gotta, so keep it quiet, all right?"

Alex had a very clear vision of Nicky, in a khaki uniform, slowly pushing a cleaner's trolley with the moves of a pensioner. Alex ran a hand through her matted hair. It felt like she had been here, in this godforsaken hut in the armpit of Africa, since the dawn of time. She just felt this weird familiarity with the place, as if it was born from her or her from it. It wasn't a good feeling but it was intimate. It held her it its rough, at once protective and impatient arms and was now urging her to start walking on her two feet again.

"What?" Morgan asked.

"I'm not sure what to do now. Is this really… real?"

He threw his hands up, screwing his eyes at the roof.

"What is reality? That's the only question worth asking, Hamlet."

Outside it was still pouring. The air was still thick with moisture and milky in color. Everything felt sticky. The runway was partly inundated and the roof was leaking quite badly. But just as Alex was about to speak, the sound of a Cessna engine broke over the rain's patter.

Morgan's face stretched into a genuine grin and he slapped his knee.

"Clever move, Vause, clever move. If the plane's coming I can't keep you here."

That's when Piper had this strange waking dream where Alex was walking through red clay in cargo shorts, with a satchel containing $500K in $100 bills slung across her back, looking like she hadn't slept in a 100 years. And for some reason that dream or vision or whatever the hell it was made her feel warm and fuzzy for the first time since she had been incarcerated. Because now she knew where Alex was. And Alex was coming to her. She just knew it.