Piper didn't know what to do. Should she go and talk to Alex? She certainly needed to apologize for pretty much everything.

And something Nichols said stuck in her head.

"If I made it and Vause made it…"

Did that mean that Alex is now clean? Alex being clean meant that Alex did drugs. Piper felt her heart clench at the thought. Why would Alex do drugs? It probably was her thought. When she left, Alex did not only lose her girlfriend, who, according to the brunette, was the love of her life, but she lost her mother too. Basically, the two single most important people in Alex's life left her on the same day. It may sound crappy, but her using something to get away from a world that fucked her over more often than not seemed logical.

The blonde scratched her arms and hands. She felt agitated and sweaty. She craved a hit, the euphoria, the high. But it was time for her next shot of Clonidine. After being used to syringes offering her an escape from her self-destructive thoughts, offering her an escape from the darkness that had settled permanently in her mind, she hated the withdrawal medicine. It helped her with the cramps and the anxiousness, it helped with the sweating but it made her moody. While heroin became a good friend that offered her at least an hour or two of happiness and helped her to dislodge from her own mind, Clonidine just helped a little with withdrawal symptoms but offered nothing else. No euphoria, no high, no escape.

Heroin was Alex. Beautiful and deadly, destructive but she loved it all the same because it made her feel all those wonderful things.

Clonidine was Larry. It helped her to get over heroin but that was it. She didn't feel anything. She still missed those wonderful feelings, she still had the occasional cravings but it wasn't as physically painful anymore. It all was just lodged deeply in her mind, creating dark thoughts that carved themselves into her very being, forever there. Clonidine couldn't hide them.

She was standing in the line at nurse Dimaguiba's office, waiting for it to be her turn. She shifted from one leg to the other, glanced around, scratched her arms and trailed her track marks over the sleeve of her scrubs, shifted again.

"Yo, Chapman!"

She jumped at the loud voice, her heart racing and eyes wide. Turning around, she saw Nichols waving at her. The blonde gave the crazy haired woman a weak smile before taking a step forward as the line moved on.

Walking up next to the blonde, Nichols gave her a once over. "You look like crap."

Piper offered her a weak chuckle. "Thanks" She mumbled.

"Your symptoms getting worse?"

"Yeah…I feel achy and sweaty."

Nicky nodded in understanding. "When I was withdrawing, I had a runny nose, you wouldn't believe. Heck, I couldn't believe the amount of snot I produced."

Piper actually let out a huff of a laugh at that before she rubbed her eyes which became teary at the most random times. Probably another withdrawal symptom.

"Chapman!"

She moved up and rolled up her sleeve in the process, baring her track marks. She didn't really mind them, but wasn't comfortable with others looking at them. The nurse didn't show any indication of judgment or anything else for that matter, as placed the syringe with her medicine on her arm after finding a usable vein.

When he was done, he made a note on her file, gave her a few more instructions and dismissed her.

The blonde made her way towards her cell to lie down a bit as Nicky followed her. "So, when did you start using H?"

Piper thought back for a moment. "I think something around one and a half year? At the beginning it wasn't even regularly…over time I started to use it more and more often." She shrugged.

Nicky nodded. "You know, when I try imagining you healthy, without that whole junky look- you know, pale skin, dark circles under your eyes and all that- you don't seem like someone to us that kind of drugs. Maybe something like X, you know, party drugs and the shit, but H is serious business man."

Piper shrugged. "I understand. I was in a bad place; still am. I felt lonely, I had bad thoughts. I had no one to talk to. I needed an escape, just for a little while and heroin offered it. Add to that the strained relationship- at best- with my mother…" They both were silent for a few minutes as they kept walking when Piper spoke up again, but more silent. "You know…I miss it. Not in a craving way…or addictive way…I just miss it. If someone would offer me a hit…I don't think I would hesitate."

Nicky threw an arm over the blonde's shoulders. "That's alright. Wasn't any different for me. Even now I crave a hit on bad days and honestly, in here you'll have a lot of them."

They arrived at Piper's cell and Nicky led her inside. The crazy haired woman was about to say her goodbyes when Piper grasped her arms, stopping her from leaving. Raising an eyebrow she waited on the blonde to say what was on her mind.

"What you said earlier…about Alex making it…was she an addict?" Her voice was low, almost a whisper and she looked everywhere but the redhead's eyes.

"Yeah, she actually was."

"Oh." The blonde said in a flat voice. "Okay."

Nicky crossed her arms over her chest, cocking an eyebrow. "Sounds like you and Vause have history." It was more of a statement then question.

"You could say that."

A big grin formed on Nicky's features. "I am already smelling dyke drama. I can't fucking wait."

She almost sounded giddy.

Piper slept for about 15 minutes before waking up again. Her symptoms weren't as bad anymore as before, so she got up and decided to take a shower.

She was warned that the showers were really dirty and that she would need slippers, so she made herself some with sanitary pads right after lunch.

The water was lukewarm at best, so she decided to make it as quick as possible. Once, showers and baths were her happy place but since she left Alex her happy place became a place of memories that made her heart ache. The prison showers didn't make it any better.

When she was done, she wrapped herself in a scratchy towel and stepped out and dried herself up. She glanced down at her body and sighed.

Over the past year, she lost a lot of weight. She wasn't unhealthily thin and, when wearing clothes, people wouldn't recognize it if they didn't know what to look for, but she probably needed to start changing her eating habit.

After being fully clothed and her dirty laundry being put inside her laundry bag, she walked back to her cell and nodded at the other three inmates she shared it with. She hung her bag on her clothes hook and decided to take a trip to the library. Alex used to read a lot and it was one of the few things that they had in common. They were so different from each other, came from two different worlds and the few things they did have in common they enjoyed to the fullest. She would get lost in Alex's voice when she would read to her.

The library looked surprisingly inviting, considering it was in a prison and the variety was looked at least promising.

As she browsed through the shelves, looking for a book to read, her head perked up as she heard a familiar, yet almost forgotten voice.

"What is it, Nichols?"

"You weren't at lunch."

Piper leaned closer to the voices.

"Again, I wasn't hungry."

"You missed the fresh meat."

The deeper voice snorted. "Knowing you, you were already busy with her and you know that I don't go for sloppy seconds."

Nicky laughed at that. "You know me too well but I don't think you would have appreciated if I'd eaten that particular pussy."

"Oh? And why is that?"

"Imagine this: she is blonde. She has blue eyes and silky smooth skin. Obviously comes from money. A little WASPy. Probably went to college. Has a fit body and toned legs, as far as you can tell with that fucking prison uniform."

"Doesn't sound all that special to me."

Piper felt a little hurt, but she could hear the suspicion out of Alex's voice. She moved closer to them, her concentration fully on the conversation.

"Alright, last hint. She begins with C and ends with hapman."

She heard movement and someone got up, so she quickly turned around but crashed into a chair, cursing under her breath as she rubbed her knee. She glanced back and just saw Nicky grinning gleefully at her before she heard more movement from behind the shelf.

"No way, Nichols. No fucking way. No. Where is she?"

Piper's eyes widened in panic as she frantically shook her head but Nicky just pointed at her direction and suddenly she was there.

Still those ridiculously hot glasses, still those perfect eyebrows and lush lips, still that dark hair and green eyes. She was still breathtakingly perfect.

"Pipes?"

The blonde was frozen, she didn't know what to say or do, how to react. Should she run away, should she talk, should she just stay silent and hope that she would ignore her?

Alex moved closer to her, an unbelieving look in her eyes as she looked her ex-girlfriend up and down. "Jesus, kid…you look kinda crappy…"

Piper chuckled weakly, looking down, scratching her arm. She craved a hit right now more than ever. "Thanks…"

Sighing, Alex ran a hand through her hair. "Do you…do you want to talk?"

"Why would you want to talk to me?"

"You are right, I have no reason whatsoever to even remotely look at your direction but we are obviously stuck in here so we might as well be civilized with each other. And, against my better judgment, I still care a fucking lot about you and I really am curious about what you are doing here."

"Okay."

Alex dragged her away from the library- not before shooting Nicky a death glare at her overly excited expression- and inside the chapel. "Usually people fuck here, but we can actually make use of this place's holier perks."

Piper chuckled weakly, still being incredibly anxious. She wasn't sure if this had anything to do with her withdrawal at all or if it just was Alex. When Alex was around, nothing really made any sense anymore.

They sat down on the stage of the chapel and neither said anything for a while. When they were together, they could just sit around silently with each other and it was always curious. Glances, smiles and smirks would do the talk; soft touches here and there would be the whispering of dirty promises.

But those days were over. Now, sitting next to each other on the stage of a chapel in prison after three years since their breakup, they didn't know what to say; afraid of offending the other, of alienating the other before they even were on friendly terms again.

Finally, Alex took the plunge. "How have you been?"

Piper mulled the question over, wondering if she should be honest or if she should be irrationally proud about it. She then just sighed. "Could be better."

"Why?"

Piper glanced up at the brunette. "I am in prison, Alex."

Chuckling at that, Alex nodded. "That brings me to the thing I was really wondering. Why are you in here Pipes? I could have named you and gotten a lot of time off, but I didn't. I should have, though. The point is that no one else in the Cartel cared about you enough to even remember what you looked like. So it couldn't have been for Brussels. What the fuck did you do, Pipes?"

The blonde sighed. She knew she would have to tell Alex at one point. "I'm an addict…"

Alex stared at Piper for a long time; her already pale features seemed even paler. "You…what?" Her voice sounded strangled and it took afford to form the words.

Piper didn't want to say it again; she fidgeted with her fingers, then with the sleeve of her scrubs, trying to suppress the habit of scratching her arm before she couldn't anymore. Usually the itches would start soon after she took a hit but with the withdrawal her body, especially her arms and hands, started getting itchy.

The brunette reached over and grabbed her arm, stopping her from scratching. She then reached over with her other arm and pulled the blonde's sleeve up, gasping at the track marks, the dots lining up along the blonde's veins.

"Pipes…" Tears started to fall from the Alex's eyes as her thumb brushed over the injection points. She then looked up at her ex-girlfriend, who looked down at her lap. "Why?"

The blonde shrugged. "I was miserable. My life was miserable. I didn't fit anywhere. I didn't have any friends aside from Polly who was in her engagement high and I couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand the happiness of others. I needed to escape…even if it was just for a little while."

She left out the part of guilt and regret, not feeling ready or confident enough to reveal that piece of information.

"Oh god…Pipes…"

"You don't need to feel guilty, Alex."

"How can I not feel guilty? You basically used my shit! I did business with heroin and you are a heroin addict!"

Not knowing what to say she just sighed and kept staring at her lap. Basically, Alex was right. She didn't sell it in the streets but she still distributed it, made it available so it could be sold.

Of course she would feel guilty and that was why Piper didn't want her to know, even when it was obvious that she wouldn't be able to hide it.

"When did you start using?"

The blonde sighed. "One and a half year…"

"You look surprisingly healthy."

"I first just took the occasional random hit…it got more frequently over the past year."

"And no one realized?" Alex shook her head, unable to grasp anything she was told by the blonde.

"Like I said…I didn't have anybody. I hardly ever talk to my mom and with my dad I usually talk over a phone call…I rarely visit Cal, Danny I haven't seen in forever and Polly was busy with her engagement and wedding plans."

"But…you were her maid of honor, right? So you would have seen her regularly, right?"

"Well yeah, but she didn't want to marry right away. We wanted to get our business going first and well, after I started doing heroin I wasn't a big help anymore. She just thought I needed a break so…"

"Fuck…" Alex again ran her thumb along the track lines, still holding tightly onto the blonde's arm.

"Nichols told me that you did heroin too."

"Yeah, but I'm a bad fucking addict." Alex shrugged. "I never missed using it. I miss the rush and power of the business but not the using."

Piper nodded. Alex was good at it; more than good actually. She was rapidly climbing the career ladder in the cartel, but the higher she climbed, the more responsibility she had to carry. Her jobs became more difficult and demanding and the time she spent with Piper dwindled.

"How were you caught?" Alex asked.

"I…was in my bathroom. I had a bad day. Polly said she'd come over later since we haven't really spent time together in forever…I figured I had time so I took a hit and kind of…overdosed."

Alex's eyes got wide. "You…overdosed?" Her eyes got teary again.

"Yeah…I guess." She looked at the wall behind Alex, not wanting to look her in the eyes. "I don't remember anything after…just that I woke in the hospital later. Polly said that she came early because she couldn't wait. I guess I got lucky."

"You guess you got lucky?! Pipes, how can you be so whatever about it? You nearly died!"

How could she explain that to Alex? How could someone explain what she felt for years to somebody else? For years the swirling darkness in her mind engulfed her very being, pulling her deeper and deeper inside. The loneliness she felt outside in the world she felt inside her own mind too. She wasn't happy. She hadn't laughed in ages. She felt lonely, no matter where she was or who she was with. Her life was miserable. She was miserable. She hated herself and the life of regret, guilt and emptiness she felt since she left the brunette in Paris. Heroin helped her to forget all of that. If her body had to pay the price for some peace from her own thoughts then so be it.

"Sorry…" Was the best she could come up with.

Her face held an expression of utter disbelief. Her voice was thick with sadness at what became of her once so vibrant ex-girlfriend. "What happened to you, kid?"

Piper looked at her hands. That was a good question actually. Sometimes she herself wondered what became of the once so happy and innocent girl who majored in English literature in college, how she became a junkie who now would spend 30 months in prison. She looked at Alex, who had such a sad and heartbroken look on her face. She wondered what Alex thought and felt.

"I don't know, Al…I really don't know. I guess…I just am a good junkie."

AN: Really?! 13(!) reviews after just one single chapter? Holy crap, I am so pumped right now! I couldn't not write a chapter right after that! Thank you all for that amazing response to the first chapter of this story. Just…WOW.

And sorry if there are any obvious spelling or grammar mistakes. I am just lazy, not bad at English.

Thank you all for the reviewing, for the favs and follows. I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Review please and tell me what you think! I won't say no to another 13 reviews of course.