Her first night in prison was uncomfortable to say the least. She couldn't sleep; her insomnia, caused by her withdrawal, was keeping her awake and she had no means to do anything against it. Walking around was out of question because she had no legitimate reason to be up and on her feet at night, so she tossed and turned in her bed, trying to be as silent as possible in the process.

She wondered how Polly was doing. Piper told the redhead that she shouldn't wait for her to be out of prison to marry when she found out how long her prison sentence was. The redhead didn't have many female friends aside from Piper, but the blonde knew that Polly was an easy person to like and that another of her friends would do her best to be a good maid of honor. It wouldn't be her best friend, but a really good friend would be close and good enough to fulfill that role. Of course Piper felt horrible for missing her best friend's wedding but it was better that way.

Piper also wondered about her parents. Did they even care about their daughter? She wondered if they just chose to ignore the fact that existed. They hadn't been there to see her off to prison and they hadn't visited her in the hospital after her overdosing.

She turned around, her eyes burning from tiredness, staring at the wall. Sleep was still very far away and she wondered if she would be able to sleep when all this was over.

A hand caressed the wall, fingers drawing random pattern on the fading white paint. Her first whole day in prison included, it was now 5 days since her last hit. She rarely took hits two days in a row. She often craved it and muscle aches and moodiness often accompanied her throughout a day, but she didn't want to become too suspicious to others with her behavior. The last 3 weeks before she overdosed was when she couldn't help herself anymore. It was then when she started to take hits daily, usually when she came home from work. The last 2 weeks was, when she didn't leave her home anymore, aside from going out to her dealer. She started to do heroin more than once a day, didn't bother cleaning anymore, her hygiene got worse and her dealer offered to give her an additional gram for a blowjob but she had the money on her- but just about. He was pissed but took the money anyways. She still wondered if she would have gone through with it if she didn't have the additional money.

Not being able to sleep made her remember all these things and remembering all these things made Alex's question echo in her head relentlessly.

"What happened to you, kid?"

She couldn't tell. All she knew was that over the past 3 years bad thoughts became a permanent companion in her life; poisonous thoughts, cursing through her body and eating away at her. The added loneliness- real loneliness, the real deal when you feel so alone that not even a group of laughing people can pull you out of it depth- made her snap and out came what she is now, a woman who lost herself deep in the swamp of heroin. In those days the drug was her only companion and she missed it. She honestly, truly missed using it, no matter how dangerous the drug was.

At dinner, Nicky had asked her to join them at the NA meeting. The blonde was willing to give it a go. Maybe then, she could get her life back on track. But then what? What would she do, when her life was 'back on track'? After she left Alex, she wanted to get back on track. Away from the cartel, away from drug importing and money smuggling. Away from a woman who didn't really explain to her what she should do with the bag of money, how she should proceed and what to expect. Away from a woman who didn't tell her what could happen if she lost the bag of money.

"Alex, I was so freaked out when the bag didn't show up. I almost bailed!"

"Well, it's a good thing you didn't. There's 50 grand in that bag; Kubra would've had you killed."

She could've had the life everyone expected from her. She could've had a kind husband in Larry, who was everything Alex wasn't. She could've had children with him, a nice cute house with a garden where her children could play; the whole white-picket-fence-package.

But she couldn't. Back then, she couldn't live with Alex. As soon as she left though, she realized that she couldn't live without the brunette either.

The nice quite life was unbearable. She tried to fit in with Polly's crowd but couldn't. She tried a relationship with Larry, but he didn't have anything on Alex. Sex with him was bleak at best, whereas sex with Alex was fireworks, sparks, explosions and lightnings.

When she broke up with him, the loneliness really started to set in. She tried parties and clubs, pubs, a few one-night-stands, mostly with women, to compensate, but nothing worked. At that time she really, fully realized what she threw away. At that time, Piper missed Alex more than ever. She missed her laughs, her cries, her voice, her hands and breasts, her smell, her fingers and tongue. Daily, she wondered where she was, what she was doing, if she had had someone to help her over her mother's death, which should have been her job to begin with. The guilt etched itself into her very being, the regret of her decision began to haunt her with a vehemence she never experienced before. She got more and more miserable, more depressed until one day she saw a dealer selling heroin to someone behind a club. Out of a whim, she bought herself a gram, went home, locked herself in her bathroom and, after looking up on how to use heroin, took her first hit.

That one hour of euphoria was the first time she felt amazing. The sweet heaviness in her limbs, the warmth spreading through her body, the sudden unexplainable happiness and comfort was such a turnaround from the life she led for the past one and a half year.

"Chapman!"

She jumped, nearly falling down from her bed. The guard with the mustache, affectionately called 'Pornstache' by the inmates, hit their cell door with his baton, effectively waking her cellmates up. If his grin was any indicator, that was just what he intended.

"Time for your next medicine shot, freakin' junky."

She slowly moved down from her bed, her muscles aching. Lost in her the depth of her mind, she hadn't realized how much she sweated again. It was now cool on her skin, making her feel cold. The guard opened the door and waited for her to move out before he closed it again, hitting the iron bars a couple last times to wake her cellmates completely up.

"Ha, I fucking love this job." His grin turned into a sneer at the sight of her. "Move."

He moved at a slow pace, glancing down at her sweaty hair and pale, oily looking skin. "God, you look like shit."

She didn't answer, concentrating on the path to the prison nurse's office.

"Bet you'd like a hit right now."

Her heart sped up at the thought.

"Did you like the preparing part? I mean, the looking for a vein, the needle breaking through your skin, knowing that soon, at any moment, you'll feel good again, y'know? Away from your fucked up life, just for a moment."

She folded her arms over her chest, her hands tucked under them, trying to hide the shaking. The guard's words didn't shake her- she knew full well herself how much she wanted a hit. But his words made her desire, her want even bigger. As if he wanted to make her weak; show her how weak she was.

He succeeded.

"You always hear how resourceful inmates are in prison. It's true, y'know? Somehow they manage to sneak shit in here and no one knows how. I wonder if they found away to get to drugs."

Her head swiveled towards the guard, almost hurting her neck in the process. Her eyes were wide as saucers, but the guard kept staring ahead as if he didn't even know what he just said. As if it wasn't even said.

Almost painful, her heart pumped against her chest, her breathing heavy.

"Here we are." He stopped, knocked once on the door and opened it, pushing her inside. He smirked at her and she kept staring at him, wide eyed, until he closed the door.

The nurse gave her the medicine, dismissed her and she walked out, the guard waiting at the door for her.

"That shit got nothing on heroin, right?" He chuckled at her, his smirk betraying the enjoyment he took out of tormenting her.

But he was right. That shit really got nothing on H.

Before breakfast, she managed 10 minutes of some shut eye. Her feet dragged her tired body to the end of the line and, almost on autopilot, she grabbed her full tray of something that resembled scrambled eggs and something else and walked over to the table with Nicky, Morello and the rest of the crew; this time Alex was there too.

She dropped the tablet on the table and let herself drop down heavily on her seat, her head immediately dropping into the palm of her head, propped up.

"You okay, Pipes?" Alex's voice was laced with concern.

"Yeah…yeah, just a bad night." She wanted to ask if what the guard said was true; if people managed to get drugs inside, but she knew she couldn't.

A wave of nausea suddenly hit her. "Shit…"

"You sure you okay, Chapman?" Nicky asked.

"I feel sick…" Her words were followed by a dry heave.

The crazy haired woman chuckled at that. "Ah yes, now she's at the really pleasant part of withdrawals."

Alex immediately got up and walked around the table to Piper. She grasped the blonde under her arms and threw one around her shoulder as she walked her to the bathrooms, all the while praying that she wouldn't puke on their way.

They made it to the bathrooms without any incidents and Piper immediately dashed to a toilet and leaned over, retching, then emptying her stomach. Alex gathered the blonde hair in a fist, holding it away from Piper's face while rubbing her back.

After the worst was over, Piper took a few deep, shaky breaths. "Thanks…" She mumbled; her voice shaky and weak.

Alex shook her head, wondering what had gone wrong in Piper's life, what happened to the girl she was so deeply in love with. "You shouldn't be like this, Pipes."

Piper turned her head slowly at Alex's general direction. "What?"

The brunette shrugged. "You're not supposed to be the fucked up one. You are…you are supposed to be…I don't know, Pipes. Not this. You're supposed to be this perfect girl I met at that bar with that bullshit resume."

A shaky hand reached over, flushing the toilet. She sat down against the toilet stalls wall. "Those days of my life are over, Al." Her voice sounded rough, her throat sore and burning from her stomach acid. "This is who I am now. I can't change it. Everything I had from that life is gone. My college degree is useless now…a junky and ex-con won't be taken anywhere."

"No!" The brunette's voice sounded thick and Piper looked up, only to see those green eyes she loved so much brimming with tears. "You shouldn't be a junky! You shouldn't be an ex-con! Fuck Pipes…you were fucking perfect…" She whispered the last part. "With all your selfishness and naivety and all your bullshit, you were just so fucking perfect…"

She had to admit, she was stunned. It wasn't like she didn't expect Alex to take her addiction hard, but not like this. "No, Alex. Just no."

"What?"

"Just…stop. I wasn't perfect. And now I am just about as far from perfect as possible."

Alex just shook her head. She wanted to shake Piper, to ask and prod until there was something that could show her how the blonde hit rock bottom, but she dropped it.

Piper struggled to get up, so Alex reached over and helped the blonde. She washed her face at the sink and rinsed out her mouth, trying to get out the acidic taste as good as possible.

They got out of the bathroom when Alex ran a hand through her hair and sighed. "You need to go see the nurse for the nausea. And ask for something against diarrhea as well…it'd be crappy if it'd hit you by surprise…literally."

The blonde nodded in affirmation. "…thank you, by the way. For helping me out."

Alex seemed to hesitate for a moment, before she mumbled. "Fuck it." She suddenly pulled the blonde into a tight embrace, shocking her. Piper stiffened and tried to relax, but found it hard.

The brunette's familiar smell invaded her senses though, calming her a little at least, making her tense muscles relax in her ex-girlfriend's arms.

"I know we have a lot of shit to talk about…especially on your part. I know that things between us are tense, uncomfortable and complicated at best…but all of that crap can wait. I hate seeing you like this, kid. I know what you were like, I know how much you used to laugh and how excited you got every time you saw something new…" Alex let out a shaky breath. "I just want you to be okay again, Pipes. Everything else can wait. I mean it. Just, please, be okay again."

Piper didn't say anything. She didn't react in any way. She didn't know what she should say or do, so she just let out the breath she held.

"Inmates!"

They jumped away from each other and Alex threw the guard a glare. She then turned back to Piper. "Will you be at the NA meeting?"

The blonde nodded. "Yeah…Nichols told me about it yesterday."

"Good. It'll help you."

Nodding, Piper shifted from one foot to the other, suddenly feeling awkward. "I'll…go, take my medicine."

"Yeah…you do that. I can have Nicky bring you some food…she can ask Red for something to help with the nausea."

"That'd be nice…thanks."

The NA meeting was more pleasant than Piper anticipated at first. They didn't ask her to talk yet and she was grateful for that. At first she just wanted to listen to the others, what their stories were and how they got clean again.

Alex sat next to her with Nicky and she didn't know what to make of it. It felt like they were making it their personal agenda to get her clean again and it somehow was endearing and annoying at the same time. She didn't say a word though.

Nicky got up and told them her story and Piper actually listened to that one with rapt attention. Nicky's story was somewhat similar with her own. She came from money, had a mother who was never really there and usually was more alone than not. While Nicky's mother was physically away, Piper's mom may have been there but in an interpersonal level never was. She was a too distant, cold person with to insane standards to make Piper ever comfortable around her, to make Piper feel close to her.

Both started drugs to escape from loneliness, though both had experienced a different kind of loneliness and both had other things mixed in with their loneliness that ultimately triggered their addiction, but all in all, Piper felt that they both had a lot in common.

She had to puke again just before dinner and felt all in all miserable. Her medicine against nausea and vomiting wasn't really helping but at least she didn't have to go for messy number two's yet.

Before heading to bed, she also started shivering a lot, her skin covering itself in goose bumps. The nasty part of her withdrawal process was beginning.

So, here she was, lying in bed, not able to sleep and rolled up in fetus position. She was shivering, her clothing and bed sheets covered in sweat and her breathing ragged.

Her body craved a hit, her mind craved a hit and instead of feeling wonderful and invincible she felt anything but. It was almost a whole week since her last hit and she couldn't remember the last time she went a whole week without.

Her whole body ached and her stomach was cramping the whole day, accompanied by the two times she puked.

She jerked up from her lying position, when a loud clang sounded through the silent halls.

"Chapman!"

It was Pornstache again. Her cellmates were all awake now and there were mutterings ranging from curses directed at the guard to curses directed at her. She got up and shakily, shivering, walked up to him and through the door after he opened it.

They walked in silence the whole time to the nurse's office and the procedure went on as always, aside from the nausea medication she now got; needle in, needle out, write down notes, send away.

She and the guard were on their way back and they were close to their destination when she felt something tap the side of her hand. Looking down her eyes got huge, but she opened her palm, took it and pulled down her sleeve over her hand. She went inside, climbed up her bed and hid the full syringe under her pillow.

AU: I think I'll continue this for now until I figure how to continue Partners In Crime, because honest, I am kind of lost right now regarding that story. And there's also the fact, that you guys followed my "I wouldn't say no to another 13 reviews" quite down to the letter. I had to laugh at the exactly another 13 reviews.

Don't worry though, I enjoy writing all my stories way to much right now to give up on any of them. I'll also continue You Belong Here, but that just when I feel the need for something slower, nicer and happier. Right now I want my chars to go through bad times and Piper here seems to be at the brink of a disaster, am I right?!

Don't you guys forget to review! Let's see if you can do another exact 13 ;)

And thanks for all the reviews, favs and follows! You guys are the best.