General Fic Warnings: PTSD, depression, lightly evocative of self-harm
How's your halo? (just between you and I)
Alex never thought she'd be glad to go back to Litchfield, but she is now, and that says everything there is to be said about the last two months. Prison is going to feel huge, overwhelming with free will, compared to this godforsaken hospital room.
She's reminded fresh of that sad fact when they lock her into a wheelchair, a strap added around the waist in addition to her handcuffs, stop her from making one of those supposedly infamous prison escape attempts, which is frankly hilarious: Alex is now proudly capable of walking the perimeter of the post-op floor two whole times without getting too tired, thank you very much, but she doesn't think that will do her much good in a getaway.
They put a blanket over her lap when they wheel her out of the hospital, hiding the cuffs, but within the first thirty seconds Alex starts wishing they didn't. Maybe that would have detracted from the scar.
For two months she's only seen nurses and doctors and cops - they tend to leave her physical therapy mandated walks for post-visitors hours, presumably so her law enforcement escort won't cause a panic - who enter the room knowing what to expect. Now, as she's pushed through a corridor and into a crowded elevator and finally through the hospital lobby, Alex catches at least a dozen stares. It's a quick, repetitive process condensed into maybe two seconds: the noticing, the horror, and finally the very deliberate, polite pretending.
Alex could kick the blanket off herself, reveal the cuffs, go from pitiable to frightening in one moment.
She doesn't really want to be either.
The sun feels foreign on her skin when they roll her out of entrance, and it takes Alex a second of dizzily squinting into daylight before she notices the prison van pulled up at the curb, a CO waiting outside of it, a blue uniformed man she doesn't recognize; he must be another new one. He nods a thanks at the officer, who bends down and unstraps her from the wheelchair, sticks a small key in each of the handcuffs, and then tucks his hand under her elbow, and just like that Alex's insides jolt sideways. She jerks away from his touch, a panicked instinct.
"Whoa, easy..." The guy looks alarmed, and he looks at the police officer as though expecting help.
The cop gives him a skeptical look. "You got this, junior?"
Insulted and feigning bravado, he nods. "Sure, yeah. Got it from here." The CO gives her a stern look, tugging on her arm a little too roughly. "On your feet, inmate."
"I can walk myself," Alex mutters, shrinking away from him before she stands up and walks pointedly to the open van doors. Her abdomen aches when she bends slightly to fold herself into the seat, and she jumps a little when the door slams shut behind her.
Alex is expecting to see the fucking meth head cretin driving the van, just to make her welcome back the best it could be, but it's Maritza Ramos who twists around in her seat and immediately recoils, wrinkling her noise. "Oh, shit." Alex hardens her face into a glare, and Maritza quickly rearranges hers, lips pursing in sympathy. "That's a real rough break. But hey!" She smiles encouragingly. "Least it's better than getting killed, huh?"
"Wow, you're right. I never thought of that," Alex retorts dryly. It occurs to her then that Maritza was one of the panty girls, and for the hundredth or so time today, Piper's name speeds through Alex's head. She opens her mouth to ask about her, to demand any scrap of information, but then the CO crawls into the passenger seat and for some reason it makes Alex nervous. Her head feels hot and heavy, and she runs a hand through her hair, self soothing. She shakes out her wrists, savoring the lack of cuffs.
The van pulls out of the parking lot, Maritza and the CO chatting away in the front seat. Alex tunes them, staring out the window at roads taking her back to prison, and back to Piper.
Piper leaves work and goes straight to her bunk as usual, curling up on the bed and facing the wall, trying to force herself into blankness. She feels hot and out of it, probably feverish from skin infection, and she doesn't mind except it means her skin is buzzing, singing demands for the chapel and the tattoo gun and the needle.
She wants to wait - sometimes she does that now, puts it off as long as she can stand it, depriving herself - but she can't help but start mentally running through words, trying to choose the next addition. The letters are all so similar, she's run through the key phrases. There's a line from every song on Alex's mix.
The fallibility of memory frustrates her in moments like these. Piper has an exceptional memory, several of her old teachers said so, but what good does it do her? She can call to mind stanzas from a poem she memorized for seventh grade Language Arts, but she doesn't remember what Alex said to her the first time they met. Or the first sentence out of her mouth after their first kiss. Or what she'd said on the phone when Piper finally got up the nerve to call.
She remembers the feeling of all those moments - breathless exhilaration and a swollen, cartwheeling heart - but she doesn't recall the exact words.
There are a handful of words she does remember, words she can still hear, and they're the only way she can really bring Alex's voice into her head:
Please don't leave.
You may never come to me again. Ever.
You are such a manipulative cunt.
Maybe those are the words she should be inking onto her body, warnings to mark her skin, scarlet letter, but Piper hasn't been able to bring herself to write them yet. They're loud enough in her head already.
She also remembers I love you's, so many of them, but Piper can't convince herself she should be allowed to make them permanent.
"Strip."
Alex's arms and legs go slack. She doesn't move. Shuffles instinctively away.
The CO sets his jaw, looking like he's physical biting back some asshole order. Instead, he blows out his cheeks in a beleaguered sigh. "You want a female guard?"
She supposes this is the prisoner's version of VIP treatment, her reward for having a CO try to kill her on prison grounds. Alex folds her arms and nods, more to buy time than anything. She is, unfortunately, more than used to the strip and search prison routine by now. She's not sure the stripping is the problem, or even the gender of the CO.
She waits ten minutes for Maxwell to come in and double take at Alex's face before she offers a surprisingly warm, "Welcome back, Vause."
Alex peels off her clothes without incident, save for catching another wide eyed look at the scar on her stomach, but her chest starts to tense up when the female guard gets close. She holds out her arms obediently, but her stomach starts churning when Maxwell touches her. She feels dizzy and sick and inexplicably out of control.
"Squat."
She does, perversely glad for the chance to look away. Alex braces her hands on her knees, aware that she's shaking and trying to stop. This is ridiculous. Aydin wasn't some random CO, some unknown, looming threat. That was just his disguise, his Trojan Horse into Litchfield to find her, and it's really the least important part of it.
Maybe paranoia's just become second nature here. Alex's brain knows the threat is over, that she's not waiting on the worst anymore - it already happened - but her body doesn't seem to have caught up yet.
She gets to jump straight back to khakis, and it feels strange donning the familiar outfit. Alex glances down at herself; from that angle, she can almost pretend everything's the same.
She has to stop at the medical wing for a perfunctory check and confirmation of her new medication routine. She'll have to be bused back to the hospital in a few weeks for a check up, but is told to report immediately if there's any sign of complications. It's all shockingly solicitous, and Alex spends the whole visit on the verge of an eyeroll.
Then suddenly it's over and she's back, walking down the corridor to the rooms while other prisoners she's never even spoken to before gape at her like she's a ghost. A deformed ghost.
It's mid-afternoon, so the room is empty, thank God. Alex tosses her sheets onto the designated bunk, remembering the last time she returned to this place, back when she thought a fucking black eye was bad.
She keeps her back to the door, pulling her sheet and blanket out of the mesh laundry bag but not bothering to make the bed up yet. She needs to find Piper, but she also needs a second to reorient herself.
Slowly Alex becomes aware of a low hum of muttering from behind her, and she twists around to see a steady flow of people oh-so-casually strolling by the doorway, unabashedly craning their neck to get a look at her.
Alex twists her face into a snarl; she hadn't practiced that in the mirror, all that time she spent looing, but she can imagine it's pretty intimidating. Movie villain worthy, even. "Can I fucking help you?"
Most of them scatter instantly, and Alex turns back around until she hears a familiar, disbelieving voice say, "Vause?"
She turns with a sheepish half-smile in place, anticipating the reaction this time. Lorna actually gasps, eyes bulging in the moment before her face folds into such genuine concern and sympathy that Alex has to look away.
"So, uh...that thing about the shovel wasn't just rumor, huh?" Lorna says awkwardly after a moment.
Alex laughs once, a little harsher than she intends. "Can't make this shit up, I guess."
Lorna glances over her shoulder, then comes a little further into the room, her face softening. "Ya know, nobody knew if you were alive."
Her stomach lurches, even though Alex had told herself to expect that. "Um. Is Piper..." Lorna's face darkens, that fast, and Alex stumbles her way into a new, safer question. "Do you know where she is?"
"Haven't seen her today, but her bunk's the best bet if you wanna find her."
"Okay. Thanks." Alex nods and keeps nodding, thinking about Chicago, her name and Piper's voice grabbing onto her from across the prison yard after six weeks of silence. She needs to go find her. "I'll see you later, Morello."
"Hey." Lorna taps her knuckles lightly on Alex's elbow. "I'm glad you're back."
Alex smiles a little, genuine this time. "I am, too, actually. How fucked up is that?"
She makes it halfway to the dormitories, her heart roaring in her ears but not quite loud enough to tune out the fresh reactions - "Holy shit." "She lives!" - and then loses her nerve and changes course to the bathroom.
It's mercifully empty, and Alex walks right up to a sink, eyes on the mirror. It's starting to feel like an obsession; most of the time, she's trying to get used to the sight, convince herself it's normal and Not So Bad, but today she tries to imagine herself through Piper's eyes.
She stares until she's sick of herself. This is stupid, and vain, and according to Morello Piper has probably spent the past two months thinking Alex is dead. It fucks her up to even think about that, and should make it pretty damn obvious that Piper isn't going to care about what her fucking face looks like.
Probably.
Something else Alex doesn't like to think about: how hard it was to understand Piper that last month. Alex is historically much, much better at seeing through Piper than she'd been at the time, but with everything else going on, it's like she'd been afraid to look too closely.
She'd been holding onto Piper for dear life, clinging with her eyes shut and stubbornly missing the moment Piper started to drift away.
At some point, Alex had opened her eyes again and found herself alone.
On the heels of that thought, it hits Alex fresh that Piper's probably spent the last two months blaming herself.
She drags her gaze away from the mirror and goes to find Piper, this time pointedly ignoring anyone who sees her coming, just heading straight to the suburbs, her eyes searching out the bunk Piper shares with Red. Alex can't help glancing into her own former cube when she passes by; someone else's things are there.
Her heart is inching toward her throat when she approaches Piper's bunk, but it sinks when there's no one there. Alex leans against the doorway of the cube, frustrated, the momentum that carried her here abruptly deserting her.
Those last few weeks, it felt like Piper was always someplace Alex couldn't find her. She remembers the day she went looking for her and came upon her with Stella.
She wishes she hadn't thought of that now, hadn't remembered the two of them in here together for the past two months.
I promise I was protecting you.
Piper finishes the dot of the period and doesn't lift the needle right away. She tilts her head back against the wall and closes her eyes, the whir of the gun oddly soothing.
It's a sentence from Alex's letters, in almost all of them. Protecting you is already scrawled across her stomach, but now Piper's added the full sentence underneath the curve of her left breast.
Piper never once protected Alex. She doesn't think she's ever protected anything but herself.
She still feels hot and ill. Her exhaustion is burrowing deeper.
But a light goes off and she's out of bounds and has to hide the tattoo gun - she has a place for it now, attached to the metal bottom of one of the chapel's random built in chairs, changing rows and seats every time she uses it - before she rushes back for check.
Lorna and a few others in the dorm are looking at her strangely. Piper observes that and then promptly forgets. Everything that happens now feels like that, utterly transient; nothing has anything to do with her even when it does.
A CO comes by and clicks a count, the second one quickly following. Everyone heads out to dinner, and Piper hangs back, out of the crowd, the way she likes.
When she does start walking down the corridor, she ducks a hand under her shirt, conducting a bad habit of tracing her fingers over the freshest spot, and then someone is saying, "Pipes." and it feels like she's swallowed lightning.
Piper jerks around, eyes darting, following the sound.
Alex is standing there.
Alex is standing.
Alex is -
Alex is alive.
Piper's chest spasms a staccato of wavering breaths. She feels tears and sobs swelling everywhere, like she'll be crying soon and her whole body is planning to participate.
Alex is alive but there is crack down the left side of her face, pink and jagged and tender. Alex is alive but she is all sunken eyes and shadows, her skin hanging like it was fit for a different set of bones. Alex is here but Alex looks diminished.
For a wild few seconds, Piper thinks she's just here to haunt her.
But Alex's eyes, intently searching Piper's, slowly cloud over with worry, and Piper would never ever imagine Alex concerned for her.
"Alex?" She asks it like she's not sure, her voice weightless.
"Hey," Alex breathes out, her face forming this eye crinkling Picasso smile. Piper is openly staring at the scar. She sees Alex noticing but can't make herself stop.
"I thought..." Piper's voice is wet. She hasn't cried since that third day After, in the shower, and she's pretty sure she's forgotten how to do it right. Right now talking feels like enough of a struggle. "I thought you were...no one would tell me - "
"I'm sorry," Alex says softly, so earnest. "I told them to, at the hospital, first thing, I swear, but no one paid attention...assholes said I wasn't even allowed to write, that there was no communication."
Piper's torso is humming, and she feels hyper focused, all of a sudden, like she needs to remember every single word Alex is saying to her. Her fingers twitch, aching to write them down even while she's speaking.
"God, Pipes, I don't even know where to start...it's all been so fucked." Alex takes a step closer. She looks sick, not just injured. Still sick. "Are you okay?"
Alex asks her that.
Piper goes numb.
Picture - yourself - as - a - hand - grenade - without - a - pin.
Piper physically backs away from Alex. "I have to go."
"What?" Alex's voice sounds hurt and confused. Piper doesn't know what Alex's face looks like because she can't look at it anymore.
"I'm glad you're okay." Piper's voice bends a little. She struggles for distance, addressing the floor. "I'll see you around."
"Piper - "
But Piper goes and goes and goes until she's gone, ending up out of bounds in the same place where she once beat up Pennsatucky. She stays there until she's sure Alex isn't going to follow her. Then she sneaks away to the chapel and frantically inks Are you okay? three times, stacked on top of each other, written sideways on her stomach, until she feels present again.
Then she starts to sob.
Alex pushes her hands through her hair, feeling strangely, viscerally afraid of something.
That hadn't been what she was expecting. She can't make sense out of it yet. But even though Piper didn't answer her question, Alex can tell she is miles and miles from okay.
She goes to the cafeteria but doesn't get food, just heads for the table where Lorna and Yoga Jones are sitting. Lorna smiles when she sees Alex, and it's mostly not forced; Yoga looks taken aback by the sight of her but she covers better than most people have. "It's good to see you back."
"No food?" Morello asks as she sits down beside her. "You kinda look like you could use a good meal, not that this qualifies."
Alex shifts self-consciously, briefly distracted from her immediate intention. She's been so focused on her face that she hasn't stopped to think about the rest of the physical repercussions from two months in a hospital. She's only been back on solid food for a few weeks. "I'm okay."
"Did you find Chapman?"
"Yeah..." Embarrassingly, Alex's voice falters right away, and she has to gnaw on the inside of her cheek before she can ask in a steady, crisp voice, "What's going on with her?"
What Alex is really asking is why she looks like all the Piper has been drained out, why the only thing left in her eyes is ache. Alex wants to know how long it's been like that, how far gone she is.
Instead they tell her about Piper giving up the panty business almost immediately, that everyone was pissed to have it taken away just as they were about to start earning money, but no one was willing to challenge Piper, even the new, nearly silent version of her, because of what she did to Stella.
And then they her about that, and maybe Alex should be perversely happy about it, but she just ends up startled at how far gone Piper must have been to do something like that. Piper, who agonized at perjury because of the morality, who so often asked for assurances that she wasn't a terrible person because it was so damn important to her not to be. Alex had realized those parts of her were disappearing when she fired Flaca so gleefully, but this is on a whole new level.
But then, that version of Piper sounds a far cry from the one they're describing from the aftermath: silent and withdrawn. Hollowed out. They talk about Piper sleepwalking through work and meals and spending most of her time curled in her bed.
Alex doesn't say much in response, but Lorna reads the distress on her face and adds hastily, "But you know, everybody understood. We all thought you were a goner. I'm sure she's gonna be just fine now that you're okay." Lorna's smile trembles, voice going wistful and a few shades of envious. "Bet it's the best thing to happen to her, you coming back when she thought you were gone forever."
Alex thinks about the nothing in Piper's voice when she said she'd see her around. She strongly suspects Lorna is wrong.
Piper lies in the almost-dark that night with tears still trailing from the corner of her eyes and into her hair, like a switch flipped on and isn't going to turn off until she's gotten two months of crying out all at once.
She feels vividly aware of how little distance is between her and Alex. Her brain is pacing manically back and forth between her bunk and the rooms, exhausting her.
Alex didn't die.
But that means she's been in a hospital this whole time, all by herself, and maybe she came close.
She was probably scared. She was probably in a lot of pain. Her face looks like it hurt.
Her face looks like -
Piper clamps a hand to her mouth to stifle a sob. She wishes she couldn't picture it. It should be easy not to. She saw Alex for maybe two minutes with the scar, and years and years without it.
But she'll never see her that way again.
"Thought I might actually find you happy tonight," Red had said earlier, when she found Piper curled up and sniffling in her bunk before the last count of the day. Piper had just curled herself tighter and not answered. She doesn't know how to explain.
She is glad Alex is alive. She is relieved Alex is is so fucking grateful Alex is alive that she hasn't stopped crying for hours.
But Piper isn't sure she should get to be happy anymore. Because Alex is alive but Alex is here and Piper doesn't want that because she has to stay away.
It's so fucking hard being the grenade.
A/N: Thanks so much for the response to this so far...I'm super excited about this fic, running on major momentum from all the obsessive season three discussion and I've finally landed on arcs I like. Obviously I'm doing shorter chapters than is my norm, but I'm also hoping to update fairly frequently like this, so please keep letting me know what you think!