Coursing through My Veins like Fire
Disclaimer: OitNB is the property of Kerman, Netflix etc…
A/n: Thank you everyone for the great reviews, I'm so glad that you guys are warming up to Montgomery, it was kinda touch and go for a few chapters. Also, someone commented about Piper's lack of emotional/ psychological damage from spending 18 weeks alone in solitaire, many other writers have had Piper run the full spectrum ranging from being a little messed up to full on PTSD. Yes, I think she would be pretty damaged from her stint in SHU, especially after what she told Dina about coming face-to-face with who she really is as a person and not the person she projects out to the world, but as I said, others have written in depth about her struggles so I didn't get too into the details. One would assume that she now has mandated therapy sessions and is trying her best to appear normal in the company of others so that she isn't permanently locked up in Psych. She's learning to play the game instead of trying to change the system. And a correction in chapter 4, I wrote that Grace was Alex's niece but she is really her cousin, Mendoza runs the kitchen not Martinez, my bad, if you spot any other discrepancies please let me know, I don't have a beta. Enjoy!
Chapter 5: I've got Heaven locked up in these bones
There are only a few women in the rec room on a Saturday evening. Nicky and Alex have a table in the corner away from the tv, affording them a small amount of privacy to discuss what went down at lunch earlier.
"As your friend, I'm just saying that you're angry...all the time, sometimes for no fucking reason at all Vause." Nicky says as delicately as she can muster.
"Believe me I know," Alex tries to keep the frustration out of her tone, it's not Nicky who causes these feelings. "She makes me crazy, always has."
"Yeah, I kinda know what you mean." Nicky nods in agreement, she's had her fair share of relationship troubles in the last year.
"You and Morello gearing up for a revival?"
"Morello is still waiting on her phantom prince, I ain't got time for that headache."
"So why are you on my ass if you're not gonna follow your own advice?"
"Who said I was giving you advice? We're just playing scrabble, here." Nicky lays down another high point word.
Alex eyes the other woman suspiciously for a moment. Nicky has a way of getting Alex to open up and spill all of her secrets no matter how hard Alex tries to remain tight lipped. It's been so long since she's had someone, other than her siblings, who has cared enough to wait until she's ready to talk through her problems.
"I'm angry 'cause it's really beginning to feel like I'm going to spend the rest of my life completely in love with a woman who expects the absolute worst of me. I know what I did for a living, it was destructive and dangerous and my mom...my mom would have been so ashamed if she knew that I put people's lives in jeopardy over bullshit." Alex sighs, she hated lying to her mother about what she did for a living, especially because Andrea Vause was so proud of her successful daughter. There were times she thought her mom might have suspected what she did wasn't legal but Andrea never judged Alex, she'd just remind her what a good person Alex was even if she buried it down deep. "I tried so hard the past couple of years to make up for it, pay it forward or whatever. I gave half of the money to charity, I helped build a water filtration system in the middle of a desert for Christ sakes! I've been taking care of my younger half brother and sisters and still, all Piper sees is the idiot who asked her to carry a suitcase full of drug money."
"I don't know, kid." Nicky reasons with her friend, "From where I'm sitting, Chapman's still in love with that idiot who asked her to carry a suitcase full of drug money."
"Doesn't matter, I mean if you brought home someone like me do you really think your mother would approve?"
"I like you Vause, why the hell would I ever subject you to my mother?" the other woman jokes.
"Be serious Nicky, ignoring the whole convicted felon part, I'm one of many illegitimate kids of a washed up heavy metal drummer and a woman who once worked as a stripper to keep the heat on in our tiny shithole apartment. Do you honestly believe they're gonna welcome me into their family with open arms?"
"Well when you put it like that, fuck no." she holds up a finger to pause Alex's response. "But they just might be amendable to the woman who went through extreme lengths to make sure Piper didn't waste away locked in the SHU. Or who'd barter with Mendoza to get Piper a job in the kitchen and extra sets of eyes to watch her back. And I'm sure that once the illustrious Chapmans figure out that Piper's new lawyer is working on your dime and not as an ACLU pro bono case as I'm assuming was the cover story, they'll think twice before banning you from the Greenwich Yacht club."
"Have I been that heavy handed where Piper's well being is concerned?" Alex asks, impressed that her friend has figured out all of the strings she's been pulling behind the scenes. "How'd you know I hired her lawyers?"
"Are you kidding me, this is some serious Machiavellian shit! I gotta tip my hat," the frizzy haired woman mimes tipping a hat towards her friend, "you are amazingly diabolical. Too bad Chapman'll probably kick your ass after it's all said and done."
They quietly contemplate the remaining letters, Nicky looks Alex in the eye as she adds the letters to make 'Extradition'.
"It's kinda funny, when I first got here, I was 73% certain that you were sent by Them to kill me." The raven haired woman laughs without humor.
Nicky's mouth drops open in shock, for a second she thinks Alex is kidding then she notices the barely concealed terror in her friend's jade eyes.
"What the shit, Vause!?"
"I said only 73%" Alex reiterates as if that makes a difference.
"Why would you think I was a big house hitman?" Nicky has been called many things but this is a new one.
"I told you, I had you pegged from the moment we met and there are only two reasons girls from your background have ever spoken to me. 1.) Is to get fucked by me and 2.) Is to make fun of my shoes." Alex shrugs like that's the most logical thing in the world.
"Since we're rocking the same footwear, I suppose it's a good thing that I hit on you from day one." Nicky snorts "Otherwise, I'd have been labeled an assassin."
"Don't take it so personal," Alex waves off Nicky's aggravation, "Kubra doesn't fuck around. The girl Piper mentioned earlier, Madison, she was one of mine. I picked her up in L.A. after she had just gotten kicked out of UCLA and her folks were going to cut her off. She should have been the perfect mule, scored a four out of five on my list of requirements for new recruits but because she pretty much had nothing left to lose, Madison was a time bomb waiting to explode and fuck us all over. She only worked a few jobs for me before I passed her off to another Importer. She and Piper had this intense hatred of each other, I couldn't leave them alone in a room without worrying that they'd claw each other to death. Anyway, another associate offered to take her off my hands and I figured that was that. "
"But the problem didn't end there?" Nicky asks.
"Right before things went south, I got this call to meet with Kubra's other top lieutenants in Johannesburg. Madison, the fucking genius that she was, ripped off her boss. She stole over $250, 000 and half of his supply of product but she got busted in Sweden and was being extradited back here to the states. Madison gave the DEA a shit ton of information on the cartel that she got from listening in on meetings and was going to be the star witness for the prosecution. About a week before she was going to appear before the Grand Jury, she slipped her detail to meet up with a friend. Kubra's guys snatched her up and...I didn't ask for specifics but her head mounted like a goddamn deer over Kubra's fireplace was pretty fucking self explanatory." Alex finishes quietly.
"Jesus, fuck!" Nicky exclaims, not expecting that.
"Pretty much what I said." The visual of her former mule's cold lifeless eyes staring unseeing out at her, had haunted Alex for months. It's not the worst she's seen working for a brutal drug cartel but it really made an impact because she felt indirectly responsible. "The U.S. attorney prosecuting the case thought she just skipped off to the non-extradition country she was headed when they arrested her because she couldn't take the pressure of a trial. Madison was a lower level player but the intel she gave them was stuff overheard from her boss and it was enough to go after him, which led to the rest of us. After she disappeared the U.S. attorney's office offered me her deal, guess they figured I'd have everything they needed to tie the whole thing up in one neat little package."
"You didn't take it, did you?" Nicky nervously asks, suddenly worried about Alex's safety.
"Are you fucking crazy! What's the point of having my freedom if I spend every second of the day looking over my shoulder or worried that there's a bomb under my car. Besides, it wasn't just me I had to think about, Jess lived with me whenever she wasn't in some god forsaken jungle. And our youngest sister Quinn, she had only moved in the year before from a really fucked up situation with her folks. I couldn't ask them to drop their lives and go into hiding with the Witness Protection Program all over my fuck ups."
"Hey you two," Morello joins the table effectively cutting off the conversation, "what are we talking about?"
"I was just trying to get Vause here to go for a run, you know work off some of that tension before dinner." Nicky lamely replies.
"You... going for a run?" Lorna asks dubiously
"Why you gotta say it like that, I'm trying to broaden my horizons. Use my time wisely like Yoga Jones is always saying. I mean people change their minds all the time, right Morello?"
Lorna gives Nicky a half-hearted glare to which her ex just smirks but Alex can see the chink in her armor and can relate to how Nicky must be feeling.
"Doesn't matter," Alex interrupts, once you get Nichols started she'll most likely piss Lorna off then will spend the rest of the weekend cranky as well as unsatisfied. "I'm more of a horseback riding, rock climbing kinda girl. I don't run unless I'm pressing x."
"Horseback riding, really? And you wonder why Pennsatucky called you a fancy rich bitch." Nicky chuckles at Alex's pursed lips and the finger she aims in her direction.
"I only learned how to ride because Kubra didn't like doing business inside of his home, so we'd saddle up and ride around his land whenever we needed to talk shop. After a while, I got into it. Fahri gave me a beautiful Arabian steed for a huge job I managed to pull off and you can't really just have one horse in a stable so it grew from there. I ended up with ten thoroughbreds, I nearly fucking wept when the Feds raided my ranch in St. Martin and seized everything."
"Everything?" Nicky suspiciously inquires.
"Well," Alex adjusts her glasses and smirks, "everything they were suppose to find."
"So I guess that means the castle in Prague is undisturbed, huh?" Nicky's laugh dies in her throat at the startled expression Vause quickly tries to mask. "What…I was just fucking with you but you really do own a castle in the fucking Czech Republic, don't you?" There's a note of astonishment in her voice when Alex shifts her bright aquamarine eyes across the table, deciding that Morello is trustworthy enough and shrugs uneasily in reply.
"It's not Hogwarts or anything, just a manor I purchased when this Baron with no living relatives died. You know, a place to hang my hat one day."
"Wait so that means you're technically a Baroness, right?" Thinking back on what she read in an old European History about lineage and titles. "In the kooky monarchy rule books, whoever owns enough land is given a royal title."
"Yeah I'm royalty" Alex scoffs, "Lady Vause of Litchfield Federal Corrections, First of Her Name."
Despite the sarcasm, Nicky and Morello are still intrigued.
"You couldn't just settle for looking like a goddess you gotta toss this in to make us mere mortals feel even more inferior." There's an unasked question in her voice, 'if it weren't for Chapman, could our one-off have developed into more?' But she won't put Alex on the spot, she's had enough of beautiful women playing with her bruised heart.
"I take it you and Piper had a nice little chat?" Alex is going for intimidating but Jess merely snorts at the weak attempt.
"We weren't whistling while we worked but the time passed just the same. Chapman already knew about the hillbilly situation, I just filled her in on what you've been up to the last couple of years. She was impressed with the volunteer work but I'm afraid now she thinks you're a bit of a firebug. Also, kind of slutty. Though she wasn't really surprised about the slutty part." Jess shrugs nonchalantly and goes back to reading her trashy romance novel.
"You're such a jackass sometimes. " Alex remarks without malice
"Why thank you darling, I try." Montgomery licks her thumb and turns the page.
Alex laughs at her sister, she takes a seat on the carpeted library floor and playfully kicks Jess' outstretched leg in retaliation.
"I was so wrapped up with Quinn at visiting that I didn't even get a chance to talk to Damon, what's up with him?" Alex flips to the bookmarked page of her book, half paying attention.
"Damon's good, been locked away in his cellar working on a new Riesling. He thinks he can brew it faster or make it stronger or whatever the hell it is that Vintners do. Oh and he joined PFLAG for Quinn!"
"Yeah she told me he tried to set her up with at least three different girls after the first meeting. Aside from playing Cupid, she said he's been really sweet. "
"And yet the world hasn't ended because you left her in Damon's care," Jess quips, "I mean she's 18 and is going off to college in the fall. You can't protect her from every asshole in the world Lex."
"Yeah yeah I'm a control freak I get it." Alex bumps her shoulder lightly into Jess "You can't fault me for wanting to make sure you guys are safe, though."
"Alex," Jess softly inquires, she sets her book aside and looks at her older sister with an expression that immediately puts Alex on alert. "Chapman said that Madison turned her in, if you didn't have any contact with her for years why would Madison give them Piper? You had dozens of people working for you that she could have thrown to the sharks. Why'd she give up Piper?"
Alex debates how much she should divulge. Telling Nicky was one thing because her friend is far enough removed from the situation to see that Alex wasn't being malicious in her actions. But Jess is a different story, she won't judge but she'll definitely feel some kind of way about how Alex handled the Madison issue.
"She did it to hurt me. Madison called me for help right before she was arrested. She was fucked and she knew it, she called me to try to act as a go between so Kubra wouldn't put a bullet in her head the second she was found. You gotta understand Jess that getting involved in her shit would have rained holy hell on everyone. You don't steal from these guys, especially when you're someone as disposable as Madison was. When I refused to help her, Madison said I'd regret it. I didn't think she'd drag Piper into her mess, guess I miscalculated how much she loathed me."
"We're not safe, are we Lex?" Jess quietly asks. Alex wraps a protective arm around her and plants a kiss to the crown of her head.
"I'm working on it, kid."