A/N: Thank you very much to all of those people who reviewed or sent me a PM after the last chapter. It's been a real boost to get so many positive vibes from you and I'm glad you enjoyed it! Plus, so many of my favourite ongoing stories had new chapters posted this weekend - I'm trying really hard not to read them all at once and savour each one ;-)
Important developments in Piper's backstory in this chapter to explain some recent events. Some of you have been braced for it (Brace! Brace! For those who haven't). Also want to say top marks for MadeintheUS for spotting and remembering the intimacy dynamic from previous chapters. On with the story...
Piper closed her eyes for a minute, just concentrating on breathing. She felt like she was backed into a corner now, with Alex waiting patiently to whatever she was about to say. Her heart was racing with indecision about what to tell this person she had reconnected with only recently. How was she supposed to even start to explain something that she didn't fully understand herself? Glossing over it didn't seem to be an option right now. Alex could smell bullshit a mile away and she couldn't easily explain why she had frozen when Alex tried to take her panties off with anything that was far from the truth. She was angry at herself for letting this come to the surface when she'd been able to keep a lid on it for so long and seem to be in control to everyone around her. Alex would probably think she was even more a fuck up than she already suspected and probably make her excuses and back out of her life. Feeling Alex lift her hand and kiss her knuckles, Piper squeezed her hand without looking at her. She squeezed her eyes closed and felt tears pricking her eyes again, signs of the dam she had built up breaking as she frantically thought of ways to keep the walls reinforced.
Alex shifted in the bed so that she was facing Piper and she reached out to gently turn the blonde's face towards her so she could make eye contact before brushing her hair behind her ear and wiping away the tears with her thumb.
"Pipes, it's just me and you here. I'll just listen if that's what you want me to do. It doesn't matter what you say or where you want to start. Beginning, the end or a random selection from anywhere in between. Nothing you say will change how I feel about you, OK? It's breaking my heart to see you this way and I can see you're hurting….."
The tears started flowing again and Piper put her face into her hands to feel less exposed with her raw emotions yet again. Alex pulled her against her shoulder again and soothed her back. "Oh sweetheart, I wish I knew how to help you."
Piper pulled away and stood up suddenly, leaving the room and Alex stayed where she was. A few minutes later Piper returned with a box of tissues, a few balled in her hand, before sinking back onto the bed and pulling the duvet back over her.
"God, I feel so fucking pathetic." She sniffed. "I've spent half the night bawling like a damned child." She wiped her face with the ball of tissues. She looked over to meet Alex's eyes, the brunette slightly turning up the corners of her mouth in a comforting smile.
"I fucking hate this. I don't know how to tell you what you want to know and you might wish I'd never told you when I'm finished. I also don't know how I feel about telling you this. It's like….I don't want to let it out of the box because I don't know what harm it's going to do…..to both of us. But I know you're going to keep pushing me to open that box without realising what's inside…..It's a fucking monster Alex. Can I tell you that and leave it there? I can live with what's inside because I know what it is." Piper's eyes were pleading with Alex to leave the subject be and accept that it was something that might be best left alone. Alex reached out to cup her hands on either side of the blonde's face, lifting her face to meet her eyes.
"If you're living with that monster, I want to be there with you. You're right, I have no idea what I'm asking of you right now and I don't know what the implications might be. I do know that I want to be right by your side to fight it though. No matter how big and scary it might be." She brushed Piper's hair behind her ear before moving the duvet over her legs as she continued to sit cross-legged opposite Piper on the bed.
Piper sighed and rubbed her face before resting her chin on her fingertips and observing Alex, hoping for a last minute reprieve. None was forthcoming, so she took a deep breath and decided to let it out.
"Darryl didn't rape me. I told you that already and it's true. I don't remember much from that night, but knowing that he almost did and that he was able to….expose me like that…has brought back memories that I didn't want to have to think about ever again. I've been able to compartmentalise it and shut it away like it didn't happen. I thought I was dealing with it…" Piper shrugged her shoulders and looked at her nails, focusing on pushing the cuticles back as she thought about what she wanted to say next.
"What memories Piper?" Alex asked gently after she didn't speak for a while.
The blonde squeezed the ball of tissues in her hand as tightly as she could, feeling her heart beating so fast it might give out at any second. Was there a way through this conversation where she could skim the details and give a half truth? Probably not, seeing the intense look on her girlfriend's face as she waited for her to continue.
"I was…attacked when I was in prison." Piper looked directly at Alex as she spoke and saw her face drop to an expression that seemed to be somewhere between horror, fury and like she was about to throw up. She could see her swallow and tears formed in her eyes as she looked away from Piper for a moment, wiping her eyes.
"I'm sorry Piper…..I don't know-" But Piper cut her off, conscious if she didn't get these words out now, they might never get spoken and she'd already gotten this far.
"I hadn't been there long when it happened and I didn't understand the way things worked yet. I'd maybe been there for…I don't know…3 weeks or something. I'd seen some of the male guards sneaking into supply closets or store rooms with inmates and I felt like it was something inappropriate that was happening. I kept an eye on them and there were two guards in particular who were doing it, always with the same girls. Vulnerable women who were either mentally unstable or had an addiction and they were coming out wiping their mouths or straightening their shirts….I saw the guards fastening belts as I passed a crack in the door, so I knew they were taking advantage of these girls. I spoke to my counsellor about it and he said he'd look into it, but nothing seemed to happen. I insisted on seeing the warden and told her about it. She seemed shocked and I figured it would be dealt with properly and was doing these girls a favour by speaking up for them."
"Jesus, that's fucking horrendous. The guards are supposed to take care of prisoners in there!"
"I know. You'd think they'd be grateful right? Apparently not. I was walking to the showers one morning when a couple of the women from a particularly rough crew stopped me from going in and said I'd ruined a very profitable business arrangement for them and needed to work out a way of paying them for their loss of earnings. I wasn't about to fall into a trap of being blackmailed for the money that they thought I had access to as a rich white girl. I'd been warned about that by my counsellor and it wasn't advised to talk about my background in there. The advice was basically to keep myself to myself and don't make friends for the duration of my sentence and that's exactly what I was trying to do. It meant that nobody had my back at this point though, so I had no idea how to handle this situation. Maybe it would have ended differently if I'd have just agreed to pay them…." Piper looked out of the window briefly before looking back at Alex.
"They probably would have asked for more and it wouldn't have stopped at that one time I guess. You refused to pay them, right?"
"Yeah, I said I didn't have access to any money and my parents had cut me off when I got sent away. They said there were other ways to pay and took hold of my arms, dragging me into the showers…..The two guards I had seen in the supply closets were already in there with a couple of other girls from the same crew as the ones who brought me in. I tried to scream and kick out to stop them from pulling me inside and alert another guard but they covered my mouth and there were enough of them in there to pin me against the wall and hold me by the throat." Piper moved position to bring her legs up under chin to hug them with her arms now.
"Did they hurt you?" Alex's voice was barely audible as she reached out under the duvet they shared to move her hand up Piper's foot to soothe the skin around her ankle. Piper moved her hand down to pick Alex's hand up away from her skin. The contact somehow seemed too intimate when she was talking about this and the feeling of her skin being caressed felt like it was burning. She felt tainted suddenly, like Alex shouldn't be touching her without gloves. Piper couldn't breath and Alex's proximity to her in the bed was almost suffocating. Closing her eyes to stop herself from feeling dizzy, Piper rested her head on her knees to try and bring her heart and breathing back under control. Alex reached out to touch her shoulder and Piper recoiled, leaping from the bed to stand by the window.
"Sorry. I shouldn't have done that!" Alex tried to keep her voice calm, but she was suddenly terrified that Piper was about to run. "Don't leave Piper…We can do this. Together."
Piper forced herself to look at Alex on the bed. She could see the fear in Alex's eyes as she sat, poised to leap up and stop Piper from running. It made her feel trapped, like she couldn't escape and the claustrophobia was overwhelming her. Doubling herself over to try and get some blood to her brain to prevent herself from passing out, she focused on inhaling deep breaths, trying to distract herself from the overwhelming nausea she was feeling.
"Just focus on your breathing…..deep breaths Pipes…in through your nose….then out through your mouth…deep breaths…just think about getting as much air into your body as you can through your nose…that's it."
Piper dropped to her knees and hunched over with her palms on the floor, trying to get close to the ground in case she did pass out. After a few minutes, she started to shiver uncontrollably and Alex pulled the duvet off the bed to wrap it around her, careful not to stay too close to the blonde in case she got spooked again.
After a while, Piper sat back against the wall, pulling the duvet around her shoulders. Alex stood to pick up Piper's robe to put it on since she was also getting a little cold, wearing only a tee shirt on the bed.
"Sorry. I guess I'm being a bit greedy here." Piper smiled weakly.
"It's OK. If that duvet stops you from leaving me, I'll gladly take a hit of pneumonia to keep you here."
"I'm not going to leave you Al. I just needed a little space…..Talking about this is a bit overwhelming and I know that seems stupid."
"It doesn't. Not at all. You do whatever feels best for you to do right now. OK?"
Piper nodded and pulled the duvet around her shoulders again as her teeth started chattering.
"I'm going to make some chamomile tea, would you like some? Might warm you up a bit?"
"Yeah, please." Alex stood to go to the kitchen and Piper found herself following her with the duvet, not wanting to be too far away from the brunette whose presence was such a comfort to her.
Alex busied herself boiling the water, focusing on the task without saying anything as Piper watched in silence from the sofa. Her knees pulled up to her chest again, trying to still her chattering teeth as she watched the brunette pour the water into two mugs a few metres away.
"They raped me." Piper focused on Alex's back as she was faced away from her, trying to see if the brunette had heard her. Seeing how Alex froze in her movements confirmed that her girlfriend had indeed heard her.
"One of the guards forced a tee shirt into my mouth to stop me from making any noise and the four girls held me against the wall while he pulled my pants off so they could pull my legs apart…" Alex's head dropped and she started to turn around before Piper stopped her.
"Wait! Don't look at me Alex, please. I need to get this out now and I think I can only do that if I can't see your face when I say this." Piper's voice was breaking and she took some deep breaths to get it back under control. Alex stopped and didn't move or say anything.
"He said I was going to have to learn the way things worked around here and I should remember this lesson the next time I thought about trying to be teacher's pet. He gave one of the girls a screwdriver and told her to cover it in soap from the dispenser by the sink, then he…forced the handle inside me…." Piper wiped her face before she continued sniffling only a little now as there were hardly any tears left inside her tired body by this point.
"He was rough and told me to look into his eyes while he did it so he could see how much I was enjoying it or he'd use the other end of it to gauge my eyes out when he was done. The other guard was beating off right in front of me and they swapped places after a few minutes. There were a couple of girls stationed outside the showers to stop anyone from coming in and interrupting them, but it started to get busy in the hallways and they told me to put my clothes back on and go back to my dorm for count like a good little girl. If anyone was to find out about their lesson, they wouldn't go as easy on me next time. They carried on with the day just as though nothing had happened." By the time Piper had finished speaking, her voice had become emotionless and matter of fact about it. She never took her eyes off Alex the whole time she was talking, so that way she felt as though she was sharing with her, but without the pity or loathing or whatever other feelings she might have being visible to her. Alex still hadn't turned around and neither of them spoke for a while as they sat in the darkness and Piper looked at the floor as she rocked back and forth on the sofa.
Piper jumped from her thoughts on hearing something smash against the wall behind her, looking up to find Alex leaning onto the breakfast bar with both hands and breathing heavily before turning to see tea running down the wall of her living room. Alex swept her hands over the kitchen tops and pushed everything onto the floor, the kettle breaking on the floor still half filled with water as it hit the ground. She turned to swipe everything off the window sill behind her as well and threw the plates and mugs from the draining board against the wall too, smashing and dislodging a photo of Piper's graduation day with her family in the process. She was on her way to clear the kitchen table of the vase before Piper jumped up and ran to hold her from behind, straining to keep her arms by her sides before she damaged anything else.
"Hey, hey! Stop that….Enough." She crushed her arms around the brunette's ribs, pinning her arms to her sides and pressing her against the breakfast bar with the front of her body against Alex's back. Alex fought to free herself for a moment, but Piper was crushing her tightly against her with her arms locked around her chest.
"No more." She whispered over and over against Alex's shoulder blade. The tension in Alex's muscles was emanating from every pore and Piper felt like she had jumped on a grenade and wasn't sure if the pin could be pushed back in. She could feel her rapid breathing expanding her chest and relaxed her arms only slightly to allow her to breathe, resting her head against her shoulders. They stood like that for a long time, Piper not daring to let go of her girlfriend in case she lost it again. Eventually, Piper felt Alex's muscles relax a little as she began to cry. Piper didn't know what to do and simply rested her forehead against Alex's back while continuing to hold her as she cried quietly, still with Piper's arms wrapped around her tightly, restraining her from moving anywhere.