A/N: I really like that there are diametrically opposed views on whether Piper or Alex should be the one to offer an olive branch. It means I've written them both sympathetically in this, which is what I was hoping for. Equally, there are a lot of people who see both sides and just want a happy Vauseman! I'm taken aback by one of my recent reviewers telling me I'm handling the sexual assault storyline so well - it really means the world to me that you say that as I'm conscious that it's an extremely sensitive subject and I want to get the balance right of story progression / banter / tenderness and angst all around that central plotline. As a first time writer of FanFic, I'm relieved!
I was going to pick this chapter up with Alex and Nicky in the bar, but I decided to keep this one focused on Piper and come back to them in the next chapter. Let me know what you think and thanks for all your lovely reviews and kind words - you're an amazing bunch :-)
Piper was up early and made a veggie smoothie to go with her toast for breakfast. She was dressed in a black pant suit and white cotton blouse, mostly for the meeting with her new lawyer later. If she was dressed for business, it looked like she meant business was her thinking behind the selection. Polly had insisted she didn't need to come in later as she had enough to deal with today, so she opted to drive the short journey to Queensboro in the comfort of her car instead of risking getting soaked by the expected rain later. Picking up the letters she had about the pending court case and the addresses she needed, she locked up and got in her car to join the rush hour traffic as it chugged through the city.
Strangely, she wasn't nearly as nervous about seeing Julie as she was the lawyer later. Even though she knew that she wasn't the one on trial this time, she couldn't help but feel like some sick twist of fate would see the tables turned and she would find herself in cuffs. She was hoping that someone was going to call her up eventually and say they had way more evidence than they ever needed and she didn't need to testify after all.
As she sat in the traffic, heading through the underpass, she thought back to last week when she was making this trip with Alex driving her. Her girlfriend had soothed her hand and been reassuring with her words as they got closer. A week later and she hadn't gotten as much as a text message from her this time. It was very clearly a case of the ball being in Piper's court on the next move she thought to herself.
Eventually parking outside the office block, Piper headed up to Julie's floor and reported to the Reception desk. Julie didn't have her waiting long before she came outside to greet her warmly.
"Hey Piper, good to see you again." She smiled and gestured towards her office with her arm.
"Hi. Yeah, the week flew by huh?" Piper walked in front of her and headed towards the same seat that she sat in last time.
"You want a coffee? I was going to have one, so it's no trouble."
"Yeah, latte please."
Julie dipped her head outside of her office to place the drinks order with the Receptionist before closing it again quietly and walking to sit down opposite.
"Looks like the heavens are going to open later I think. I hope you brought an umbrella?"
"Oh, I drove here today. I noticed you had some parking when my girlfriend dropped me off last week, so I parked in a visitor bay just by the door. No getting wet for me!" Piper smiled.
"Ah, you're slumming it without the girlfriend to chauffeur you this week huh? Alex wasn't it?" Julie looked at her notes quickly.
"Yeah, that's her."
"You didn't want the moral support this week then?"
"No. Well, I think she's busy anyway at the moment. She's got a big contract at work to sort out, so she'll be all over town sorting that out I expect."
"That sounds like you didn't ask her…Does she know you're here for another appointment today?"
"Yeah of course! I mean, I told her last week that I was booking another appointment. I'm sure she will have remembered that." Piper shrugged as there was a knock at the door and Julie rose to get their drinks before sitting back down again.
"Thanks." Piper took her coffee and put it onto the table in front of her before smoothing down her jacket.
"You don't see a lot of each other then?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, it sounds like you haven't seen her if you aren't really sure what she is doing today is all. How often do you guys see each other?"
"Um, it's not fixed really. Just as and when I guess."
"Oh! I didn't realise it was a casual thing…It sounded like you guys were pretty serious last time…." Julie checked her notes again. "This is the second time you've been in a relationship with Alex though, right?"
"Yeah."
"Was it casual the first time as well?"
Piper pursed her lips, aware of how odd this looked to an outsider and finding it difficult to know how to explain it.
"No." Piper laughed at the absurdity of what their relationship might look like as a casual hook up and shook her head to confirm it. "Alex and I don't do casual when we're together, no matter how much we try. We're full on crazy, obsessed and in love or at each other's throats and manipulating each other in some weird sense of vengeance over being hurt by something the other did."
Julie remained silent, only raising her eyebrows to encourage Piper to continue.
Piper sighed and fidgeted with her fingernails in her lap before continuing. "Alex and I fell in lust, then love in a very short space of time when we first met. We were obsessed with each other and I followed Alex….well, everywhere just to be near her. But the flip side of that is that both of us are very jealous and we both have a temper. We're very passionate people." Piper shrugged as though that explained anything at all.
"That doesn't sound like the kind of relationship that would be casual if you got involved for a second time then." Julie chuckled and took a drink from her mug.
"Let's just say, we went from zero to a hundred pretty early on in the sequel…. So, we both still have those traits, only now they come with baggage four years down the line."
"What kind of baggage?"
"The kind you get when you've been single for a while, the kind you get from being in prison…"
"That's to be expected. So how are you both dealing with the baggage then?"
"Honestly? With a toxic combination of avoidance and stealth sometimes I think." Piper said without humour.
"OK…. Is that how you always dealt with problems like baggage when you were together the first time?"
Piper thought for a moment and looked through the window as she sipped her coffee.
"You know, it isn't when I think about it. We used to argue, like throwing things in hotel rooms and screaming argue. I would normally be the one who stormed out, probably because I felt like I was repeating the same things over and over. But then I'd always come back eventually. Alex would have calmed down and be sorry for whatever I was blaming her for and we'd be back into crazy and obsessed love again. But the arguments got more frequent and the crazy and obsessed love in between got to be too much of a roller coaster for me…."
"And so?"
"So….I bailed on her. " Piper said simply as she looked out of the window again, watching the raindrops start to fall against the glass. The clouds had darkened, as though reflecting the topic they were discussing and the rain drops were few but heavy as they splashed against the transparent surface in front of her blue eyes.
"You say that as though you regret it. Do you?"
"Yeah, I do. I walked out on Alex within an hour of her finding out that her Mom had passed away while we were in France. I left the love of my life at the very point she had never needed me more." Piper finished the last sentence with barely a whisper of the words that she found so difficult to say on so many occasions before. A tear snaked it's way down her cheek as she tried to avoid Julie's eyes. She sniffed as she stood to look out of the window, watching the rain drops gather momentum as they combines and tricked down at an ever increasing pace towards a heavy landing 10 floors down from where they started their journey.
"I know what you're thinking and it's nothing I haven't thought and felt about myself already since that day." Piper didn't even turn around to talk as she felt herself drawn to the patterns on the window as a distraction from facing the topic on conversation.
"What is that?"
"What a cold, heartless bitch I was. How my own self-preservation was more important than someone I tell you I was deeply in love with, so how could it have truly been love at all? Am I close?" Piper finally turned to see Julie's expression.
"I think things must have seemed hopeless and it took some guts to do something like that in those circumstances."
"You think I was brave?!" Piper was incredulous.
"I think it's the most cowardly thing I've ever done! The brave thing to do would have been to stay…. To suck up all the shitty things that were happening and just be there for her you know? I could have walked out later, I could have packed my damned suitcase any day of the week. But to leave the one person who looked after me and loved me so much she'd have done anything for me at the very moment her only real family passed away while she was alone and away from home…..That decision will eat away at me for the rest of my life because it has directly impacted everything that happened since. My whole world got way shittier ever since that day. At no point have I looked back and patted myself on the back for doing that. I needed to leave, I knew it then and I knew it every day since. But I didn't have to leave like that. Nobody deserves that, especially not the one person you gave your heart to and never took it back from…."
Julie rose from her seat and picked a box of tissues up from her desk, walking to join Piper at the window and offering the box.
"You love her." It wasn't even phrased like it was a question and Piper didn't get the impression that Julie was expecting her to answer.
Piper pulled a tissue from the box and blew her nose to stop the incessant sniffing she was irritating herself with. "I never wanted to. God how I wanted to stop loving her, stop thinking about her. To cauterise the arteries around my heart to stop them from bleeding every time I thought I heard her name or saw her long dark hair weaving through a crowd….Do you have any idea how painful it is to want to close the book on something so damaging to your sanity, but your heart and mind won't let you? Instead, making you live in perpetual regret that you'll never again feel what you used to have with that one person you have hurt so badly they will never forgive you? Like some sick fucking Moebius loop of unrequited love and self-loathing it was."
"Come and sit down. You've barely touched your coffee." Julie sat back in the comfy chair again and nodded for Piper to do the same, putting the tissues on the table in between them.
"You found each other again though. That's at least given you an opportunity to deal with those feelings hasn't it?"
Piper wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand and gulped her coffee.
"It's stopped the constant looking for her in a crowd because I feel like I have my safety blanket back again. So there's definitely a feeling of being less anxious generally now I know she's back in my life. There's just….a lot unsaid at the moment I guess."
"And what's stopping you from saying it?"
Piper thought for a moment, struggling to pinpoint exactly what it was that meant she hadn't said these things to Alex.
"Fear I think. Fear that we will argue and she won't forgive me. Fear that I'll lose her again. Fear that I'm not the person she wants me to be anymore."
"Piper…..when you were talking about you and Alex first getting together, you said that it was you who walked away when you argued. It was you who walked away and you who came back. It was you who left her in France. Did Alex ever walk out on you?"
The blonde thought back, trying to think of a time when Alex had been so angry she had stormed out and slammed a door behind her. "Never…..Alex always stayed. Whether I was throwing things at her or giving her the silent treatment, she fronted it out. She's not a woman who ever backs down, no matter what the situation."
"So what makes you think she'd leave you now?"
"I'm….well, I'm not the same person." Piper was puzzled.
"Do you still walk away when you argue?"
"Yes."
"Do you come back?"
"Yes."
"Does Alex wait for you when you do that?"
"She does."
"And does she forgive you or apologise like she used to?"
"Uhm…..yeah, I guess so."
"Maybe you're not all that different to who you used to be after all. In fact, you both seem pretty consistent."
Piper rubbed her palm over her face. "Pretty consistently bad for each other, yeah."
"You called her your safety blanket earlier. Why is that a bad thing?"
"I don't know….Because she's a safety blanket that tries to smother me at times?" Piper offered the words as though they were a question and she sought Julie's agreement.
Julie chuckled lightly. "Nice analogy."
"Well, it's true. I've fended for myself for the last 2 years, in and out of prison and in some pretty dire situations. Alex can't help but take over sometimes and make decisions for me and it drives me mad that she thinks I'm not capable of the smallest of decisions without her."
"She dropped you off here last week, so she knows why you're here, right?"
"Yeah, she knows about the attack at Sandy's and the thing that happened in the showers in prison."
"OK…and you've been back together for how long when you told her about both of those things?"
"Well, the thing at the bar happened before Christmas. She found out when I was in hospital, so like 6 weeks ago I guess. We got together when I came home from hospital and she was taking care of me. Then I told her about the prison thing like…2 weeks ago?"
"Right. So if you guys were the centre of each other's universe for say 2 years…..You get back together in some pretty stressful circumstances when you've been sexually assaulted and Alex takes care of you…then a couple of weeks later, you tell her that you've been raped while you were in prison…Correct so far?"
"Yeah…"
"You said earlier that you gave Alex your heart and never took it back again. In the time you've been apart, you've been sexually assaulted twice when she wasn't there to protect you, care for you, love you and now you're back together. I think she's going to want to hold onto you with every fibre of her body to make damned sure you never get hurt again." Julie let her words settle into Piper's mind before speaking again.
"I'm saying it as I see it Piper. I'm no relationship counsellor, that's not my bag I'm afraid. But I do see the impact that sexual assault can have on those people closest to you and one of the things I see is partners and family members smothering those people who are living with the effects of sexual assault because they don't know what else to do to ease their pain…They try to protect them, love them and nurture them to the point where you can't breathe and you find it suffocating. That's not an unusual reaction at all, it's perfectly understandable. The safety blanket who smothers you hits the nail on the head there."
"So, are you saying I should be grateful for it?" Piper was confused about if this was advice or a statement.
"I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying what you are both going through is completely normal. There are no rights or wrongs in the way you're both dealing with this. But you have the advantage of being with someone who is the love of your life – to use your own words, who lets you rage and waits for you. If she does nothing else right now, you both know and understand those reactions to dealing with your baggage. Don't change that and you both have common ground to work with. Don't bottle it up, avoid it, or turn it into a different kind of emotion. Deal with it like your instincts tell you to and you'll work it out. Don't try to be a different person Piper, she loves you – and whatever baggage comes with you."
A/N (2): ejm137 - are you reading my mind?!