Chapter 2

"Memories"

"Again. You gotta be fucking kidding me." Alex said angrily. She turned and knocked hard on the door and yelled, "I don't want to be with her! Take me to another room! Hell take me to psych, just get me the hell out of here!"

No answer. She continued to knock, but it quickly switched to punching as she received no attention. Fischer wasn't coming back. Apparently she hadn't gotten the memo that Piper and her weren't together anymore and had thought well, but it was Alex worst nightmare.

"Alex," Piper warned her. "You are gonna hurt yourself, please stop."

Alex faced her. "You mean hurt myself more than you hurt me?" she snapped.

"Alex…" Piper said, but she had no idea what to say. She knew that 'I'm sorry' would not be enough and nor would be anything really.

"Fuck you," Alex said before sitting down the floor. She closed her eyes and leaned the back of her head on the cold wall.

Piper sighed and lied down on the bunk facing the wall. It must have been the middle of the night after all this. Both of them were very tired and yet neither could sleep. Piper's hand hurt so much she wanted to cry and the bright light bothered Alex so much it gave her a headache.

Around three hours later that they had finally managed to get some sleep, they were woken up by the sound of a screeching metal tray sliding on the ground inside their cell. A brownish, almost red loaf of some unidentified meat lay in the middle of it. Alex, who was closer to the door, put her hand on the tray and simply pushed it toward Piper without even touching the food.

"You're not eating?" Piper asked, looking at Alex who stared blankly at the wall. She nodded as she realized she wasn't getting any answer. She examined the loaf and noticed, as she looked closer small, greenish dots that was mold beginning to form. She did her best to remove them, pinching them out and throwing them in the tray. It was her second time down in the SHU, the first time because she had suggestively danced with Alex – a moment which she had truly appreciated. Even after eating that meat loaf everyday during her last time there, she really hadn't gotten used to it. Nobody could ever for that matter. "You know I read before coming here that those kind of loaf are actually very nutritional and healthy. Well, without the mold that is." Piper said, even if she knew Alex wasn't going to say anything back. Talking when knowing someone actually listened helped her keep her sanity, even if it was a one-way conversation.

Piper ate half of the food, keeping the rest of it in case Alex would decide to eat some. Anyways, the half was all that she could bare eating without puking. She put the tray on the floor between them. She moved on her bunk so that she could lean against the wall, wrapping her arms around her knees and trying desperately not to think about the pain from her wound. She wondered if Alex was the one who had fixed her hand with the stitches and the bandage because it was done quite perfectly-for prison and someone who isn't a doctor that is. She found some comfort and hope thinking that it was. Romantic relationship or not, Piper was determined to get back on friendly grounds with Alex. The first reason to that was that they were going to be in Litchfield together for a year still and also she felt the need to leave with a peaceful mind and no regrets once her sentence was going to end. Both reasons were completely narcissistic reasons if you'd ask anyone who knew her, but Piper didn't think of it that way.

A few minutes later, Piper broke the everlasting silence and said, "I need to pee". She stood and looked at Alex awkwardly. It was not like it was the first time she'd ever peed in front of Alex so she wasn't sure why she was making a deal of it, but considering the circumstances she felt a bit uncomfortable.

"Sure go ahead, I'll wait outside. Oh wait. We're stuck here, thanks to you." Alex scolded sarcastically and rolled her eyes. She shoved her face in the folded arms on her knees.

Piper decided to ignore her. She peed, and then thought it was time to start and make a mend with Alex.

"Okay listen to me Alex," Piper started. She stood in front of her and the fact that the dark-haired woman was sitting on the floor and that she could look down at her made her feel in power to continue this argument. "I'm a coward, alright. You want to know why I picked Larry? Because I'm scared. I love you so fucking much that it scares me. I love you so fucking much that I'd carry another suitcase of drug money for you. I love you so fucking much that I'd spend another decade in here if that means I could stay with you. And I don't want any of that. So I picked him."

Alex looked at her. "You are so fucking selfish Piper. I can't believe this." She said and stood up. "Hasn't really never occurred to you that I'm an actual person with feelings and Larry too? You ripped my heart out. Twice." She looked at Piper, not with anger anymore, but with deep pain and sadness. She fought hard to keep the tears from falling and the big lump in her throat made it difficult for her to continue. "You had a choice to make. You made your decision based on only you, like you are the only one in the relationship. You never cared about my feelings. You never cared that being with Larry because it's easier wasn't fair to him. And now you lost both of us."

Piper was crying and for the first time she felt ashamed. She didn't have a right to cry. She wasn't being hurt by anyone. Hell, she had two incredible persons that loved her. Suddenly it was all clear in her head—she had been the problem all along.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." She repeated over and over. It was pointless- words didn't work anymore.

"And even sadder is that you still think I'm the bad guy. That I'd use your love selfishly for illegal shits even if I told you the only plan I had ever made in my life was never to get back to that."

"I'm so stupid Alex," Piper couldn't get herself to stop crying. "What do I have to do for you to forgive me? Please tell me."

Alex sighed. "I don't know anymore." She really wanted to be able to forgive her and make the tears go away, but she couldn't trust her. The fact that she was incredibly lonely didn't help the matter. She craved for physical comfort. Not just sex. It was never just sex with Piper- they always connected emotionally too. Although she hooked up with a lot of girls after Piper left her, she never felt that with anyone else. She felt stupid to romanticize Piper like that in her mind because she was so toxic.

"We should probably stop arguing because I have a feeling we are going to be here for a while and I have a fucking migraine." Alex said. She walked to the small sink and splashed some water on her face. It was lukewarm and smelled like cooper. She took a piece of brown paper and dried her skin and then gave a piece to Piper to so that she could wipe off her tears.

Piper took it and gave her a weak smile. They threw the papers in the toilet and flushed it. The motion made the blonde's hand burn and she winced. Alex noticed.

"You want me to take a look at it?" Alex asked, not really sure why she did thought. Piper nodded. They sat on the bunk bed and Alex held Piper's arms with her long fingers and with the others she delicately peeled the maxi pad that covered the wound. The touch made Piper shiver and her stomach fluttered the same way it did 10 years ago when she first got the tall woman's attention. Alex examined the cut. "No infections, you're good." She covered the wound and too soon the blonde missed the warm touch.

"Thank you." Piper smiled and asked, "You did the stitches?"

"Yeah I tried"

"You did a good job. Your mother would be proud of you that you still remember her sewing techniques you know." Piper said carefully. Alex's mother was a touchy subject between them. She immediately regretted mentioning her once she saw the other woman's face.

"Proud of her drug-smuggling loser of a daughter who's in prison," Alex recalled. "Yeah I don't think so."

"Proud of the smoking hot, funny, smart girl who's still standing tall even after all the mistakes she made." Piper corrected.

"Hot and funny hell yeah but I'm not smart," Alex shrugged. "I didn't go to college."

"What? That doesn't matter you are brilliant. You read like a thousand book every week and you have always interesting stories to tell." Piper smiled. "You could be a writer and be the next J.K Rowlings I'm telling ya."

"Harry Potter, really?" Alex chuckled. "Yeah I could totally write stories about Azkaban." She nodded proudly and looked at Piper with a genuine grin on her face. Piper loved everything about that smile – the way her eyes shined brightly, her glasses falling on top of her nose and her cheeks creasing adorably.

Alex was moving her hand to take Piper, but another of food was thrown in the room before they even touched. She looked down at the tray0- it wasn't a loaf but a beige, lumpy mash of something that looked like vomit.

"I guess I gotta eat at some point right?" Alex sighed, took the tray and put it between them. "So what's the trick with that?" she asked.

"Really there is none. Just don't look at it too closely and don't breathe." Piper suggested.

"Wait how are we supposed to eat this without utensils?"

"With our hands, like animals because that's what we are to them." Piper said.

The dark haired woman looked at it and frowned, "Man I don't even want to touch it with my hands how the hell am I gonna eat it."

Piper laughed, "Oh my god do you remember that trip to Istanbul, we had gotten lost and we were so hungry we stopped at that small Vietnamese restaurant and they served us a fish bass with its stomach and everything." Piper reminisced.

Alex was jumping on her seat as she remembered. "And you cut right on his bowel and it splashed fish blood on your fancy white blouse. The whole staff laughed at you and when we walked back to the hotel you complained the whole time. You were about to strip down to your bra in the street."

"But I had blood on me! It looked like I had murdered someone." Her smile vanished. Murdered someone. Like Tiffany, she thought. She still had no idea if she was really alive or not. She felt horrible to prefer it to be the latest.

"This kinda looks like what one of my cats was puking when I came back from that business trip after leaving them two weeks with you. Man you were so bad at taking care of them, poor things." Alex said, changing the subject rapidly by bringing back some other memories.

They spent the rest of the day reminiscing old time and it almost felt like no time had passed and nothing ever happened. When they judged by their tiredness that it was about nighttime they went to sleep. This time Piper had insisted on sleeping on the floor so Alex gave her the top blanket to put on the floor and she slept on the bed. They drifted off to sleep easily this time, their minds full of great memories to dream about.

A/N: Thank you all for the great reviews, I'm glad you liked it. Keep telling me you think.