I Love You and I Hate You

Downward Spiral

Piper’s POV:
Things I’ve discovered while in prison #3015: I’m pretty damn naive for a 33 year old.
I don’t know what I expected. For Larry to neglect the fact that I thoroughly betrayed him, and shat on every glued-together aspect of our fragmented relationship, because the words “I choose you” somehow amend every one of my faults, like some tacky movie marketed towards foolish teenagers? For Alex to accept me with open arms as I come crawling back to her for the millionth time, to trust me after I left her in her one and only time of need, in the most insensitive of manners? The truth that I’ve been neglecting for the past 5 years is that I don’t believe for a second that my love for her will ever fade. I used Larry. I used him as some sort compensation for not having Alex anymore, some sort of false sense of security that I could live society’s idea of a normal life, despite what fate I’ve been pinned to. Because I love every facet of her very being, and I still feel my heart stop for a mere second every time I see her walk into the room, like that first time I met her in that little bar nestled in the corner of the bustling city, and the spark ignited. I love the way her dark hair contrasts and frames her pale face. I love the way her glasses sit on her upturned button nose. I love her husky voice, and the way her eyebrows pronounce her expressions. I love the way we lied, intertwined, as I traced her tattoos, our bodied moulded perfectly together. I love the way she smells, from the expensive Chanel perfume, and champagne on her breath in the early days, to the smell of standard soap mixed with her sweat these days. I still, and will always, love Alex Vause. Now I just have to get her to believe me.
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Piper's POV:
Each passing day, my yearning for Alex intensified. Every aspect of my life somehow reminded me of my time spent with her, despite the blandness of prison life as opposed to the plethora of twists and turns on the rollercoaster that was our life before I left her. And thinking that I left HER when I was just about the most generic person on the earth, and she was in every way a gem who had let herself fall for a woman who she had only ever meant to use for her profit, as a mere aid to her crime. So, when the alarm woke me from my sleep, the only comfort I had being found through shutting off my brain, and drifting off to another world, I put my head down, and slipped past the line of people heading for breakfast, to the showers. I'm not sure if I just wasn't hungry, or I didn't want to interact with anyone to the extent that my psychological well being was prioritized over my biological well being somewhere in the back of my head. I was fully aware that I had fucked things up to the point that nobody could pity me anymore, and nobody even needed to clarify that they sided with Alex. I don't even remember getting undressed, or even turning on the ice cold water, and I sure as hell didn't make any attempt to actually wash myself either. I let the tears I had been swallowing ,and willing to go away for what felt like forever,  well up in my eyes and fall. I tasted the salty morsels, diluted with the water falling around me, on my lips, gasping for air, my chest heaving, and fluids collecting around my nose and mouth. I could faintly see the blurry image of the shower curtain just in front of my face. While being perfectly audible, I didn't process the annoyed voices of the people piling into the bathroom, waiting for their shower. When Nicky Nichols sharply pulled aside the curtain, I stared blankly through her, not even attempting to cover anything. She tried to will me out, and eventually opted to pull me out, march me across the change room, her clammy hand gripping me by the elbow, my entirety fully on display, and force my jumpsuit onto my limp body. The worst part? I was a drone. I couldn't care less, despite the mortifying factor of the situation. She pulled a notebook from the waistband of her pants, a chewed on pen nestled in its spiral, and said: "write about it" before pushing back to her initial position in the line and getting into the shower.