Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Piper exited the bus and found herself on a tarmac somewhere near LaGuardia. There she was redirected by a burly looking gentleman in a high-vis vest to another line leading all the way up a staircase onto a Boeing 797 midsized plane. She tried asking the gentleman where the plane was going but he only grunted something about Eastern Europe. Piper cried and shivered in the cold- her white womanhood was doing her no favors today. Earlier that night she'd been dragged out of her solitary cell, on to a bus with inmates from other prisons, with no clue as to where she was going. She still wasn't sure why they had taken her out of Litchfield, but she had to guess it had something to do with Pennsatucky's death. Was it because she had used that weird glowing orange gun on her? Assault with a deadly weapon- and that was if the girl had somehow survived. By the way Pennsatucky's small and mangled frame had looked when the guards dragged her to the SHU, Piper felt in her gut that the girl was dead.

There were some new faces on the plane- strange faces, male faces. Sitting near the front was a quiet, stone-faced man with glasses and a goatee. He looked younger than Piper, smart but a little odd. She guessed he must have done something really horrible or bizarre to end up here.

Passing by him, Piper scooted down the aisle between two men arguing loudly. The one on the left was huge and bald, with a strong accent. The one one the right was sort of short, but so loud and gruff his voice made Piper wince.

"You shut your mouth, maggot! They've got us cooped in here like animals! I haven't eaten anything all day! And it's all because your little friend back there called the goddamn police on our spy, who was just doing his job, instead of doing the honorable thing and killing him!"

"SCOUT IS JUST LITTLE KID. HE CALL THE 9-1-1 BECAUSE YOUR SPY WAS LIKE COMMON CRIMINAL- VERY MESSY! HAD NO IDEA YOUR TEAM IS INVOLVED. YOU SAD BECAUSE YOUR SPY IS DEAD? YOU CRY NOW? LITTLE BABY!"

"Why you no good son of a- I had no love for that lily-livered French coward, but he was still more of a man than anyone on your worthless team!"

"MAN? HA! I CRUSH HIS SKULL LIKE TINY EGG! HE WAS NO MAN, HE WAS FRENCH OMELETTE-BRAIN!"

"You red Russian son of a whore!"

"Fellas, please", came a smooth drawl from next to the shorter man. Piper couldn't see his face until his friend leaned back in his seat, but then she saw a square-jawed, slightly handsome man with some curious eyewear. He outstretched his palms and spoke slowly but surely, "We need to take this li'l conversation down a notch before those guards at the front of the plane start gettin' nasty. Why don't we resolve this disagreement later, in the prison yard, like men?"

At this the other, beefier men nodded appreciatively. They were apparently in the thrall of the Texan's commanding presence. Piper made a note of this- he could be someone to watch out for, or try to win favor with- a real player.

Finally, another guard, this one wearing a grey mask, grabbed her wrists and pushed Piper toward her seat. She had to push past a young woman with her black hair tied up in a ponytail, who looked to be around college age. She had a red jacket on over her orange uniform. The woman seemed annoyed, but she didn't say anything and turned away from Piper once she was sitting. More prisoners passed through the aisle of the plane, filling up the remaining seats. Across the aisle and one row back, a baby-faced young man popped his head out towards Piper's seatmate.

"Hey, lady!" the kid said, "Why don't you sit back in your chair a bit so I can get a look at that gorgeous blonde MILF next to you!"

"What?" asked the young woman.

"You heard me! The MILF! I wanna ask her if she'll give me her hat!"

"She's not wearing a hat, you dumb asshole! Where is she gonna get a hat? And why would she give it to you?"

"Ohh wait wait wait- not a hat! Usually people give me hats, so I forgot- since it's a hot broad, I should ask for her underweah!"

"Ew, that's fucking disgusting. I'm gonna throw up."

"N-not to smell them or anything! I just collect pieces of clothing! So far it's just hats though. How's about it lady?"

Piper's seatmate nudged her.

"I think he's talking to you."

"I'm not giving you my underwear," said Piper.

"Awright," said the kid, "You wanna go bang in the bathroom?"

"No."

"How about you?" he asked, motioning to Piper's seatmate, "Miss...?"

"Zoey. And I'm not gonna bang you, dude. But I will bang your head against the seat in front of you if you try talking to me again."

The kid went quiet after that, and Piper smiled at Zoey appreciatively. The plane took off soon after that, and the flight passed smoothly save for the occasional screaming match or fight. Once the plane was in motion these conflicts were solved quickly by more guards in full tactical gear and masks. They deployed stun batons which seemed quite effective and painful. Thanks to them, the last couple hours of the flight were actually fairly quiet- Zoey even fell asleep. The young woman's head fell softly against Piper's shoulder, and Piper was too scared to move a muscle, fearing she would wake. Piper stared straight ahead and had a quiet internal struggle with herself wherein she regretted every little life decision that had lead up to this moment. Even Zoey's soft breath against her chest wasn't enough to dissuade her from regretting ever becoming a lesbian- if she ever got out of this situation she vowed to herself she'd never look at another woman. Even if she was young and fit with soft, pouty lips that were so close to Piper's own... nope, it's back to being straight. You had to choose one or the other- sexuality was binary.

After two more hours of panic and quiet temptation, the plane landed and its occupants were escorted out. From there they were herded through a second set of gates and into a huge cement building with a brutalist aesthetic. Inside, a giant screen hanging from the ceiling greeted them. On it was an older man, handsome and sophisticated, in a black turtleneck and brown jacket. He smiled and gestured toward them.

"Welcome," he said, "to Prison 17."

Chapter Text

"Welcome to Prison 17," said the prison administrator over the speaker system, "You have chosen, or been chosen, to relocate to one of our finest Maximum security prisons. I thought so much of Prison 17 that I elected to establish my main office here, in the facilities so thoughtfully provided by our benefactors. I've been proud to call Prison 17 my workplace. And so, whether you are here to stay, or passing through on your way to the electric chair- welcome to Prison 17. It's more secure here."

Piper stood transfixed for a moment, staring at the image of the white-bearded administrator. Then a guard behind her pushed her forward and she rejoined the line of new inmates being taken to their cell units. She and three other women were herded into one marked 1010 and each handed a sealed plastic bag of new orange uniforms and other essentials before being locked in. Piper stared at her new roommates. Two of them appeared to be black and the other was Asian. The Asian woman was absurdly tall and very fit. She had tied her orange top around her waist and was wearing just a white tank top over her torso. She instantly commanded the respect of the room, but said nothing and so the bigger of the two black women spoke up first.

"Well, I call top bunk!" she said, climbing up the cot on the right.

"Okay, well if you girls don't mind imma just take the other one..." said the shorter black woman, inching towards the cot on the left.

The Asian woman shook her head deliberately and walked left, pushing the girl out of the way as if she wasn't even there. She climbed to the top bunk and the black woman sheepishly sat on the cot underneath her. Piper sat on the cot underneath the taller black girl and removed some of the toiletries from her bag, fidgeting with them absent-mindedly. She started to think about Alex and tried to put the thought of her mind. She didn't know if she would ever see her former lover again, much less her fiancé Larry.

"Hi, I'm Alyx!" said her bunk buddy, hanging upside-down over the side of the cot, "What's your name?"

"Piper."

"Nice to meet you, Piper," said Alyx, lowering her voice to a whisper, "That girl over there is fuckin' scary huh? Like, how the fuck is she so big? Do you think she talks?"

"Um, I don't know. But hey, do you know where we are? Like, what state? Or... or country?"

"Nope. Not really. Where did they bus you from?"

"Um, New York."

"Oh, lucky. They stuck us on a bus from Santa Fe. We were on it for two whole days, just to catch that stupid flight."

"We?"

"Me and my boyfriend," said Alyx "Well, ex-boyfriend now. He got us into some real shit, I tell ya."

"Real shit?"

"Yeah. Hey, you must have done something really bad, huh?"

Piper gulped. Her mind raced back to that strange device she had been given to defend herself by another inmate back in Litchfield. What had that inmate's name been? Judith? There was something off about her. And there was definitely something off about how frighteningly easy it had been to use that orange glowing device to smash Pennsatucky's head in. It gave her shivers even now. Piper shut her mouth and turned towards the wall, away from Alyx.

"Fine, girl. Sheesh." Alyx's head retreated over the edge of her bunk. After a minute a chilling feminine robotic voice came over the speaker system in the cell.

"PRISON 17 WELCOMES IT'S NEW INMATES AND INVITES THEM TO OBSERVE A TRADITION WE HAVE HERE, KNOWN AS 'LIGHTS OUT'. THIS TRADITION INVOLVES THE LIGHTS GOING OUT, YOU GOING ABSOLUTELY STILL, AND NOT BREATHING TOO HARD OR RUNNING YOUR SILLY LITTLE MOUTHS. SLEEP IS OPTIONAL. FAILURE TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS BELOVED TRADITION WILL RESULT IN THE STAFF'S FEELINGS BEING HURT. AND THE ADMINISTRATION OF INTENSE BEATINGS. GOODNIGHT."

With that, the lights in the cell turned out and, after crying for ten minutes or so, an exhausted Piper Chapman fell asleep.

Chapter Text

The next morning, Piper tried to wipe the bleariness from her eyes as she was pushed roughly out of bed by a guard and towards the showers. When she opened them she saw her cellmates already gathered there- the quiet Asian one had somehow pushed her way to the front and was standing in a shower with the curtain open, staring straight ahead at the wall. Several other female prisoners were giving her side eyes. Piper thought about going to close the curtain but something about the silent woman’s biceps, glistening and red from the heat, dissuaded her.

“Damn, she does not give a fuck!” Alyx chirped happily from behind Piper’s shoulder, “She, like, came to max already prison jacked. What do you think is up with that, Rochelle?”

“Girl, she scares me,” said their fourth cellmate. She was leaning against the wall just behind Alyx. “Wherever she comes from, she is not normal. I don’t even wanna know.”

The three women cocked their heads and observed their new acquaintance’s sturdy naked frame for a moment. For her part, their target of fascination didn’t seem to mind or even notice. Then all three realized what they were doing and looked alternatively at the ceiling or wall. Alyx whistled a haunting little melody to herself.

“You get used to some real weird shit in places like this,” observed Rochelle, “Sometimes I forget that none of this is normal.”

“You’re damn right about that,” replied Piper, the words falling from her lips as her mind raced through the dense collection of experiences from her few weeks spent at Litchfield.

Rochelle seemed to appreciate the affirmation, and introduced herself formally to Piper as they waited in line for the showers. The two made basic prison small-talk for a few minutes, with Alyx jumping in excitedly when she had a few words to contribute. By the time Rochelle was next in line to shower she had concluded that Piper was “alright”. Piper smiled lightly to herself for her first time in this strange new facility.

“Well, I heard from another girl that that was the only shower we get this week,” said Alyx as the four women were being lead with their fellow prisoners from the showers to the cafeteria, “So I hope you three all feel extra squeaky clean.”

As soon as she heard this Piper started to feel gross again. She looked over her shoulder longingly at the door to a room which had seemed to disgusting and inhospitable mere moments ago. And yet her new friend Alyx’s wry smile and gung ho approach to even these conditions made them almost tolerable.

In the cafeteria, the curious gas mask-wearing guards corralled the women roughly towards the breakfast line and turned to guard the doors. The food on display here was even less appetizing than what Piper had recently grown accustomed to. The cold eggs being served from metal ramekins by a couple of unshaven and disheveled male prisoners looked so desaturated under the harsh lighting that she could barely distinguish them from the other food item being served: a disgusting gray slop.

“What is that, oatmeal?” Piper said out loud to herself as she grabbed a tray and stepped in with the procession of hungry inmates.

“Girl, those are grits,” Rochelle replied, “I… I think. Shit.”

“Let’s call it what it is, ladies,” Alyx said, “It’s a gross gray goop!”

“Gross gray goop,” Piper repeated, and smiled to herself.

With her tray loaded up with food, Piper turned around and looked for a place to sit. At one table she spotted Zoey sitting across from the young man who had been harassing both of them on the plane. Piper walked up next to her and quietly asked her if she needed help.

"No," said Zoey, "He's pretty harmless. I'm just watching him try to wrap his brain around basic concepts. It's pretty entertaining. Come, sit with me."

Piper cautiously placed her tray down next to Zoey's and sat in front of it. Her two new friends, who Piper realized knew even less of the hall’s occupants than she did, followed suit. Across from the line of women was the young man from the plane, whom Zoey addressed as "Scout" as she playfully bantered with him. Now that he was in a Prison 17 uniform, he looked even more boyish. It was probably a medium but it was clearly too big for his wire-thin frame.

“Hold on, Scout- start over from the beginning,” goaded Zoey.

“U-uh, well...” Scout stammered, pressured to perform in front of this new audience, “I had to take the top bunk last night, ‘cause when I tried to give it to Heavy he broke the thing.”

“Who’s Heavy?” asked Alyx.

“That’s my guy, yo,” Scout answered offhandedly, “Anyway, Heavy sleeps like a rock, but I noticed that enemy soldier givin’ him a real mean look. So I get outta bed and I start givin’ him the business and- all of a sudden, he grabs me! Picks me right up off the floor!”

“Who?” asked Alyx.

“Misha- I-I mean Heavy!”

The girls all giggled amicably at the Russian's name. Scout’s cheeks burned a bright red.

“Shut up!” he yelled pleadingly, “Anyway, I guess the guy was still sleeping the whole time- he musta’ been really tired and I was disturbin’ em. So he just lifts me into his bed and keeps sleepin’!”

“What? No way!” said Alyx disbelievingly. Zoey laughed again.

“Tell her!” Zoey demanded between fits of laughter.

“Tell her what?”

“Tell her where you spent the night!”

“I mean, uh, you don’t know ‘im, but… Heavy’s a big guy, and I couldn’t really get outta there...”

“You could’ve woken him up, man!” wheezed Rochelle, breaking into laughter again herself.

“S-sure, but… he seemed so peaceful.”

At this the women couldn’t contain themselves. Even Piper broke into that true feral laughter which mends the soul and steers the mind from dark thoughts and loneliness. In that giddy reverent moment of comedy regarding the foolish male youth, Piper caught Alyx’s eyes and some measure of the beauty in her sweet voice. Alyx’s smile was captivating; a glimmering assembly of perfect white teeth and full soft lips. Piper grew slightly self-conscious of her own thin white lips but leaned into the moment’s merriment.

Piper looked away from Alyx, almost overwhelmed by the radiance of the young woman’s golden brown skin. She craned to see the even younger-looking Zoey’s beautiful smile in profile, while Zoey was still regarding the blushing Scout. Zoey wiped a mirthful tear from her eye and brushed it down her soft white cheek, leaving a thin trail of dew and a sparkling blue pupil. That pupil shook and drew towards Piper, and for a moment the smiles disappeared from both women’s faces.

Piper’s heart beat in her chest. In a few mere minutes, her breakfast tray and it’s uneaten contents would find themselves in the garbage, and Piper’s thin growling stomach would find itself undulating with a rapid ferocity. Around this time a smile would reappear on the face of the young Zoey Eichmann. A confident smile which denoted a certain triumph of dominance and will.

This was the first lesbian dealing in the homosexual game Ms. Eichmann played- one which would come to define the landscape of Prison 17 and the surrounding occupied lands.

Chapter Text

Zoey licked her lips and cheekily smacked Piper’s thighs. The blonde sighed happily and breezily whipped her hair back off of her face so it collected atop her head. She took Zoey by the elbows and pulled the smaller girl up off her lap so the two were pressed together chest to chest against the shower wall. Zoey pushed against Piper’s forehead with her own and planted a wet kiss on Piper’s lips, filling her mouth with her own flavor.

The two rested like that for a minute until they heard the footsteps of a guard drawing near the bathroom entrance and rushed to pass one another their clothes. Once both were dressed, Zoey let Piper leave the bathroom first. She exited and tried to sneak back to her cell, sidling around a trash bin at the end of the hall and turning a corner, where she was immediately approached by a guard. The guard was presumably male, but wore one of the strange gray masks with empty black eye-holes and two ring-shaped breathing apparatuses which hid their appearance and distorted their voice.

“Oh, hello there officer!” Piper waved, putting on her lost-little-hetero-lamb voice, “I think everyone musta’ forgot about me, nobody came to escort me back to my cell after bweakfast!” She heard the w sound she made when pronouncing the word breakfast and cringed at herself.

The guard said nothing for a moment, then stepped forward and pulled out a black baton. Piper winced, anticipating the worst, and heard the ping of aluminum as the officer knocked an empty soda can off the top of the heap of garbage in the bin. They pointed with a black glove toward the dislodged container several feet down the hall.

“Pick up that can,” a distorted robotic voice from the apparatus on the guard’s mask commanded.

Piper faked a smile and nodded, turning to walk to the can. She bent over to pick it up. Peeking upside-down between her legs, she clocked the guard leaning toward her with a hand on their hip and both eye-holes pointed directly at her ass. Piper sighed to herself, dreading a lifetime of dealing with pervy male guards such as this guy and others like him. She walked back to the bin and was about to drop the can in when the guard reached out his hand, palm side up.

Piper gave him the can. The guard made a strange robotic noise, turned, and began leading her back to her cell. As Piper approached she noticed Rochelle giving her a suspicious look through the bars. Alyx was laying on her bed and staring at the ceiling. The quiet Asian girl was on her bed too, sitting straight up and staring straight ahead at the wall.

Once the guard had unlocked the gate and let her inside, staring a bit too long during the process, Piper tried to diffuse the awkward tension in the cell a bit by engaging one of its occupants in conversation. Of the three available inmates, she opted for the intimidating Asian girl, who seemed the least pissed.

“Hey there, I just wanted to say hi to you personally, and maybe clear something up?” Piper began, approaching the Asian’s bed diplomatically, “I really respect you and your, um, physique and aura and everything, and like, your choice or maybe condition of, um, not really talking? But due to that, the other girls and I have mostly been calling you ‘that Asian girl’, and I’m realizing now that I’m starting to even do it in my head which is making me feel kinda weird about myself and I was thinking maybe you’d prefer it if we didn’t have to do that? Because I know a lot of girls call me ‘that white girl’ or ‘Taylor Swift’ and I don’t feel super great about it. So, like, maybe there’s a way for you to let us know what your name is? Whatever works for you.”

The Asian girl sat and blinked at Piper. She then very quickly jolted off her bed, bringing her face within a few inches of the blonde. Neither woman moved for a moment. Piper was terrified. She could hear her cellmate’s breathing and the slight raising and lowering of her chest beneath her white tank top, but could detect no other sound or movement.

“O-okay, just let me know!” Piper said and rushed to her own bed. After a moment, the Asian woman climbed to her cot and sat back down. Piper breathed a quiet sigh of relief and silently tried to calm herself down. Above her, Alyx didn’t make a noise either, nor did she lean over the side of the bunk to greet Piper with a smile, though she kept expecting her to. Piper’s normally cheery bunk-mate was unusually solemn, and so the tension among the four women in Cell 1010 remained unbroken, until the chilling feminine robotic voice from yesterday came sounding over the loudspeakers.

“WILL THE HUMAN INMATE PIPER. CHAPMAN. PLEASE REPORT TO COUNSELING IMMEDIATELY,” it spoke. Piper felt herself start to sweat. It was already starting to feel like a long day, and it wasn’t even eleven yet.

Chapter Text

“I WILL NOW UNLOCK YOUR CELL GATE, PIPER. CHAPMAN.” the robotic voice continued. The syllables of Piper’s name were delivered at a different tone and frequency than the rest of the speech, “AS PART OF OUR INMATE COUNSELING INITIATIVE, INMATES ARE ENCOURAGED TO TRAVEL TO THEIR SESSIONS ALONE, WITHOUT AN ESCORT. THIS DEMONSTRATES INITIATIVE AND HAS BEEN STATISTICALLY PROVEN TO LEAD TO A GREATER SENSE OF CONFIDENCE AND WELL-BEING. HOWEVER, IF YOU DO NOT REPORT TO THE COUNSELING CENTER WITHIN 4.5 MINUTES YOU WILL BE PHYSICALLY DISCIPLINED, WHICH HAS BEEN PROVEN TO LEAD TO A LOWER SENSE OF CONFIDENCE AND WELL-BEING. ADDITIONALLY, IF ANY OTHER OCCUPANT OF YOUR CELL TRIES TO LEAVE WHILE THE GATE IS OPEN, I WILL FORCEFULLY OVERRIDE THE LOCKING SYSTEM ON THEIR LEG, WHICH WILL TRIP THEM AND CAUSE THEIR SKULL TO BREAK ON THE FLOOR, WHICH WILL BE VERY FUNNY. HA. HA. HA.”

Hearing this, Rochelle took a step back from the metal bars near the gate and looked around for cameras. Piper herself hesitated as she was leaving, disturbed by the voice’s violent threat. Alyx spoke up for the first time since Piper’s return from the bathroom:

“Damn, remind me not to piss her off!”

Piper hurried down the hall, following the small fluorescent signs on the ceiling which bore the words “COUNSELING CENTER”. She did not stop until she came to a similarly marked door. It swung ominously open as she stepped towards it, and inside was a red-haired woman at a desk. She wore a turtleneck and her hair was in a tight bun. She was on the older side of forty and her features were quite sharp, yet among them her smile was not entirely unpleasant.

“Ah, Miss Chapman” spoke the stranger, “So nice to finally meet you. I’m Dr. Mossman. Or Judith, if you prefer. We don’t really worry too much about titles here.”

She extended her finger and motioned around the room. The counseling center’s walls were concrete like the rest of the prison’s, but painted a comforting blue. Oak picture frames containing what looked like stock photos lined a corridor connecting several doors to the main office. Here, a pristine cream couch was laid at a discreet angle towards the desk. Piper sidled pertly over to it and sat.

“Right, okay Judith. What was it you needed from me? The robot lady made it seem really urgent.”

“Oh, don’t mind her. This is just an initial intake session. I thought it important to get out of the way because of the, um, manner in which you came to us.”

Piper’s posture stiffened against the plump cream cushions. She flashed back to Pennsatucky’s small and mangled frame. All the moments surrounding blurred together in her memory. Yet she could still pick out the one before when she’d found the glowing orange weapon.

“I’m, uh, not sure...”

“Piper Chapman. Litchfield Penitentiary. Criminal conspiracy and money laundering, correct?”

“...Yes...”

“Yes… might have to up that to murder...” Dr. Judith Mossman mumbled under her breath, looking at a file on her laptop.

“Oh, shit, I knew it,” Piper said to herself. Pennsatucky was dead. She felt like she was going to cry, or vomit. Something needed to happen, and she couldn’t be in this office anymore. She wished she was home with Alex- or Larry, she meant Larry. Of course it would be Larry. Right now she would settle for a cell.

“Hey- it’s alright, it’s alright,” Judith said. Her eyes were wide and sincere, her tone even as if a potential murder charge was nothing to fuss over. “I said we might have to. But I’ve already discussed this with Dr. Breen and there’s no need for that as long as you cooperate. I find it very likely that Miss Doggett will make a full recovery, if you can just tell me what you know.”

“I… I don’t know anything.”

“Really? Sixteen feet of iron fencing, you managed to pull that out of the ground? I’m impressed, Miss Chapman. Really. But a young woman doesn’t wind up in Miss Doggett’s condition out of nowhere. And trust me when I say we intend to recover any mislaid proprietary technology which may have been involved.”

“We?”

“The organization I represent.”

Piper wanted to tell the truth, but she couldn’t. The only think she knew aside from the basic properties of the orange gun was a name. The name of the person who had given it to her, and told her to use it. The name was the whole reason she had gone to Litchfield, the reason she now found herself in this strange place. The name had betrayed her, yet she couldn’t betray the name even if it would forevermore be nothing more than a name.

The name she couldn’t say was Alex Vause.

Chapter Text

Piper made her way back to her cell unescorted. There was no guard to unlock it for her, so she stood in front of it, observing Alyx and Rochelle looking up curiously at her from what they were doing. As she stood there, the feminine robotic voice came over the loudspeaker again:

“ALYX. VANCE. YOU WILL NOW REPORT FOR YOUR SURPRISE COUNSELING SESSION. CONGRATULATIONS.”

The gate opened. Alyx set her book down and walked over. As she was passing Piper she lowered her voice and whispered:

“What did you tell them?”

“-Huh? Um-”

But Alyx didn’t slow her gait, and was soon already gone.

The truth was Piper had hardly told them anything. She had described the properties of the gun- the metal construction, the glowing barrel, the improbable effects it had upon physics. But she had fabricated an unlikely story about finding the thing in a bathroom stall. To aid her lie she had mentioneda suspicious woman frantically searching said stall afterwards. She had described the woman in general enough terms that Dr. Mossman’s mysterious organization would have trouble narrowing their search by much- though in her head Piper had been thinking of Blanca Flores.

In the cell, Rochelle and the Asian girl were sitting together on Rochelle’s cot. As Piper came in Rochelle cast a worried look in Alyx’s direction and then turned to Piper.

“So… while you were gone Chell told us her name. It’s Chell,” she said.

“...Chell? Really? How did she tell you? Did she write it down or say it?”

“No… it was Alyx’s idea. It took us a while. There was a lot of… jumping involved.”

“Jumping?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

Piper looked curiously from Rochelle to their still mostly mysterious cellmate. Chell face was as inscrutable as ever. There was little else to do, so all three waited for Alyx to come back from the counseling center.

When Alyx returned, she was being escorted. In this case it was quite necessary, because the normally jovial young woman looked like she would have had trouble walking on her own. Her lip was actively bleeding down her neck, and there was clotted blood on her cheek. Her temples and what Piper could see of her arms were bruised and purple. Alyx’s whole body seemed to sag and crumple disturbingly. She had her arm over the shoulders of one of the masked guards, who was handling her surprisingly carefully considering they were probably one of the people who had done this to her.

The guard unlocked the gate with Alyx still hanging off their shoulders. She let go of them and started walking into the cell on her own. Though the guard reached out, it was too late as Alyx’s left leg gave out from under her and sent her crumpling to the floor. She let out a pathetic little wail and Piper’s dark eyes burned furiously. She marched up to the guard.

“What the fuck?!” Piper spoke, nearly yelling, “What did you do to her?”

“Nothing,” came the distorted reply as the guard tried to get past her. There was something familiar about the cadence of their artificially garbled speech.

“Hold on… you’re that fucking creep from earlier!” Piper cried, jabbing an accusatory finger in the vicinity of the guard’s face, “God damn it, what kind of douchey state school for date rapists did you drop out of? You shouldn’t be working in a place like this!”

The masked guard took a step back and reached his hand towards his belt. Piper felt that familiar “I fucked up” sensation flood her mind as he whipped out his baton and flicked a switch on the weapon, sending tiny bolts of electricity buffeting up its length. There was a tense moment as the guard and the white inmate faced each other. Then, he simply holstered his weapon and left through the gate.

Rochelle and Piper rushed to the collapsed Alyx, trying to get enough leverage to lift the injured woman to Piper’s cot. Both struggled and only managed to lift her a few inches before Alyx slipped from their grasp and fell back to the floor. Piper was reaching back for Alyx’s arm when she felt a strong hand wrap around her own and pull her away from her new friend. Chell nudged Rochelle away too and lifted Alyx up almost five feet in both arms to the height of her chest. The strapping young woman laid Alyx out on Piper’s bed and promptly walked directly back to her side of the cell.

Rochelle and Piper leaned over their hurt friend. Rochelle seemed to make a point of not touching her, but when Alyx reached her hand out Piper couldn’t help but hold it and begin to cry. She had already known this place was brutal, but it was now clear to her that much like in Litchfield she wouldn’t be the one to bear the brunt of this system’s atrocities. She couldn’t help but feel responsible for Alyx’s pain, but was unable to channel that feeling into anything useful. Instead, she cried and redirected the attention of the cell’s occupants to her. Rochelle backed off a few feet from the bed, clearly uncomfortable with what was happening. After a few minutes of sobbing that she was sorry it occurred to Piper to ask Alyx the last question the black woman had posed to her.

“What… what did you tell them?” Piper asked, stifling her sobs.

“I… fuck,” Alyx said, and spit a gob of blood out on the floor, “...I’m sorry, Piper. I told them. I told about Vause.”

Piper let go of Alyx’s hand, and it dropped to slam against the metal of the cot. Alyx bit her bleeding lip to silence a yowl. Piper apologized, but she couldn’t have helped it. The skin of her fingers had suddenly felt very cold.