1. Destination unknown

AN / Hi guys, it's me! Since there are no signs of S6 here's a post series five spec piece that I've been toying with for some time. This carries on a week or so from the happenings of when the group are all holding hands in the bunker. All historical events are canon compliant and obviously everything moving forward from there is purely my speculative account of the ensuing consequences. Of course, exclusively Alex / Piper POVs. Please enjoy!

(flashback in italics - the only flashback to feature in this fic)

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The doors slammed open. A frenzy of shouts and screams all of a sudden piercing the air. Darkly dressed men in heavy armour descended into the bowels of the bunker in one moving flurry of black. Seconds later, a low whistling cut through, then a deafening blast. Then another, and another. Piper counted at least six.

The overhead lights were switched off, plunging the space into gloomy darkness. No sooner, foreboding shadows of smoke began to spread far and wide, thick plumes enclosing them all. Smoke grenades Piper distantly realised. She couldn't see a thing, acrid smoke poured through, the noxious fumes of tear gas now beginning to burn her eyes. Tears streamed down her face as she tried to make sense of the increasing disorientation. The bunker was all of a sudden alive with rapid movement, chaos quickly escalating.

Beside her, Alex grabbed for her, their hands grappling for each other in the dark, nails almost digging into her skin.

"Stay down! Stay down!" Piper barely heard Alex's shouts through the series of bangs echoing around them. Another flash, this time so shatteringly loud it momentarily deafened her. Her face was burning, as though someone had dunked it in a vat full of acid. Piper fell to her knees, cowering, white hot fear adding to the mounting turmoil.

Disembodied screams rang all around her, distorted and distant, the ringing in her ears intensifying.

"Six accounted for…fuck, grab that one…another one! Alpha two, do you copy! Do you copy!…Shit, halt the smoke grenades…we got another one!...I repeat, target number is ten!..."

Piper swallowed back a scream when she felt hands roughly pushing her into the ground. Her face scraped painfully into the debris covered ground. In the next second, a knee harshly dug into her back, her spine almost bent out of its shape. Her arms were twisted around her back, hands clamped together with plastic wiring.

Piper twisted her neck, barely able to make anything out through the billows of black smoke and moving bodies. Beside her, Alex's arms were being pulled behind her, an expression of pure and utter pain shooting across her face.

A new rush of despair seized Piper's chest, and for a moment she couldn't breathe and it felt as though history was repeating itself.

"She's got a fucking broken arm!" Piper felt her temper break apart, her screams turning into racking coughs as tear gas needled its way into the back of her throat, "Listen! Stop! Just stop! It's fucking-"

The knee dug into her harder. Piper was all of a sudden pulled off the ground and hauled to her feet. She twisted around, frantically searching for Alex, trying in vain to resist the heavy hands marching her forwards, further and further away from Alex. "You're not listening!" She directed her pleads toward Alex instead, "Alex-"

'Shut the fuck up!" The faceless guard yelled in anger, moving so that he purposefully obscured Piper's view.

Piper kept her head turned, completely unaware of the others stumbling beside her, nor was she aware of the armed man still harshly yelling into her ears. If there was a world beyond this bunker, Piper had no memory of it, didn't care for it. Everything that mattered to her was just metres away lying on the ground.

Piper closed her eyes and wondered how it was possible to still feel her heart hammering so hard and rapid, because something inside of her had already died.

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The cold window pane was a welcome relief to the cloying interior of the bus. The dank air circulating its narrow confines was beginning to turn Piper's uneasy ache spreading across the front of her eyes into a real headache. While the acrid fumes of old diesel oil added to the increasingly sickly feeling brewing in the pits of her stomach.

It must have been well over two hours since they've ate and another hour since they'd last drank anything. But the lack of food and drink was trivial compared to the incessant throbbing of her wrists.

"Is this really necessary?" Piper pointedly levels her gaze at the handcuffs, all reinforced steel and clanging parts that harshly chafed into her skin.

Alex shakes her head in response. She lowered her voice when a CO walked the aisle, slowly passing them as he carried out his patrol, "As far as the Department of Corrections are concerned; we're extremely dangerous felons who deserve to be caged in like animals. I'm surprised we haven't been chained and fucking shackled as well."

Piper didn't miss the bitter undertones skewing Alex's words. She couldn't help but look at Alex's own handcuffs, her right hand had been cuffed to the metal arm-rest while her left was wrapped in a thick hastily put together cast, covered by a sling that bracketed over her chest.

Alex hadn't said much ever since they'd been escorted onto the bus back at Litchfield, instead preferring to blankly stare out into space. Piper could count on her fingers how many words they'd exchanged until now.

It was two whole weeks since armed guards had stormed their way into the underground bunker they had all been hiding in, drawn back in fearful anticipation, clutching onto each other's hands for desperately sought comfort. Smoke grenades had been tossed into the space together with flash guns that had quickly led to panicked pandemonium. Hearts in their throats, they'd all been dragged onto their knees, thrown to the ground, one by one, faces flush with the jagged concrete. Before their final coup de grace where they were violently wrestled into cuffs. The whoops of adrenaline fuelled guards ricocheting off the walls as they blithely waved their guns around in a gesture of hard won authority.

Piper remembers being frogmarched out, cuffed and chained to the others. The sure presence of Alex by her side the only thing that had stopped her legs from giving way and collapsing into a dazed heap. The palpable fright hanging above each and every one of them that day was something Piper would never forget, it was as surely seared into her brain as the screams of anguish back in that room. It was a day or two later when they had been surrendered to the state, as it was called, and were officially declared to be volatile inmates.

It had been another week later when they had been forced to clamber onto a waiting bus without any prior warning, and made to leave all of their belongings behind. Apparently they didn't even have the right to be told where the bus was headed and what was being planned for them.

Litchfield had been immediately placed under a prison wide shutdown and a criminal investigation opened into the death of Humps whose body was eventually discovered during a massive clean up operation a day later. The body had sparked a nationwide media bonanza, dominating every twenty four hour new channel for days to come. The sensationalist story of a federal prison riot involving incarcerated women, sparked by the alleged maltreatment of an inmate, had soon transformed it into a media hot potato - add to that the prospect of a federal employee's murder and the story became a lot whole more insatiable.

"Do you think we're close?" Piper leans in, her growing unease had finally turned itself into a question. She hoped to somehow knock Alex out of her trance.

"I don't know."

"We must have been traveling what…three or four hours maybe? And I think we've definitely already driven out of New York."

"Sure."

Alex says it in the same toneless manner she had for every sporadic response she had uttered since the start of the journey. It's like she's ran out of all happiness and couldn't access any more of it. She continues to stare at the window, gaze heavy-set and impassive. Piper can feel her own forced enthusiasm shrinking, the attempt at conversation dwindling back into yet another tense silence.

"I think we might be due a break possibly," Piper announces after another half hour or so, "We stopped at that rest station in New Haven a while back now."

"Hmmm."

"And the fact it's getting colder definitely means we're heading further north."

"Sure."

Piper falls silent, unable to stop the frown from forming.

Alex doesn't ask. Doesn't expand. Hasn't really reacted. She's just there.

But Piper has to hold it together. She had to harbour a strength that was enough for the both of them.

Because she was not the one who had her arm broken and nearly ended by a rogue correctional officer. No, she shouldn't be complaining. Could not. Should not.

She turns her gaze toward her lap, trying hard in keeping the tears from forming as an uncomfortable heat swathed through her.

The bus rides on. Silence, the third presence wedged between them. For a few seconds Piper was thrown back into the squalid room Piscatella had held them hostage, she; bound and tied and helpless. Piper could still the taste the remnants of raw fear scraping the back of her throat, the ripping belief they weren't going to make it out alive still reverberating inside her head. But it is the compounding terror she was going to witness Alex be killed that bulldozes all the way to the top, her own fruitless screams the loudest in her head. It's an almost surreal ordeal to comprehend and Piper doesn't think she was ever going to outlive the trauma of it.

Piper needs to make sure she's okay, "Alex…"

Alex shifts in her seat, her face inscrutable like always, but Piper can't help but notice the touch of reproach in her eyes, "Look Pipes, I get that you have to talk to feel better but I really don't feel like pretending everything is okay at the moment." She sighs wearily, her tone dull with resignation, "I know that's shitty of me but right now I just can't, okay?"

It's not malicious or even remotely critical, if anything it was said with a note of regret, the tone, that of someone who was desperately trying to hold it together, yet the words are like a punch to Piper's gut. It's an unexpected onslaught that was closely followed by a hot guilt dousing all of her insides. She berates herself for her senseless stupidity, her complete and utter lack of tact. She obviously had to make it all about her, needing to make herself feel better rather than think beyond herself and realise Alex had come off much worse in their ordeal.

Piper quickly shot Alex a remorseful look and apologetically murmured, "Of course. I'm sorry."

But she was already back to blankly gazing at the window. Alex's body language was all wrong, head tilted away, posture tense, and good arm clasped underneath her sling. It was as though she had closed herself off mentally and now; physically too.

The first few nights had been the hardest.

The nightmares had come with waking vengeance, their presence as sure as the earthly sun rising and setting every day. Piper would wake, almost swimming in her own cold sweat as the tried to empty the memories from her head. She had found herself spending longer each time at having to repeatedly reassure herself she was okay...but most of all, that Alex was fine.

Alex was okay. Pipes shies her gaze away from Alex. She was fine, at least in the macro sense.

It was a gradual process, almost unnoticeable, but the vivid fear had changed from all jagged and sharp in its contours to a more rounded, manageable shape. Piper was now able to bolt it shut, only letting it occupy a small part of her mind. If she just left it there, quiet and placid she could almost pretend everything was maybe not so bad.

The bus hit a ditch in the road, the wheels dipping and jolting them all hard. Piper's teeth painfully clamped shut, her head rocking forwards. She plants her cuffed hands against the seat in front for purchase. The monotonous drone of the engine was drowned out by the collective cries of complaints from the passengers. The shrill squeal of brakes being applied dices through the air before the driver manages to correct the bus' centre of gravity.

"Shut the fuck up!" The guard stationed at the front of the bus roars, "This ain't a goddamn zoo, ladies!"

Flores' voice rings from the back, and protests, "Can we at least use our seatbelts? If you uncuff me for a second I'd be able to strap myself in."

The guard, a blonde guy with steelly blue eyes lets out a belligerent scoff and juts his head at his colleague stood toward the back, "You hear that, Sean? This safety conscious bitch wants me to actually uncuff her."

"This crap is against my amendment rights!" Flores exclaims, unheeded by the guards sarcastic remark.

"You find me the amendment that states thou shalt not wear a seatbelt when aboard a jail bus and I'll uncuff you, how about that, huh?"

Sean, a burly guard with a face consuming beard and a grin that said he loved his job a little too much lets out an exaggerated laugh, "Hey princess, America's honest taxpayers are already paying for the mistakes of your sorry asses. One less of you good for nothing bitches wouldn't be such a bad thing."

"Sing it, Sean."

A cold stream of anxiety swims through Piper. She quickly looks down when the blonde guard sweeps his gaze over the contained passengers, daring anyone else to complain about safety regulations or basic human rights for that matter.

These guards were ruthless. They made their Litchfield counterparts look like bumbling untrained idiots. It was in their eyes; the hunger for violence and subjugation leeching out. It was in their clenched fists; wanting to be given the most minor of excuses to exert their male power over a group of tied up and helpless female prisoners.

The bus veers a sharp left, the sudden momentum slamming Piper into Alex who sat beside her. This time everyone had the good sense to keep their complaints internal.

"Shit, Piper!" Alex breathed through clenched teeth, her face turning dark red from the effort to stop herself from crying out in pain.

"Alex!" Guiltily, she pats Alex's arm down, "You okay? I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."

Alex lets out a long exhale, her head slumped against the window, her breathing rapid and shallow. "Fuck... it's not your fault... that asshole driver thinks...thinks he's competing in the Nascar races with his shit driving."

Piper feels absolutely useless, "Are you okay, though?"

"I'm fine." Alex wheezed, her breathing finally and thankfully normalising again.

Piper's guilt though, showed no signs of abating, "You're definitely okay though?" She's already scanning the bus, ready to flag down a passing guard. "You need pain relief. You have a right to pain medication, and a-"

"Piper, stop. I'm fine. We don't need to bring attention onto ourselves."

"Alex, you're hurt. Screw attention. These assholes have a duty of care to make sure everyone in this bus is okay. You're not in a state to be thrown around like a rag doll every time the damn bus driver reminds us he's not fit to drive." She was quickly mounting memories of Alex helpless and broken...at risk of dying. Her fear fuelled the rapidly rising panic of concern, "Let me get one of the-"

"Piper!" Alex hissed, clasping her good hand around Piper's forearm, "I said... stop."

Her voice softens, "You need to take a breather. I'm fine. You're fine. We're both fine…" As an afterthought she adds, "Well physically anyway." She lifts her hand to brush Piper's cheek, and it's the first time Alex properly regards her, "Babe, I know how you're feeling. I do truly and I'm sorry about before. But you have to stop asking whether I'm alright every two minutes, y'know? I'm not going to splinter into pieces every time someone so much as touches me."

Piper nods and fidgets with the hard material of Alex's cast and reluctantly relents, "I just can't help it, you know?" She turns away, embarassed when she hears the obvious catch in her voice. "I keep replaying that horrible snapping sound over and over, Alex. And I…I was just sat there…not able to do anything. You lying there and me not knowing whether he was going to finish the job." She pauses for a second, trying to secure her unravelling thoughts, "I don't think I could have lived with myself if that had happened."

"Hey, hey." Alex manoeuvres herself sideways in her seat, and faced Piper. The action awkwardly restricted by the tight handcuffs. She lifted her head to lock gazes with Piper. Alex's eyes were dark, their green dimmed to an almost grey, a world of carefully concealed pain swimming just below their surface. Her face was beaded with a fine sheen of sweat, and her skin a wanly pale grey under the harsh strobe lights of the bus. "Piper, look at me. You were not just sat there. Don't be ridiculous. You did everything you could, given the circumstances. A mentally unstable giant of an ogre decided when he woke up that day to break my arm, nothing more and nothing less."

Piper's stomach tightened, "You know it was more than that, Al. Don't try and trivialise it."

Alex turns away, her eyes glazing over, face almost crumbling in on itself. Something in Piper's words triggers a belated response that should have been shed days and days ago. They both pretend they hadn't seen it.

"I know it was much more than that." Alex begins, her voice eerily quiet, "But I don't want to keep reminding myself what happened that day. It sucked. It really did." She rests her hand on Piper, expression turning stern, "Like I said; you're fine. I'm fine. And we are together. And to me that's all that matters."

"Okay." Piper murmurs after a while, trying really really hard in accepting Alex's soft reassurances.

The thing was, Piper hadn't really stopped thinking about it. If anything that's all she was aware of. It's like her mind had tuned itself onto one god-awful frequency she was not allowed to change. Sudden flashes of Alex grappling with Piscatella fire through before quickly fading back to black, the images dissipating but then closely followed by the loud ear-piercing crack of bones unforgivably snapped.

Alex then on the cold cemented floor and her watching on helplessly. Too many times Piper had jerked upright from barely there sleep, groggy, and emptily wondering when those memories would finally wane.

It was Alex's turn to ask, "You okay though?"

"Yeah, think so. You?"

"Think so too."

Piper sat back in her seat, her body stiff from being in the same position, and edged herself closer to Alex. She stroked her fingers over Alex's forehead, trailing away a damp lock of hair away from her eyes. Without thought Piper rested her hand on the back of Alex's neck and gently ran her fingers through the dark strands of hair, caressing her softly.

Alex meets her hand and gently pulls it down into her lap, their fingers intertwined in the now gloomy dark - both of them listening to the sounds of the bus as it drove through empty plains of arid land and headed to a destination unknown.

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Piper slept. Her head was rested on Alex's shoulder, a sure and comfortable weight anchoring down her own fears and worries. Through the haze of her reassurances, Alex had almost forgotten the pain that had kept her awake for the duration of the journey.

The searing pain that streaked down her arm now was close to unbearable. There was also the strangest tingling in her hand that would add to the existing throbbing every so often. Alex had been trying to quell down the waves of nausea that threatened to erupt every time the bus took an unexpected lurch or hit a pothole in the road.

Taking heed of the guards patrolling the aisles, she gently ran her fingers through Piper's hair, her sleeping form unperturbed, face slack and free of the tension Alex had grown accustomed to. Piper looked so peaceful, the tranquility of undisturbed sleep so rare to see. Alex felt herself slowly relax, allowing herself to turn down her guard for a few minutes, lulled into a sense of calm by the sensation of Piper's warmth, comforting beneath the pads of her fingers.

Alex had spent most of her life surrounded by people, alone. During her glory days as a drug importer, she'd sought the presence of pretty young things; naive and gullible, in a vague attempt to connect with something. Her mom's diner friends whom she didn't know anything about beyond their first names had also been nebulous dots in her life. So were the countless other people she'd crossed paths with.

Back then, Alex had been perfectly happy with that decision. Sated by her own solitude, it meant she never had to deal with the messy aftermath of failed relationships and broken friendships. She had been content with the emotionless affairs she embarked on when she'd been on the job where the pine for the pleasure of another woman sometimes became too great.

Then Piper had rip-roared into Alex's life, carrying with her, all the zest and zeal of life itself. Alex had found herself quickly deconstructing the thick shell she'd been building since her high schools years, easily allowing Piper access to the most guarded parts of her; her heart. It had never been a conscious decision or one that had needed too much thought.

Alex was all about logic and practicality, it's the code she used to live her life by, but surprisingly with Piper - that had all been pushed aside and instead everything from then on had all been emotion and instinct.

What scared Alex was how easily she'd lost the skill of keeping her emotions checked and internalised. When Piper was around she simply couldn't. They were too attuned to each other's tics and feelings, something unconsciously honed and evolved over the course of a decade.

She shivered when the burst image of a tied up Piper flashed across her mind's eye. What worried Alex even more was knowing that without Piper, that place she had opened up so readily all those years ago would ache, empty and hollow.

Alex rested her head back, trying to ignore the renewed tension racking in her chest. She held Piper closer to her, a little frenzied in her actions. The soothing closeness soon banishing away the dark thoughts.

Loving someone so damn much was such a dangerous thing.

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AN / Thank you for reading, dear all.

This is obviously very much a scene setter a of a chapter, and albeit short.

As always please, please let me know your thoughts!