AN: I am so sorry…

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"Things were all good yesterday

But then the devil took your breath away

And now we're left here in the pain

Black suit, black tie, standing in the rain

And now my family is one again

Stapled together with the strangers and a friend."

-'Afire Love' by Ed Sheeran

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Alex burst into the emergency room. Blind, she ran over to the receptionist's desk, quickly yelling, "Diane Vause, I'm her daughter, where is she?!"

Piper trailed behind her, not knowing what to do. She had tried to calm Alex down the entire ride back from Maine, none of it had worked. Nothing the blonde could say would stop the brunette from beating herself up.

Alex's brain was running a mile a minute. She was cursing herself for letting her phone die, for not charging it until the next day. For getting married and for going on her honeymoon, it could've waited; it could've been put off. She shouldn't have left her mother when she needed her the most. She should have never put herself first, she should have never been as happy as she was now. But the thing was she wasn't happy. Not now, and probably not for a very long time, if ever again.

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Piper couldn't see Diane like this, couldn't see Alex like this. So she stayed behind, outside of the small hospital room that was dark and looming. In that moment, Piper Chapman was a coward because Alex Vause was brave, and that's the difference between them. Married or not, this was something that neither one of them expected would come between them.

Nicky sat in the hallway in between Piper and Lorna. The small brunette had been there when Piper and Alex showed up, but Alex hadn't see her, hadn't see anyone, and Piper didn't care to ask.

They were all quiet, the only sound that could be heard was Alex's muffled sobs from inside the room as the doctor came and broke the news to her. Diane had a little less than 24 hours since when she had been brought in, and she wasn't going to wake up beforehand.

Nicky kept side-eyeing Piper, no doubt giving her condescending looks for not being in there with her wife.

Alex had only cried since going into the hospital room, it shocked Piper, never had the blonde seen someone so broken before, and it scared her to know that this was Alex while her mother was still breathing.

Lorna had been holding Nicky's hand through the majority of the night, the red head didn't really think much of it, the smaller woman never dealt well with hard topics such as death. Nicky had heard Lorna talking to Christopher earlier on the phone; she kept having to explain the situation to him as to why she wasn't home yet, and wouldn't be for a while. On top of that, she had been wiping away tears as she apologized over and over again to him, Nicky was fucking furious. The read head seemed to be the only one that was properly in touch with her emotions.

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Alex sat beside her mother, holding the frail woman's hand tightly. She couldn't believe this was it, this was the end of the road for the strongest, most passionate and hardworking person she knew.

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"You know, it's still early enough for you to file for an annulment." Nicky said casually as the three of them sat in the hard plastic chairs that lined the hallway.

"Fuck you." Piper mumbled. Her eyes were glassy as she stared at a crack in the linoleum; it was a surprise that she had heard the shorter woman at all.

Nicky shrugged, "Well you can't run for Wife-y of the Year with your ass sitting out here."

Piper turned to face her, "You're supposed to be my friend!"

The red head nodded, "Yeah, until you turn into a horse's ass and I jump ship."

"What does that even mean?" The blonde asked, exasperated.

"That the S.S. Piper is a terrible place to live; there are holes in your sails princess."

Piper grinded her teeth, saying nothing. She knew that she was in the wrong, but she was also comforted by her own selfishness.

"Vause gets me in the divorce." Nicky muttered, a finality in her tone.

Piper stood abruptly, "It's Vauseman, and stop assuming that we're going to break up!"

Nicky shook her head, clearly saddened by her friend's words. "That's just the thing; you're in too deep now Piper, it wouldn't simply be breaking up. You forget how well I know you, far more than Polly ever has!" Nicky stood to match Piper's stance. "You run. You have ran from everything that has ever been good for you or had the opportunity to, all because you are afraid of commitment, you are terrified of letting someone else take the wheel of your fucking ship, and you know what? You are a dumb fucker because of it! You can't live a life like that, so you need to buck up before you fuck up, or you're going to lose Alex, and I won't be there to help you pick yourself back up."

Nicky stood; pulling a shell shocked Lorna behind her. She leaned into Diane's room, and told Alex that she would be back once she had dropped Morello off at home.

Piper spun on her heel and kicked the leg of a chair, making a loud bang as she sent the chair back into the wall. She quickly looked around; there was no one in the hallway with her, the lone late shift nurse was currently in one of the rooms, making her rounds.

It was 2am on what was supposed to be day 4 of their honeymoon, and they were sitting in a hospital awaiting death.

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Alex didn't sleep for a solid 48 hours. Diane had passed away just after 4am that morning, so much for 24 hours. In Alex's experiences, doctors were a joke.

For the past two days she has been staring at the wall in her apartment. Piper didn't even try to console her, it was pointless.

That night, Piper had inched her way into the room around 3am, but kept her distance, leaning against the wall beside the door, ready to run if she needed to, which is what she did around 3:30am, when she went to get coffee. Alex had barely heard her, and didn't respond when the blonde had asked if she wanted anything. Piper had yet to return, and it was two hours after the fact. Diane was already gone.

Alex hadn't noticed any of this, the only reason she knew that Piper wasn't in the room was because of Nicky's constant strew of profanities, cursing the blonde and her future bloodline.

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Lorna had found Piper asleep in the cafeteria, a cup of coffee sat in front of her, completely full, with steam no longer rising from it, it was lukewarm at best.

To the small brunette, the table the blonde was sat at didn't hold much significance, but Piper had. It was where she and Alex had truly started their lives with that god forsaken key; it was where they had first gotten the news of Diane's impending fate.

The reason they were back in New York, was because Alex's aunt Kathleen had brought Diane down to her house to make final decisions on what was going to who, Alex was getting everything, with the exception of an old pair of leg warmers that Kathleen was getting as an old joke.

Diane had started to feel an excruciating pain in her lower abdomen. Kathleen had taken her straight to the hospital where Diane was taken in for an immediate CAT scan. The results had come back positive; the cancer had spread out through the entirety of the older woman's body. It was something the doctors knew that they were going to be faced with eventually without the use of chemo. Diane wasn't surprised and Kathleen had been practically inconsolable.

Kathleen had tried to call Alex and Piper, but both their phones had been shut off, so Diane had told her to call Nicky.

Soon after Diane's 24 hours turned into 12 as she lay in a coma, never to wake again.

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Piper had kept to her side of the bed last night. She hadn't offered Alex her embrace, and the brunette hadn't asked for it.

Piper knew that what she was doing was the worst thing she could possibly do to her wife, but she didn't know what to do. This is what she knew best, what she was taught growing up, to act as if nothing happened, to act cold and composed. Alex was the complete opposite, she walked around like a zombie once more, reminding Piper of the time several months before where Alex had nearly drank her way into a rehab.

Piper had gotten up several hours before, now sitting at the kitchen's bar, sipping at her coffee and scrolling through her phone. She hadn't spoken to Polly yet since she had gotten back from Maine, she should probably meet her for lunch, she could bring Alex back a sandwich since she wasn't going into work for a while.

Piper dialed Polly's number, telling her briefly of what had happened, and that they should meet for lunch, Polly told her to bring Alex, and she would bring Pete, but it never happened. Instead Piper went alone, leaving Alex to make calls to arrange the funeral with a pile of used tissues by her side.

Piper knew that it was wrong of her to leave her wife in such a state, but she couldn't handle it, the sadness that hung over their apartment, she was suffocating.

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"What the fuck Piper?! Diane dies and you just shut down? You can't do this fucked up shit anymore. You can't be a selfish bitch when Alex is home right now, alone and broken while you're out here drinking a fucking latte and acting like everything is fine." Polly said as soon as she saw that Piper was alone. She had known the blonde a long time; she knew Chapman bullshit when she saw it.

Piper shrugged, taking another sip of her coffee and looked to Pete who sat in the booth beside his pregnant girlfriend across from her, closest to the window. He wasn't looking at her.

Polly tried again to break through to her best friend. "I know you Piper, you're going to break eventually whether you let it happen or not, and when that happens you have to suck it up and be there for Alex like you should be right now."

Piper listened, but didn't respond to what Polly had said. Polly was right, she knew that, but she didn't want to admit it. Piper didn't like being wrong, so wrong in fact that she was currently destroying a week old marriage.

Polly finally simmered down some to actually eat her lunch, leaning back into the worn leather; she spoke once more in more of a blasé tone. "Nicky is fucking pissed at you."

"I know." Piper mumbled.

"You know that it's going to take a lot to get her un-pissed at you."

"I know."

Piper decided to leave early, getting her lunch wrapped up along with an order of fries and a BLT for Alex. It was time for her to buck up before she could fuck up any more than she already had.

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Alex had just gotten off the phone with the funeral home. The funeral was set for the day after the next, and the pressure of it all could be felt right in the center of her chest. She had to call everyone, find a dress she could wear, find Piper, wherever the fuck she had gone.

Alex was starting to miss the blonde; she didn't necessarily blame the girl for her lack of comfort. Alex did notice that Piper had checked out soon after they had reached the hospital two days ago. Alex knew, and she didn't expect anything less from her, Piper had warned her once that she was a runner, that she didn't stick around when the going got tough. Alex figured that it meant something that the blonde still slept beside her at night, that she even came home at all.

Alex knew that she hadn't been anything but a silent, sobbing mess, but that was about to change. She was no longer going to let Piper take advantage of Alex's carelessness, because she cared now.

The front door shut then, sending Alex into a spiral of immediate turmoil, the world went on without her mother. Even if it was just Piper coming home from wherever she had been, it made Alex realize that Diane's life ending wasn't news worthy, it wasn't going to affect hundreds of thousands of people, that no one was going to feel the way she felt now. No matter how much Kathleen cried and Piper looked at her with worried, blank eyes, no one could even begin to understand the deep wrenching feeling in her gut, the lack of something, of not having your entire heart and having to learn to live with only half of it.

Piper slipped out of her heels and hanged her coat up on the hook beside the door. She figured that Alex was still in their bedroom, so she set the food down on the counter and made her way down the hallway to her wife.

Alex lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling. She had a pained look on her face and it made Piper take a quick, shallow intake of breath. The sharp pang in her chest that had decided to reside there for the past couple of days was all because of this woman's pain right in front of her. She stepped closer to the bed, making a point not to say anything. She knew that Alex had heard her come in, she knew that her wife saw her standing not even two feet away from her, yet she made no intention to acknowledge her presence.

"Al, I got us lunch." The blonde said timidly, she didn't know what kind of mood the brunette was in, her face was unreadable. She could either be ready to throw something or to burst into tears. Piper reached out to Alex, sitting down on the bed next to her feet and ran a soothing hand up and down the taller woman's calf.

Alex turned to look at Piper, fighting a frown, and even managed a ghost of a smile for her wife.

Piper looked back at her, looking into Alex's watery green/gray/blue eyes that never seemed to want to stay one color. She looked at her blotchy red face, her nose that was rubbed raw from the tissues, and fell in love all over again.

"Come on, you haven't eaten since yesterday." Piper said, grabbing Alex's hand and pulling her into a sitting position.

Alex searched the blonde's face for something, anything that would tell her why it took Piper two whole days to kick into wife-y mode. "Why are you doing this?" she whispered.

Piper's eyes widened, she hadn't heard that husky voice since the cabin. The voice was sad now, heavy, and much more rough than husky. Piper's knees still buckled either way. "Because I love you." She mumbled in reply.

Alex nodded slowly, of course Piper loved me, she thought.

"Come on, we can even eat in our underwear like old times." Piper said, a little bit louder than their current conversation had been. She asked Alex to raise her arms above her head and pulled her shirt off of her. Alex hadn't been wearing a bra.

Piper sucked in air through her teeth, making a hissing noise, before smiling warmly at her wife. "I'll be right back." She quickly plated the food and brought it back to the bedroom, setting the plates down before pulling her own clothes off, matching the brunette's attire by just wearing a pair of lacy panties.

They ate their food in silence, never quite speaking, and after they were finished, Piper made love to Alex. It was slow, and gentle, and afterwards they both cried.

They lay together, Piper's hand playing with dark curls.

"The funeral is the day after tomorrow." Alex whispered into the still air. She hadn't looked at Piper's face yet.

Piper stayed silent for a beat longer than would deem appropriate. What was she to say? I'm sorry? Alex knew that she was sorry, she knew that everyone was sorry, because no one knew what to tell someone when their parent died, it was never written down in a guidebook for them to know.

"I love you." Piper said instead, because it was the only thing she knew to be true, the only thing she knew that could get them through this.

"I know." Alex spoke, hurt clear in her voice. "I love you too."

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"Diane Vause was a gift to us all? Are you fucking kidding me?" Kathleen grumbled beside Alex. The funeral home had offered to make little cards for the burial.

They were all dressed in black, Piper's hand clasped in Alex's tightly. Alex had yet to let go of it since they had gotten out of the car a half hour prior.

Nicky had showed up with Lorna, which wasn't that much of a surprise, Christopher had to work claimed Lorna.

Polly sat in a folding chair with Pete beside her, she was starting to look more and more like a whale these days.

Alex smiled at her aunt's antics. It was true, the cards were cheesy, and if her mother had been here to see them, she would have ripped every last one of them up into shreds.

Piper had looked over at Nicky during all of this in which the red head had given her a thumbs up when she saw that the newlyweds were holding hands, it was a start.

That was probably the saddest part about all of this, Alex and Piper had just gotten married the week before, and now they were at a funeral, talk about book ends. This was the very reason they had gotten married in the beginning of November, Diane's time wasn't up for another month, they had thought that they would have her for just a while longer. There were a few other people milling about the grave site, co-workers and employers that Diane had considered friends, even the old woman that lived next door came.

Diane was being buried in New York, where she had been born and raised, where Alex had been born and raised. Alex had yet to talk about it with Piper, but the brunette had wanted to move back to New York since she had dropped out of Smith. She knew it wouldn't be possible for at least another year, but still, being in her home town brought back just enough nostalgia to miss the state and not the town. Alex wanted to build a life there, with Piper.

Once Diane's coffin had been lowered into the ground, each of them had gotten the chance to throw a handful of dirt over it and say a few words.

"Diane, I know we've only met each other a few times, but I knew I was your favorite." Nicky had said, grabbing a handful of dirt off of the ground. "I did try and get ahold of that Butler guy for you, but it was no use, he's making a movie right now, his agent told me to fuck off too so there's always that, Hollywood drama and all." The red head ignored the burning she felt in her eyes, she didn't like to cry, especially in front of people, so she bit her lip and dumped the dirt into the grave. "See you on the other side pretty lady, and save me a beer so we can talk shit about Alex when I get there."

Next came Piper, she let go of Alex's hand reluctantly as she made her way slowly to the pile of dirt. She wobbled slightly in her heels, it had rained the night before, she could feel her feet sinking into the mud, making her wish that it was quick sand.

She picked up some dirt, holding it tightly in her hand and spoke, "Diane, you were the mother I sadly could not have. You treated me as your own, and let me have your daughter when you needed her most. I don't think I'll ever be able to thank you enough for that, like right now, there are no words that could be strung together to formulate a sentence to describe you. I know that I will never forget you, because I see you every day in Alex." She sniffled slightly, her back still to the people that sat in chairs. Her hollow voice rung out through the empty cemetery, just more proof that over time, you're either forgotten, or people decide that you aren't worth remembering.

The blonde pressed on, "You told me once that you had never seen Alex look at anyone the way she looks at me, and it amazes me to think that I had gotten to have both of you for a little while. Anyone that had gotten to know you would've known how much of a spit fire you actually were, how much you cared, and how much you didn't." she chuckled at that last part, before clearing her throat, tears beginning to streak down her face. "So thank you Diane, for making all of our lives just a little bit brighter, and for giving me the best gift anyone could ever give me, my wife and your daughter. I'll get her through this, I promise." Then she let the dirt fall through her fingertips, feeling as though she was letting go of a part of herself, only a fragment of what Alex was losing.

Piper turned back to her chair, sitting down as Kathleen stood.

Alex took Piper's hand again in her own as she listened to her aunt make her speech.

"Diane, you were the best sister anyone could have ever asked for, I know that sounds cheesy, and you would probably smack the hell out of me for even saying it, but it's true. I know we didn't always get along, and Alex and I never really clicked, but you guys are my family, and as a Vause, I know that."

Piper looked over to Alex, seeing the tears that were beginning to streak down the brunette's face; Piper wiped them away, before Alex had to stand herself.

Alex passed Kathleen on her way up, quickly grabbing at the dirt, clenching it into her fist. "Hi mom." She whispered. Her bottom lip quivered as she stood there. This was it. Diane wouldn't be able to see Alex succeed in life, wouldn't be able to meet her grandchildren. It was the whole reason Alex and Piper got married, so it could be the one thing Diane did get to see.

"I don't know what to say." Alex continued, her hands were shaking and she could barely see through the tears. "I guess I should start with how you raised me." she swallowed. "I used to get picked on by other girls for how I dressed, and you said 'fuck em' because they didn't matter, you were right, I know that now. You did everything possible to get me those clothes, and I should've worn them more proudly. You worked day and night, hours upon hours, just to keep a roof over our heads, and heat to keep us warm, to keep me warm, because I know you wouldn't have worked nearly as hard if you weren't a parent, and I will never be able to find it in myself to ever really know how to thank you for that."

Everyone else was quiet, silent, except for the random sniffle here and there.

"The one thing I can do is promise you that what I have, what I one day will have, I will always fight for it, for Piper, for our future kids. I won't give up on them like dad did. You taught me how to fight, and you taught me how to love, and to this day I have yet to learn of something better." Alex continued.

She knelt down now, not caring whether or not she pulled a hole in her stockings. "Thank you mom, for everything, this isn't good bye, this is a good night, because you are always with me. I love you mom, I'll make you proud."

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AN: So what did you guys think of the first chapter of the sequel? I hope that you guys liked it! Leave me a comment letting me know what you thought! I'll see you next time with another update! A special thank you to reesefries, RachelBarbraBerry, Ralouf26, Irish Courtney, bluepaintbox, g4gusgrisam, and Bryda18 for all of your awesome reviews, keep them coming!