A/N: Poor Emily, losing two of the people she loves the most! Even sadder considering the rest of the main couples had grand romantic moments in the finale. Le sigh. Anyway, this has shades of Emily/Maya, Emily/Paige and Emily/Alison and is set post 'UnmAsked.' Also this fic implies that Alison is still out there somewhere, so if you find that completely implausible, you should probably read something else. All I'm saying is that dream Spencer had featuring Alison didn't seem very dreamlike at all. ;) Title taken from Bombay Bicycle Club.
I can see the love we trapped, coming back
what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire.
Charles Bukowski
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Given past experiences, Emily still isn't ready for this, for the second time over.
None of them girls leave her side that night. They have all crashed back to solid ground faster than Mona was driving off that cliff. Emily struggles to remember Hanna's hand leaving hers after the ambulance leaves, in the blur of the hours past.
It isn't as if Emily was still a believer in the forever type of love; not since her Queen bitch attitude wrapped up in blue eyes and blonde hair locked all that belief away somewhere secret.
Yet none of the lessons learned stop her from sobbing and shaking relentlessly that day, listening but unable to hear whatever words of comfort her friends are trying to give her.
.
.
.
Eventually, the girls know they have to let her be, to mourn her loss alone.
Aria cites her family, and doesn't allow Emily's morose demeanour discourage her from wrapping her arms around her friend tightly in a hug.
Spencer is the next to leave with a kiss on the forehead. "We love you, Em." Her smile is small and sad, and Emily allows fresh mascara tears to steam down her cheeks.
After about an hour sitting together in silence, Emily's head on her shoulder, Emily feels Hanna take her hand again.
"I can't...I can't even begin to understand what you must be feeling." She begins, voice cracking, with a few mascara tears of her own. It's ridiculous, she knows, when her friend is the one in pieces. "Losing Ali and Maya...it isn't fair." She almost growls. "All we can do is be here for you, and you know I always will be."
Emily sits on the edge of her bed and feels Hanna's arms wrap around her in another embrace. "I'm sorry Em. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
She wonders if all the apologies will make the world stop long enough to hear her heart screaming of its loss.
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.
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Maya's funeral takes residence next to the most excruciating ordeal Emily has ever experienced, right beside Alison's.
Hanna wonders if it really is possible to cry yourself dry when she warily realizes that Emily doesn't shed a tear. Not once.
The blonde grasps her friend's hand again as Emily tosses dirt into the grave.
And all Emily thinks about how Maya suffered at the hands of 'A', how this dreaded evil dominates their lives. The threats haven't disappeared along with Mona, and when Emily finds the real name to put to that evil she thinks about how satisfying it would be to take out her own revenge.
After all, secrets don't stay buried in this town.
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.
.
Three days later, she reaches out to Paige.
Initially, she doesn't bother to give the real answer to the question of why she wants to talk to Paige about everything. It's a feeling more akin to need, and Emily needs a friend right now. A friend with a fresh perspective. She loves her three best girls more than anything, but sometimes they're still too tied up by Emily's other best girl.
And ties need to be severed at some point, she reasons.
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.
It's a relief that Paige has her house to herself, if Emily's being honest. She remembers how terrified Paige was of her parents, of knowing herself and coming out to them. It takes a certain kind of bravery to do something like that, but Emily can't help but smile when thinks about how Paige has gone from an even bigger closet case than Emily once was to wearing that suit at the masquerade ball.
She doesn't want or intend for Paige to be her emotional crutch through everything. It isn't her responsibility.
Somewhere along the way of their romantic-comedy marathon, when the guy decides he wants the girl and the girl decides she wants him back and the choice to spend their lives together unfolds within a mere hour and a half, complete with the fairytale ending everyone wants but rarely has, Paige says, "I know it seems far away right now. But you could be happy again. None of this...none of it means you don't deserve that."
Paige still finds a way saving her from drowning; she pulls Emily up for air, reminds her to breathe.
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I'm not going to say goodbye to you again, never.
Emily finds the red scarf that Maya gave her as a gift, when they were just beginning, when they held so much promise, when there were promises of how they would wait for each other, and let's herself feel the loneliness that has been building up inside of her come tumbling down over her. The loneliness she feels when her fingers aren't laced between Maya's.
She wasn't supposed to have this ending again, not with Maya, who was the antithesis of Ali. She's played the tragic heroine before like her best friends, but this time all the pain that other people their age simply call growing the hell up is starting to show.
Every night, she seems to catch sight of the snow-globe Alison gave her, and wonders why she cannot bring herself to put it away with the rest of their past.
Every morning she wakes up, she's clutching that scarf, holding on for dear life.
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Just as swim practice ends for the day, Emily spots Aria sitting in the bleachers. She waves from the pool and remembers Maya cheering, with the goofiest sign ever made, and she can't stop smiling to herself.
"Hey." Aria greets when her friend is finished.
"Hey back." Emily replies. "Bored?"
"Bored of missing people." Aria admits. "Mostly you. Here." She takes a book from her messenger bag and hands it to Emily. "I know you're not some illiterate dumb jock, I think you'll love this one." Aria sees Emily seal herself off these days and knows enough to know that sometimes her words aren't enough, but maybe someone else's can still touch her.
"Fitzy is still staying far away?" Emily enquires, hating the fact that her friend's eyes are wide and glassy. "I'm sorry."
"Me too." She says, letting her head lean on Emily's shoulder. "They're gone and all we can do is feel it."
Emily does not ask who Aria is referring to, but she thinks of Maya regardless.
Then she thinks about bracelets, broken promises, how first love inflicts the kind of mark that Aria probably secretly writes embarrassing poetry about, how some stories seem never-ending, and how Alison just does not feel gone. It isn't the same definite absence as Maya's.
(She tries to cut the ties; but Ali was always their centre and she keeps Emily in her orbit.)
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.
Emily has recurring dreams about Ali, and the setting is always the same – outside the barn.
What they talk about changes over time.
Ali murmurs, "How much do you miss me, Em?" with a playful smile, before leaning down to press her lips softly to Emily's. With Ali, it never stops feeling like the first time.
"Would you have loved her if I hadn't left? The way you loved me?"
Emily doesn't reply. She can't. She only sees the same hurt in Ali's eyes that had at the halowe'en party when Emily couldn't help but stare at Jenna.
(I didn't. I do. I don't.)
The last dream she has involving Alison is the one that slips away the quickest.
"You know I can never come back," Ali begins. Her long, blonde curls remind Emily of a twisted kind of Rapunzel; she wonders who built the tower that Alison is locked away in. "Not for Aria, Spence or Hanna at least. But you," she sighs, knowing that only Emily can understand the vulnerable part of her, "I could come back for you, Em. If you wanted me to."
And then, like Ali's favourite fairytale, Sleeping Beauty, Emily's eyes open and she is released into reality with a kiss.
.
.
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She can't help but feel furious with herself, for still having these dreams about her. It was eerily comforting at first, but now Emily is forced to contend with the realisation that of course she wants Ali back. If not for anything else - serious answers.
The four of them have changed so much, she knows, but wanting Ali back has always stayed the same. She was the heart of the group, and she keeps them bound even when she's gone. And Emily hates that because of it all, she isn't ready to give Paige her whole heart, which is all Emily wanted from Alison in the first place.
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When Paige kisses her on another one of their picnics, it's so far away from when they were here the last time with each other.
"Oh." Is Emily's reply. Oh.
She lets her hand fall over Emily's and tells her, "I'm sorry. I can't help myself around you."
Emily glances at their hands, intertwined.
"Don't be. I want this. I want you." She replies, and her pulse starts rocketing.
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It's a bright, fresh summer day when Spencer randomly shows up at her door without warning.
"Hey you." Spencer greets smiling and Emily laughs warmly, because her friend is smart, so sure of herself, and just a little bit crazy at times. "I just remembered the last time we played, you beat me," she says, shaking her lacrosse stick, "I'm going to have to rectify that."
Emily decides she's going to let Spencer win (she's relentless, but she'd never admit that) and falls down on the grass below them, exasperated. She feels Spencer settle beside her.
"How are you?" Spencer asks, cutting through any chance of small talk with the precision of the surgeon she'll probably become some day, Emily thinks.
"I miss Maya, I'm kissing Paige, and every time I have a dream it's about Ali." Emily relents. "I'm a mess."
Spencer laughs. "I'm sorry for being so...distant, lately."
"It's okay Spence. Toby makes you so happy. That's a good thing."
Spencer leans on her elbows and she's got that wistful look on her face that unnerves Emily slightly. "I had a dream about Alison once. A while ago – I think."
Emily's eyebrows stitch together.
"I mean, it felt too vivid to be a dream. And the next morning I woke up and the door was left open – as if she walked through it and...I don't know, Em. I don't know most of the time if she ever left at all."
Their phones ring at exactly the same second with threats, and Emily gives Spencer a look that says she isn't alone; she's never alone in thinking that Alison's still here.
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And they keep finding Alison in places, over and over again.
The last time they find her, it's like a scene straight from a movie. Aria's mouth forms an 'o' shape as she leans into Spencer with disbelief. Hanna's grip on Emily's hand is vice-like. There are realisations and pieces of the puzzle clicking together with more profound consequences than when they unveiled Mona.
"No matter where I ran, you always caught up with me." Alison declares to the four of them, but she's looking into Emily's eyes.
End