WHOA, what's this?! An update?! I'm so sorry that it's been such an insanely long time since I've posted a new chapter. Time has gotten away from me, and it wasn't until I started getting into "The Perfectionists" that I found the motivation to continue this. With a new plan for the next few chapters and summer quickly approaching, I don't plan on disappearing for nearly as long again! I hope that people are still interested in this story after so long - please drop me a review to let me know what you think!

*And just as a note, as it's not directly mentioned in the narrative, the majority of Alison's story is the same as explained in 4x24, but the Ezra storyline has been removed. There is also one big change, which is addressed in the chapter.

Chapter 14

"I've been doing a lot of thinking. And now I'm ready to tell you guys everything."

The words cut like a knife through Hanna's gut. Part of her wanted to pinch herself on the arm, see if she jolted awake in bed, the past several hours just a vivid, strange dream. Because in a way, that would have seemed more realistic than this – sitting in a small apartment above a coffee shop in New York City, just feet away from Alison.

Hanna's stomach was churning, and she was pretty sure it wasn't from the two hour long drive. As Alison took a deep breath, she focused on Emily, who was sitting next to Ali, their knees nearly, but not quite, touching. Emily's eyes were wide and concerned, but shining with barely concealed joy.

Hanna tried to channel the same glee, but couldn't quite get herself there. She had dreamed for years that Alison was still alive. The problem was, just as many of those dreams had been negative as positive. For every memory she had of Alison curling Hanna's hair or shooting her a thousand watt smile, there was an equally powerful one of her mouth curving into a sneer as she muttered a nasty comment about Hanna's bulging stomach.

Hanna sat up straighter, self-consciously pushing her hair in front of her shoulders and trying to focus on Alison's words as she began her story.

But it didn't take long for her to get sucked right in, leaving her own insecurities and doubts behind. The next hour and a half passed in a blur. Hanna and the others gasped as Alison described A sneaking into her room to write a taunting message on her mirror. They frowned indignantly when she admitted to slipping sleeping pills into their drinks during the sleepover. They listened intently as she listed the million people she'd crossed off her A list that night – Toby, Ian, Byron, Garrett – and they sobbed along with her, both shocked and disgusted, when she recounted her mother burying her alive.

"I can't believe your mom would do that to you," Hanna breathed, tears streaming down her face as she looked into Ali's stricken one. Emily was sitting beside Ali on the couch, looking horrified as she rubbed her back.

Alison took a deep, shaky breath. She'd remained completely composed as she'd described finding those videos on Ian's computer. She'd barely batted an eyelash as she'd recounted A – Mona, Hanna reminded herself with a lurch of her stomach – threatening to kill her. But she'd crumbled the moment Hanna had asked why Jessica didn't call the police after she'd seen someone bash Ali's head with a rock. Hanna didn't blame her. Ali's mom had always given her the creeps, but she'd had no idea that the woman was capable of something so unimaginably horrible.

"So then what?" Spencer asked, after giving Alison a few moments to compose herself. "You were able to dig yourself out?"

"I was so disoriented that I could barely think," Alison said shakily, wiping away one last tear and wrapping her arms around herself. "But I managed to stick my hand out through the dirt. I wasn't strong enough to pull myself out, but I didn't have to."

Aria uncurled herself from the overstuffed armchair she was sitting in and leaned forward. "Did someone else pull you out?"

Hanna's heart began to pound in anticipation, for about the tenth time that night, as Alison nodded. "Who was it?"

Ali let out a breath, then looked directly at Hanna. "It was Mona."

…

"I'm scared for you, Alison." Mona pressed a damp cloth to Ali's forehead, her hand steady as she wiped away some of the blood that was crusted on the wound the rock had left behind. "Are you sure you don't want me to take you to the hospital?"

"You can't," Ali blurted. Her hands shook violently in her lap. She felt tremulous and ill, as if she'd just been electrocuted. Her scattered and pounding head somehow stuck on that thought, and she reached up to touch her hair, just to make sure that it wasn't standing on end. "N-no one can know where I am."

Mona lowered the cloth from Ali's temple and sat beside her on the edge of the bed. "Why would someone want to kill you?" she asked, her eyes full of concern behind her glasses.

"I don't know," Alison whispered miserably. It was the question that she'd been asking herself since Mona grasped her hand and pulled her out of the dirt, as they made the ten-minute drive to the Lost Woods Resort, and as she waited in the shadows along the edge of the building while Mona checked in under the name Vivian Darkbloom. "But I can't stay here."

"You're right," Mona said, almost too-quickly. "If this A person was willing to bash your head in with a rock once, I'm sure they're willing to do it again."

Ali's stomach swirled. A had been stalking her, sending her nasty messages, for almost a year. It was getting to the point where it was more of a nuisance than anything else. But tonight A had proven just how much they were capable of.

Thankfully, Ali had planned for this.

Even in her disoriented, probably concussed state, images of the bundles of money stuffed inside the painting in her room and under a loose floorboard swam clearly into Ali's mind. Her deepest secrets were already carefully stowed away. Her meticulously kept diary would tell her friends everything they needed to know.

The wind whipped outside the motel room, and the sudden sound sent another wave of panic through Alison. "I have to get out of here," she muttered, struggling to her feet. "I have to go now."

"Ali!" Mona grabbed her arm and gently tugged her back down. "You can't go anywhere, not in the state you're in. You need to rest."

Alison wanted to protest, but pain seared through her head, and she squeezed her eyes closed, knowing that Mona was right. "Tomorrow," she breathed. "Tomorrow I'm getting out of here."

Mona blinked in surprise. "Where are you going to go?"

"Anywhere. As far as I can get." Her entire body suddenly aching with fatigue, Ali lowered herself onto the bed. "I've been ready to run for a long time, Mona."

Something shifted in Mona's eyes, but Ali was too exhausted to make much of it. "Because of A?"

On a normal day, Ali would have rolled her eyes and snapped back with an "uh, duh." But it was like that hit to the head had temporarily knocked the bitchiness right out of her. And she couldn't just forget about the fact that Mona had, quite literally, just saved her life.

"I have everything I need to disappear," she murmured, her vision beginning to darken. "I just need to get it from my room."

Mona sighed, pulling the ratty comforter over her. "I'll get everything for you tonight. You just get some rest."

Ali could feel herself fading fast, but she couldn't sleep until she settled the one last doubt nagging at her. "Do you really think I should do this?"

"Fake your own death?" Mona asked, pushing up her glasses. She gave Ali a sad, hesitant smile. "Ali, I don't think you have any other choice."

Something about the seriousness, the finality of her tone, resolved the issue in Ali's mind. She looked up at Mona's earnest expression, attempted to return the smile, and finally let everything go dark.

…

Hanna had eaten four cookies that she'd snagged from the coffee shop downstairs over the course of the last hour. Now, as she listened to the details of Mona pulling Alison out of the ground, rescuing her only to help her fake her own death and disappear from Rosewood, she wished she'd left them where they were. Her stomach was churning even worse than before.

She looked around at her friends. Aria and Emily looked just as disturbed as Hanna felt, but Spencer was staring at Alison as though she'd just found the missing piece of a puzzle.

"When I woke up the next morning, Mona had come through," Ali concluded. "She must have snuck into my room and found some of my hiding places, because she had almost everything I'd hidden, except for some of the money. I was out of Rosewood before the sun had fully come up."

Hanna sat on her hands to keep them from shaking. "Mona wanted you gone so badly that she helped you fake your own death?" she breathed.

"It was my idea," Ali reminded her. Then her expression darkened. "But she was more than happy to go along with it. I was basically delusional by that point. She could have stopped me at any time."

Emily frowned down at her lap, obviously conflicted. "I can't believe you were actually planning on faking your death."

"So that's why you wanted all of that money from my dad?" Aria added.

Alison sighed. "I was hoping I wouldn't have to go that far. But it had been almost a year, and A hadn't let up. It was my backup plan, in case I needed it as a last resort. And that night, I did."

"So why come back now?" Hanna blurted suddenly, unable to stop herself. "You've been gone for so long. What changed?"

"I've wanted to reach out to you guys for months," Ali admitted, her eyes filled with sadness. "I was sick of sitting back and watching A's games get more and more dangerous. The night of the lodge fire was the last straw."

"So you really were there?" Spencer asked.

"I pulled you out of there, Hanna," Alison said, meeting Hanna's eyes. Hanna felt as though a hand had just wrapped around her gut and squeezed. "The rest of you were already safe when I got there. That night, I knew that I needed to stop running. I needed to tell you guys I was alive."

Emily's brow furrowed. "So why didn't you? That fire happened weeks ago."

Once again, it was as if a dark cloud passed across Ali's face. "I was going to give it a week or two before I tried to contact you, just to tie up some loose ends and figure out where we could meet. But by the time I was ready to come forward, it wasn't just the four of you anymore. Mona had wormed her way into the group. And there was no way I was going to let her come along. I had to think of another way."

"Wait," Aria interrupted, sitting up straighter. "You're the one who sent Mona on that wild goose chase up to Cortland?"

"I knew that I wouldn't be able to keep her from tagging along otherwise," Alison insisted. "And I needed it to just be the five of us."

Hanna exchanged an uncomfortable look with Spencer. Aria shifted in her seat. As happy as Hanna was to see Ali, alive and okay, after all this time, doing this without Mona felt wrong. And knowing that Alison had orchestrated it that way felt even worse.

At the same time, she couldn't ignore that it wasn't as if Ali didn't have a good reason. And knowing that Mona had threatened Alison that night, had actively helped her leave Rosewood for good, had known that Ali was freaking alive, and had kept all of it from them…it left a sour taste in her mouth. She was supposed to be their friend now, officially, but she'd been keeping just as many secrets as Alison herself.

An awkward silence settled among the girls. Spencer, Emily, and Aria looked equally conflicted. Hanna pushed her hair out of her face. She was just about to wonder if those cookies were about to make a reappearance when a soft thump cut through the quiet.

Emily's head snapped up. "Did you guys hear that?"

Spencer sat frozen, her head tilted toward the stairs. "It sounded like it came from downstairs."

The girls exchanged looks, then slowly rose to their feet and crept together toward the stairs leading to the coffee shop. Hanna held her breath, choosing her footsteps carefully.

But the small, red-carpeted room was empty and still. The cookies and pastries that Hanna hadn't snacked on sat undisturbed on their platters on the counter. The door was shut tight, just as they'd left it.

Alison let out a breath. "It must have just been the heat coming on."

Hanna felt some of the tension seeping out of her, but Aria was still peering suspiciously at the front window of the shop, her eyes narrowed. "Is that a street lamp?"

Hanna followed her gaze. A small, bright light shone directly in her eyes, and she grimaced. "Street lamps aren't that low to the ground."

Spencer took a few cautious steps forward. The window took up most of the wall beside the door, and was partially blocked by the coffee shop's bright, neon sign. She bent her knees slightly and looked closer. "It looks like a…flashlight?"

"Oh my god, someone's out there!" Emily cried, just as a loud crash sent the glass window crumbling to the floor. Hanna leapt back with a scream of surprise, trying to avoid the glass shards. She grabbed Aria's arm in terror as a familiar figure in a black hoodie stepped through the now-gaping window and into the shop, a gun clutched in their hand.