A/N: Not beta'd. This is definitely AU. I felt if I thought about this one too much, I would never post it. And to be honest, this is my first time writing in the PLL Fandom. So, slightly nervous and hella hopeful. This is the preface for Survival: Love, Lies, and Lunatics or S:L3 as I affectionately refer to it as. This is really short so I felt as if I needed to post chapter 1 along with it…so look out for that. But I would love you if you reviewed both (grin)!
Enough from me…ON WITH THE STORY!
PREFACE: The Complexities of Love
The course of true love never did run smooth.
-A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare
Love.
Everyone wants it.
Some people want the fairy-tale romance, where everything just works out to become a mystical love and bubbles down to that one magical kiss that seals the deal. Some people want that whirl wind romance. A love that rips through their lives and turns it upside down until it's a breathtakingly beautiful mess. Or a passionate love that rivals even the standard set by Shakespeare. Or perhaps a more…comfortable love built on late night movie fests, long talks, and cuddling.
No matter what the preference everyone wants the acceptance that love brings. That's what real love amounts to in the end- letting a person be what he or she really is and embracing it.
And somehow amidst all the lies, lunatics and serial daters, we manage to find it.
Some people find it with ease. The extremely lucky people chance upon it in a blink-and-miss moment, as if stumbling upon that one person was always meant to happen. Predestined, fate, destiny. An accidental meeting in a coffee shop, bumping into your soul mate at the supermarket, a tentative "do you come here often?" turning into a confident "Will you marry me?", or growing up next door to the one who'd one day steal your heart. These rare encounters lead to that real happy ever after and, more often than not, wedding bells.
For some people finding love is a struggle. Whether they have been so damaged by a past relationship and they fail to recognize love or they just don't see it. The probability for these unluckily souls of meeting that one special someone are equivalent to finding a needle in a haystack. People may be blinded to a love that is staring them right in the face, kissing frogs when their prince was always beside them. Some people may have been constantly beaten by the search every day, hoping to find their other half. Sometimes they get back up. Sometimes they don't. Or at times we think we've found it. That warm feeling of complete adoration for another human being? We can't imagine ever living without them and are bewildered as to how we managed before.
But eventually we learn to make due alone.
Until finally. One day, if we're lucky, we find the real thing.
This is a story of two people. Both with their own emotional baggage, heartaches, and imperfections. Their own families, crazy friends, and emotions. Two people mixed up in this rollercoaster of life surviving through each day as it comes, just like the rest of us. Two people who might just take a chance...
Some would argue they were predestined to meet. That somewhere in the stars, somehow, they were always meant to meet. That their experiences molded them to become the people they needed to be for each other. They were always meant to fall in love. Or the realists amongst us may argue that in the end it all depends on the choices we make.
Because fate is extremely fickle.
Others never find it.