a/n: extension on 4x12. I just needed a bit more, you know? Of course you do, you're here too.

Leave me a review and I'll love you forever. I don't own any of PLL, especially not the dialogue that is straight from the episode!

"I wanted to believe that my sister pulled herself out of this mess when she left town…what is Shana's connection to Wren?" Her voice is rough, thicker than usual, wrought with a certain degree of creeping ambiguity.

He instinctively knows that it is less about the bad news he has delivered and more about their precarious positioning. They met these sorts of unexpected turns in a revolving involuntary manner—a fresh detail, a distorted piece of evidence, an emerging enemy—this was all neatly woven into the fabric of each day. With every off-center curveball that dashed on by, there was sure to be another one to follow it.

But if she wanted to ignore their lingering conflict from the dance last night, who was he to bring it to light? "I don't know, but it looks like your ex-boyfriend is moving in with his ex-fiancée."

"Why would they keep that a secret?"

The thorny edge in his tone prevails. "Because he's your ex-boyfriend?"

She gives him a cautionary look, a disastrous combination of back down and you know I don't want him.

"I want to talk to you about what happened last night." And the disillusioned hesitancy in her tone weighs him down. "But if I do, are you just gonna take off again?"

It's the armor she wears, the blatant accusation that hammers at his innermost demons. He scrubs a weary hand over his face. "I had some…thinking to do."

"That's not good enough." He distinguishes that she's right without a shot of supplementary reasoning, but she provides him with the sucker-punching truth anyhow. "Okay, you could have called, you could have just sent me a text—'give me space.'"

"I know." But he hadn't been ready then, hadn't even come clean with himself.

"Three words and I would have been fine." Her curving brow jumps higher and higher as she picks up shrill momentum.

"I know, okay, and I'm sorry." He tries to moderate his increasing defensive instinct, but his selfish desire for understanding once again tampers with his emotional reserve.

Her curls bounce as she shakes with uncharacteristic strain—not the kind that came with high academic standards and abnormal levels of self-motivation, but rather the cumbersome caving force of fear and frailty. "You…you can't just disappear like that, not anymore, not after what happened last time…"

Spencer's voice thins out and he hears the rising tide of pain in her words. She abruptly turns away in a clear ploy to shield him from her impending tears. "When I worry about A getting ahold of you, or hurting you, or worse…you know I have a very real picture of what that looks like in my mind."

God, the stabbing authenticity behind that reminder, it wounds him every time he lets himself dredge it up. Of course that had been her mindset. What choice had he given her?

But how could she not know? How could she not see that he had stamped down his habitual longing to just hop on his cycle and get out?

"I was in town, Spencer. Okay? I was right here." As a carpenter, he recognizes his own internal walls lack the stability needed to weather her tornado effect on his heartstrings.

Those big brown eyes were back in focus, fastening on him with a staggering intensity. "Well not for me, you weren't!"

"When I used to feel like the walls were closing in, I'd take off. But this time, I stayed. For you. You were right, last night…trying to break into Dr. Palmer's car…that's as close as I want to get to A."

"I don't want you to stop looking." Her words whisper a delicate avowal of love as she crosses the room. "You deserve to know what happened to your mom."

His head pivots to and fro like an old door on a creaky hinge. Even as the supportive rasping words tumble from her mouth, he knows how wrong they are. No more. The puppet act ends tonight.

"I don't want A's version of the truth. It's not worth it." When his crystal blue eyes land on hers, he feels his walls tumbling down with graceful ruin. Letting go of this twisted game means holding on to her, and holding on to her means breathing renewed air and drinking in the full prowess of every star in the glittering sky. He glances down, finding her hands with both of his in an automatic display of tender dependency.

Her fragile inhale accompanies a lonely silver teardrop. And those same walls that house his choking grief, his private ache, his foolish pride…he also constructs them for the sake of shutting out the all-consuming guilt that had swallowed him whole with each monstrous betrayal. Why she even allows him to be in her presence, he would never truly understand. She went to Radley becauseof his choices.

It's not like he's the only one who knows the metallic taste of blackened agony.

She lives it too. Her closet is stockpiled with unremitting skeletons.

And look at him, throwing a few more rattling bones in the mix.

He stands, wrapping her in a crushing hug. Her slim silhouette is rigid at first, but a few beats pass and he feels her body sink into him. "I need you, Spencer. I need you more than I know how to say, and you've been so strong for me through all of this. But I can be strong for you too. Even if it looks like I can't, I will always be your safe place to land. That was the most beautiful thing anyone has ever said to me and I want to live up to it. I'll do better, please let me do better."

Toby fully admits that he is muttering on and on in a disjointed babble, but he needs to start talking to her like every chance is his very last—if she comes to her senses, it will be.

"Just stay here with me a little longer?" Her small, fragmented question threatens his ability to remain standing. She weakens him in the sweetest way.

"All you have to do is ask. I'm yours, Spence." He kisses her forehead, then slowly releases her. Slipping out of his jacket and finding her again, Toby folds the both of them into the familiar cushions of her sofa. She wastes no time, instantly tucking herself into the long lines of his frame.

They sit for an indefinite stretch of time, propping their feet on the coffee table, residing in the peaceful flicker of firelight. He senses that she is content in this glowing silence, but his tongue itches to free itself of its burdensome load. "I wish I could take it all away, wipe every trace of that picture, those woods, that night…wipe it all from your memory."

A prolonged hush falls across the blurry room. Maybe she's dozed off…

"I don't need that, Toby. What I need is for it to not happen again."

"It won't."

Her head shifts deeper into his chest. "I feel like I've been on pause for a full 24 hours. I'd die if…if I pushed you away and lost you forever."

"Shhh, honey. You didn't push me away; you tried to give me a much needed wake up call. You aren't the only stubborn one in this relationship."

She begins to tiredly retort, but he bends to capture her lips in a soft kiss. His forehead presses to hers as he murmurs, "You will never lose me. I'm in too deep now. This is permanent, you and me, till the world fades and the sun stops rising. Got it?"

She releases a partial sob and a clogged laugh. "Got it…I love you so much, Toby Cavanaugh."

"I love you too, Spencer Hastings. You are the center of my universe."

She leans back into the comfort of his worn cotton t-shirt, breathing in a soothing pattern of acquaintance. He's worn the noose of too many others and he's done with that. She's different. She's always represented this supernova flash of brilliant relief.

No one else in Rosewood—or in any pinpointed twirl of the globe—gifts him with this liberation.

Anything else?

It's not worth it.