a/n: this is for alzy (saltzmans) because i am currently writing her an epic klaroline but i just wanted to let her know how much i loved her and to tell her that she literally means the world to me.
The sun always sets and the earth will eternally spin, just as the seasons change and bones crumble away, so why shouldn't their lives have followed the same iron cast structure of routine? It just so happens that they were born with their fates engraved into their skin – they were born fated to be broken and wearied: they were born fated to lose their youth somewhere in between relentless questioning and countless death threats.
Some nights, as they paint each other's spines with hues of past anguish and hollow minds, Spencer will whisper something about summer hazes and pink chiffon dresses and Aria will nod with a sigh that sounds like hopscotch and picnics and night after night they both realise the same thing over and over again.
They both realise that the hopeful ponderings of wasted minds about the teenage years they should have had is the closest thing they'll ever get to a real, glorious childhood.
In another life (a life in which two babies wouldn't be born twenty one years earlier with a strangled cry on their lips that would reflect the muffled sobs of their irreparable adolescence hauntingly so), perhaps they would have led their dream lives. Perhaps they would have spent their teenage years partying too hard and for too long, making stupid mistakes that could always be rectified and falling in and out of love constantly. Perhaps Spencer would have gone to Yale and had a lavish wedding with Toby Cavanaugh solemnly swearing to love her before her very eyes. Perhaps Aria would have been courted with red roses and romantic dates before settling down with Ezra in some Parisian apartment. Perhaps they would have been happy.
All they are now are two broken and wearied souls, clinging on to each other between frantic sobs and feverish kisses and hanging on to some delusional idea that if they try hard enough, they'll be able to turn back time and relive the life they could have done.
But, really, they should have learnt long ago that delusional dreams and hopeless fantasies create nothing but an empty bed and reeling unhappiness, because didn't they spend their whole youth praying on some washed up hope that they might be able to lead normal lives once their tormentor had ceased?
(All it led to was two battered schoolgirls that were pushed together by tragedy and spent the rest of their lives being defined by it)
Shouldn't they have learnt long ago that it is only the good girls in fairytales, the pure heroes that ever manage to find a happy ending out of doing nothing but hoping?
(Out here in their urban wasteland, the good girls die, over and over again, every night as they realise this is all they are)
Shouldn't they have discovered that their dreams of turning back the clock were futile? Because they've tried believing and praying and look at where it has got them.
No matter how many times they pretend otherwise, it has got them here:
They are Spencer-and-Aria: two washed up souls looking longingly through a stained glass window of the golden tinted childhood that they could have once led.