AN: So this idea has been floating around in my head since mid-season four, when they announced that Alison would not have a twin but someone else might. I know they probably wouldn't give one of the core four and psychotic twin but if they did, the Hastings is the only family that would fit the bill. They're shady, they're always lying and doing crazy things and it accounts for a lot of what's unanswered on the show.

Anyway, I doubt Spencer actually is going to have a twin on the show but it's plausible. I did match parts of the twin story in here to the twins in the PLL books but they definitely get very different as the story goes on. And if you're confused, it's okay, it'll all be answered and gone over in more detail in later chapters.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Preface:

Spencer sprinted up the stairs, unable to clearly think through her pathway, going to anywhere her feet would take her, going wherever her brain sent her. Anything she had to do to get away from her.

Her. The twin that was ready to steal everything. The twin that dedicated the majority of her pre-adolescent life to inflicting agony onto Spencer. The twin that would watch her be dragged over burning, hot coals and still feel nothing. The twin that wanted to steal her life.

But, to be fair, only because Spencer stole it first.

Spencer, even now, surprisingly felt little remorse for what she'd done. She couldn't find it in her to feel bad for her actions when they seemed like the only choice she had. Stealing her twin's identity is the only way she could have her own.

And, after all, her twin earned it. She'd earned it the first day she told a lie, a ruthless incrimination to the one person who she was supposed to never betray. She spent her life, telling lie after lie, as if it was her only form of oxygen, needing to, for reasons to which Spencer had never quite grasped, ruin her twin sister's world before it could even begin. Lying was like her own source power. It made her mighty over whoever she named her victim.

She named Spencer her first victim when they were only four years old.

And now, fourteen years later, she named Spencer her last victim.

She had to know she'd never get away with it. Radley Sanitarium had sent out a search party for her, their latest escaped patient. The Rosewood PD had a full-fledged missing person's investigation going for the disappeared teen. Veronica and Peter Hastings had hired the best P.I's in the country looking for their precious, delicate little girl.

Little to their knowledge, the daughter they were looking for was the one right under their roof.

There was no way Spencer's murder would go unnoticed. But somehow, all the threats hanging over her head, seemed like background noise to the demented twin. She lived in a mental asylum anyway. She wouldn't spend a single night rotting in jail for the crimes she committed upon her mirror image. Or maybe her plan was to switch them back, after the deed was done and Spencer's body was lifeless on the bedroom floor, allude to self-defense, fake traumatized, take her identity back.

Spencer had to admit it wasn't a bad plan.

But, in hindsight, her own switch was pretty genius too.

The truth was, Spencer always knew she was playing on borrowed time. This was never her life to claim, even though she took control of it with all her might. She made the grades, she made the best of friends, she fell deeply, head over heels in love.

She reshaped who Spencer Hastings was.

But the reality was, she wasn't Spencer Hastings and she always knew she couldn't do this forever.

But that didn't mean she was going to give up and lie down.

She used every muscle in her legs to propel her down the hall and into her bedroom, barely slamming and locking the door before her identical shadow reached her.

"Open up!" She heard her twin screech, pounding hard on the door, rattling the door knob.

Spencer knew she had little time to act. Her psychotic twin would soon enough find a bobby pin or a screw she could unlock the door with. And then, what choice did Spencer really have? Jump out the window or fall at the mercy of her own flesh and blood, the person who she was once the same embryo.

Knowing she had no time and no chance of walking out of this house alive, panic set it, paralyzing her, just like every single time an altercation occurred throughout her childhood. It shook her to the bones, rattled her brain and rendered her speechless. Her chest got tight and she felt the walls grow smaller, unable to breathe properly, gasping out for air.

For years, Spencer considered this a sign of weakness. But at that moment, at what she realized very well may be one of her last, she realized that this was exactly what had made her tough. She didn't get this far, she didn't fight this hard to get to where she was, only to give up now. She had to fight, for her family who remained oblivious no matter how much she tried to tell them, for her friends who somehow forgave her for all she'd wronged them.

For Toby, the blue eyed boy with unconditional forgiveness, who was able to see past all the lies and the secrets and the concrete walls she built around herself and find a heart that was irrevocably enamored by him and heal all the wounds it had sustained.

Thinking of the people she loved, the people who needed her, the people she needed, only served to make the panic attack come on stronger.

Kneeling to the floor, Spencer did what she had always known to fend off anxiety bouts. She chanted everything she knew to be true, filling herself up with the hope that if she said the words out loud, someone out there would hear it and know the truth.

Spencer's voice came out in a rasped whispered, barely vocal. "My name is Court-Courtney Hastings," She whispered in between heaving for air, grasping the comforter on her bed. "My real name is Courtney Hastings and I stole my twin sister's life six years ago. But only because she left me no choice."