One-Shot: Pretty Little Truthtellers.
A/N: I never understood in season six of pretty little liars, why didn't they tell the truth. Why didn't they stand there in the room and tell the judge that they were still afraid of Charlotte? I mean Alison was a bloody awful friend to them and Charlotte tortured them, mentally, physically, etc. Anyway, so I decided to write my own one-shot where they told the damn truth and didn't once again do what Alison said.
"Charlotte is getting the help she never had when she was little. Five years of treatment, undoing all the damage." Alison said as she stood in front of her four best friends, Aria, Spencer, Hanna and Emily. They were standing in her classroom, where she had just finished teaching for the day. "I visit her, I spend time with her. She even stayed at my house for a weekend last Christmas…"
"They let her out?" Hanna interrupted. Her arms crossed her chest, she stared at Alison.
"It was a supervised visit." Alison replied. Spencer sighed.
"So, Charlotte is all better now, what does this have to do with us?" She asked. Alison took a breath.
"At the hearing tomorrow, the judge will decide if she should be released… and they want to hear from people who were involved." Alison explained.
"Victim Statements." Spencer corrected. They weren't just involved, Spencer thought, all four of us were tortured by her, all of us were victims to her sick little games.
"Statements of support." Alison said. "Statements that she isn't a threat to anybody. That you guys are not afraid of her anymore." Everyone was silent as they all stared at Alison. "There is no reason to be afraid" Alison protested. "You know her, you heard her story. We all went through this together."
"Yes, we did." Aria said speaking for the first time. She stressed the we in her statement. "We have the scars to prove it too."
"You're asking us to give a get-out-of-jail-free card to someone who tried to kill us." Hanna said.
"She's in hospital, Hanna. She's not in jail." Alison corrected Hanna.
"She's lucky" Aria muttered. Emily heard her.
"And we are lucky to be alive" She said.
"That's why your statements would mean so much." Alison said, she looks pleadingly at the girls. All she wanted was her sister back.
"You do realize what you're asking us to do, you want us to forgive Charlotte." Emily said.
"I don't care if you forgive her…" Alison said but she was cut off by Hanna.
"Alison, we are here to say how we feel and you are asking us to lie. To say no, we are not afraid of the woman who tried to kill us, who tortured us, who locked us up and forced us to play sick games." Hanna was shaking now, she had walked up to Alison while talking and was now standing directly in front of her.
"Please, do this." Alison whispered. "Do this for me"
"Pretty please?" Spencer said, pulling Hanna away from Alison. "With sugar on top?"
"What?"
"That's what you say on a playground to exact a favour. We're not on the playground anymore, Alison. We haven't been for a long time. Now I don't know about the other girls, but I am here because the courts asked me to be. Not because of your letter and certainly not because of you. She may be your sister and she may be your only family left. But she is the thing of my nightmares. She is the reason I haven't had a goodnight sleep in five years and refuse to sit there and lie to the judge." Spencer said. Hanna nodded along with her and took Spencer's hand.
"We'll see you tomorrow." Hanna said and they both walked out of the room. Alison turned pleadingly towards Aria and Emily. Emily stood up off the table that she had been sitting on and looked at Alison.
"I can't Alison. I still have nightmares too, that I'm back in that dollhouse. That A is still after us. I cannot sit there and tell them that everything is okay." Emily said and she walked out after Spencer and Hanna. Aria and Alison looked at each other and Aria shook her head before walking out.
The four girls sat in a room. At the top of the room was a desk, behind the desk were four seats. The judges would sit there and listen as each person took their time to tell them how they felt about Charlotte's potential release.
"My family has always had a missing part." Alison started as she sat in front of the judges "What's missing is my sister, Charlotte. These past five years, I've gotten to know, come to love this missing part of my family and now, I want to bring my sister home."
The judges nodded at Alison and she stood up and took a seat at the back of the room, where a row of seats stood, they were all taken up by the liars and Mona.
"Spencer Hastings." One of the judges called. Spencer stood up, smiled a small smile at the others and walked forward, she took a seat and when the judge nodded she began to talk.
"I'm sure that you've all read the documents about who Charlotte is and what she did to us. She held us against our will, tortured us, nearly killed us a few times. Things like that aren't easy to move on from. And although I may have a good job and a good life now. I'm still haunted by those events. I'm still as terrified as I was five years ago of Charlotte and what's she capable of. You can't release her. That's all." The judges nodded and Spencer stood up and took her seat.
"Hanna Marin." The judge called.
"I was angry for a long time, at Charlotte. But now, every morning I wake up. I drink coffee and I walk outside. It's either sunny or it's raining, but I'm there. I'm free. For years I thought, I wasn't scared anymore, but hearing that there is a chance that she could be free, that once again she could step outside just like I can. That, that scares me. That she could escape and the nightmare that we faced five years ago, could return."
After Hanna, it was Emily's turn.
"My dad taught me that fear is natural. It's a good instinct and although he told me you can decide not to be afraid. He is wrong, I cannot just switch off my fear I have for Charlotte. I still wake up every night from nightmares of what she did from us. I hate walking alone at night because I'm scared that she's going to come and take me again and torture me…Charlotte being free, I wouldn't feel safe, not even if I was on the opposite side of the world."
After Emily, Aria stepped forward to speak to the judges.
"Alison and Dr Rollins have told us how well Charlotte's being doing. How rapidly she's been able to integrate herself into the general hospital population. They feel strongly that…"
Aria was cut off by the door opening and Ezra Fitzgerald walked into the room. "I'm sorry." He whispered before taking a seat.
"Miss Montgomery"? One of the judges said, bringing Aria's head back around to look at them.
"Sorry, um… they feel strongly…" Aria was once again cut off by the judges this time.
"Miss Montgomery, we have read the same reports that you have. The doctors and Alison can speak for themselves. You are here to tell us if you'd feel safe should Charlotte DiLaurentis leave the hospital.
"No." Aria whispered. "No, I wouldn't feel safe. I was on the redline going to Braintree and the train stopped in the tunnel between stations. The power went out and it was dark., no not dark. Black, it was Black. And I was back in every box, in every dark tight space that "A" ever put me in and I couldn't breathe. I could hear a girl crying and I thought good, that someone else was as scared out her mind as I was. But, the lights came back on and every single person was staring at me. Because I was the girl that was crying. I don't want Charlotte released. Ever." Aria took her seat with Spencer, Hanna and Emily.
"Here comes the last nail in the coffin." Hanna whispered to the girls, as Mona stepped forward to speak.
"I thought I could do this. But I can't. I've been listening to all my friends, on how they don't want Charlotte to ever be released. I wish I could hate her like they do. But I can't. I can't because I know what she went through. I was in Radley Sanatorium. I was in there for months. Charlotte was in there for years and years. Being in that place is what twisted her all out of shape. Let her out. Let her go home and live her life as I have been able to do."
Alison watched as the rain fell outside her window. She had heard from Emily that the girls were meeting at The Radley. She didn't understand why the girls hadn't lied for her. They knew how important family was for them, why couldn't they give her the same thing?
Charlotte DiLaurentis never got out of the hospital. A few weeks after the judge ruled that she couldn't leave, Charlotte had killed herself. She told Alison in a letter, that she couldn't wait for another five years to pass to be free.
Aria, Spencer, Hanna and Emily all moved on from Charlotte in their own time and although the rest of the lives had their ups and their downs, it was all untouched by A. They were finally free. They never spoke to Alison again after that day in front of the judge. She blamed them for her sister's death and they disliked how she expected them to lie, to down play how much pain they were actually in.