AN: I don't even know if I like this, to be honest, but an idea struck me at one in the morning and I figured why not write it out.

Warning though, this does contain sensitive material and topics. I'll move it to M rated if I continue but for now, nothing graphic happens in this chapter. This is set Post 6A and is set the allotted time that 6B will be moving forward (5 years) but doesn't resemble what will be airing in the time jump.

Read and enjoy.

Three Years

Three years. That's how long they went without seeing each other. Without contacting each other. Without speaking to each other. Without acknowledging each other.

How does someone go from being the one person you have to speak to every day, to being a complete stranger?

Three years ago, she came home, to the corrupt town she'd left behind, the town where she'd left him behind, and told him goodbye. She said a lot of things that didn't make sense, a lot of excuses, a lot of things that weren't even right. He searched for the truth in her eyes to no avail. There was no truth in her eyes. For the first time since the day he met her, really met her, on his porch step, in a different life, when they thought they knew everything about each other only to soon find they knew nothing at all, he couldn't see the truth in her eyes. He couldn't read her. He couldn't tell what she was thinking.

That was how he knew they were really over.

Three years. That how long since he became a cop again. He'd reapplied two weeks after Spencer dumped him. He showed up at the station, half expecting to be told to leave the premises and never to return again. He thought Tanner would tell him to go to hell, that he'd botched the entire investigation because of the word of his eighteen-year-old girlfriend, that he'd stained the rug on a national case, don't let the door hit him on the way out.

She didn't say that at all. She couldn't. Turns out after Charlotte was locked up, Tanner had been demoted. Her new boss-bosses, as there were actually two of them-was a married couple. Sleek, tough, straightforward but not corrupt. The woman, Brielle, had long, auburn hair, a pale complexion, bright blue eyes and perfect straight white teeth. Her husband, Hanson, had dark brown hair, round cheeks, and a smile that was reminiscent of a five year old boy, innocent and sweet.

They were the last people in the world you'd guess to be running an entire police station, sent from New York to clean up the hell hole that was Rosewood. They were tough, took no crap, did what needed to be done and pulled no punches. But they were good people and incorruptible. They made Toby want to be a cop, not for the sole reason of protecting his girlfriend-now ex girlfriend-but to protect the innocent lives that could not protect themselves. To protect the naïve people who hadn't been put through the ringer more times than they could remember, who were living peaceful, unsuspecting lives, who did not know the cruelties of the world as well as he did. He wanted to be the fair and just cop he needed when he was on the police suspect list. He wanted to be the noble and resourceful cop he tried to be for Spencer, when she was being tormented to no end. With Hanson and Brielle, that felt attainable.

He didn't know though, that one day the reason he ever enrolled in the police academy in the first place, would need his badge to protect her again.

Three years. That's how long he fantasized about seeing her again. She walked out the door of his apartment, perfectly composed and almost relieved. She was not shaken by the fact that she was breaking up with the first and the only person she'd ever fallen in love with.

Spencer Hastings never looked back when it was time to quit.

But Toby Cavanaugh watched her leave and immediately imagined her coming back. He thought about it when he was supposed to be sleeping. He imagined her running into his arms while he was driving to work. While straightening up his house, he pictured the day she rolled over in bed and tucked her head under his chin again. He thought about running his fingers through her hair while making dinner. When he took a shower, he imagined touching her skin, her long legs pressed around him once more, the smell of her shampoo. He thought of her laugh, her smile, her unladylike snoring, her snarky comebacks and her sassy remarks. He remembered her smirk, her eye roll, her pursed lips when she suppressed her amusement. He replayed the days when she would twitch her eyebrows and narrow her eyes at him in annoyance, the nights she looked at him with tears in her big mocha eyes, the afternoons when her happiness verged on drunkenness.

But with time, these dreams faded, as the gash in his heart slowly mended itself. There were days when the images seemed fuzzier, days when picturing her didn't hurt, days when he didn't long to taste her vanilla-mint chapstick again, days when he couldn't remember how it felt to lift her up in his arms and twirl her around, days when her head laying against his shoulder didn't seem real anymore.

But there was never a day he didn't think about her. He wished there was. It ached to still love someone so deeply and know that somehow, they had managed to leave you without a trace. They had figured out how to go on with their lives, without you in it, and yet, your world still revolved around the very image of them.

But, with time, these dreams began to fade.

Until that night.

Three years. That's how long he'd been day dreaming about the moment he would see her again, believing with all his might, hoping against hope, that she would somehow, someway, turn back up in his life again.

Had he known the circumstances that would bring her back, he'd have let her stay gone. Let her keep her happiness three thousand miles away, let himself keep the blissful, ignorant hallucination that wherever she was, she was happy, she was smiling, she was thriving.

Even without him by her side.

He had been driving down the street, on official parole duty, the chilly January air outside biting the inside of his cop cruiser as he maneuvered around the curvy road, his headlights on as he peered out into the dark winter night.

Up ahead, just barely visible in the bright light shining from his car, half walking on the side walk, halfway in the street, was a girl. She looked like a fallen angel, wearing a short white dress that was stained and had a missing strap. Her chocolate brown hair was knotted and matted, standing up in the back unnaturally. Her walk was more of a stumble, her legs propelling her forward at both an awkward and a slow pace.

Toby knew exactly who she was at first glance.

Without thinking, his gut instinct completely leading him, he slowly drew closer to the girl, turning his headlights on low in an effort not to startle her. The car moved at 7 miles per hour as he closed the distance between him and the once love of his life. It was no hurry. She was moving slower than he'd ever seen her. Slower than Spencer Hastings ever maneuvered herself. She used to complain when people didn't move at a breakneck speed, always on the go, always full of caffeine and bouncy anxiety.

But Toby knew that there was something obscenely wrong with her before he even saw her face.

When he had closed the distance to about ten feet, so close he was basically riding the break, Spencer turned around hazily, meeting his eyes for the first time in three years.

He had imagined this moment since she walked out of his life.

But he never once imagined when he saw her eyes again, her bright, expressive, passionate chocolate orbs, that they could ever be so haunted.

Three years since he last seen her and his reactions were still second nature. He still knew exactly what she wanted, exactly what she needed from him.

He parked at the side of the road, leaving his headlights on dim and swiftly got out of the car. He didn't approach her like he was trained by his superior officers, gradual and careful and quietly. He approached her like his life depended on it, like she was the other half to his whole and he needed to see what had hurt her.

She welcomed him. Somehow, someway, in the years apart, they hadn't lost their connection. Their unspoken bond that somehow, they always could commute what they needed to the other. Spencer waited at her spot in the street as he hurried out of his vehicle and rushed towards her.

Much to his surprise, she threw herself at him when the gap between them was small enough for her to reach, her arms squeezing his neck into the chokehold he'd always craved in the middle of the night. Neither of them knew if she wrapped her legs around his waist or if he'd picked her up first but within seconds, he was there, he was holding his girl in his arms again and suddenly, she kick-started back to life.

Her sobs followed not two minutes later, muffled into his uniform. He wasn't surprised in the least. But he was alarmed. He was petrified.

Instead of questioning her, pushing her for information that she was clearly not in any shape to tell, he squeezed her tighter to him, rocking her the way he used to rock her in the chair he'd built with his own two hands. He swayed her gently, remaining silent as he knew nothing he could say would be enough.

It was Spencer that broke the silence, her low, raspy voice cracking and grating hoarsely in combination with her sobs.

"Take me home."