A/N: Warning for implied incest.
..
this my penance
..
"Sometimes I think my life is going in circles," he told her one day when they'd ditched their parents on a family vacation, instead paddling in a little boat on the lake where they were staying.
Alison looked up at her big brother then, looked up and smirked. "Oh, Jason, don't you know?" She reached over and let her fingertips trail lightly down his arm.
He shivered under her touch.
"Everything only happens once. Once a moment passes, it's gone." Her lips slid up into a catlike grin. "Gone forever."
..
She remembers when they were kids. Jason was the oldest but Alison was always the bossiest, so they never got along.
"Play with me," she would order, tossing her blonde ringlets and holding her hands on her hips as superciliously as a five-year-old can.
And he would scoff. "Go away, Ali. I don't have time for you."
But he always did. She knew he'd always have time for her. And sure enough, not two minutes later, he'd find himself ensconced in her pretty pink bedroom, a crown made out of paper perched haphazardly on his head, a tiara on hers.
"You are King Jason, ruler of all Rosewood," she told him matter-of-factly.
Jason still looked reluctant, but she's always been very persuasive when she wants to be. He'd always give in to her, sooner or later, and go along with whatever game she wanted to play. "All right, whatever. And you're…what? Princess Alison, my daughter who I'm going to marry off to the handsomest knight in the land?" he asked with only a hint of sarcasm.
At that, she kicked him so hard he yelped. "No!" she screamed, and then took a deep breath to calm herself down. "I want to be Queen."
..
"Yes, right there." A sigh. A low moan. "Oh, Jason."
Alison burst through the door and felt her heart skip a beat at the sight. Her brother, lying on his bed, his face obscured by blonde curls that looked so very like her own.
The girl slowly turned her head and slid off Jason. Her eyes widened, and then she smiled. "Hello there. You must be Jason's little sister. I've heard so much about you. I'm CeCe."
Alison wanted to scream, to throw the biggest tantrum of her life, but she stopped herself at the last second. Keep your friends close, but… Then she grinned. "Hi, Cece." She took a step forward. "I think we're going to be great friends."
..
Alison used to love to play with dolls. Then she'd moved onto real-life girls, collecting them and grooming them into little carbon copies of herself. Real-life dolls are so much more interesting than plastic ones, anyway. They surprise you.
Ali likes that. Well, she used to, anyway.
"Be careful," Jason warned her one afternoon after her four new best friends had left the DiLaurentis house. "Those girls might get sick of you always bossing them around and manipulating them."
She sneered at him. "Don't you have some pot to smoke, o wise one?"
He rolled his eyes. "I'm serious, Ali. You can't just make people do whatever you want them to."
"Oh, but I can."
I can, Jason. I can.
..
When she found out that Jason was only her half-brother, an ugly feeling formed in the pit of her stomach, and it hasn't gone away, even today.
Now she had to share him with the Hastings sisters, with ambitious Melissa, with clever Spencer, and Alison worried. What if you love them better than me, Jason?
And then her worst fears come true, and it was all so horrible it was like a living nightmare. "Your brother gave Melissa a ride home from Philly, and they got caught making out in the car."
It was all Alison could do not to shout, to bang her fists on the walls of Spencer's bedroom, or, worst of all, to cry. But she kept calm. After all, she was used to this, used to forcing down the bile that rose in her throat whenever CeCe would describe her dates with Jason in great detail.
"Let's just say it'd be a match frowned upon by the gods," Alison told Spencer, because it was true, because it would be.
She would make sure of it.
..
"Who's that little brunette friend of yours, again?" Jason asked her one morning, after the girls had slept over. "You know, the one with the pink in her hair?"
Alison bit into her egg viciously. "Aria," she replied through clenched teeth.
She licked the yellow yolk from her lips. Don't even think about it, Jason.
..
When they found Byron Montgomery doing the dirty with a blonde co-ed in his car, Alison couldn't help but grin. It looked like everyone's parents were like her own mother, then, ready to jump into bed with anyone other than their own spouse.
"Don't worry, Aria, it'll be our little secret." What Aria didn't know was that once Ali knew your secret, she controlled you.
..
Aria was so stupid and naïve, it was almost boringly easy to manipulate her, play with her feelings, make her hate her father and hate herself even more.
Getting CeCe kicked out of college – that one was a little harder, since CeCe was a far more formidable opponent. But CeCe had taught Ali everything she knew and more, and the student had long since surpassed the master.
And Melissa – brilliant, polished, perfect Melissa Hastings, with her perfect athlete boyfriend. Little did she know that her boyfriend wasn't so perfect after all, that he had an eye for little girls who he shouldn't have been kissing. He kissed Spencer, and Ali saw from her window. She'd decided right at that moment. She would take Ian from the Hastings sisters – after all, they'd taken half her brother from her.
..
Alison got so caught up in all her games and revenge plots that she didn't realize, until too late, that it was all going to blow up in her face.
And it did. It was a pretty little catastrophe, and if she hadn't spent so much of her life being so recklessly arrogant, too infatuated with her own power to realize that she was putting herself in danger, she might have seen this coming. As it is, though, she didn't, and now she pays the consequences. She pays the consequences every damn day, and after three years of this, she's getting kind of tired of running.
I'm tired, Jason. I'm so tired.
She can't stop, though, because if she did, she'd be dead. She's made too many enemies to stop running.
..
She realizes quickly enough (Alison DiLaurentis is many things, but never stupid, thank you very much) that they're all working together to bring her down. Aria, and CeCe and Melissa, and who knows how many others they've enlisted to join their little revenge team.
I GIVE UP, Ali wants to shout sometimes. Sometimes she just wants to walk into the center of Rosewood and shout, loud enough for the whole damn town to hear her, OKAY, YOU'VE WON, I GIVE UP. I'M DONE.
Because she's just so tired, so exhausted from running, from scrambling to keep Spencer and Emily and Hanna safe. It's not their fault that they're mixed up in any of this. They've gotten caught in the crossfire, and Alison fears every day that one of them will end up paying the price for what she's done. It's not fair for the A-Team to go after them, and Alison's anger that they are is one of the few things that keeps her from giving up.
And then – then that bitch goes after Jason, and Alison sees red. She wants to claw out Aria's eyes when she sees her kissing Jason. Aria knows perfectly well that Alison is still alive, that she can see every time Jason's fingers slip through her long brown hair, every time Aria's lips press into his golden skin. Aria is no longer that naïve, pink-haired little girl. Nothing she does is without a purpose, these days, so she must know, she must, how hooking up with Jason will affect Alison.
Run away from her Jason, run Jason run! She's not what she seems.
..
The worst part of it all isn't the running, isn't the loneliness, isn't even the fact that her best friends are in constant danger because of her.
It's seeing her brother slowly going insane, and not being able to protect him. He blames himself for her death (her "death," that is), she knows he does, and it's all she can do not to leap from the shadows, run into his arms, and press kisses to the crown of his head. It's not your fault, Jason. He's all alone in the world, and he's driving himself mad trying to find out what happened to her. He's going to get himself killed, one of these days, if he's not more careful.
She does everything she can to drive him away from Rosewood, away from danger and trouble and the memories of her that she knows he sees everywhere. Forget me, Jason. Forget me and be happy.
But he keeps coming back.
She wants so badly to go to him, to tell him not to worry, that she's alive and she's here and it's all going to be okay. But he can't know about her. She has to stay away from him to keep him safe.
..
Alison remembers the days when they were the King and Queen of Rosewood. Now, their kingdom has crumbled down around them, the Queen proclaimed dead, her rival on the throne, her friends persecuted, and the King all alone in the ruins of the castle where they once ruled.
I'm sorry, Jason. It's all my fault.
..
A/N: Thanks for reading my first foray into the PLL fandom. All I want for Christmas is for the writers to actually make Aria A. It would be amazing. Please leave a review!