You Are My Sweetest Downfall
Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Though I have a huge crush on Shay Mitchell and Troian Bellisario, and I'd like to keep them both to myself. Haha. As this is an AU, there have been some changes to the storyline and I don't exactly know where the changes begin in terms of it's continuity with the TV series, and no I've never read the original books, so please don't get upset!
Chapter One
Emily stared at the ceiling as she laid in her bed. It had been three weeks since she had moved to this house, but she had yet to get used to it. A few unopened boxes were left in a corner by her desk, unsure whether the boxes belonged to her and wasn't ready to go through reminders of her past life in Rosewood.
When Lieutenant Colonel Fields' unit was rotated, he was given an extended assignment that required his service at Fort Knox in Louisville, Kentucky. Emily contested every night with her mother about it, which she came out unvictorious.
She could remember every single conversation they had about it, until her mother have had enough of the fighting. Her mother's final words were burned in her mind, and they kept playing over and over, "You belong with your family."
Her mother could no longer handle being separated from her father, and she had one day decided to move to Kentucky, no longer discussing this with her. Emily just came home one day to her house packed in boxes inside a giant U-Haul truck.
And then she was in Kentucky, in one of the most important bases in the United States Army history, but she couldn't feel at home. Her mother decided to paint her new room a shade of yellowish cream; the colors only reminded her of her old room, and it only made her miss it even more.
She grabbed her phone and looked at the time. It was 7:10- scratch that, 1910 hours; she put the phone down on her nightstand and she closed her eyes.
Three weeks had passed and not a single message from A. Did it only take getting out of Rosewood and moving over 600 miles away to get A to stop? Somehow she couldn't believe that the distance was gonna stop A from making her life miserable. So she just let her mind wander off into some other form of despair. She didn't know what else to do but worry.
Living in an off-base military housing didn't mean living without the military schedule. If anything, she had to go through a stricter schedule than being on based. Her father, who had to get up at 0330 hours for training, had set a 1930 hours curfew for her house, and an 2030 hours bedtime. And every night he would play Taps in the house before bed, and the Reveille in the morning.
Once in a while she had received messages from her friends back in Rosewood- Spencer, Aria, Hanna, and occasionally Toby- who would tell her that with her absence, A just had to attack them double. This made her feel guilty, even more so because she couldn't respond to them as much as she wanted.
She hated it here and almost made her wish that she was back in Rosewood where the only sound she dreaded was her phone with a message from A. Almost.
Spencer stared at the plate of fresh salad in front of her, absent-mindedly rolling an olive around on her plate. A lot of things were on her mind; more importantly, a day had passed without her getting any message from A, but then again it was only six-thirty at night. The day wasn't over yet.
"Spencer, are you even listening?" Spencer looked up to see her dad, Peter, who was sitting across from her, turn a shade of red in frustration. He took the lowball glass on the table and put it to his mouth, drinking over half of the whiskey on the rocks with one gulp. He then filled it up to the rim.
"What?" Spencer replied, gently shaking her head to bring her back to her dining room where her family was sitting together for a dinner. It had been seven and a half weeks since her family had eaten together, since the funeral for Ian Thomas, her sister's fiancé.
"This is why I'm the favorite," Her sister, Melissa, groaned. Veronica, her mom, did not say anything at all to negate this statement. Spencer shot a quick glare at her sister and turned her attention back to her dad as quickly as possible.
"I am taking Maxwell Tyler to the club, a potentially new client, tomorrow. He's bringing his daughter around and I need you to entertain her." Peter said this with a definitive tone that implied it was not a choice. Knowing that her father does not accept a no for an answer, Spencer just nodded.
"May I be excused?" Spencer said, putting the fork down on the side of her plate. "I have to finish up my summer homework, and maybe try to get ahead." She lied, as she had finished the summer homework a couple of weeks after summer had began. She just didn't want to be with her family at the moment.
"Okay," Peter replied, "Just don't forget about tomorrow."
"I won't. I'll go to the club as soon as I get out of field hockey practice." Spencer said, pushing her seat forward and leaving the room.
Before she walked toward the living room, she turned around to watch her family have a real conversation, something else other than winning or the trouble she had been into—but about Melissa's adjustment in Philadelphia, about the short older woman who was teaching one of Melissa's classes whom Melissa endearingly referred to as Professor Hobbit. And her parents laughed; a sound that was rarely ever heard in the house, or so at least Spencer thought. Her stomach sank, knowing that she would have never felt like she belonged in this family. She quickly ran into her room.