A/N: Wilden is a jerk, but he used to be a sympathetic character for me...so here's to the Wilden from Season One. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: Don't own.

REST FOR THE WICKED

The darker the night, the brighter the stars, the deeper the grief, the closer is God!

Consciousness slowly trickled back in, announcing its gradual presence with the blinking of red and blue light. For a long moment it was difficult to distinguish where I was. Then I heard the crackle of the scanner from some nearby place.

I must have still been floating in semi-consciousness somewhere, because I wondered if I'd passed out in the car. I blinked sleepily – my eyes blurry – and managed to make out several shapes in the black of night around me. There was the car, sitting with the door wide open, throwing its existence at the world with those flashing lights and that static scanner. I thought I could see the vague shapes of trees, tall and strong and dark in the night.

The air was cold. It was the sharpness of the cold that brought my senses to me. I heard myself take in a short breath: my ribs felt distinctly broken, as did my left leg. I considered trying to stand up, but at once that seemed to be far too arduous a task, and I laid there on the ground, allowing my face to press into the gritty dirt.

I didn't know how long I lay there. I tried to think through the pain and wondered what had happened. No – I knew what had happened. Ashley had hit me with her car. God – she'd run me over. She had actually run me over. I remembered bits and pieces of argument and panic and then the rush of air against me as I flew over the roof of her car. Everything was starting to make sense, at least, I thought dully.

I closed my eyes and hoped I would die.

It would all be much easier that way, certainly. For Ashley, who thought I would harm her pretty daughter. I wouldn't, but she had no idea. She might have wounded me in the past, but what else was to be expected? I had been stupid enough to return to my old habits of trusting when I already knew I shouldn't. That was a lesson so deeply ingrained that I had to hate myself when I went back on those old ideals.

It would be easier for the station, too, if I died; they wouldn't have such a liability on their hands. After all, what was a detective who could not solve the same case that they had been assigned to for years? They could assign Rourke to the DiLaurentis case, I thought. He would solve it, of course. He had always wanted to.

Wouldn't it be easier for those four girls, too? The Liars, as Rosewood had dubbed them? Yes, it most likely would; they had always hated it when I tried to nose around for answers. Well, I was on the police force, I was the professional, I was the detective – there were reasons that I went sniffing around, and doubtlessly they were not allowed to know them and they could no more understand them than I understood the fate of Alison DiLaurentis.

But that was something else entirely that I understood. I understood it all too well.

It went both ways for me: if I trusted someone, they would soon turn their back on me. If someone trusted me, I would soon turn my back on them. If given the choice in that age-old equation of fight or flight, I had always chosen flight with no degree of uncertainty. It was easier: so much easier.

Life seemed to be working against me now, as it always had; I was still awake, and the pain was beginning to throb. I could feel an intense headache coming on. I squeezed my eyes shut tighter – and that was when I smelled it.

My eyes snapped open. I stared at the ground for a moment, stunned and too lazy to roll over and see. I thought I could hear movement behind me. "Oh, dear," said an all-too-familiar voice. I swallowed hard and wondered if this hallucination would disappear if I closed my eyes again. "You don't seem to be doing too well, Darren."

It hadn't worked. She was still there. I cautiously lifted my head, seeking her out: and I saw her lithe form standing too close. I could still smell her perfume. "You're dead," I murmured into the ground hoarsely. I found it was all that I could say. She was one of those people that had turned on me, too. It was only natural. She betrayed everyone – and that was why she was dead.

"But I don't want you to be," she said, tilting her head. I could practically see that pretty pout on her glossy lips: I knew that expression, remembered it darkly, the way she looked when the gears were turning in her head, when she was trying to decide what to do. "Oh, Darren," she said suddenly with a sigh. "You've been digging too deep in all the wrong places. Time should have taught you better."

I thought that this was supposed to mean more than it sounded, but I was fighting through waves of pain to think and it was too hard. "You're a bitch," I said sleepily into the ground. I could feel dirt on my mouth.

She threw her head back and laughed. I shifted around, much to my own detriment – pain took hold of me and refused to let go, tightening its grip with the slightest of movements. "You would think that, wouldn't you?" she said affectionately. "But that's all right. You really have no idea what's going on. I'm not the bitch here, Darren, and I never have been. I'm only deciding what to do with the time that is given to me."

I turned my head to look at her. I wasn't sure what my expression was; she suddenly moved, though, taking a step closer. She was wearing heels, like she always had. "I'll help you out now," she said, "but if you get yourself into trouble I won't help you again."

"Why do you want to help me?" I asked, and then gasped without meaning to at the spike of pain in my abdomen. I struggled to reach down and hold my stomach. She tilted her head again, although I sensed pity this time instead of consideration. "You always liked…someone else," I added with some trouble. "You were scared of…someone else."

"And you still don't know who it was," she said, shaking her head. "Maybe I should regret keeping you in the dark, Darren, darling, but I don't. Then you'd be as dead as I am."

It was this admittance of fact that somehow ended it all. When I woke up again, I was lying in an unidentifiable hospital bed in a white room. As I glared at the ceiling, hearing the connected heart monitor beeping steadily along behind me, I thought about what she had told me. There is no God, I thought. What a fucking hallucination to have.

It was true: there had always been someone else, and she was a bitch. I'd just been too stupid to see it at the time. There had been other men in her life – so many others – and more than one of them had threatened to kill her for something. I didn't know what, and I had the horrible feeling that I was supposed to know…but that didn't change anything.

Alison DiLaurentis had died, and there was nothing I could do to figure out who had killed her. So much easier, I thought, closing my eyes. It would have been so much easier if I had died.

For now, though, all I had was the thought of Ashley and Hanna. I had to stop them, I knew. I had to keep them from accusing me of something someone else had done to Alison…Ali. It had to be true, of course – of course she'd been pregnant, of course – there were so many men she had always been with all at once; but to accuse me? I'd been the one trying to find out who, I thought, and I'd be the one taken in for questioning and kicked out of the only job I knew how to do if they kept accusing me. I'd be kept from discovering who had pushed her into the hole in her backyard that night.

I had to stop them before I could move on and find Alison's killer. I had to.

So much easier.