Only Ghosts, a pretty little liars fanfic

So everyone's familiar with how Emily helped Paige come to terms with her sexuality, but what if it was the other way around? This story is mostly AU with a few canon consistencies, but you'll have to read on to find out what they are...

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Only Ghosts

Not conscious
that you have been seeking
suddenly
you come upon it

- (RS Thomas)

Pam Fields was furious.

Emily could tell by the way the groceries were slammed down onto the kitchen counter, the apples jumping up excitably from their position balanced inexpertly on top of the eggs before toppling down onto the surface of the counter and bouncing briefly, rolling enthusiastically to the edge of the counter before tumbling to land at Emily's feet.

Emily bent down and picked them up, rubbing at their blemishes briefly with the sleeve of her sweater. 'Everything OK Mom?' she inquired as she set them back on the counter.

Her mother pressed a hand dramatically against her forehead between her eyebrows as if she was developing a migraine. 'I just don't know what's wrong with people,' she said, turning to look at Emily in a vaguely accusatory manner, as if the sentence could be equally applied to her.

'What people?' Emily asked, taking a few steps closer to begin extracting the groceries from the bag.

'Just ... people,' she gesticulated erratically towards nothing in particular, 'everyone,' she concluded.

'What's happened exactly Mum?' Emily asked gently, opening the fridge to put away the perishables she had piled into her arms.

'Those hippies in the woods,' her Mum said angrily.

Emily scrunched up her face slightly in confusion. Hippies in the woods? Really? 'Mum, don't take this the wrong way but ... did you breathe in any suspicious fumes in the car today?'

'Don't get smart with me Emily,' Pam warned, snapping round to look at her, and Emily bit her lip and shut the fridge door quietly, 'You know your Father and I have viewings for the house all week,' Pam continued, 'if anything's going to drive the value down it's a bunch of unwashed tree-huggers camping right outside the front door.'

Emily frowned, trying to ignore the pang of sorrow she felt at her mother's mention of their imminent relocation. 'You're going to have to help me out here Mom, I seriously have no idea what you're talking about,' she admitted.

'Have you even left the house today Emily?' Pam asked irritably, 'because if you had you'd have seen them all there with their tents and their signs.' She sighed heavily as if the whole thing burdened her terribly. 'They're protesting the building of those condos in that scrubby bit of woodland by the Marwyn Trail.'

Emily's body tensed. 'Condos?' she repeated. 'What condos? Why haven't I heard anything about this?'

'If you took any interest in local affairs, Emily, you'd have seen the notices in the paper,' Pam reminded her.

Emily scowled. 'But Mom ... that's where,' she felt her throat begin to tighten, 'I mean ... Ali's shrine ...'

'Oh, Emily,' Pam sighed, her tone softening slightly, 'I'm sorry honey, I really am,' she paused, pursing her lips together as if unsure whether to say what she wanted to say, and after a moment just continuing anyway, 'but when was the last time you even visited that?'

Emily dropped her gaze to the floor, her eyes prickling slightly, aware that her mother was right. It was probably a racoon den by now.

Her mother appeared to allow her a few moments of contemplative silence before speaking again. 'Now will you go any tidy that pig sty you call a bedroom please?' she asked, scrunching up the now empty grocery bag noisily and balling it tightly in her fist. 'The estate agent's arriving in thirty minutes and we're going to need all the help we can get.'

She stood up from laying fresh flowers at the base of the hollow tree and rejoined the line of her three best friends who had gathered at her panicked group-text half an hour earlier. She could hear the distant bustle coming from the protest camp, as well as some sort of rustling coming from somewhere close by, but when she looked up she saw nothing but the canopy of the trees.

When Alison had disappeared teams of searchers armed with shovels and flashlights and whistles had combed through every last inch of the woodland, churning up the earth and tramping through the brambly undergrowth, calling out to each other through the trees, cordoning off more sections of the wood with yellow police tape. When Ali had been found, dead, back at her house of all places, the wood looked just as traumatised as Emily had felt, scrambled and disorientated, unfairly arraigned as the entomber of the body. Emily found herself coming to the woods more and more often – they offered her a quiet emptiness that she couldn't find at home, not with the team of police detectives stationed next door. She had discovered the old hollow tree on one of her visits, and had found it frightening at first; it was broken-backed and expressionistic – dead, with a cavernous opening splitting its trunk near the base. But there was something comforting about it that Emily could never quite put into words. Something about the void, something about death, something about the new life that encircled it – green saplings springing from around its gnarled roots – that gave her a sense of strength when nothing else would. When she took a framed photo of Alison from her house and placed it into the shadowy cradle of the hollow, she had felt as if she'd laid a ghost to rest. Gradually, her and her friends had all brought keepsakes and mementos of Alison to the tree.

'I just wish we could do something,' Emily muttered, scuffing at the soft earth with the toe of her shoe.

'Like join a protest?' Aria suggested softly.

'Well ... no,' Emily conceded, 'but –'

'Short of tie-dying your underwear and using a bucket for a toilet, I don't expect there's much you can do Em,' Hanna told her, glancing towards the tents.

'Not to stereotype or anything, huh Han?' Spencer asked dryly.

'Hey, I used to have to stay at my Uncle's 'artist commune' in Connecticut every summer. Communal living is messy. I've seen things that I had to repress,' she seemed to visibly shudder.

Spencer rolled her eyes. 'Oh please.'

Aria placed a gentle hand on Emily's shoulder. 'I wish we could leave her here too Em, but seeing as we can't ... I'd like to move her somewhere where she won't get, y'know ... bull-dozed.'

Emily sighed, feeling helpless. 'Yeah ... you're right.'

'We'll pick a real nice place,' Hanna promised, taking Emily's hand in her hers and squeezing lightly.

Emily looked up sharply as she heard the rustling again, certain it was coming from almost directly above her.

Her friends remained seemingly oblivious to the noise, but they were growing a little restless, beginning to offer reasons for needing to leave.

'You guys go ahead,' Emily told them. 'I'm just going to ... stay a little longer.'

'Don't stay out late Em,' Aria warned her as they began to move away.

'Promise,' Emily assured her with a small smile.

Her friends had disappeared entirely from view when she heard the rustling again, and she once again looked up, before looking left and right urgently. 'Alright who's there?' she asked firmly.