Chapter 1: I Think We're Alone Now

Disclaimer: I do not own Pretty Little Liars. I'm not making money off of writing this.

AN: This is in the same world and could be considered a direct sequel to Plants Are the Fat Ones. I was planning on using that as the first chapter of this, but I realized that the other story worked better as a stand alone. However, I am taking Plants Are the Fat Ones as canon for this story.

Also apparently I missed a few typos in the previous story first time around. I may have fixed them by now.

People who have read some of my stuff before may notice that I definitely have favorite characters on the shows I like, but I hope that, though I focus on those characters, I also bring in the other characters at least somewhat.

On with the show.

Enjoy.


Emily couldn't sleep in her family's house. Logistically it was an option again; the tenants had moved out after the body had been found and the cops had cleared out of the yard weeks ago, but she couldn't stop seeing Maya's corpse in every room. Before, she couldn't stop seeing Ali sleeping in her bedroom, eating at her table, sitting on her porch and now Maya had joined her. The two girls she had been in love with. The two girls who had broken her heart. Broken it before they left, broken it by leaving, broken it by dying.

She hadn't even had to tell Hanna that she needed a place to stay. Hanna just knew and Mrs. Marin had been more than happy to have her stay as often as she wanted. Hanna had joked that her mom just wanted to hang onto the good daughter, but she was smiling when she said it. The only genuine smile that she had seen on Hanna since the Masquerade Ball. Part of Emily suspected that Hanna just didn't want to be alone right now. Why should she. Emily seemed to be the only one who hadn't forgotten that Hanna had lost someone too.

The first night that Emily had been allowed back into her childhood home she had carried her last bag of things over her back as she walked down the stairs from their...Hanna's room. She had thanked Mrs. Marin for her hospitality for all of these weeks and then she had gotten in her mother's car and sat quietly for the entire ride back to her house as her mom talked about how nice it would be to be living with family again. Emily held back a comment about how her dad still wouldn't be there – her mother really was trying – and just watched the road go by, making meaningless responses whenever she could tell they were expected.

At dinner she heard Maya telling the story of how her father had proposed to her mother. She felt herself rubbing the base of her ring finger and picturing a tattoo carved into her skin. Imagined that whether she liked it or not both Maya and Ali were carved into her now. They were gone, but she would never be able to escape from them.

She only made it half way up the stairs to her room before the mixed giggles of Maya and Ali drove her back down the stairs to the front door. Her mother worriedly called out to her as her hand closed around the doorknob, but Emily didn't really hear her as she pulled the door open and rushed out into the cold night.

Emily didn't even pay attention to where she was going. She followed her feet. She remembered that line from a movie. She wanted to go back. Back to when she hadn't lost anyone. She wanted to go to where she felt safe. She wanted to go home. So she followed her feet.

Hanna was already waiting for her on the front porch when she got to the Marins' house. Her mind flashed back to a time not so long ago when they had sat together on her own porch, both feeling lost and alone. Their silent promise to be alone together.

"Come on inside, Em," Hanna said, "Your mom called. I told her you were coming."

Hanna wrapped her arms protectively around Emily's waist and led her through the door. Mrs. Marin looked up from her seat in the kitchen and when she saw the girls coming in through the door she nodded and picked up the phone, but Hanna barely spared her mother a glance before continuing to pull Emily upstairs to their room.

Hanna gently lay Emily down in her bed and began removing her boots and her coat. She pulled the blanket gently over her and then climbed into the bed with her. Holding her as she cried.


When Emily woke up the next morning and tentatively made her way downstairs she was worried that there would be questions or dictations or something, but when she walked into the kitchen it was to find Hanna and Mrs. Marin sitting and eating quietly and a bag, that she quickly recognized as one of hers, sitting at the foot of the table.

"Your mom stopped by," Hanna said simply, "Dropped off some stuff you left at her house."

Nothing else was said on the matter.


As the months went by they fell into a pattern; Emily wouldn't leave, Hanna would stay with her, Emily's mom would come by for dinner every other day, and then would go home afterward having not once mentioned Emily coming with her. Emily suspected that her mom was still giving Mrs. Marin in compensation for her staying with her, just like when she hadn't moved to Texas, but she wouldn't have known for sure even if they had told her.

Really the most important part of the pattern was that Hanna was always right there with her. Because Emily was the only one who still remembered that Hanna had lost someone too. Because they had promised each other to be alone together. Sure people came to visit.

Lucas and Caleb usually showed up, joined at the hip, to talk Hanna into going somewhere fun with them and Hanna would smile and turn to invite Emily, silently begging Emily to give her a reason not to go which Emily would give. Caleb eventually learned to involve Emily in their plans automatically, but it didn't make that much of a difference.

Paige showed up once. When the door opened and Hanna saw her she scowled, but when Emily nudged her she invited the other swimmer in. Hanna didn't say anything the entire time that Paige was in the house, but she 'absentmindedly' moved everything sharp, heavy, or wet away from their guest for the full forty five minutes. When Paige left and Emily turned to her with a questioning gaze, Hanna had shrugged and said "Didn't she try to drown you once?"


Tonight was different.

At lunch Hanna had received a phone call and, after cheerfully answering, her face fell and she responded to whoever she was talking to in only monosyllabic grunts of ascent or denial. Finally, hanging up the phone, she walked out of the house alone.

For hours she didn't come back. Mrs. Marin was surprised when she came home and found Emily alone in the kitchen. When Emily's mom arrived for dinner she turned to an empty space in the room during her greetings expecting to have one more person to say good evening to.

It wasn't until Emily was leading her mother to the door that Hanna came back through it. She waved distractedly at the two of them, but continued up the stairs without supplying any sort of explanation. Emily smiled softly at her mom before turning away from her and following Hanna upstairs.

She paused outside of their room, the door left partially open, she watched Hanna walk to the middle of the room and then she watched as Hanna's legs gave out from under her. Emily rushed forward and wrapped her arms around Hanna's shoulders – half holding her up and half hugging her – and started whispering comforting sounds in her ear. She had no idea what had gone wrong, but this was Hanna crying. Hanna crying had to be rectified.

"She hit me with a car," Hanna finally forced out in three wracking sobs of speech.

Emily immediately pushed away from Hanna so that she could check over her body to see if she was hurt. She pushed her face from side to side and was just about to push her shirt up to check for bruising when Hanna pushed her hand away, shaking her head.

"No, Emily, stop," she said.

Emily froze. Her eyes not leaving Hanna as Hanna's eyes trailed all around the bedroom.

"Hanna, what happened?" Emily could barely hear her own voice as she asked the question.

"I got a call," Hanna said, "From the doctors. They were asking if I would go see her. I went up there."

"Oh, Hanna," Emily cooed and pulled Hanna in close again.

"She was my best friend," Hanna said, "She was my best friend and she ran me over with a car."

"None of us saw - ," Emily began.

"And I still care about her," Hanna burst out, "After everything...she's still Mona."

In the silence Emily felt Hanna's body tense, waiting for her reaction. Afraid that Emily would reject her for her feelings, but Emily just pulled her closer. When the tension left Hanna's shoulders and she sagged into Emily, she began rubbing circles in Hanna's back.

"It's okay, Hanna," she whispered, "I know."


Emily woke up to the sound of the doorbell. The clock read 11:00am, Mrs. Marin would be at work by now. The doorbell rang again. Emily looked down to see Hanna looking up at her with wide eyes and with shake of her head she told Emily that she wasn't ready to see anyone.

Emily walked to the window and peered carefully out. She sighed when she saw the two stood on the doorstep. They would be difficult to get rid of.

"Caleb and Lucas?" she said softly with a little sigh.

Hanna just shook her head again and pulled the covers over her head. Emily sighed and walked out of the room and to the front door. When she opened the door Caleb was almost immediately on his way through the door, but Emily blocked his way with an outstretched palm on his chest.

"It's not really a good time," Emily said with a sad smile, "Hanna kind of wants to be alone."

"What happened," Lucas asked from the porch.

"She had a tough day yesterday," Emily said, "It wore her down. She'll be okay."

"I just want to see her," Caleb insisted trying to move forward again, but Emily's hand didn't budge.

"She knows you're here, Caleb," Emily said firmly, "It's not a good time."

"It hasn't been a good time for awhile," Caleb said, "What's going on with her?"

Lucas placed his hand on Caleb's shoulder and shook his head at him. When Caleb turned to look at him he pulled his hand back and turned uncertainly to Emily. After a moment of silence he seemed to have steeled himself for whatever he was going to say and turned back to Caleb.

"Maybe we should go," he said quietly.

"Thank you," Emily said with a gentle smile, "I promise I'll get her to call you when she's ready to see people."

"Other than you," Caleb said.

Emily flinched at the dig and some part of her recognized that Lucas was flinching in sympathy. She stepped back inside to close the door, but was stopped by Caleb's hand on her arm.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I didn't mean..."

"Thank you for stopping by," Emily said politely.

Shoving his hands in his pockets, Caleb turned and began to walk away. Lucas hesitated for a minute, shifting back and forth on the step. He finally looked up at Emily and she could see the worry in his eyes.

"She's going to be okay, right?" he said tentatively.

"Yeah," Emily said with a smile, "I think she will be."

"Thank you," Lucas said, "for being there for her."

With that Lucas turned and hurried after Caleb. Emily watched as they met up and then continued watching until they turned the corner and disappeared from sight.


Hanna was curled up in a ball on the bed with her back to the door when Emily made her way back upstairs. Emily walked over to the bed and gently put her hand on Hanna's back. Hanna silently turned her head to look at her as she sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Scoot over please," Emily said softly.

Hanna wiggled a little closer to the other end of the bed and Emily crawled under the covers with Hanna, wrapping her arms around her waist as Hanna allowed her body to stretch out a little bit. She rested her chin on Hanna's shoulder and squeezed her a little bit.

"It's okay to still care about her," Emily whispered, "We all know that Mona loved you. She might not have shown it in the best of ways sometimes, but no one doubts it at all. She was there for you at a time when none of the rest of us were. Remember how mad you were at me when the school year started?"

"Well, yeah. You wouldn't even talk to me," Hanna said with a scoff, before quickly continuing, "Which I totally get. You loved Alison and she was gone. I was a reminder or something, right?"

"And Spencer was never the best at connecting with the rest of us, even when Ali was alive, and Aria just ran away," Emily said, "You're the only one of us who managed to maintain any kind of bond for a long time after Ali disappeared. So yeah. It's okay to still care about Mona. And it's okay to be angry at her."

"If there's one thing we learned from Alison...," Hanna began.

"It's how to hold the two feelings in tension," Emily said brightly.

"I was going to say 'how to love a sociopath'," Hanna said with a sniff and a smile, "But there was also a lot of tension. I'll go with that."


The weatherman had said that it would rain tonight, but Emily hadn't seen any of the signs as she walked down the dark Rosewood streets. Emily noticed that not just the graveyard, but the street for four blocks in every direction from the graveyard was completely deserted. No cars were parked. No dogs were being walked. No teenagers escorting their friends or their dates home. Just Emily and the few flickering streetlights.

As she walked up the path through the grounds of the cemetery, Emily glanced to either side trying to remember where her goal lay. She has only been able to bring herself to visit once and it had been so long ago.

Finally her eyes trailed across the name and the dates and she stopped and leaned back against the headstone. She closed her eyes and listened for any voices. Whispers. Whispers of thoughts. Ghosts.

"Hanna admitted that she loved you today," Emily began, "She may have also called you a sociopath, which I'm kind of impressed that she knows the word, but she also admitted that she loved you."

Somewhere in the back of Emily's mind Alison's laugh echoed. The dark one. The one that said that she appreciated that a funny joke had been pulled at her expense, but that also warned that no one joked at her expense.

"Someone else was killed," Emily said, "Her name was Maya and I'm pretty sure I loved her. She won't be joining you here. Her parents wanted to bury her closer to them and they moved to the next town over pretty soon after they found your body. So, it's a little bit harder for me to say 'goodbye'. You're right here. I just walked here from Hanna's house and it took me five minutes, but Maya..."

"Grow a backbone, Emily," ghost Alison whispered, "You're not fifteen anymore. You can drive. Go say goodbye to your gal-toy and come back to fabulous me."

"Mona went insane," Emily switched subjects, "I guess you already knew that. We just found out recently. Hanna hasn't been taking it very well. They had gotten close. After you...after you died. I really don't know if Hanna is going to make it through this. We all cared about you, Hanna included, but when you disappeared we could comfort ourselves with the thought that you were still out there somewhere and when we found out you were dead we were all there for each other and there was some sympathy for all of us."

Emily looked off down the path for a moment and then stroked the top of the gravestone. She collected her thoughts, playing with the band still wrapped around her wrist.

"Hanna doesn't really have that, now," Emily said, "She has me. I'm basically living in her room again. I was living with her, because...but I'm living there again because...well my reasons are mostly selfish, really. No one else seems to get it. It doesn't matter that Mona was secretly terrorizing us all for months. It wouldn't even matter if it turned out that she was the one who actually killed you, which, by the way, I'm not sure if you'd be impressed or upset with number of suspects in your murder. The thing is Mona and Hanna kind of belonged to each other. A little bit."

Emily closed her eyes again. She leaned her head back against the top of the gravestone and was silent for a minute. When she started talking again, it was in a tone that suggested that she was talking for the first time.

"So, I'm taking care of Hanna these days," Emily said conversationally, "She's had a bad fight with a good friend. You'd be proud of her though, she still gets out of bed in the morning. For the most part."


A/N: Way more came out of the last scene than I originally intended, but I just started typing and got on a roll. I've never really been interested in what exactly Emily saw differently than the other about Alison, but now that I think about it there must have some glimmer that she thought she saw.

I'm not sure how happy I am with this 'first' chapter, but then I never am. There will continue to be the dealing with grief storyline in the other chapters, but I think I might also branch into something that resembles one of the Pretty Little Liar mystery storylines. Enjoy.