Author's Note:
This AU will be set over ten years after the events of Season 5, where the Liars were never rescued from the Dollhouse.
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Chapter 1: Liberation
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As the months began to blur into years, she soon abandoned any hope of salvation.
What she had once hoped for—a miraculous, sweeping rescue, freeing them from their captor's macabre prison—now seemed so foolish, just as unlikely as her own chances of escape. Now, after so many years, she had long since banished those wishful imagnings to where they belonged; the realm of fiction, of impossibility. Time had given her the ultimate insight, the impetus to recognize a bitter, unspeakable truth; her hope held no power, no meaning beyond the temporary solace of a fantasy.
However insubstantial they may have been, she couldn't help but yearn to fall back into the embrace of illusion; fantasies of hope were the only solace she had left, the only balm over a savage, gaping wound. She had suffered for so long—suffered under every torture that could be imagined, an endless catalogue of torment—that it began to wear upon her sanity, fraying her mental faculties beneath the heavy, solemn cloud of anguish. If she were ever fortunate enough to be liberated from this hellish prison, she knew she would never be able to set foot in her own bedroom again; it would bring forth too many memories, that familiar rush of fury and desolation.
While she had been ravaged by the passage of time, her personal chamber had not; it looked no different than when she had first been placed within it, a perverse replication of her bedroom. She had tried to search for the smallest error, an absent detail, an object out of place-but in spite of her meticulous efforts, she found nothing, and it maddened her. There was no feature in her bedroom that this cell did not mirror, and it felt like an intimate violation-as if her tormentor had stolen every item that she held dear, twisted them into something rotten.
As the days crawled by, she began to understand why people went mad, on a more intimate level than she wanted to admit; when everything was stripped away, what more did she have left? Their tormentor had tried to obliterate their identities, their autonomy, their very thoughts—to twist them into nothing more than dolls, plastic husks where a soul had once been. In the first months of their captivity, she had fought, railing against him with every ounce of her stubborn ferocity-but now, she saw no point in outward defiance, instead confining her resistance to the privacy of thought.
The only thing that had kept the plague of madness at bay—and, perhaps, kept her from crumbling into oblivion—was the ability to make tallies on her wall, keeping track of the days. It may have seemed mundane, but in her eyes, it was a small victory; she had been able to craft a timeline of her captivity, grouping the weeks, months, and years into seperate categories. Now, looking upon her scrawled numbers from where she sat on the floor, she ruminated on the vast stretch of time—they had been gone for over a decade, nearing their eleventh year.
I'm almost thirty. Spencer recoiled from that unspoken reminder, from the cruel reality it betrayed; if her timeline was correct, she had spent nearly half of her life in this wretched cell. I've lost so much time. Before, she would have wept at the realization, her eyes hot with grief over what she had lost, what had been stolen from her-but now, her spirit had been hardened, and she accepted the truth with a bitter resignation.
There had been so much that she had lost, so many years, so many of life's pleasures that she could never experience again—she would never feel the sun's warmth upon her skin, the beauty of the world around her, the embrace of those she had held most dear. The world thought they were dead, and time would continue to move forward, leaving them behind in its shadow-and for all that she had endured, that knowledge cut deeper than any blade could reach.
It hurt, to imagine those she cared about moving forward, her memory fading to the background of their lives-but she couldn't find it in her heart to blame them, as they had no way of knowing the truth. Charles had tormented her with videos of those she held dear, taunting her with what she would never have; she had been forced to watch her loved ones move through the stages of grief, carrying on with their lives in her absence.
After five years, Toby had met another woman, beginning a relationship that would eventually lead to marriage—those videos had hurt most of all, a vivid, scalding imprint on her memory. It had broken her, to her tormentor's delight, making her facade of strength crack for the first time; even now, her stomach tightened with a fierce echo of grief, followed by burning jealousy. Imagining him with someone else—in another woman's arms, creating a family together, sharing every intimacy that they had shared and hoped to share—was enough to make her heart sting, though time had blunted that painful echo.
Desolate as she was, she couldn't blame him either; he thought she was dead, as everyone else did, and they had no reason to think otherwise. She had wished she was dead, many times over the years-and after a few weeks passed without rescue, their tormentor seemed to know that they were now helpless, utterly at his mercy. Unlike before—he could only torment them from a distance, forced to restrict the sadism of the game, lest he draw attention from others—he could do anything he wanted to them, and he took those liberties to a gleeful extreme.
The first year of captivity was one of the worst; dominated by a rapid escalation into physical violence, Charles' perverse games grew ever more sadistic, designed to cause them pain. Though she yearned to forget, to erase that brutal imprint from the shadows of her mind, nightmarish flickers of the memory still haunted her; the first of many torturous games, of nightmares to come. Nothing would ever match the horror of that first game-of the speakers commanding that she torture one of her friends, or else they would all be tortured.
She could remember every moment—tears clogging her throat as she made that first cut into Aria's flesh, that terrible laughter from the intercom, her watery eyes rivited to the trails of blood that ran down Aria's splayed, naked form—and many more like it, only with different combinations. Sometimes, she only had to watch the gruesome scene; on other days, she was forced to participate, either as the victim or as an unwilling torturer. Ever selfless, it was Emily that always offered to sacrifice herself on the rack, willing to bleed for her friends-but seeing her take the brunt of the torture didn't make Spencer feel any better, shivers of guilt twisting down her stomach.
Eventually, after a year, they decided to rebel; each of them refusing to torture someone else, willing to suffer together, as the united front they had always been. It worked, but not without consequences—Charles had decided to seperate each of them, torturing them individually with a new round of games. This time, the torture was psychological, designed to degrade and humiliate them-and while she faced it with stubborn defiance, this round of games lasted for almost seven years, breaking the tenuous threads of hope she once held. Most often, the game involved forcing her to do something repulsive—wetting herself like a child, rolling in her own feces—and if she rebelled, the punishment was even worse.
Fortunately, things had changed in the most recent years of her captivity, though she hadn't a clue as to why; perhaps he was satisfied that she had been hammered into docile submission, feeling more defeated than she had ever been. After her eighth year, the torture sessions grew less frequent—as if Charles had grown bored of her, or simply ran out of ideas—and, in the last year, they had ceased altogether.
He seemed content to leave her alone, rotting in the silent confines of her chamber-and while she was grateful for the turn of fortune at first, she soon began to regret it, boredom creeping upon her like a parasite. The emptiness grew oppressive, an unending void, leaving her with only the anxious thoughts that raced through her mind-and she wanted nothing more than to end it, to burn every drop of suffering away.
It hadn't been the first time she had contemplated ending her life, by any means, yet it was the most potent; silence, she had grown to realize, was a torture in itself.
Spencer had little remaining to occupy her time, save pondering the future—an uncertain future, destroyed by their tormentor's hand. She worried for her friends, friends that could be suffering some unimaginable horror right now, yet she was powerless to act-and that impotence grated on her nerves most of all. Even if she could find them, she knew they would be changed, scarred by over a decade of torment-no one could emerge from such an ordeal unscathed, and like it or not, it would change them.
It had changed her, after all.
She had grown to despise looking in the mirror, at the shadow of what she had once been; the woman that stared back at her seemed so old, her features alien, unable to be reconciled with past memories. Her eyes were harder than flint, cold and empty, weighed down by a decade's worth of trauma-and the lines of her face had grown sharper, thinned by malnourishment. Her body still bore the scars of torture—though faded on her skin, they were there, an eternal monument to her agony—and even the way she carried herself was different, her posture guarded, as if shielding against the next blow.
Spencer stirred, rising to pace before the mattress, ignoring the seductive pull of exhaustion; she was in no mood for a fitful sleep, peppered with nightmares of what could never be.
So many years, gone. The words felt as if they were crawling down her skin, a solemn echo. After all we've been through, we deserved more than this.
The shadows clung to her, thick and dreadful, as if mirroring her own despair; she was going to die here, she knew, alone and forgotten. Her friends would likewise perish, if they hadn't already—it had been nine years since she had seen a trace of them. Ever since they had been separated, banished to the enclosed chambers that would comprise their personal hell, Spencer hadn't a clue as to what happened to them-and she had no idea if they were alive or dead, suffering or left to rot in silence.
As it so often did, her thoughts swam with worry, struggling to discern the unknowable...
Click.
Spencer nearly leapt from her skin at the sound, whirling about, surprise catching the breath in her throat-but as she laid eyes upon the source of the noise, she was taken aback by what lay before her. The doorway to her chamber was drifting open, as if nudged by a breeze, and she could only stare; her heartbeat thundered in a furious rhythm, lending fresh warmth to her muscles. The door hadn't opened in years, only doing so when their tormentor wanted to take her to another room to be tortured-and panic fired through her nerves, raising the hairs upon her skin.
For a moment, she waited in fearful silence, expecting that cheerful voice to give her a direction—
But it never came.
The Dollhouse was quiet, silent as the grave, and Spencer frowned; this had never happened before. Even as she peered into the darkness beyond, into the maze of barren corridors, there was no activity to be seen-and, as the silence began to grow heavier, she finally mustered the courage to advance a few steps. Just before she reached the opening, fear twisted down her stomach in a violent spasm-and the terrible feeling seemed to freeze her in place, suspending her movement before she could step into the corridor.
Is this some kind of test? A trick, to see if I try to escape? Caution stayed her advance, her eyes narrowing, unwilling to fall into a potential trap-but as she studied the door, chest rising with every shallow breath, nothing seemed to move. She could hear the faint echo of movement ahead, perhaps from the others, but even that was not enough to convince her; she hesitated, shivers grasping her skin at the thought of her tormentor's retaliation.
Bad dolls get punished. Those words, so often hissed through the intercom whenever she had attempted to defy him, seemed to ring in her ears-and she fought the urge to cower, to hide, to crumble into whimpering obedience. She was more than a doll, more than a victim; it was the one truth she had clung to, that had given her strength to keep the darkness at bay. She had an identity, a name, and no one would ever erase that-though Charles had tried, made countless attempts to destroy the only sanctuary that she had left.
Could it be another game? Doubt surged through her thoughts, weakening her resolve with flickers of terrible memory, of the many nightmares she had endured-and her mind swelled with sudden panic, every thought scattering before that familiar, overwhelming anxiety. She wrestled against her own emotions, adrenaline driving her thoughts beyond reason, to the height of despair-and suddenly, all she could think about was the threat of punishement, consumed by a primal fear of the next.
She could almost hear her own screams, that shrill voice chiding her for disobedience, the pain that seared down her back like fire—
Don't think about it. She dispelled the memories with a fierce shake of her head, pushing through the cloud of fear that threatened to overcome her-and, after a breath, she stepped into the corridor. To her relief, nothing happened, the grasp of panic beginning to ease-and, as she staggered towards the intersection that seperated their chambers, she saw a few silhouettes enter her field of vision. Their figures were little more than blurs in the darkness ahead, indistict shadows, almost blending into the surrounding walls-and she fought the urge to announce her presence, instead advancing at a cautious pace.
Then, she drew closer, and something in her heart soared with joy; it was them, shuffling from their chambers and into the intersection beyond. They looked just as hesitant as she was, just as disoriented, like patients awakening in an unfamiliar hospital-and Spencer quickened her footsteps, as much as her exhaustion would allow.
They met in the intersection, and it was as if something had changed in the air; as if a supernova of light had blazed into existence where there had once been only darkness. For a moment, the quartet stared, momentarily surprised-before racing forward, their pathways colliding in a whirlwind of joyous energy. The embraces seemed to last forever, every hug stained with tears, with an outpouring of a decade's worth of emotion-and for each of them, it felt as if a source of strength had been regained, fueled by the euphoria of reunion.
"You're alive." The words fell from Spencer's lips in a breathless rush, her tears mirrored so clearly in the eyes of the others-and her throat was closing inward, clenching with a grief deeply felt. "I...I never thought I'd see you guys again."
She studied each of them, noticing for the first time how old they looked, how weary-but then again, she knew she looked no different. They looked as if the air was pressing down upon them, heavy with over a decade's worth of suffering—their eyes were haunted, devoid of light, clouded with something dark and inscrutable. Each of them bore scars, gashes littering their skin, some in more visible areas than others; even in this dim, muted light, she could see the remains of every wound.
Emily carried herself with a pronounced limp, sagging to one side as if a fracture had never healed properly-but when her eyes fell upon Hanna's face, she nearly recoiled, horror taking the wind from her lungs. The woman's features looked mutilated, as if they had been disfigured with burns, resembling that of a pig's coarse flesh-and, as bile surged in Spencer's throat, she swung her eyes in Aria's direction. Aria didn't seem to have many scars, though she looked emaciated, the bones nearly visible beneath her skin-and her eyes were hooded, rimmed by a set of deep, dark circles.
"A-are you guys okay?" She knew it was a foolish question to ask, but she could find nothing else to say. "W-what did he do to you?" She felt their eyes lingering on her own wounds—a jagged scar across the length of her face, the electrical burns on her neck, other scars that streched below the fabric of her clothing—and ignored the scrutiny, taking a step forward.
"We went through hell, let's just leave it at that." Hanna's voice was brittle, a feeble shadow of its former strength, and Spencer cast her a sympathetic glance; even from a distance, she could see how guarded the woman's eyes were, how dark. Though she was clearly trying to discourage further inquiry, if the biting snap of her voice was any indication, concern propelled Spencer onward-and she was speaking before she could stop herself, voice soft with pity.
"Han, what happened to you?" Spencer asked, noticing her concern mirrored in the faces of the others-and Hanna's shoulders heaved with a trembling breath, eyes lowering to the ground.
"I...I tried to escape." Her fingers twitched upward to grasp her face, as if on impulse, to shield it from their view. "I thought I could break down the door with a chair in my room, and when that didn't work, I used it to destroy that damned camera." Her voice grew quieter, eyes stinging at the remembrance of what followed, of the round of hellish punishments that had lasted for what felt like a year—a twisted game that had culminated with most of her face being disfigured with acid.
He had spared her eyes, fortunately, yet the majority of her features were not so lucky; the lines of her skin had grown rough, uneven, colored with a faint hue of scarlet. With time, the initial wounds had healed over, yet that permanent echo remained-as if he had branded her, an eternal claim of ownership. Charles had known that such a punishment would hurt her the most—she had always been fixated on her looks, ever since the turmoil of adolescence, and her beauty had been a treasured source of contentment.
Now, that beauty had been destroyed, leaving a hideous shadow in its wake; if she ever managed to find her freedom, she knew the world would look at her differently, and perhaps even Caleb would too. Not that it mattered—he had moved on with his life, found happiness with another, something her tormentor had taunted her with—and while that knowledge had cut her deeply, she couldn't expect him to spend the rest of his life in a stagnant cycle, forever chained to the ghost of her memory.
For all he knew, for all the world knew, she had been dead for a very long time; it was unreasonable to think that her loved ones would not move on with their lives, and she wouldn't want them to remain trapped in time. Unfortunately, it was a luxury that she could not share—she had no clue as to how long she had been here, and the passage of time had long since lost any meaning.
"The bastard made me suffer for it, of course." Hanna continued, fury snapping at the edges her voice, an unspoken demand not to speak of it any further-and Spencer nodded, allowing the silence to remain.
"Do...do any of you know how long we've been here?" Emily's voice disrupted it, soft and hesitant, and Spencer nodded. "I do." She responded, watching as the others glanced her way, confusion written across their faces; she could already see the questions forming on their lips, unspoken.
"I managed to keep a running tally of the weeks, months, and years." Spencer elaborated, watching the emotion that swirled in their eyes—surprise, relief, and even a shred of humor.
"Of course you did." Aria's mouth curled in a tiny smile, warmth behind her words-and Spencer felt her own lips twitch in response, her spirits lifted by the moment of levity. Even the others were smiling, their nerves soothed by that familiar banter, the good-natured humor that helped bind their friendship together so long ago; even though it had been nine years since they had seen one another, it was as if no time had truly passed.
"And you thought my perfectionism would never come in handy." She jested back, smile broadening, though her mirth was quickly cooled by the circumstance at hand-and as the others looked at her, expectant, she prepared for the reactions that were sure to follow.
"We've been here for ten years, nine months, and twenty-five days." As she expected, the knowledge seemed to strike them like a physical force, the unforgiving reality crashing down upon their shoulders-and Aria put a hand to her mouth, trying to stifle the sob that ripped forth. Their faces had gone ashen white, contemplating the implications, how much they had missed-and Hanna had turned away from the others, as if struggling to hold back tears.
"We've been here for almost eleven years?" Emily's voice was stricken, frantic, and Spencer couldn't bear to listen any further; even though she had always known the truth, hearing it articulated by another was like a blow in itself. The words rang in her ears, stark and cold, an unforgiving whisper that seemed to resonate through the very marrow of her soul—
Ten years, nine months, and twenty-five days.
"Is this going to be another game?" Aria asked, glancing at the silent darkness around them, as if afraid a demon would leap from the shadows. Spencer's eyes drifted towards the camera that was positioned above the intersection—it was unmoving, strangely enough, that red, blinking light extingushed—and she gestured at it, drawing the attention of the others.
"The cameras are off." She scowled, glancing around, now thoroughly confused. "If this were a game, I doubt he'd take that risk."
"Is he letting us go?" Emily peered at the camera, then swiveled to face the corridor ahead. They gathered there, at the intersection's edge, held at bay by a chilling fear of retaliation-but as the seconds passed without incident, they grew bolder, inching into the shadows.
"Screw it, let's get the hell out of here." Ever impetuous, Hanna was the first to stride forward, taking that first step into the corridor; the others followed, though more cautiously. The dark, twisting labyrinth of passageways was no longer unfamiliar to them; they knew how to navigate it as if it was second nature, a knowledge cemented by years of exposure. They headed straight for the exit, turning corner after corner, blood roaring in their ears with every step; time was a scarce commodity, especially if they wanted to escape before their miraculous luck ran out.
"Do any of you—" Hanna's voice seemed to falter with grief, as if just realizing that Mona was not with them, her eyes darkening with a solemn shadow. "—do any of you know what happened to Mona?"
"I don't think she made it, Han." Spencer responded, wracking her memory for images of the woman; all that remained were a few flashes of the girl's face, indistinct and murky, blurred by the passage of so many years. It had been a long time since she had seen Mona, longer than a decade-and the last thing she could remember, Mona had been banished to the Hole soon after their first escape attempt.
She had been tasked with delivering their meals, an opportunity that she exploited to attempt to contact them; the girl had tried to pass messages to her using the food slot in their cell doorways, a transgression that had inspired Charles' wrath. Mona had vanished a few days later, leaving only a final, haunting message behind: He's going to kill me.
She almost hoped Mona was dead, because the alternative—over a decade spent rotting in the Hole, a jagged pit that was far worse than their cells—was too horrific to consider.
No one could have survived such a fate, at least, not with their sanity intact; the human body could only handle so much. It would be Mona's worst nightmare, to live on as a broken shell; she may have caused them pain in the past, but she didn't deserve such an inglorious fate. If given a choice, Spencer knew the girl would have rather died as she lived—strong and stubborn, with an unbreakable strength of will—than devolve into a babbling wreck, unable to handle reality.
"If we get out of here, the police will be back here, and they'll search for her." Aria offered, not wanting to deny her friend that sliver of false hope, but knowing how unlikely a positive outcome was. They couldn't risk getting lost while searching for the unfamiliar chamber, not when they had such a critical opportunity to escape. "Everything's going to be fine, Han."
It was a lie, they all knew, but none of them had the strength to contradict her.
They reached the exit, noticing the door's position, a heavy slab of metal that had been canted ajar; just as with their cells, it was as if the electricity had failed. Glimmers of light shone through the crack, making Spencer's heart leap with joy-and she was the first to exit, pushing the door open with a hand. The light of dawn greeted her—cold and biting, thick with a refreshing blast of oxygen—and she took a few paces forward, glancing at the wavy portrait of clouds that loomed above.
It was just as sublime as she had hoped.
The dirt was cool beneath her bare feet, sending delightful shivers up her spine-and the sky seemed to hold more beauty than an artist's masterpiece, streaked with blue and orange, the sun poised like a crown atop the ocean of color. The woodlands circled them, save for a open trail that led away from the fence-but the rest of the trees were not thick enough to restrict their vision, allowing for a wide berth of sight into the surrounding woods.
Spencer breathed it in, savoring every image of the outside world, of a world that now seemed so foreign; how had things changed, when over a decade had passed them by?
"Do you think a storm knocked out the power?" Emily questioned, approaching the fence-and when she discovered that it no longer hummed with lethal electricity, she turned, waving the others over. "All we have to do is climb this fence, and we're free."
Hope—foolish, stupid hope, an emotion that had led to untold pain—surged in Spencer's chest. She could hear the excitement in Emily's voice, an excitement that mirrored her own; perhaps salvation was finally at hand, and they were finally free from this hell. She could see the world again—see Toby again, see her parents, her sister, everyone she held dear—and before she knew it, her lips had twisted in a smile, the first in quite some time.
After all this time, could it really be over? Could they be free at last?
"Maybe God decided to throw us a bone." Aria scowled, her eyes were shining with the first sparks of suspicion; it seemed like a miraculous twist of fate, too miraculous for her to believe. Even now, they still knew so little—so little about the game, so little about the identity of their mysterious torturer. "What if this is some kind of game, and he wants us to be free so he can stalk us all over again?"
"What do we have to lose?" Hanna's voice silenced her, incredulity bleeding through the sharp tones, and the quartet began to start forward. "I don't know about you, but I'd rather not die in a replica of my bedroom." Soon enough, they were scrambling up the fence, all else forgotten in a mad rush for salvation-and the instant Spencer's feet landed upon the forest floor, she felt buoyant, her blood singing with the rush of euphoria. Tears gathered at the edge of her vision, a glorious cascade of emotion rushing down upon her, striking her like a physical force; liberation was within their grasp, and that was all that seemed to matter.
As they stumbled through the woods, struggling against the fatigue that clung to their aching limbs, Aria's words lingered at the back of her mind; perhaps this truly was too good to be true, the beginning of another game. If it was, it was more than worth it-while that paranoid instinct would always remain, it was dwarfed by the blessed reality, by the promise of escape. Whether by a deliberate act or the mercy of nature, they had been given a second chance; a second chance at life, a second chance at living.
She didn't care about the future—not as long as she felt the sunlight upon her skin, felt the cool air in her lungs.
Freedom beckoned.
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