Hi all!

I have decided to shift from first to third person.

First person really limits my ability to jump between perspectives and scenes and very much imposes on my creativity.

I hope this doesn't change much for you with regard to the actual storyline.

Thanks!

- I -

Just as the seven-AM orange-yellow sun peered through the evergreen leaves of the trees at seven surrounding the Hastings barn, a powerfully built, handsome man walked up the gravel path and to the patio door.

"Knock knock!"

From underneath the covers, Spencer grinned.

"Who's there?"

"Well, well, well…" she could hear him walking slowly towards her bed. Like an eight-year-old girl hiding from the Boogieman, Spencer hid her entire body under the covers without a single limb poking out.

"I guess you'll just have to come and see…"

He grabbed her leg.

"Won't you?"

At this point, Spencer was fully out of the covers, and facing the intruder. His eyes were blue-green and radiated sunlight. She smiled. The pair kissed.

"How are you?" Toby asked, in that unabashedly sincere, thoughtful way he mastered.

"I've missed you."

He reclined. They both lay on the bed, facing the ceiling.

"I want to see you more too. Which is why I want you to come camping in the Ozarks with me next week during your… week-long vacation."

At this Spencer laughed mirthlessly.

"Toby. I'll kick your ass in Western any day of the week, but good luck finding a trekking pole on any of the acres of our property."

"Spencer. You know so much. But you have to expand your horizons."

Spencer rested her head on his shoulder.

"Okay, Carnegie. I'll become a horsefly-magnet under one condition."

Whispering into his ear… "I get all the s'mores and all the caffeine I want. And you do not get to grimace when I make your cup. Oh, and…" she leaned even closer. "We play Risk instead of Scrabble."

Before he could open his mouth in protest, the phone rang.

"Hold that thought."

Spencer raced to the other side of the barn, in the kitchen, where she could look at Bashful pawing the dirt.

"Hello?"

"Spence?"

"Ali! How are you?" Spencer turned around, making a gesture to Toby, who didn't look enthused.

"We'll talk about me later." Alison sighed, and then dramatically stated, "Emily's back."

At this, unable to mask her surprise, Spencer quickly put the phone on speaker so that Toby could hear.

"What? How is she?"

"She's dead tired. She's super different. She seems really isolated right now. Like a fish out of water. And that's why I want you to pep her up before she comes back to school tomorrow. Coffee after you get out? And bring your beau. He and her jive in a way that eludes the rest of us."

Spencer looked at Toby, though neither of them were smiling.

"Yeah, um… we'll both be there."

"Thank you, Spencer. It means a lot to me. To us."

"Bye, Alison."

Toby and Spencer looked at each other. They had seen Emily when she'd come home from the army (three times a year), but now that she was back permanently, and starting her job at Rosewood High, they were sure things would be beyond difficult for her.

Spencer put the phone down, and sullenly sat next to Toby on the bed.

- II -

By the time the flight from Montreal to Philadelphia landed in the runway, Mona's body was sore and stiff. Not because of any uncomfortable positioning, no. Because of the tension that returning home brought. The pang of nostalgia as the plane flew over Pennsylvania's rolling hills and ridges sheerly juxtaposed the hostility she just knew she'd receive as she rolled through Rosewood's city limits.

Mona made her way to the baggage claim. Five large designer bags rolled out, one after the other, perfectly neat and organized, and she seized them off the conveyor belt, sticking them onto the metal cart, which she rolled out to the terminal entrance.

"Mona!"

Mona wheeled around to see him. The one guy in this state who she knew she could count on. The guy who'd written her messages, and never had any ulterior motives to asking her how she was doing. The guy she deep, deep down, loved.

"Mike!"

Right away, the pair embraced, and started rolling her cart to his SUV.

"You look tired."

"That's off-script, you know. But yeah, I'm beat."

As he started the ignition, and drove into the city, Mona tried identifying all the changes that had taken place since she'd left, in corner shops, boutiques, restaurants, and even the flowers that grew out of sidewalk cracks. Mona needed to stay away. She knew she wasn't wanted, but now, she was sure of who she was. She didn't need validation, and Paris had just been a coping mechanism.

Thirty minutes later, as we rolled into Rosewood, Mike turned to her, and rubbed her shoulder.

"Hey. If you're not comfortable, you can stay at my place."

Mona smiled.

"I just want to see my room again."

Although Mona knew that one way or another, she would have to talk to the girl whose friendship she was starved for.

- III -

The kitchen clock read 1:31 PM. Alison put her heavily annotated version of Twelfth Night next to A Midsummer Night's Dream on her wooden bookshelf and rose slowly from the couch. Lily and Grace were at Pam's until the evening, which was perfect.

Alison pulled the cookies out of the oven, poking them with a spatula to make sure they were just the right texture. She then took out grapes, crackers, and cheese from the fridge, which she set out onto the table. There would be five, six guests, she thought to herself, making sure there were just enough platelets and serviettes.

All the while, Emily sat vacantly on the queen-sized bed in their bedroom, staring at herself, or at nothing in particular, in the mirror. She wore light colors, as selected by Alison to make her feel "more content" than she had been.

At 1:59, Aria rapped on the door.

"Are you sure it's fine that we didn't bring anything?", asked Ezra, scratching his head.

Aria, turned, smiling. "Yes! Besides, Ali likes being in charge."

"No, but I mean for Emily."

"Alison told us not to bring gifts. That'd overwhelm her."

Alison opened for them, they all embraced.

"I'm so glad you could make it," she said, ushering them to take a seat in her living room.

Then, Toby and Spencer, and Hanna and Caleb.

The second that the door opened, Hanna peeled herself from Caleb's side, and practically lunged at the open seat next to Aria. While she was glad to see her friend, her absorption of Aria's attention was motivated by her discomfort in concealing something as inflammatory as Mona's whereabouts from Caleb. Caleb, confused, dismissed her behavior as Hanna-odd, and sat next to Ezra instead.

Aria and Hanna exchanged meaningful glances.

Hanna whispered, "How long have you known?"

"She called me yesterday evening. It sounded like she was about to leave."

"I guess I just don't understand why she would do this now. I…"

Aria shrugged her shoulders, turning her attention away from Hanna so that nobody caught onto their conversation.

Alison sat on a couch by herself, facing her guests.

"Thank you all. It… it's amazing that you took time out of your day to come and sit with us. Emily really needs to know she's supported right now. She—"

"Is not made of glass."

Seven heads whipped around to the staircase, as Emily, whose normally olive-colored face exhibit a new kind of pallor, stood, at half-step, ghostly. Her face was stoic, but it was clear that being treated as if she were a fragile vase was not on her personal road to recovery.

"I've missed you guys. It's great to see you, and I'm thankful that you're here," she said, walking down the stairs, and pointedly plopping down next to Spencer, instead of Alison, who looked a bit like she'd been slapped.

Toby took Emily by the hand, and encouragingly smiled at her. She turned to him, and for the first time since she had returned from service, beamed, as the smile that had made her so well-loved in high school spread from cheek to cheek.

"I'm so thankful that you're here," she repeated.

- IV -

From outside Alison's house, a woman stood on the opposite side of the street, looking in through the window at the crowd, unnoticed. The tension had visibly reduced, as Emily and Toby looked to be laughing, and everybody was indulging in Alison's hors d'oeuvres.

The woman turned to the taller man standing next to her.

"Seems to me like they're all together. You know what you need to do."

The woman handed the man a folder. Just as it looked like she was about to part ways with the stranger, she turned, and said:

"Use just one. Too much ammunition will backfire on us both."

She turned back around, and stepped into a cab, which sped off, as the man slipped into the bushes.

- V -

It was 6:03 PM. Almost everyone had left Alison's house, bidding goodbye to Emily, who seemed to have greatly benefitted from the company, and whose countenance seemed to have lightened up. They wished her luck at her first day coaching tomorrow, and walked off into the night.

Emily and Toby sat on the steps of the lit DiLaurentis porch, both with a glass of white wine in their hands.

"So the concert's all the way in Jacksonville?"

Toby slid the grip of the glass back and forth in his palm.

"Yep."

"I hate Florida, but…" Emily paused. "Their new album's amazing. Their cover art got better too."

Toby laughed. "Circa Survive hasn't changed much since 2009, has it, Em?"

Both of them chuckled, enjoying the silence of the night, and the cool breeze.

Emily started.

"You know, when I was gone… there was a lot I missed about home. I missed the Brew, the pool, Ali, Lily, Grace, Mom… even my job. I missed this stupid town like crazy."

"Believe it or not, I know the feeling," Toby responded, finishing his glass.

"But I kept thinking that I missed you. You… you know what it's like to be ostracized in a way that none of us do… did. You… you know how to stay strong when everything seems like it'll break apart. You even know how to give other people that strength."

Toby smiled, looking down at his pant leg, as Emily continued.

"What I'm saying is… I'm starting to feel that way. Excluded. Left out. Like everything that goes on in my head just is beyond everyone else." Emily corrected herself, looking down, embarrassed. "Sorry, that came out wrong."

Without so much as hesitating, Toby put his hand on Emily's knee.

"Emily. I need you to know something."

Emily slowly turned her head in his direction.

"You aren't a victim to me. I won't treat you like you're made of glass, because you aren't. I'll expect from you what I expect from everyone else. But when your safe haven is out of reach, I want you to know that I'll always be there to catch you… and to listen to some awesome tunes on the way."

Emily nodded, and slowly smiled, as the first droplets of rain started to pour down from the silky gray clouds.

"Thank you, Toby, for looking at me the same way you did all those years ago. Even when I treated you otherwise."

- VI -

This was typical. Absolutely classic. When there was a problem, Mike would flee from it. He would refuse to acknowledge it, or the people who'd ask him about it. Aria had been trying to get in touch with him for the last day, fruitlessly, and could just see him methodically dodging her texts and declining her calls. She was seething.

"So, Mike's just ignoring you?"

She had told Ezra everything on the way back from Alison's house.

"Well, yeah. I mean, he knows that I'm onto him about Mona."

Ezra nodded, pensively stroking his chin.

Aria lay her head on his knees, as he stroked her hair.

"There's so much going on all of a sudden. It's like we're just so over our heads."

A slight scoff escaped from Ezra's mouth. "You say it like you didn't anticipate it."

"I'm just worried about Emily."

Ezra nodded.

"Emily's always been strong, Aria. She can handle what this world throws her way. Especially when she has you and the rest of your friends."

Aria pushed herself off of Ezra's lap.

"How can we make being here easier for her? I mean, I'll take Lily and Grace to school, go walking with her, drop food off, an—"

Ezra lay his hand on her shoulder. "Like you said, Emily doesn't take kindly to being overwhelmed. Give her the space she needs while being the friend she deserves."

Aria took his hand, curling her fingers in his. A rose-colored smile crept across her face.

"I spoke to Sheryl this morning."

Ezra turned his head, making eye contact with her. Sheryl was their counselor at the maternity center, and had guided them in more ways than one through the strenuous process of inter-state adoption.

"She sent me another possibility. I want you to see this girl, she's beautiful."

"Where's she from?" Ezra asked.

"D.C."

As Aria pulled out her tablet, Ezra planted a kiss on her cheek. The pair's apprehension was for that instant palliated by an image of a six-year-old girl with a wide, gap-toothed grin, pink shirt, white summer skirt, and pigtails reclining on a rocking horse in front of a wooden swingset.

- VII -

The second Hanna got home, without Caleb, who was finishing up at the office, she powered upstairs to her room, and started to clean, ferociously. She did this when she needed to dissociate from what was going on around her. It was the only way things got done. Thinking about what she could do to make Emily's life easier, and keeping Mona's return a secret from Caleb had simply been driving her insane.

"And since when do you clean?"

Without acknowledging her presence with her eyes, Hanna replied to her mother, snarkily.

"I'm not an imbecile. Being a mom makes you more conscescentious."

Ashley walked up to her and lay her hand on her shoulder.

"Not the word, sweetie. Put the duster down."

Hanna rolled her eyes, visibly vexed.

"Why should I?"

Ashley pulled Hanna down to the armchair so that she was facing her at eye level.

"I know something's upset you. And I know that when you're upset, you deflect. But I want you to leave that behind. Talk to me."

Hanna sighed.

"It really isn't anything important."

"Nor is letting Billy Joel breathe past the blanket of dust. Talk."

Hanna's guard came down, and her thoughts flooded out.

"Aria told me that Mona's back in town. I don't know what I'll do. She cut me off and I just don't know how or if I'll be able to see her again. I've thought about her, and I know that I'm responsible for her mental illness, but…"

"No."

The fire in Ashley's eyes blazed like a winter hearth.

"You are in no way responsible for Mona's mental illness. Nobody is. I don't know how I can help you, but if it makes things right, I'll talk to Leona. See if we can rekindle something."

Hanna jolted upright.

"No! No, Mom. This is something I need to do myself, if at all. I just… whatever you do, don't tell Caleb."

"I won't."

"Mom!"

"I promise you. If Caleb finds out, it won't be from me."

As Ashley's heels clicked down the hall, Hanna turned to the crib, and looked at Lindy, for the first time fast asleep.

"What will I do?" She asked her, tracing her rosy cheeks with her finger.

- VIII -

Spencer bit her nails on one hand while typing the minutes for yesterday's meeting with another, all at a caffeine-fueled, viper speed. Melissa sat cross-legged on Spencer's barn couch, reading Memoirs of a Geisha on her Kindle.

The Hastings sisters did this often. With their mother circumnavigating Pennsylvania with her campaign team, it was natural for them to seek each other's company, even as they ignored each other, and as their conversations, though mostly benign, were laced with borderline hostile sarcasm and disparaging commentary.

There was a rapid knock on the front door of the barn.

"Does Toby not have a key by now?" Melissa said, not looking up from her book, her irritation at being interrupted apparent as she spoke.

Spencer was equally confused. She was not expecting company.

"Of course he does," she said, getting up to answer it.

She opened the door in a sweeping motion, and there, his long hair and beard doused from the rain, was her half-brother, bearing a paper shopping bag.

"Jason. Hey!"

The two embraced.

"I haven't seen you in months, what the hell have you been up to?"

"Oh, you know. Scrounging around, eating leftovers and making sense of the world."

He lifted the paper bag, exposing freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, sheepishly grinning.

"Can I come in?"

Lightning struck.

"Uh, yeah, sorry," Spencer motioned.

"Can I get you hot cocoa?"

"Gladly. I just came to drop these off though."

"And since when do you bake?" Spencer asked, raising her eyebrow.

"Ha. They're Ali's. She's on a baking kick."

Spencer chuckled as Jason sat himself down in a chair on the island counter.

"Melissa! Where's the chocolate powder?"

No response. Spencer rolled her eyes, heading into the living room, where Melissa had been only a minute earlier. The Kindle sat on the couch, still powered on, but no sign of Melissa. Weird. Spencer came back into the kitchen, as Jason was on his phone.

"I guess it's just us."

"No worries. It's to be expected," Jason said, sliding his phone back into his pocket.

"So, why don't you tell me all about this world you've been trying to make sense of," Spencer said, as she pulled the raw cocoa from the shelf, and started making hot chocolate the hard way.

- IX -

As Toby's coffee-colored truck ambled out of Alison's windy driveway, the door to the DiLaurentis house opened, and Alison stood, hands on her hips.

"The girls are back," she said, awkwardly, stiffly.

Without turning her head, Emily let out, "Good," in a dulled voice.

Alison couldn't contain her frustration any longer.

"Okay, what the absolute hell was that?"

Emily turned her head around, slowly, almost as if her neck were disconnected from the neurons in her brain. "What?"

Tears started to bud in Alison's normally placid, on the occasion even mischievous, sky blue eyes.

"You've spent at the damn least two hours talking to Toby, who you haven't seen in over a year. You've talked to Caleb, to Aria, to Hanna, to Spencer, to Ezra, to your mother, hell, you were even all chatty with that douche ex-Vice Principal Tamborelli at the grocers on Sunday. But you seem to be especially reserving the monosyllabic backchat for me, and that can't happen anymore."

Emily looked at her lap, her hands nervously wringing each other.

"I just want you to tell me what I can do to make your life easier, Emily. Let me in. Please."

The blonde was drilling holes into Emily's head with her eyes. For a few minutes, silence.

Then Alison started.

"When I was an ugly human being, you saw a beautiful soul. You make the world a better place because you see the good in it."

Emily looked up, for the first time making proper eye contact with her wife. The words had had an effect.

"You can keep seeing the good in everything, Emily. I'm not pretending to understand everything you went through for these last two years, but I know that you left to be stronger. And I know you well enough to know that that's exactly the way you came back. Even if I can't see it right now."

Emily rose from the steps, and took Alison's hand in hers.

"I think I'm ready, Ali."

"Ready for what, Em?"

"To move on. Together."

- X -

Film noire Phyllis Dietrichson's face froze on the pixellated television screen as the shrill ringtone of the Fitz-Montgomery residence phone interrupted the increasingly suspenseful scene.

Aria groaned, burying her face in Ezra's plaid shirt.

Not. A. Moment. Of. Peace.

"Shucks! It's my favorite part, too," Ezra stood up, leaving Aria lying head-down on the couch.

"Hello?"

Silence. Ezra turned chalk white.

"Can you… can you please explain how this happened?"

"But… I guess I just thought everything was going smoothly…"

Aria scrabbled herself up into a standing position, as red flags emerged all over the place. Ezra, in a trance, hung the phone up without another word, and looked at his wife, mouth slightly agape.

"What was that?!"

"We've been rejected from the entire national adoption system. They… they've deemed us unfit. There are… there seem to have been anonymous concerns about the welfare of benefiting children."

It was as if a dam had been opened, and Aria's future had been flooded. The girl who had stood before a swingset only a moment before was sucked into a vortex of impossibility. All she could muster was a whispered, "What?"

Just as Ezra opened his mouth, the door to their apartment was pounded.

Ezra opened. Aria was transfixed to the spot. One of Rosewood's finest, clad in uniform, stood on their step. Before Aria knew it, she felt sick. Sick to her stomach, as if she were being blasted into an abyss that she had created, without her consent.

She could see her pallid reflection in the officer's night black acetate sunglass lenses, and see the hallway light bounce off of the jet-black pistol strapped on his waist holster.

"Ezra Fitz, you're under arrest for multiple counts of criminal harassment of a minor, and for one count of statutory rape."

- FINIS -

Despite the handcuffs, Alex Drake was animatedly gesturing at a hooded figure at the table, seated across from her in the visiting room.

"This isn't the deal we made. I only… did everything you ever asked me to do. I… I wasn't thinking like you told me to. I was afraid. You have to understand me. All I ever intended for, all I ever wanted was…" Alex started to fight her tears, as she tried as hard as she could to maintain her tough, normally unfazed countenance. "Please."

The hooded figure nodded curtly at a guard on the opposite side of the room, who took her by the arms and escorted her outside.

Alex wheeled her head around as she was escorted out. By now, tears soaked her face, as she angrily spat out:

"After everything that I've done for you, everything I gave up, if you don't help me, I'll find someone who will!"

Secretly, Alex knew that she was done with. It was only a matter of time before she'd resign to her fate.

The hooded figure left the visitation room, signed out of the guest book, helped itself to two buttercup candies, and disappeared into the rainy, unforgiving winter night.