A/N: This is the longest thing I've written for Paily Week so far, and I'm really proud of it. I wanted to relay all the important things that I think would have been cool for Emily's past and how she tried to deal with it all, like being young and her dad being away, and they scary time period when you figure out your feelings. I love this chapter so much. In a few hours, I'll have up Paige's chapter, which will most likely be a little more violent and detailed. I just have to finish going over a few paragraphs and revising everything. Until then, please in enjoy Chapter One of Day Four, the prompt being "Backstories". Let me know what you think, and I'll see you in a few hours.


Chapter One: Emily

Raiting: K+

Words: 3,866

Truthfully, Emily never thought she would ever be in the positions that she is in today. Although life seems to be easy for Emily in general now, she did a fantastic job of putting on a façade when she was younger, fooling everyone into thinking she was okay, when in reality, her confusing emotions were getting the better of her.

Emily slowly paces her room, making sure she's collected everything she needs to take to college with her. Once she gives her room a good look-over, she returns to the open package on her bed, filled with little things like knick-knacks, posters, and pictures to decorate her dorm room with. A small smile spreads onto her face as she picks up a few picture frames from her box, letting the memories flood back into her mind.

The first picture she examines is one of herself back in the fourth grade: she was covered in dirt, a tooth missing, and a slightly-shorter dark haired girl stood next to her, who was also covered in a mass amount of dirt, although she was too busy playing with the worms in their mud pie to even bother looking at the camera for a picture. It's strange, Emily thinks to herself, how much Aria has grown from that little girl she sees back in the picture.

Emily had met Aria on the first day of school in fourth grade. Emily had just moved to Rosewood after living in California her entire life. After months of protests that were ignored by her parents, Emily finally gave in; knowing that because of her father's occupation, it wasn't a choice to move to Rosewood (although looking back on it now, Emily never understood why her she hated her father's job). Begrudgingly, Emily packed up her bedroom, along with all her memories, said goodbye to her friends, and hopped on plane to Rosewood, Pennsylvania, where she would start her new life in a small town. First arriving it Rosewood, the immense change shocked Emily. She never realized how fast talk could travel in a small town, what with having lived in a large city the majority of her ten-year-old life. It was a tightly-knit community, where everyone knew everyone and secrets were a rare thing.

Entering class on her first day, Emily kept to herself. When she introduced herself to the class, she spoke so softly that almost no one heard what she said. During arts and crafts, she sat alone in the corner, making a Popsicle stick family of her, her mom and her dad, in silence. Well, it was in silence, until someone skipped over to the edge of her table.

"Hi, Emily," the little girl smiles brightly, "I'm Aria. I like your bracelet," she says, pointing to the colorfully woven bracelet on Emily's arm that her mother made for her last summer.

"Thanks, my mom made it for me," she replied quietly.

Aria nodded. "My mom made me sandwich one time, but it didn't taste good. She put ketchup on it instead up mustard, and it made the ham taste all slimy." She giggled.

And that was the first time Emily smiled since moving to Rosewood.

Aria and Emily became best friends; they built sandcastles during recess, painted together in art class, and talked about how obvious it that Sean Ackard had cooties, and no matter how hard he tried to deny it, once you had cooties you could never get rid of them. The two girls spent all their time together, and when Aria came over to Emily's to spend the night for the first time, the little girl was shocked when she saw that it was only Emily's mom there with them.

"Where's your dad?" Aria asked curiously when the two girls were coloring at the kitchen table.

"Oh he's… gone," Emily grimaced slightly.

"Gone? Gone where?"

"My mom said he's out fighting to keep me and the country safe. He's at a base in Texas right now. We don't get to see him much," she sighed, looking out the window sadly.

Aria could sense Emily's sadness. "Sometimes, it's hard to be away from people you love a lot, but when you see them again, it makes it so much better when they're around you that it feels like they never left at all. My mommy used to tell me whenever my dad left town for business trips and when I'd miss him a lot that 'absence makes the heart grow stronger'."

Emily quirked an eyebrow. "What does that even mean?"

Aria shrugged. "I don't know, but it seemed like she was so proud of it that I never wanted to ruin it for her by asking." The two girls laughed and continued coloring, Emily giving Aria a small, thankful smile, to which Aria nodded back in understanding.


Emily smiled at the memory, putting the picture frame down and picking up the next one, which was a picture of her, Spencer, Hanna, Aria and Alison at Emily's swimming competition, holding up Emily's first place trophy that she won in seventh grade.

When it came time to transition into middle school, Emily and Aria were beyond nervous. They didn't enjoy the idea that, not only would kids from their school be attending the middle school, but people that had never met before were going to be there, too. They linked arms walking into first period together, taking two seats near the back wall of the classroom. The two chatted amongst themselves about how nervous and excited they were, before they were interrupted by a very loud argument between to other girls who walked in the room.

"Hanna, that doesn't even make sense. People can go out into the sun and photosynthesize. It's impossible," the brown-eyed girl stated in annoyance.

"Of it does, Spencer," the chubby blonde threw her hands into the air, "humans need the sun as much as the plants do!"

"Yeah, but we can't make our own nutrients. We don't have chloroplast in our cells that would even-" Spencer stopped suddenly, looking at Emily and Aria with irritation. "You're in our seats."

"Excuse me?" Aria asked, sharing a quizzical look with Emily before returning her attention to an fuming Spencer. "What do you mean your seats?"

"I came to orientation yesterday and I reserved those two seats for Hanna and I."

"Uh," Emily chuckled in disbelief, "I don't think you can reserve seats in class."

"Well, I did, so move."

"Spencer," Hanna reached out and touched her arm gently, "it's no big deal, we can just sit-"

"Yes it is a big deal! I don't think you understand the struggle I went through just to get the teacher to agree with me that reserving seats for the two of us would be a good idea."

"Well, maybe you should've put nametags down so no one would've sat here," Emily inquired humorously, earning a hearty laugh from everyone except Spencer, who looked like she was about ten seconds from strangling her.

"I like you. Hi, I'm Hanna Marin," she shook Emily and Aria's hands and smiled politely. "This is Spencer Hastings," she gestured to the girl standing next to her.

"Hi," Aria smiled back, "I'm Aria Montgomery, and this is my friend Emily Fields. If you guys really want these seats, Emily and I wouldn't mind moving."

Spencer opened her mouth to say something, but Hanna cut her off quickly. "No, it's totally fine. We'll just sit right here. We have to save Alison a seat anyway," Hanna said, taking a seat adjacent from Emily, placing her stuff in the desk in front of Spencer.

"Alison?" Emily asked.

"Alison DiLaurentis," Spencer replied sharply.

"Who's she?"

"She went to the same elementary school as me and Spence. She's really cool. You guys will like her," Hanna said.

"You're right, I am really cool," a voice said from behind them, bringing everyone's attention back to its owner. Emily took one look at the girl, and a weird feeling passed through her body that she hand never experienced before.

She looked to be slightly the same height as Aria, with platinum blonde hair and piercing gray-blue eyes. Her lips curled into a devious smile as she stepped forward, taking her seat in front of Spencer, handing back her things and turning her attention to Emily and Aria. Emily held her gaze and felt the breath catch in her throat. 'What's going on?' Emily thought to herself. She shifted uncomfortably under Alison's gaze, and she could swear she could a smirk of victory creep onto her lips.

"I'm Alison," she said in a calm voice.

"Hi, I'm Aria," she said cheerfully, "Wow; I really love your earrings!"

"I was hoping someone would notice them. I just got them yesterday and practically had to wrestle a girl down in the store just to buy them," Alison turned her attention back to Emily, who was looking down at the ground. "What's your name?"

"Emily," she said in a squeaky voice. Aria raised an eyebrow at her, but Emily chose to ignore it.

"Hey, Emily, look at me," Alison said softly. Emily slowly lifted her head and locked eyes with Alison, who gave her a heart melting smile. "You have the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen."

Emily could feel the immense rushing to her cheeks, mumbling a small "thanks" before ducking her head once more. What was happening to her? She wasn't able to understand what was happening to her body right now and why heart was thumping so loudly in her chest. As the other four girls began to continue conversation, Emily noticed Hanna continuously looking back at her.

"Em, are you okay?" Hanna asked.

"Yeah, it's just…" she tried to choose her words carefully, "…Alison is really intimidating."

Hanna gave her a radiating smile. "Oh, yeah, she totally is. But once you get to know her, she's so much fun. Don't even think about her intimidation. I don't let it get to me anymore, and know me, her and Spencer are like three peas in a pod!"

After the first few months of sixth grade, all five girls became best friends. Emily and Spencer bonded on the fact that they loved good competition, with Spencer being on the field hockey team and Emily on the swim team. She found a more quirkiness to Hanna that really seemed to cheer her up whenever she was down. And whenever she thought of just being able to stand next to Alison, her heart did a little backflip inside her chest.

As the five of them moved through the middle schools, Emily saw her four friends dating boys and talking about boys, but Emily never felt comfortable. She always felt out of place when it came to talking about boys with her friends, or when they would ask her if she thought any of the boys were cute, she would usually just shrug and say no one has caught her attention yet. In seventh grade, when Alison introduced a boy named Ben to Emily, she thought things would be different. Ben seemed to really like Emily, and she believed the feeling was mutual. Then, one day, after Ben walked Emily home from school, he kissed her. It wasn't anything major, just a slow kiss on the lips. But something about it didn't feel quite right to Emily. She'd always imagined that when you kissed someone, there would be sparks and fireworks and doves that flew around.

Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration, but the kiss still felt strange. It felt… almost fake. And Emily couldn't help but notice that things she was supposed to be feeling for Ben, she saw herself feeling for Alison. Like the way Alison's touch would linger on her arm, or when she pulled Emily's hair behind her ears and smiled warmly at her. Emily could only imagine what it felt like to kiss Alison.

Soon, her feelings for Alison became almost scary, to the point that Emily would sit awake at night and think until her brain would actually start to hurt. She's heard of gay people before, but she's never met one in real life; plus, she's every only heard about it when people talk about two men, so it was strange when she thought about the possibility of two girls being in love with each other. She did her research, and for a while, she kind of drew away from her friends, just because she was afraid of her own feelings.


She shivered, closing her eyes and shaking her head, remembering back to the time when she was first coming out to herself, and how scary that had been. Emily wiped the small tear from the corner of her eye and moved onto the next picture, which was of her and Maya, sitting down with the three other girls at the park. In the picture, Emily and Maya sat extremely close together, the hand they both had placed on the bench grazing at the fingers. It brought back the memories of being able to be honest and open with about herself with the one person at that time that was able to reciprocate her feelings, and not judge her for it.

Maya had been eye opening for Emily in a way in which she was able to come to terms with her sexuality and realize that it was okay for her to feel these things and that it wasn't wrong, or it wasn't an abomination that she had feelings for someone of the same gender. Sure, a large part of their relationship, Emily had been so deep in the closet that she could have used the help of the Jaws of Life to pull her out, but Maya had been patient with her. She had understood the fact that Emily had never been able to experience something like love before, because of the way Emily had been raised.

Emily remembered back when Maya had first kissed her in the photo booth at Noel Kahn's party, and how Maya's lips just felt so right against hers. The kiss had initially scared Emily, but never regretted it. It opened up so many doors in her mind that she would have never thought to have been possible had she stayed with Ben. And when she fell in love with Maya, her entire world changed. She had become secretive with her mother, something she would never think to do now. Emily's mother thought her daughter was becoming an entirely different person. When Emily did eventually come out to her mother, father and her friends, she was so relieved that she could stop living a lie and finally try and be happy. Although, the uneasiness with her mother continued on for many months as she struggled to accept her daughter's sexuality, it didn't stop her from loving Maya.

And when she died, Emily's entire world fell apart.

It was all too fast, too soon. Maya had just come back into her life and she was rightfully happy. They were happy. Together. And when she was suddenly ripped away, Emily didn't know what to do with herself.

She spent the entire first month crying. She cried in the shower, cried in the bathrooms at school, and she would even cry herself to sleep at night. Her grades began to drop, and she stopped showing up for swim practice. Emily even started to lose weight, because the thought of eating without Maya made her physically sick. The next few months, she spent partying. She knew it wasn't good for her to do. Emily did things that she wasn't proud of and that she could never take back. She drank herself into a deep depression that would only worsen with time.

When she finally had to come back to Rosewood, the first night she saw the girls again she drank until she was numb. She didn't want to feel what she was feeling anymore. But when she woke up and realized that she was outside of Alison's grave, her body dug up and missing, and she was still drunk from hours and hours before, it terrified her. She has yet to ever take a sip of alcohol again out of fear of ending up that way again.


She picked up the final picture frame in the box and smiled brightly. It was a picture of her and Paige on the swing-set after swim practice one day. Hanna had taken a picture of them from across the street, saying "it was so über-adorable, that it would've been a crime not to take a picture". She remembers that day so well.

Emily was having a particularly bad day. She was stressing out over the massive Calculus test that she felt she did poorly on, and it was bothering her so badly it affected her swim times, prompting coach not to anchor her for that weekend's swim meet. Paige saw the tension in her girlfriend, so she asked Emily if she could walk her home that day. Emily agreed thinking spending some time with Paige would take her mind off of the terrible day she was having. Boy was she right.

At that time, Paige and Emily had been dating for seven months. Emily was completely taken back by how much her girlfriend had changed from the first time Paige surprise-kissed her after a swim meet. Emily tried to get Paige to talk about what happened, but Paige had been so frightened that she tried driving Emily away. But when they started a relationship, Emily felt that maybe things would be good for once. But Paige never wanted to be seen alone with her in public out of fear, and it drove Emily mad. She wished she didn't have to, but she ended it with Paige to spare her own feelings. And once Paige came back into her life all that time later, Emily was more than ready to try again. Her relationship with Paige had been stronger than her relationship with Maya, and it took Emily by surprise how hard she fell for her.

That day at the playground, Paige pushed Emily on the swings, built a sand castle together, and even solved one of those rotating plastic puzzles with the picture of the animals. It felt so childish, but it also felt really good. The entire time she felt like a kid again, laughing at the little jokes Paige would make or the faux-angry expressions she made at Emily when she had knocked over Paige's well-built sandcastle on accident. Paige then told Emily to wait at the playground and that she'd be back in no more than ten minutes. Confused, Emily stayed there, waiting for her girlfriend to return, and when she did; she came back bearing fruit of the Gods.

More like frozen yogurt of the Gods, but it was so delicious that Emily immediately beamed when she took her first bite.

"Paige, this is so good! Seriously, the entire time we've been here has been amazing. I've never had so much fun in my entire life," Emily said, taking another generous spoonful of frozen yogurt.

"You're welcome," Paige smiled warmly, leaning over to place a slow kiss on Emily's forehead.

And that's when it hit Emily full force.

She slowly opened her eyes to look into Paige's chocolate brown orbs, trying not to melt completely. She knew that she had been in love with Paige for a while, but she never had the nerve to tell the other girl how she truly felt. Emily thought that maybe Paige would run away if she tried dropping the bomb on her, but it seemed like Paige had tried showing Emily that she would never run away from her by the little things she would do for Emily just to see her smile.

Emily licked her lips, wiping away any leftover frozen yogurt on her lips and looked at Paige with a serious face. She reached over and tucked a stray piece of hair back behind Paige's ear, scooting her body a little closer. She searched Paige's eyes for a few moments, gathering the courage and telling herself that it was okay to feel this way and that she shouldn't be afraid.

"I love you," Emily said softly. It was the first time either of them said those words. Paige's eyes widened in shock. Emily thought that she'd messed up big time. She started to look away, but then she felt Paige cup her cheek and turn her face back towards her, leaning in to place a tender kiss on her lips. She felt Paige slightly part her lips, taking Emily's bottom lip between hers and sucking lightly. A few minutes later, Paige broke away from the sweet kiss, resting her forehead against Emily's and looking into her eyes.

"I love you too, Emily."

"Babe, are you ready?" a voice breaks Emily's train of thought as she places the picture's back into the box, making sure that the one of Paige and her was on top. She heard footsteps come barreling up the stairs and stop just outside her door. "Emily? Are you okay? Why are you crying?" Paige asked, her voice full of concern, and stepped closer to Emily, wrapping her arms tightly around her and smoothing her long dark hair.

Emily nodded slowly. "I'm just going through my things and I was reminiscing. Don't worry, I'll be fine," she pulled away to look Paige in the eyes. "I wish you were coming with me," she said sadly.

Paige smiled softly, kissing Emily on the forehead. "I know, baby. But, I'll only be a few states away at Michigan. You're going to love Penn State."

"It won't be the same without you…"

"Em, you're making me sad. I'm trying to stay happy for you!"

"I know, I know."

"Hey, look at me," Paige puts two fingers under Emily's chin, angling her face towards her own. "It's only a few months until we see each other again. You're going to Skype me every day and tell me all the wonderful things happening to you at Penn State and all the new friends you'll be making. And Hanna is going to be with you, so don't worry about being bored. Okay?" Paige kissed her on the lips quickly, grabbing Emily's box from the bed and quickly taping it. "I have a plane to catch, and you're going to make me late, you goof! Let's go!" She marched out of the room.

Emily laughed and shook her head, following her girlfriend down the stairs and into her car, Paige sitting next to her and both their parents & the girls following them in the cars behind. She intertwined her fingers with Paige, placing a kiss on her knuckles before starting up her engine, leading the small brigade of cars with her to the Philly airport, where she would drop Paige off, only to be seeing her again in a few months' time.

Her heart swelled with happiness as she took in her situation, and how it took her so long to get to this incredibly happy place.

'It was so worth it.'