I'm am incredibly delighted and grateful for the reception for this story so far. Already we can see the divide between the two girls and their personalities, and I believe it'll make for a yummy snack as this continues on. Oblivious "dork" Emily is growing to be one of my favorite Emily's yet!

CHAPTER #4: Any Last Parting Words

Italics means thoughts, emphasized word or action. Bolded is a flashback. (….) is an indication that time has passed.

"We've only been together for a month but I really feel like I've gotten to know a little part of each of you from these sessions. It may not feel like it but I did. We've went over everything I believe there is to go over and I can confidently put $100 on each and every one of you that you will ace your exams. No question. No doubts."

Emily sits on the edge of her stool and folds her hands onto her lap as she looks out to the undergraduate students staring back at her, suited up to leave but waiting patiently at their seats as Emily shares her parting words with them.

"While this tutoring does come to an end tonight, I want to leave you guys with some food for thought that you can possibly carry with you during the course of your lives. Each one of you have dreams and aspirations. Ideas and hopes. Wants and desires. Never lose sight of them. Never."

Emily's eyes land on Shana as she emphasized her "never" which made Shana want to shift in her chair. Why did Emily look at her when she said that? What does that mean? What does she know? Why me?

"You will have incredible high-points in your life where you feel like everything is falling into place the way it should be. You also will experience devastating low-points in your life where you will feel like the world you know would be better off without you. Know that you will go through these transitions but never let it deter you from where you want to be. If nobody tells you that you they believe in you, screw them. Make them believe in you. Make them regret doubting you. Force them to reevaluate their own life decisions because of how you turned out. Create your name and make it hold weight. Be a Khan, be a Fring, be a Driscoll, be a Coogan, be a DiLaurentis. Believe in yourself."

Emily's voice begins to be pick up with authority as she begins to feel she was center stage at a TED Talk or at some kind of gathering in front of impressionable young people. She knew they were hanging on every word she spoke because of the subtle posture changes. It showed that they are engaged. Not knowing what kind of advice they hear on a daily basis, if they come across any at all, Emily felt this was the perfect opportunity to give them motivation, especially going into a huge test.

"Envision exactly where you want to see yourself in the next five, ten, twenty years because those years are going to come whether you want them to or not. So do something worthwhile with it. Doesn't matter how dark and murky your past was, your future is spotless and waiting for the first strokes of your paintbrush that will shape how it turns out. And only you can paint that future. A ship in the harbor is safe, but that's not what ships are built for. Always remember that. I believe that one of these days, I'm going to see each of your names outside of this very classroom. I just know it."

…

Alison absentmindedly fiddles with one of her lower large, black buttons on her red, double breasted, cashmere coat as she sat in quietness. Sitting in the same chair she's always taken during their personal time, Emily watches her, not saying anything to force words to fill a silence. She stares at Alison's knitted brows that created a crease in her forehead and the tight lines around her narrowed eyes. She was an obvious deep thought and Emily didn't want to disrupt it.

So, in the stillness of the empty classroom on a brisk and windy December night after the group left, they just sat.

"Do you think I'm ready?" a soft, meek question floats out of Alison's lips. The mere sound of her voice made Emily break out of the almost curious daydreaming she fell into and straighten up.

"I know you're ready. Do you think you're ready?" she responds, applying the same low volume Alison used so she wouldn't disturb the feel of the room.

"I guess we'll find out when the time comes." Alison sighs, leaving her coat button alone and leaning back into her chair, her eyes laid upon the floor. She chewed on her tongue for a moment before she spoke again.

"Thank you for being there for me the way you have. Most people would have charged extra or made some excuse as to why they couldn't take on additional help at this frequent rate but you didn't. You showed up every day with no complaints." She glances up at Emily, catching her gaze. "That means a lot to me."

"Of course. It's no problem." Emily nods with a small smile, briefly pulling away from their eye contact to look down at her hands rubbing together. "I wouldn't have been able to live with myself knowing someone is out there struggling when I could have prevented it, you know? So...it's not a problem at all."

The room falls quiet again as Alison stewed. Emily wishes she could outright ask what she was thinking about, what was so heavy on her mind, but she figured with her exam being a large percentage of her overall grade, it could have just been nerves. Less than thirty seconds pass by and Alison suddenly stands up, causing Emily to follow her direction and also raise to her feet.

"Well…I guess this is goodbye." Alison grabs her bag and slings it over her shoulder.

"Yeah." Emily crosses her arms with a somber twist of her mouth.

"I've never been good at goodbyes..." bowing her head, Alison stuffs her hands into her trench coat, almost as if she was feeling a certain way about their separation. Emily wanted to say anxious but felt that wouldn't describe it accurately enough. Hesitant? Apprehensive, maybe?

"You won't have to if you need help with another science class." Emily lightly elbows Alison as a grin slides across her face in attempt to lighten things.

Alison shakes her head, "You're just saying that so I can continue paying you almost $20 a hour." she points out, almost rolling her eyes as she holds back a smile.

Unlike Alison, Emily allows herself to express the emotion she's feeling in the moment and laughs at the comment before she held up a finger.

"Oh, before I forget-"

Alison watches her stride over to the professor's podium to grab her things before her eyes drifted over to the right hand corner of the board. The same place she would find herself anticipating before their sessions.

"DiLaurentisim: The act of knowing Alison DiLaurentis is going to ace her final!" trailed by a decently drawn greenflexing emoji was written and Alison notices how that wasn't up there prior when the group was present. She wonders when Emily had the time to scribble it down without her seeing.

Sliding her arms into her black, wrap coat with her scarf draped and bag strapped, Emily approaches her again. "I got you something." she reveals as she hands Alison a square, white case. Alison squints at it, not knowing what it was seeing that it was blank.

"I did say maybe, didn't I?" Emily beams proudly as Alison turns what appears to be a DVD case over, then deciding to open it.

"Wait." Emily halts her, putting a hand on top of Alison's to cease her movements. "Not now. Not until you're finished with your test."

With the curiosity now bubbling inside her like a shaken up soda can, Alison pursed her lips into a pout, tapping the case against her palm, having no choice but to obey the command despite wanting to rip it open even more now.

"Well, either you have really good timing or we're beginning to think alike because….I got you something too…" she digs her hand into her purse and pulls out a long, leather case and hands it over to Emily. At the sight, Emily couldn't help but giggle at the fact that not only did they both get gifts for each other but they were both in cases of some sort.

"I saw it in Michael's and it reminded me of the little performance you put on about a week ago. Found it fitting."

Standing in front of each other, holding their received offerings, Emily suddenly felt like a kid. Similar to the well-known yearly ritual that was forced upon children in elementary school during Valentine's Day. A holiday where students within a class would exchange cards and candy with each other, specifically making sure you gave your crush the best card while everyone else gets the same generic messages on theirs. The instant you exchange gifts with your crush, it was the most nerve-racking moment of the entire day because you hoped that they like it and somehow fall for you in the process, as children believe love works. She wanted to say this observation out loud as an amusing reflection but then retracted that idea, not want to make things awkward with the implications of a topic like Valentine's Day.

"Can I see what's inside?"

"No. Not until you get home."

Emily cocks her head at Alison, narrowing one eye as a smirk suddenly appeared. "Are you saying no because I said you can't open yours?"

"Yep." the smile can no longer be contained on Alison's face, showing the first genuine grin of the entire night. "Now the anticipation can kill us both."

Seeing such a bright smile made Emily's heart beat a little harder in her chest. She liked whenever Alison smiled, especially during a time where she's been incredibly tense. It made her feel good that she was able to put her at ease with something she did.

For what feels like the umpteenth time of silence slithering into their conversations, Emily watches Alison place her white case into her bag and tried to come up with something that could possibly stall for time to prevent a cumbersome, final goodbye.

"Are you going out to your car? I…I can walk you, if you'd like?"

"Sure." Alison easily agreed. "We'll be stuck in this room all night by this rate if we don't start getting out of here."

Emily allows Alison to lead the way as she bagged her leather case. Taking her last sweep around the class to make sure nothing was left behind, Emily's feet were walking her towards the door when she realized she forgot to rid something. She quickly turns around and trots over to the board, grabbing the eraser.

"You saw this right?" she asked Alison as she pointed to her last message of their sessions.

With her cheeks expanding and the corner of her lips curled into a tight yet gracious smile, Alison confirms with a single nods. "I did, thank you."

Internally satisfied, Emily removes the board clean of any markings with a few swift strokes, places the eraser back on the whiteboard railing, and follows Alison out of the classroom where she flipped off the lights and closed the door behind them.

"For the winter break, are you going to stay around the area or are you going home to see family?" Emily begins another conversation with an easy, icebreaker kind of question as they walk down the lengthy, empty hallway on their way towards the nearest exit.

"I'm going to head towards home once they kick us out. My parents would never stop bitching at me if I miss the holidays." Alison answers with her response as she grabs her gloves from her coat pocket and slips them on. "I'm giving them Christmas but New Years is a different story. That is definitely being spent with my friends."

Emily pushes open a door with a firm push against its rail-handle when a gust of Connecticut's freezing night winds smacks her in the face. She braces through it and stands off to the side, holding the door open for Alison. After getting her thank you, she lets go of the door, whips the end of her scarf around her neck, and tightly wrapped her coat shut with a tie of her belt. While she enjoyed so many things about this season, the bitter cold always was her biggest foe.

"My car is right there." Alison politely pointed out into the parking lot lead them into the right direction. Emily looks into the distance and a spots a red Ford Fusion. For some reason, seeing how Alison presented and dressed herself, she always imagined her driving an attractive, luxury vehicle, something probably gifted by her parents. This was Yale, after all. It wouldn't be uncommon.

"Where did you park?" Alison asks while they walk in an unhurried fashion towards her car a couple hundred feet away.

"I'm down there in the corner." Emily nods her head to right of them, at the end of parking lot to a larger car. "The black one."

Alison raised both her brows in surprise. Noticing how laid back and composed Emily has exhibited herself this small time they've been together, along with her music liking, Alison envisioned her driving maybe something older like a vintage muscle car. Something small yet easy on the eyes.

"An SUV kind of girl, huh." Alison crosses her arms as she stares at Emily's lone vehicle in her parking spot. "You like riding big?"

"I mean, yeah. I tend to lug lots of things around. Sometimes a sedan isn't enough space so…I went bigger." Emily shrugs with a toss-up of a smile as she takes in the beauty of her recently brought Lincoln MKX that she worked her ass off to buy. Although it was used 2015 model, she was able to snag it in a sale and had fell in love with it ever since dumping her old junk of a car she had since high school that was falling apart with every mile.

"What about you?" Alison turns to face Emily with her curiosity kicking up as she remembered the conversation she was having prior to being distracted by cars. "Anything going on for the break?"

"I'm staying around a little longer because of work but I'm flying out to my family as well. I haven't seen them in a while so I'm pretty happy about that." a fog of air puffs out of Emily's mouth as she smiles greatly, looking off into the distant street lights that illuminated the streets that had a few cars whizzing past them. "I love Christmas so I'm really looking forward to spending it with them."

"Awww." Alison coos at the lively glee that radiated from Emily at just the mere mention of her family. She must be really close to them, Alison figures.

"Are all your siblings flying in too?"

"Ah, no." Emily shook her head as they neared the driver's side of Alison's car. "I'm an only sibling. It's just my parents and me."

"Well…do you have anything planned for New Years?"

"Uhm...spend them with my parents, I guess?"

"Really? No wild partying and getting drunk with your friends?"

"Oh no. I don't-" Emily chuckles with a wave of her hand before she quickly tucks them back into her coat. "I try to stay away from all of that. That scene. I did it once and that's all I needed to experience. But, I guess I do have a friend who wants to do something for the New Years so if everything pans out, I might spend it with her."

"That's good. It's good to bring in the new year with some kind of fun. Wash away this crappy year, you know?"

Emily nods as her eyes connect with Alison's and, without words being uttered from either them, they shared a brief moment of staring into each other. With a small shimmer of light and a flawlessly application of her makeup, Alison's eyes were feline-like and trance inducing. Emily felt she could stare into them for minutes on end when Alison turns away, grabbing her keys from her purse.

"I should get going..." she respectfully suggests as she toys with the keys in her hands.

"Right," Emily clears her throat with a shake of her head. "Don't let me hold you up. Just be sure to let me know your final grades." she pauses momentarily. "You...you still have my number?"

"Yep. Saved in my phone under Awesome Tutor." Alison innocently teases.

"Awesome tutor." Emily laughs at that disclosure that she had no idea about, not even knowing Alison actually created her contact instead of having it linger around as an unsaved number. "Okay, then yeah, just text me it then. Not only so I can congratulate you but I can show the organization I'm under so they can see your final and overall progress."

"Of course." Alison concurs. With a press of a button, Alison opens her car door and slips inside, making sure to roll down her windows as she starts her engine to get the heat started. Fastening her seatbelt, she turns back to Emily for any last parting words. Waiting for her to say something.

"Good luck to you in life, Ali. I hope everything works out the way you plan for it." Emily tells her in a genuine and warm voice as she stands outside her window.

"You too, Emily. Be safe."

With their drawn out goodbye, Emily watches Alison pull out of her parking space, not knowing whether to stand around or walk away. Nonetheless, she opts to hold her position until Alison drives off into the streets when she jogs in the direction of her car. One thought that bugged her at the moment was during the last minutes, she didn't get a hug or at least try for one. As weird as it sounds to her, she would have liked it if she had received it as a way to say goodbye. She should have initiated it, at least, but then again, maybe its best she shouldn't have.

…..

After a well desired hot shower and towel drying her hair, Alison steps into her room, throwing her clothes into her hamper and heaving herself onto her bed. It was a quiet night with Aria out, most likely with Ezra, and her other two roommates in their own private rooms. She stares up at the ceiling for a long minute, hearing occasional heavy footsteps coming from the suite upstairs, before she looks over at her bag on her desk.

With a push of a button, Emily silences the beeping of her microwave and grabs her spaghetti and meatball leftover she had made the night before. She walks over to her dining room to sit with the case Alison gifted next to her. Eating her food as she stared at it, she tried to guess what could be inside. The interest becomes too much to handle after a short while when she finally goes to open it.

Alison cracks open the blank case Emily gave her and sees two disks inside – one branded MP3 and the other MP4 with a simple, white label sticker. Having an idea of what this was but being impatient anyways, Alison pops out the MP4 disk and powers on her Blu-Ray player, sliding it right in. The launching of the DVD felt like tortuous seconds sluggishly passing by as Alison crawls into her bed anticipating the big moment. Going from black to a sudden light, a video starts with the camera facing a drum set in an isolated area. She couldn't tell exactly where this was located but it appeared to be in the middle of a large room. Maybe a basement, Alison theorizes. The camera stays stagnant for a good twenty seconds until it abruptly shakes with the zoom going back and forth as if someone was adjusting it.

Emily laughs as her gift was unveiled with much eagerness. There were two sets of pencil pairs, four in total. But they weren't just any pencils. They were drumstick pencils – slightly larger than normal pencils in the shape of drumsticks. She examines the present, feeling the weight of them in her palms, and the checks out the ends which mirrored the tips of actual drumsticks. Still laughing to herself, she twirls two of the pencils between her fingers on both hands and begins tapping a beat on her dining table, impressed by how it sounded.

Alison watches the screen attentively until a body walks into the frame and sits on top of the chair behind the drums. A wide smile from ear to ear completes the lower half of Alison's face as she witnesses an obviously teenage Emily putting her light brown hair up into a high bun. It was almost a surreal sight to her after seeing such a mature and older Emily nearly every day. This Emily was about a shade lighter than how she is now, smaller in both height and body size, with a complete baby face. Alison was instantly put into adore-mode by all of this.

Younger Emily puts headphones over her ears, making sure everything fit perfectly by testing it with a few shakes of her head to see if they would move or come off. To the right of her, she had a laptop on top of a small table to which she scrolls through fleetingly before she settles herself. Grabbing her sticks with a spin in her hands and taking a deep breath as she stared into the camera, she begins to talk.

"Today is Sunday, September 20th, 2009-"

"Oh my God." Alison whispers to herself as her awe continues. Not only was younger Emily adorable but the difference in her voice was another thing Alison caught right away. It was about an octave higher with a slight scratch to it. The same scratch that later develops into the rasp in Emily's voice when she speaks now.

"I was in the car with my mom earlier today and we were listening to the radio when Jordan Spark's new song Battlefield came on. It was my first time hearing it and I liked it. It had this new generation spin on it but it reminded me of another Battlefield classic that I really like. I've been practicing this song for a good while now and I think I'm confident enough to say I got it. So, bringing back this timeless hit from Pat Benatar, you know what I've concluded? I think it would have been awesome to live in the 80s. Everything seemed so cool and liberating then. Probably everything except the drugs."

Emily laughs at her own little jab when she leans over to her computer. The laptop connected to speakers off-camera begins the song as it is now played at a loud enough volume to be heard on camera over the percussions. The moment she starts drumming, Alison could feel her energy being tied to the music with every head bob she did as she drifts away into her craft. Emily mouths the words to the song as she strikes down with her sticks, adding a combination of extra fills and a few tricks here and there - both grabbing Alison's attention like no other.

About a minute into Emily's cover, an older man appears in the background walking past, bopping his head to the beat. Before disappearing completely, he notices the camera and backs up, almost how people act when they notice a news crew recording at a local spot. Without Emily noticing as she's lost in her own world, the man begins to sway to the music, raising his hands to join the band with his air guitar. It was fairly quick when Alison made the assumption that man was her dad. She was amazed by the genetics because Emily, especially how she looked now, favored him a lot. Opposite to her own family where she feels that she looks nothing like her father. A few more moments came and went when a woman entered the frame as well and Alison couldn't do much but laugh. If she thought Emily favored her father, she clearly didn't see her mother. She was a perfect blend of them both.

The older woman comes through with her ears covered, seeming as if she was trying to ask her husband something when he grabs her hand, spins, and then dips her. She was clearly confused by the sudden action when he points to the camera, smiling like a mischievous child. He continues his air guitar, gesturing her to join him but she refuses. He doesn't allow her to leave when she tries to, however, only adding lip syncing to his duty as Emily's imaginary band member. Egging her on with a grin, he doesn't let up until she finally cracks with a roll of her eyes and small movement of her hips. Enthusiastically, he holds her hand and leads her to the front so that they're in Emily's line of sight. There is a second of her being startled by their presence when it's replaced by a goofy smile, noticing how her parents were dancing along to her performance. With all the happy energy flowing between the three of them as they began singing the song aloud in unison, Alison laughs and curls up to her pillow. This was going to be an awesome night.

Do you have a goofy smile on your face right now? You should. Someone call 911 because these two and their attention to detail for each other will be the cause of my death.