A/N: An extra-long chapter to make up for it taking a little longer (just don't get used to it haha). Hope you enjoy :)
Alison realizes pretty soon after Spencer's gone home that spending the night home alone isn't going to do her any good – all she seems to be able to do is brood, replaying her conversation with Emily from the previous night and then her conversation with Spencer, too, the brunette's threat still looming (and she has no doubt that Spencer can make her life a living hell, doesn't want that or the isolation that she knows will come along with it, and she wonders, not for the first time, if coming home had been such a good idea after all).
Sometimes Rosewood doesn't even feel like her home, anymore. Sure, she recognizes the streets and the places and some of the people, but there's a lot that's different (including in her own home – her mother's gone and her brother's in the wind and her father doesn't seem to be able to bear being in the same room with her for longer than an hour, and some days she wonders why she'd even come back here at all).
Well, she knows why, technically – Emily had asked and she'd come running, too weak to walk away from the brunette for a second time, but now she's messed it all up before anything could even start, and there's a voice in the back of her head telling her that things would be so much easier if she just left town again.
She hadn't been altogether serious about it, after Toby's house had blown up – she'd been scared, yes, but she'd been scared to leave, too, scared of what it would do to Emily, to have Alison back only for her to disappear again (she thinks that maybe now the brunette wishes that she had gone, perhaps that would be less cruel than the damage Alison has inflicted on her since then), and she doesn't know if she would have actually been able to go through with it, had A not taken the decision out of her hands.
She ends up taking Pepe out for a walk, unable to stand the dark, oppressive silence of the empty house any longer, and she clips on his lead and takes him around the block, deciding to wander through the park.
It's getting dark out, the days becoming shorter, but she doesn't mind it – she likes the twinkle of the stars in the sky above, moonlight filtering down and lighting their way, and she always loved walking at dusk, wondering what secrets she could discover as the light faded and night began (because people naïvely thought that the darkness offered them protection from prying eyes like hers).
Pepe pulls her along, his tail wagging constantly as he sniffs along the sidewalk, and it's nice, to feel like a normal teenager for once. She'd always wanted a dog, when she was younger, but her Mom had never let her have one – she thinks it's ironic that she has one now, when her Mom is gone, her parting gift to the daughter she'd never said goodbye to.
The park is unusually quiet but Alison likes it, likes hearing the chirping of crickets as she lets Pepe off his lead to roam free, and she throws him the ball she brought with them, smiles softly as he bounds across the grass to retrieve it and bring it back, having learnt pretty quickly that fetch was a game that he would never tire of.
When she sees two figures sitting on a bench a little way away she thinks nothing of it – at least until Pepe takes off towards them at a run, and Alison is horrified as she jogs after him, and promptly stops in her tracks when she realizes just who, exactly, Pepe has run to.
He'd loved Emily since the day he'd come to Alison (the blonde thought that he loved Emily more than her, sometimes, with the way he reacted every time to brunette came around, vying with Alison for Emily's attention), and he barks excitedly as he hurtles to a stop just in-front of the bench, and Emily hops down from it (swaying unsteadily as she does so, and Alison sighs because she's obviously been drinking again), and says hello to him.
Hanna, Emily's unsurprising companion, eyes Alison warily as the blonde just watches the scene from a few yards away, and she sighs before moving closer because doesn't want to leave the two of them out here drunk off their asses, because anything could happen to them – they could get attacked, or hounded by A, any number of awful things could happen and what were they thinking?
"What are you doing out here?" She asks as she nears the bench, burying her hands in her pocket and tugging her coat tighter around herself, feeling the chill of the night air against her exposed skin, and Emily remains crouching on the floor with her arms around Pepe but does glance up at Alison, and it's the first time the brunette's made eye contact with her all day and even though she looks like crap she's still the most beautiful woman Alison's ever seen, and she can still take her breath away with just a single look.
"What are you doing out here?" Hanna counters, openly glaring at Alison, slurring her words, and Alison rolls her eyes and then, when she notices the half-empty bottle of alcohol on the bench beside the blonde, she lunges forward and snatches it away, Hanna too slow to stop her. "Hey! Give that back."
"No," the blonde says stubbornly, as she unscrews the lid and pours the liquid within onto the grass beside her feet, and it's really kind of comical, that she's the responsible one in this little group. "You're going to drink yourselves to death."
"Maybe that's the point." Hanna is sullen as Alison hands the empty bottle back to her, and the blonde takes it with a scoff before dropping it to the ground. "What's it like, Ali?" The blonde pauses as she leans down to grab the bottle back and turns to the nearest bin, made curious by the tone of Hanna's voice. "To know that you drive people to drink themselves to death?"
"Hanna," Emily warns, and she rises to her feet and leans back against the bench with a severe look on her face as she regards the blonde in question.
"What? Don't fucking defend her to me, Emily. Not you, of all people. Do you really think she gives a fuck? About any of us?" Alison's never seen Hanna so angry – her eyes are dark, flashing with a fury that's probably been building for a long time, the blonde keeping inside the years of insults and Alison's taunting about her weight and all her insecurities, and they all come pouring out now and really, Alison deserves this.
She deserves all of this – all of this destruction that she's wrought, crashing down around her – and karma really is a bitch, after all.
"Are you not going to defend yourself?" Hanna's voice is loud, her expression twisted into a glare as she meets Alison's eyes, and the blonde can only look at the two of them, these girls that she loves, and wonder how much better off they'd be without her. "Well?"
"I don't know what you want me to say," she answers carefully, digging her hands deeper into her pockets and pulling her coat even tighter around herself, as though it would offer protection from the sting of Hanna's words.
"How about a fucking apology for once in your life? How about actually standing up and admitting what a shitty person you are? How about apologizing for letting the four of us think you were dead? Or for all the shit we went through because of you? How about showing some fucking remorse for what you did to us? You come back to town and pretend everything is fine and nothing's changed, and you're right – because you're still the same cold-hearted bitch that you always were before, and sometimes I wonder if we'd all be better off if you really were dead."
She flinches at the vehemence in Hanna's words, feels the sting of tears in her eyes even as a thrill of fury shivers down her spine – her hands curl into fists, her nails biting into her palms hard enough to draw blood as she wills herself not to speak out.
Because she knows that Hanna means every word, but she also knows that the blonde's drunk, has no control over what she's saying – and Alison can't be mad at her for that, can't try to show them all that she wants to be better person if she lets her rage take over and snaps at the blonde like she wants to.
She wants to scream at her that she has no idea what it was like, to be threatened and tortured by someone for months and to doubt every person around you. To not know who you could trust – if anyone.
She wants to shout at her that at least, despite everything else, the four of them had each other. They had each other to lean on when it got to be too much, to confide in – but she never had that. She was all alone, just like she always has been.
Sometimes she wonders if she always will be.
She wants to grab Hanna by the shoulders and shake her, to tell her about the horrors she'd endured living on her own for the last two years, because none of it had been easy. She'd left town because she'd thought it would be safer (and really, how much more unsafe could it be, after being buried alive by your own mother because she loved someone else enough to protect them over you?), but she'd been wrong.
She has a scar on her thigh to prove that.
But she keeps herself quiet (barely – it's a struggle, and she has to take deep breaths and grind her teeth and look away from Hanna's baleful eyes because she can't crack, she can't, she can't let either of them see how much this hurts her, how much she needs them), instead turns away from the pair of them and drags her phone out of her pocket and calls the one person that she can count on to help her out, because no matter how mad she is, she can't leave the two of them out here alone.
"I'm surprised you even want to talk to me after our conversation earlier."
"Yeah, well, I need your help," she sighs, casting a quick glance over her shoulder to check that Hanna and Emily are still there. "It's Emily and Hanna."
"Let me guess," Spencer replies with a sigh of her own. "They're drunk."
"Extremely. Could you come and pick us up? We're in the park, I could use some help trying to get the two of them home in one piece."
"We don't need babysitting," Hanna snaps from behind her, "especially not by you." Alison whirls around, anger flashing in her blue eyes as her tenuous control snaps.
"Oh yeah? Then how the fuck do you plan on getting home? I can see your car keys – were you planning on driving back? Maybe you want to wrap your car around a tree or a lamppost. That'd be a quicker way to go than drinking yourselves to death, like you seem intent on doing. Maybe I should let you drive, maybe I'll come along with you – that way at least you'll finally be rid of me and god, I think everyone in this town knows how much the four of you want that."
She shakes with the force of her words, feels her fury licking like fire through her veins, and both Hanna and Emily just look at her, wide-eyed, and all she can hear is the sound of her pounding heart and Spencer's even breathing in her ear.
"Alison –"
"Don't fucking lecture me, Spencer," she hisses down the phone, because she's had enough, enough of all of this, and maybe she really is as much of a bitch as they all make her out to be, but she doesn't care anymore.
"I wasn't going to," the brunette replies quietly, and Alison remembers her earlier concern, when they'd been in her kitchen and sighs, all the fight going out of her and she just wants to collapse to the floor and maybe never move again. "I can't come and help you – my parents want to talk to me and Melissa about what's happening with the divorce, but I can send someone else to help. Give me a few minutes."
x-x-x
It feels like an age, waiting for the help that Spencer promised. The brunette had hung up and then had called Hanna back a few moments later – or Alison assumes that's who the blonde's talking animatedly to, anyway.
She'd walked a few steps away from the two of them to lean against the trunk of a nearby tree, close enough to keep an eye and make sure they're not harbouring more alcohol but far enough away to not be able to hear what they're saying.
Emily has been quiet throughout the whole ordeal, barely even speaking to Hanna whenever the blonde turns to ask her something, and Alison would give everything she has just to know what the brunette's thinking.
She'd used to be able to read Emily like a book – it was easy, to guess what was on her mind. She wore her heart on her sleeve and her emotions in her eyes, and Alison had always been good at reading people, but Emily was easier than most.
But now she's an enigma that she feels like she barely knows. And she supposes that she doesn't, not really, because a lot's changed since she was last here in town and while she's so, so happy that Emily has turned out to be so sure and so strong and so good in spite of everything that she's been through, a selfish part of her longs for the old days when things have easier.
When help arrives, it's not in a form she's expecting. She'd told Spencer where to find them before she'd hung up, and when she sees a male figure striding towards them she frowns, because she'd figured Aria would probably be who Spencer called – she doesn't recognise Caleb until he's illuminated by a nearby streetlight, and she pulls out her phone to text the brunette, a frown on her face.
Caleb? Seriously? I thought he was part of the reason why Hanna's drinking so much, is this really a good idea?
Hanna doesn't look happy to see him – in fact, she glares at Alison like it's all her fault when he eventually reaches them – but Alison just ignores her as her phone chimes with Spencer's reply.
I went to talk to him after I left yours – told him to get his act together and help her out. They need each other. They'll get each other through this.
Alison isn't so sure, but she supposes she has no right to argue. She knows nothing about him, really, or his relationship with Hanna, but she trusts that Spencer does and slides her phone back into her pocket as she makes her way over to him.
"You can go home now, I've got it from here," he says, barely even glancing towards her, but it's enough for her to smell the stale scent of beer on his breath and she narrows her eyes into a glare as she takes a step closer to him.
"You're drunk as well? I thought Spencer told you to clean yourself up!"
"Not that it's any of your business," he glances towards her, face full of contempt and she's taken aback by the hatred that someone she barely knows can hold for her. "But I didn't know that I was going to have to come to the rescue. I'd already had a drink or two before Spencer came to see me – I didn't see the harm in having a couple more and starting sobriety tomorrow."
"Isn't that what people who intend to put it off say? 'Oh, I'll just do it tomorrow?'"
"I don't need a lesson on how to live my life from you," he snarls, lips curling into a mocking smirk, and Alison's hands clench once more, her jaw setting. "Why are you even here, anyway? I didn't think you cared enough to actually lower yourself to helping somebody without getting something out of it."
"You don't know anything about me." Her voice is cold, flat and emotionless, and he watches her with avid interest, that damn smirk still on his face. "So don't presume anything. You take care of Hanna, and I'll make sure Emily gets home safe."
"I really don't think that's a good idea," Caleb replies with a wary look towards where Emily is sitting curled up on the floor with Pepe lying beside her, his head on her lap (he's barely spared Alison a glance since running over there, the traitor).
"Well seeing as you're drunk yourself I really don't think you're up to making any decisions," she snaps, because suddenly she's exhausted and she just wants to get out of there. "So why don't you shut up, take her home, and both of you can sober up together."
She doesn't leave him time to argue, instead heading over towards Emily and extending a hand towards the brunette to help her stand. She stares at it for a moment, and Alison thinks for one terrifying moment that she's messed things up between them so much that Emily will refuse to take it and demand to go with the other two, but eventually she grasps Alison's hand with her own and allows the blonde to haul her to her feet.
She knows that it's probably a bad idea to be with Emily right now, when she's so drunk that she can't even walk in a straight line, but she can't bear to let her go now that she's with her, because she doesn't know when – if – she'll get the chance again.
Emily leans her weight heavily on Alison as they make their way back to the brunette's house (Alison is glad that Emily lives closer to the park than she does), with the support of Alison's arm wrapped around her lower back, Pepe trotting along beside them.
They don't talk, and the blonde doesn't know if that's a good or a bad thing. She doesn't even know if Emily is aware of what's going on around her – there's a dazed expression on her face and her eyes stay trained on the floor, focusing on her shuffling feet.
It's a torturous fifteen minute walk that should normally only take five, and Alison realizes too late her mistake in that she's never going to get the brunette past her mother and up to bed when she's got Pepe along with them, too.
And she can't just leave him outside, because she always hates seeing dogs tied up outside shops while their owners are inside, so she resigns herself to facing the wrath of Mrs Fields as she knocks on the front door (instead of rooting around in Emily's pockets for her keys), and when Emily's Mom opens the door the way her eyes widen would have been comical under any other circumstances.
"Is she drunk?" She whispers, horrified, as Emily's head lolls back onto Alison's shoulder, and the blonde can only offer up her best sheepish expression as she tries not to sag under their combined weight.
"Um, it's a long story." Pam reaches out for Emily's other arm and helps Alison manoeuvre Emily into the house. "But yes. Probably very drunk but I don't know for sure. I found her and Hanna in the park."
"Well… thank you, for getting her back safely." There's a frown on Pam's face, and Alison wonders just how much of a telling off the brunette's going to get when she wakes up in the morning. "I'll take it from here."
She's kind of loathe to leave, especially when she doesn't know when she'll see the brunette again – or, well, talk to her again because she's sure she'll see Emily in the torturous class that they have together, or catch glimpses of her in the hallways at school like she had today, but none of that is enough – but she can't think of a reason to disagree so she just nods and twists away from the hold that Emily's managed to get on her, transferring over to Pam's shoulder instead.
But the brunette's hand closes around her wrist as she turns to walk away, her grip surprisingly strong consider how inebriated she is, and Alison wonders for a second if Emily is even aware of what she's doing, until the brunette speaks.
"No." Her voice is quiet but forceful, and she tugs a little on Alison's sleeve, dragging her a little closer. "Don't leave me. Not again." Her voice cracks, and yet more tears spring into Alison's eyes and she's not quick enough to blink them away before a couple escape, and she knows that Pam notices as she lifts the arm that's not being held by Emily to wipe them away with the back of her hand.
"You're the one that keeps walking away from me," she says, softly, because she's had to watch Emily walk away from her twice within the last week and it hurts, like little shards of glass in her heart, pressing deeper and deeper with every breath that she takes until she feels like maybe she has no heart left to tear at all.
"Don't leave," Emily repeats, voice pleading, and Alison just looks helplessly at the brunette's Mom – she looks torn, her gaze flitting between the two of them. "Please."
"I'll need some help getting her up the stairs," Pam says eventually, reluctance written all over her face and it makes Alison pale, just a little, wondering just what, exactly, the brunette's mother knows about their… can she call it a relationship? She doesn't really think she can, considering the fact that they've never even been on so much as a date, but sometimes she feels like they're in one, because her heart has belonged to Emily Fields for as long as she can remember.
She takes Emily's left side and Pam gets her right, and they make it up the stairs in one piece, Alison turning into Emily's room and flicking the light on before they lead the brunette over to the bed – she collapses face-first against the covers and Alison rolls her gently so that she's lying on her side, trying to ignore the fact that the brunette's shirt has ridden up significantly to reveal a strip of toned skin beneath and god, she should not be thinking about things like that right now.
Except she can't help it. Can't help her mind flitting back to that night (it felt like ages ago, now), in her room when Emily's mouth had been hard and demanding against hers, when she'd allowed herself to let go, a little, to be bolder than she'd ever dared before, and let her hands wander across the brunette's body.
She'd never thought that something as simple as kissing could ever be so… erotic, but that's what it was like, being with Emily. Emily kissed her like she mattered, like she was everything, and it had made her head spin and her heart pound she she'd never felt quite so alive in her life.
And the memory of it haunts her – at night she dreams of the feeling of Emily's tongue stroking against her own, of the sound of the brunette's moan when Alison's hands had dared to slide down, one cupping the back of her bare thigh and the other digging into her ass to bring her closer, and she remembers the heat of Emily's skin beneath her fingertips and she's woken up with an unbearable ache between her legs more times than she can count ever since.
But she should not be thinking about that right now, when Emily looks like she's about ready to pass out, lying there on-top of the covers fully clothed and with Emily's mother's eyes on her and god, she really does have issues.
"I'll… leave you two, to talk," Pam says after several seconds of heavy silence in which Alison can only shift her weight from one foot to the other anxiously. "If you could try and get her out of those clothes – at least the shoes and the jacket – that would be a great help." Alison bites her lip at the thought of trying to wrestle Emily out of her clothes, and she didn't want the first time that she undressed her to be in these circumstances, but she nods anyway and Pam disappears after casting another worried glance towards them.
Alison doesn't miss the fact that she leaves the bedroom door deliberately wide open, and it makes her worry once more about just what, exactly, Emily's told her mother about them. Does she know about all the horrible things that Alison did to her daughter? And if she did, then how can she still look Alison in the eye without wanting to kick her out of the house?
She pushes the thought away, though, because now isn't the time – though she supposes she could get an answer to any question she asked Emily at this point, with how drunk she is. And there are a dozen at the tip of her tongue, but she won't ask any of them.
She can't, not when she shrouds herself in secrets like they're a veil, not when she can't even bear to show her soul to Emily (and maybe it's because a part of her is scared that, if Emily knew everything about her, saw everything that she was, knows about all the things she's done and all the people she's hurt, that she'll run away and never look back, and she doesn't think she could bear it). She can't be desperate for the truth when she's not strong enough to give it, herself.
She's pretty sure that Emily's asleep – her breathing is even and her eyes are closed, and she hasn't said a word since she'd begged her not to leave (and Alison thinks about how easy it would be, to just slip out of the door, now, when Emily's none the wiser, but a part of her can't stand the thought of letting Emily down again, even if she probably won't want to face her in the morning) – but she still hesitates before sighing softly and falling to her knees by the side of the bed, hands reaching out for one of Emily's legs and dragging the zipper of her boot down as gently and as quietly as she can before doing the other.
When they're both off she turns to put them to the side, out of the way so that neither of them will trip over them later on – and when she turns around she jumps, startled, because Emily has risen silently so that she's sitting up on the edge of the bed, looking down at her with dark, dark eyes.
Her expression is inscrutable, and Alison longs to know what she's thinking and hates that she can't even guess, and she's trapped beneath the weight if Emily's gaze, feelings like she can barely breathe and she's distantly aware of the pounding of her heart in her ears and she feels like she's waiting for something but she doesn't know what.
She's not all that surprised when Emily reaches for her and crushes their lips together in a kiss that's full of desperation. It's similar to the last one they'd shared, where she'd been terrified of Emily walking away from her for good, wondering if it would be their last kiss – this one is all teeth and tongue, Emily's lips hard and unrelenting against hers, and it's a world away from the kisses they'd exchanged in Alison's bed, all shy looks and soft touches.
This sends a thrill down her spine, this has her hands sliding up Emily's thighs to come to rest at her waist (and the moan that rumbles through the brunette's chest has heat pooling between her thighs).
And she knows that they should stop.
She knows that she should stop this because she's the sober one, and she knows there's no way that Emily would be doing this if she weren't drunk. She wouldn't be kissing her as though her life depended on it, in a way that has her head spinning and air disappearing from her lungs as she struggles to remember how to breathe. She wouldn't be tangling her hands in Alison's hair and tugging hard enough to make her hiss in pain (but it's oh, so sweet at the same time).
They're a living, breathing disaster and they should be staying far away from each other – Alison should be staying far away from this woman who she's bent and she's broken and she's shattered perhaps beyond repair, instead of drowning in her and making everything a hundred times worse.
She's filled with remorse when she does eventually tear her lips away from Emily's (and misery, too, wondering if she'll ever get to feel this again – and she feels guilty for even wanting it to, for wanting something that shouldn't have ever happened in the first place), but the brunette doesn't let go of her, instead twists her head to the side and presses a heated kiss just below Alison's jaw and she shudders, her breathing ragged and her lips bruised.
"Em-Emily," her voice shakes as Emily's teeth scrape across her skin, and it takes every bit of willpower she has not to moan because god that feels so good. "We should stop."
"Why?" Comes the response, breathed against the side of her neck as Emily's lips continue to trail lower, and her hands slide out of Alison's hair and that's all she needs – she pushes herself away from the brunette and scrambles to her feet.
"Because you're drunk." Her hands tremble and all she can think about is the feelings of Emily's lips on her skin and it would be so, so easy to go back over there, to throw herself at a woman that she knows wants her even if she wishes she wouldn't. "And I'm not going to take advantage of you like that."
Emily's lips quirk into a bitter smile, and she shrugs herself out of her jacket and Alison has to force her eyes away, instead trains them on the floor. "Not drunk enough," she hears Emily mutter, and her heart breaks, that voice screaming at her once more than this is all her fault.
"I'm sorry," she says, because she feels like she should apologize for something – anything – and her gaze darts back up to meet Emily's and she flushes when she realizes that Emily's taken off her shirt, too, leaving her in just a bra and Alison has to force her eyes to stay focused on Emily's face, and not…anything else.
"What for this time?" There's bleak amusement in Emily's voice as she squints at her from across the room, and she cocks her head to one side and Alison feels like she's being studied like a rat in some sort of sick science experiment.
"Everything."
"Not good enough," Emily fires back immediately, and the resentment held in those three words has Alison flinching. "I used to think about it, you know." Alison doesn't know because she has no idea what Emily's talking about – her eyes are unfocused, mind clearly far away. "About whether if… if you were drunk, if you'd act differently towards me. If you'd kiss me, for once. I used to think that maybe then you'd finally be honest with me, and tell me how you felt – how fucked up is that? How deluded was I?"
She's rambling, words spilling from her lips quickly, but there's a raw pain in her words and Alison knows that no-one else in the world could ever hate her as much as she hates herself in that moment, when Emily's angry eyes meet hers.
"And then it finally happened. Noel Kahn's party, two weeks before you disappeared. You got smashed –" She remembers that night, remembers the barrage of texts that she'd gotten from A and she'd just needed to forget, just for a little while – "and I asked you. I asked you if you felt the same way about me as I did for you. And do you know what you did?"
Alison shakes her head, made mute by the look on Emily's face because she doesn't remember any of it, the whole night is just a blur to her – she remembers arriving at the party and she remembers her first couple of drinks but then that was it, until she woke up the next morning somehow, miraculously back in her own bed.
"You kissed me. And I thought that that was finally it, you know? That I was right, that it hadn't all just been… wishful thinking." The brunette's voice is soft and Alison is frozen before her, terrified to hear what she has to say next. "And then you pushed me away and you laughed in my face and you told me that you could never feel like that about a girl."
There's venom in Emily's voice but Alison knows that it's her speaking through Emily, knows that's how she would've said it, because she was Alison DiLaurentis and she didn't allow herself to care about anyone and god, she was a monster.
She still is a monster.
"I wrote you a letter, you know." The abrupt change of subject makes her head spin, still focused on that piece of her past that she doesn't remember, and Emily isn't looking at her anymore, is instead looking out of the window, a haunted expression on her face. "I wish you'd had a chance to read it," she sighs, and Alison is too scared to ask what it said.
(But she can guess).
"Hanna shouldn't have said what she did before." Alison doesn't know what to do with herself, doesn't know how to follow Emily's train of thoughts (doesn't know how to make any of this right, save to wish that she'd never been born). "That we'd be better off if you were dead."
"She was right to say that," Alison replies softly. "Sometimes I think it would've been better for everyone, too."
"Don't ever say that." Emily whirls back around to face her, and there's a ferocity to her words and a fierceness in her eyes that makes Alison's eyes widen. "Don't talk like that. Promise me."
"I…" She knows she can't promise that when it's a thought that she has a dozen times a day, and she's loathe to tell another lie. "How come you don't agree with her? After everything I've done. After what you just told me. How can you still care about me?"
"Because I'll always care about you." There's an intensity to Emily's gaze, and Alison realizes belatedly that she's strayed into the territory of 'things she'd wanted to ask but said she wouldn't because Emily was drunk and it wasn't fair'.
Fuck.
"Because no matter what you do, I'll always care about you. And because… because the moment they found your body…" Emily's breath hitches and she sounds like she's fighting back a sob and Alison had never wanted any of this. "It was… the worst moment of my life. But it almost… finding out that you were alive, seeing you again after all that time… it almost cancelled it out. But if you were really gone, if you were really dead, I… I don't know what I'd do."
"Well I'm not." Alison's throat feels tight, and she can feel the sting of tears behind her eyes and she doesn't know whether to scream or cry because Emily still loves her and she doesn't deserve it. "I'm here."
"But for how long?" Emily demands, voice hard. "How long before you decide to leave again? You were ready to the other night before A stopped you. You were going to leave me all over again, even after…" Emily's voice breaks and tears leak from her eyes and Alison swears she feels her heart twist in her chest even though she knows it's not possible. "After you told me that I mattered."
"Of course you matter!" Frustration leaks into her words because she knows why Emily is like this, why Emily doesn't believe anything she says – it's because she's a liar and she tried so hard for so long to convince them both that she didn't feel anything for Emily and it's coming back to haunt her now. "Why do you think I couldn't say goodbye to you? It was because I knew that I couldn't. I couldn't stand to see the look in your eyes when I told you that I was leaving. I couldn't stand to see the disappointment. Or the pain."
"Or maybe you just never gave a shit so it was easy for you to just pack up and go. Again." Alison sighs, her eyes fluttering closed in defeat because she doesn't know what to do anymore and she's suddenly exhausted.
"I don't know what to say to you." She runs a frustrated hand through her hair and takes a deep breath, and when she finally opens her eyes Emily's watching her warily. "I don't know how to make you believe me."
"How about trying for a little honesty for once in your fucking life?" Alison winces at the anger in the brunette's tone, but all the fight's gone out of Emily – she looks weary, as tired as Alison feels, her shoulders hunched (and she's still not put on a damn shirt and Alison's a little proud of herself, for not checking her out because god, would it be easy to), and her eyes downcast.
"I'm trying." Her voice cracks with the force she puts behind it, because she is, she's trying to be better, not just for Emily but for the other girls, too, and for herself. Because there are days where she barely stand to look at herself in the mirror, and she wants to change. She wants to not be haunted by the memories of the things she's done (though some things, she's learned, are hard to forget). She wants to be able to look back at her life and actually feel proud of who she is, for once.
She'd give anything to feel pride instead of being sickened.
"I'm trying," she repeats, pleading, now, as blue eyes lock with brown. "Can that please be enough? Just… just for now?"
It takes Emily a long time to answer, and when she does she speaks haltingly, like she's not really sure what to say – not that Alison can blame her. "I guess we'll find out." And it's not really the answer that she'd wanted, but she supposes it's better than silence.
"Do you want me to go?" She doesn't want to ask, doesn't want to get sent away, but she'd hate to think that Emily might want her to leave but wouldn't be able to speak up to tell her that, and the last thing she wants is to feel like she's forcing the brunette into spending time with her.
"I…" Emily bites her lip, and Alison can see indecision warring in her eyes and she steels herself because she's sure that a rejection is coming. "I think that might be for the best." She fights to keep her expression carefully blank and just nods before spinning and heading for the door, because she thinks if she stays for much longer she might start to cry and she can't stand the thought of doing that in-front of Emily again.
"Alison?" The brunette's voice stops her when she's halfway out the door, and her hand curls around the doorframe so hard that her knuckles turn white as she takes a deep breath and turns her head. "I'm sorry. About you needing to take care of me tonight. And about the drinking."
"You don't need to apologize for that," she says, puzzled. "It's my fault, isn't it? That you're drinking? I should be apologizing to you."
"Why?" Emily looks confused, now, her eyebrows creasing into a frown. "You never put the bottle in my hand. I chose that, I did that, and I'm not your responsibility." The brunette bites her lip, looks like she's debating whether to say something else. "Have you ever thought that… instead of apologizing so much for the past, maybe you should start focusing on the present? On making sure that in the future, you don't have a million things to be sorry for?"
