Chapter 9: Immortality.
Characters: Alison, Mona.
Quote:
Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality. (Emily Dickinson)

She's always dreamed of immortality, of reaching some state beyond that of human and being worshipped for it.

Somewhere along the way she gets it into her head that true immortality, the physical kind that would freeze her face and body, is the kind that she wants. The problem is, she doesn't live in a world that happens to be occupied by vampires, there's no witch waiting to make an elixir for the right price, and so she continues to get older.

She lounges around, tells her friends in a lofty tone that immortality is dying young and beautiful and she almost believes it. Underneath, she's desperate for forever, and research does nothing to quench the thirst – it only worsens it. She never wants to die, never wants to grow old or grey, never wants to get ill. Her mortality is something of a trouble to her, but she doesn't want to be a monster either – just eternal.

And one day she reads a line or two in a poem, that immortality can be achieved by either creating art or passing on the genes to a child. The poem is shortly forgotten, but for those lines, and she resents the author for not telling her some greater secret. There's no inclination for children, maybe never will be, and she's not the artistic one.

So after everything with A happens, or rather doesn't happen, she's grateful to Mona for bringing her away, giving her a sanctuary, and suggesting how she can outsmart A.

She drives away in a cheap car the next morning and it doesn't take long before her face is on posters, missing, with captions that plead for information about her.

Beneath the guilt for making everyone worry, she loves the attention. It's a good photo, and her only problem is that she can't tell people that it's her in this beautiful photo. One day, in a café, she plans her next move and watches someone stare at her image, smiles coyly to herself and slinks back into her hood.

(can't take the risk of being recognized, after all)

No, that's not quite right. Her bigger problem is that every day she is outgrowing the photo, her hair imperceptibly longer or her body changed ever-so-slightly. Every day there's some new detail about her that the photo-girl didn't have, and she hates it. She tries her best to lessen the changes, but the truth is she's still on the run, still stressed out about where she's going to sleep, and so some days she greets the world haggard and tired. Right now she doesn't have the luxury of endless cosmetics and clothes, just a few jars and bottles that fit into her bag.

The problem with faking her death is this: she has to come home older, still mortal – in fact she doesn't think she's ever felt so mortal, not even when she had to staunch the blood flow from a wound because she couldn't go to hospital. She has been stripped of her immortality, the endless photos living forever on computers and not comparing to the real thing. People no longer dance around her in conversation, but speak openly and bravely.

Seems they don't quite love her anymore.

She no longer wants forever, just a lifetime.

Under the monstrosities, she's still just a girl, and she thinks she wants all the usual things. She's not always quite sure what those are though, forgets sometimes that she's been a monster and is now a girl, gets mixed up between this and that.

People don't love her anymore, so she focuses on redeeming herself, making herself someone that can be loved, someone who can be forgiven her sins and given a new slate.

The opportunity comes when she suspects Alison of being the newest stalker in town, calls Alison a sociopath and offers to help. This time it's almost like having friends, but she knows that friends don't stop by simply because they want help, and this stings.

(mortal, she's mortal)

Survival, that's her mode now. It's a familiar one, not unlike pulling on a comfortable old jumper, and she tries her best to go undetected. Thing is, her mother is monitoring her purchases and bank accounts, watching for unusual activity and ready to step in at the first sign that something is wrong. Instead, she makes do with what she has got and tries not to inventory all the ways in which A might have her outclassed, listens in on conversations she isn't supposed to hear and tries to calculate how she can help the girls.

She has to protect them because she does have a hunch about how things might turn out for her and if that's the case she needs to leave some kind of legacy, prove that she wasn't always just a loser.

And hell, when her door swings open and her assailant is there, she's not going to go down quietly.

She kicks and punches and scratches, slashes with fingernails deliberately left long, tries not to scream at the pain because that would be weakness and there's no time for that –

but no, her wounds are becoming fatal.

There's less consciousness now, she can feel herself growing so tired. She's lost too much blood, there's no hope of medical attention.

She wanted to leave a legacy – well, here it is, in her bloodstained house and a few items hidden where they'll go undetected until it's time for Hanna to receive them. She decides that she may as well make her peace, she isn't going to survive and her mother loves her, maybe even the girls could have come to love her, and so she knows they'll remember. Knows there will be a memorial and tributes, knows that they will know how she died. She knows that the town won't forget anytime soon, especially not if her estimations about the eventual police report are correct.

She thinks they'll try to avenge her, maybe interact with her mother the way she watched them interact with Jessica DiLaurentis.

Her eyes water and the tears spill over just a bit, it doesn't matter now if she's weak because what's weaker than dying?, quickly drying up in the cold air and soon enough she feels nothing more.

She trades one immortality for another.

She lounges on her bed. Her father is away and so is her brother, and she isn't welcome into the homes of her former clique.

Maybe she'll call her new pseudo-clique, but truth is, they're not her friends – just a jumble of girls who represent the others she has lost: one for the art, one for the athletics, one for the academics, and one for the admiration. All of it feels hollow, dull, but the admiration is the worst of it, because it's all a smokescreen for her new unloved status.

So much for immortality.