A/N: I'm sorry this has taken to so long guys, uni is really kicking my ass right now and it's not going to let up anytime soon sooo updates are gonna be pretty irregular for the next few weeks, my apologies for that.

I had to take a few creative liberties with this chapter because the show has given us so little information about Alison and her past, hopefully that's okay with everyone.

"I know what you're doing." Alison glances up from her notes at the sound of the voice, because she can scarcely believe that out of everyone, it's Hanna Marin hovering over her. She hasn't spoken to Hanna since she'd left the blonde's house after the whole Noel fiasco and returned to her own – aside from that awful evening where she'd found the blonde with Emily in the park, but considering how drunk the other woman had been she's not sure she can count it.

"Calculus?" Alison replies smartly, pen tapping against the paper open in-front of her, and Hanna makes a face before she slides into the seat opposite of Alison, resting her arms on the table, an unusually serious expression on her face.

"No." Alison's been in the library since she finished last period nearly half an hour ago, determined to get as much work done as she possibly can before she goes to Emily's. "With the notes and the acting all scared of Mona and everything else. I know what you're doing."

"Please," she says, her voice sickly sweet, and she has to force herself to stay calm even though Hanna's tone is accusatory. "Enlighten me."

"You're trying to win her back."

"And that's a problem because…?"

"Because I don't know how to believe that you've actually changed. Emily has so much unwavering faith in you, that you could be a better person, but I… I don't see it. I don't know how she does it."

"Honestly?" Alison can see, in Hanna's eyes, so like her own, that a part of her wants to believe in Alison, wants to have her back in her life… but she doesn't know how to. "I don't either. If someone treated me like I treated her – and the rest of you, too – I wouldn't know how to get over it. She's a bigger person than I am."

"Than the both of us," Hanna adds, and Alison smiles softly, because at least they can both agree on something. "If you hurt her, Ali, I swear to god…"

"I know. I already got the talk from Spencer: 'if you hurt her again I'll make you wish you really had died that night'. I get it. Hurt her and I'm a dead woman."

"Spencer really said that?" Hanna asks, looking impressed. "When? She didn't tell us about it."

"She came to talk to me last week," Alison shrugs, and Hanna nods, looking thoughtful. "And I have no intention of hurting her again, you have to believe me. I care about her. I always did, I just never… never knew how to show it."

"I want to believe you, Ali. I want to believe that you're not the same girl who put me down for how much I weighed and me feel so shitty about it that when I lost it I did it in the worst way imaginable. I want to believe that really, deep down, you're the sweet girl I saw sometimes, who'd do anything for her friends. I want to, but I don't know how."

"And I haven't made it easy for you," she replies quietly, remorse settling in her chest – Hanna had been the sweetest of the four girls, after Emily, the one who had been the easiest to cut down just so she could feel a little better about herself.

"Yeah, no shit."

"I'm sorry." She meets the blonde's gaze and sees a guarded look on her face, takes a deep breath and tells herself she's never going to get anywhere with Emily if she can't make amends with their friends, too. "I know I never really said it, but I am.

"I shouldn't have treated you the way I did. And I don't have a reason for it. You were sweet and nice and kind and a great friend and I… shamed you for the thing you hated the most about yourself, and I shouldn't have done it. And I know the stupid stunt I pulled the other night doesn't endear me to you, and I shouldn't have done that, either. And I'm sorry for that, too. I'm sorry for so much, Hanna – I've made a lifetime's worth of mistakes already and I'll be paying for them for the rest of my life, and I don't deserve your forgiveness."

"But you want it." Hanna's eyes never left hers as she was talking, her expression unchanging. "Don't you?"

"I'd like it," she shrugs, because Hanna is important to her – they all are. The blonde had been enough for her to risk herself when she came back to Rosewood, terrified for Hanna when she'd heard that she'd been put in the hospital. "But I'm not stupid enough to ask for it."

"Hanna!" A voice calls from over the blonde's shoulder, and Alison raises her eyes to see Caleb striding towards them with stormy eyes. "What are you doing?"

"We're just talking, chill," the blonde replies smoothly, with a roll of her eyes, and Alison's narrow as Caleb reaches their table and towers over them, looking down at Alison with clear distaste.

"What, are you her minder, now?" She doesn't like the look on his face, can't help but react to it, and Hanna shoots her a warning glance, aware of how she can get when she's pissed off.

"Ali, don't. He was just asking."

"I'd call it demanding, but okay," she mutters under her breath, but Hanna coughs to hide a laugh and she knows the other woman heard her. "You know I'm glad you found a boyfriend, Han, but… I think you could do better." Caleb bristles, and she smiles sweetly up at him.

"And I think they could all do with a better friend than you, so I guess we're both a little disappointed." Alison's smile slides off her face to be replaced by a sneer, and Hanna is quick to speak as Alison opens her mouth to come back with a biting retort.

"Okay, both of you need to cut it out, right now," she says as she rises to her feet, giving them both a stern look. "Because you're probably going to have to get along at some point in the near future. But for right now, we're leaving. Come on." She closes a hand around Caleb's wrist and starts to drag him away. "Oh, and Ali?" She turns to look at Alison over her shoulder. "Remember what I said. Don't - "

"Hurt her," she interrupts, wearily. "I know." She watches them leave and then glances at her watch, figures that she won't be able to get much more done with the blonde's words still swirling in her mind, so instead she gathers up her stuff and makes her way towards the pool.

She hears Emily before she sees her and smiles to herself, glad that, if the brunette couldn't have her hobby in the exact way that she wanted, at least she could have it in another. As she rounds the corner to bring the pool into view, she sees Emily on the edge, leaning down to talk to someone in the water, and Alison chooses a seat at the bottom of the bleachers and waits.

She catches Emily's eye after a few moments and grins, and the brunette smiles softly back at her before turning back to the pool, standing with her hands on her hips as she watches two girls race down to the other end with a frown of concentration on her face.

Alison's eyes flicker around the room and land on Paige, hovering behind Emily's shoulder – when she sees Alison she pales, glances from between the blonde and her ex-girlfriend, and Alison feels a stab of sympathy at the flash of pain that crosses the other girls face before she turns and disappears into the locker room.

But she's distracted from Paige's feelings when one of the girls in the pool climbs up the stairs, and makes her way over to Emily, and Alison narrows her eyes as she watches the way the girl talks to the brunette – she's not someone that Alison's ever seen before, with red hair and pale skin, and Alison doesn't like the way she presses close to Emily as she talks, as water streams down her back, and when she rests a hand on Emily's arm the blonde's eyes settle into a glare.

And she knows she doesn't have a right to be jealous, because she has no right to Emily. But the thought of anyone else's hands on her fills Alison with rage, just like it always has – and to see it happening?

She wants to go over there and give that girl a piece of her mind, but she won't. Because Emily will kill her and because she knows, logically, that she has nothing to worry about. If Emily was interested in this girl she wouldn't be looking at her with only a polite smile on her face, wouldn't brush the hand off of her arm tactfully – and she wouldn't be planning on leaving practice with Alison.

Still. She glares at them for a while longer, and when mystery girl turns to leave she tries to school her face into a neutral expression – but she knows she's failed when she sees Emily roll her eyes and shake her head as she makes her way over to the blonde.

"I know that look," she says as she comes to a stop in-front of Alison, her hands on her hips and the blonde looks up at her innocently. "What's Lucy ever done to you?"

"Nothing."

"Then why do you look like you want to kill her?" Emily's eyes narrow, and then she grins. "Were you jealous?"

"No. Don't be rid - "

"You totally were," Emily cuts her off, looking positively gleeful, and this time it's Alison who rolls her eyes. "Sorry. I just never thought I'd see the day where I could make Alison DiLaurentis jealous."

"Why? You've done it before. I apparently just hid it better." She's a little sullen over being found out so easily, but Emily's happiness about it makes up for it.

"Oh yeah? When?"

"Lots of times," she shrugs, avoiding the brunette's gaze as she talks, choosing instead to focus on the rippling water of the swimming pool. "Whenever you talked about Ben, because he got to hold you and kiss you whenever he wanted."

"Not whenever he wanted," Emily points out as she moves to sit beside the blonde on the bleachers. "Considering the fact that I was using him as beard and ew, gross."

"Well I didn't know that," Alison points out, bumping Emily's shoulder playfully with her own. "Um, there was Jenna, at that Halloween party – you don't still think she's hot, do you?"

"She's not really my type. I prefer blondes." She whispers it into Alison's ear and she shudders at the feeling of Emily's mouth brushing against her skin.

"And I prefer brunettes," she replies, and when she turns her head she realizes that Emily hadn't moved away, and there's less than an inch of space between them. "So I guess we're a good match."

"Mhm." Emily's eyes meet hers, hold her gaze, and Alison can barely breathe, wants nothing more than to reach out, slide a hand into the brunette's air and kiss her. "I should go and get my stuff so that we can leave."

"You probably should," she murmurs back, but Emily doesn't move – at least not until there's the sound of slamming door from far away, and the brunette finally leans back, shaking her head as if to clear it.

"I'll be right back," she assures Alison and the blonde nods, watching Emily walk away (and she tries to keep her eyes from falling to the brunette's ass but she fails, miserably, and Emily had always been beautiful but now she's hot as hell and sometimes Alison doesn't even know how she manages to speak around her).

"Are you two together, now?" The voice comes from behind her and at the sound of it Alison jumps, her heart hammering in her chest as she whirls around – but when she sees Paige standing there, watching her with wide, dark eyes, it doesn't slow down.

"I… No," she replies, and she wishes that Emily would come back sooner rather than later because she's alone with someone she'd hurt pretty badly and Paige had always had a bit of an anger management problem and Alison's terrified of saying the wrong thing.

"You look like you are." It's not an accusation, just an observation – and Alison has no idea how to reply. "If you're not then do you want to be? I know she still has feelings for you, but do you have them for her?"

"I…" The blonde thinks that this just might be the most awkward conversation she's ever had – she's dealt with angry exes before, girls screaming at her for messing around with their boyfriends, but never anything like this. "I care about her, yeah."

"Can you promise me something?" Paige asks as she casts a glance over the blonde's shoulder, and Alison turns to see Emily coming towards them, a frown of confusion on her face. "I still love her. I don't know how to stop… But I know she can't be with me if she's still in love with you. So will you just… can you just make her happy? Can you please do that? Because she deserves it. She deserves to be happy, for once. And if I can't give her that then… then she needs to be with someone who can."

Alison sees tears form behind the brunette's eyes and her heart aches for her, and she feels like she's stolen Paige's happiness away even though she knows it's a ridiculous thought, because Emily's a person and she made her own decisions and Alison never had a hand in anything that happened between the two of them, at least not directly.

"I… I'll try my best. I can promise you that." She manages a smile, but it's weak, and Paige's is more of a grimace before she nods and turns and walks away, just before Emily reaches them.

"What was that?" Emily asks, frowning in the general direction that Paige had gone, and Alison can only shrug, helplessly.

"Honestly? I don't even know. I thought she was going to yell at me or something but she just… She told me to make you happy."

"Oh." Emily looks like she doesn't know what to say, what to feel, and Alison can't really blame her seeing as she doesn't, either, and she has no real connection to Paige – not like the brunette does – and she's relieved when Emily changes the subject. "Well. Shall we go, then?"

"Sure." She climbs to her feet and slings her bag over her shoulder. "Do you mind if we stop at my place just so I can let Pepe outside and feed him?"

"Yeah, that's fine. I'd say we could bring him with us, but my Mom's not really a dog person."

"Yeah, I realized that on that night that I took you home. When I came down from your room they were sat staring at each other in the living room in some kind of stand-off." Emily chuckles softly at the mental picture, and Alison glances at the brunette as they walk, admiring the way that she lights up in the weak sunlight filtering down from the sky, and thinks that she's never seen anything so beautiful.

x-x-x

"Keep that door open!" Emily's Mom calls up the stairs after them as Alison's following the brunette up to her room, and she flushes at the elder woman's words.

"Oh, my God, I'm so sorry," Emily groans, mortified, and Alison laughs at the look of horror on her face.

"Does she know about… anything?"

"Not really. She knows bits and pieces." Emily shrugs as they reach her bedroom door, flinging it open and perching on the edge of her bed – Alison opts for the chair at the brunette's desk because the last time Emily had been on that bed with the blonde in the room she'd kissed her so hard that Alison could still feel the heat of the brunette's mouth against hers, even now. "She guessed that you meant more to me than a friend on that night that she invited you all over here – her true motivations." The brunette rolls her eyes, but Alison thinks that it's sweet. "And then she knows a little more. That I was drinking because we had a fight, but she doesn't know what about. She just suspects. Is that okay?"

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"I don't know…. You've never been with a girl before. I figured it might freak you out."

"As long as she doesn't mention anything to my Dad before I get the chance, then I really don't see how it's an issue." Emily nods, thoughtfully, and Alison worries at her bottom lip – not only at the thought of what her Dad would say when he found out that she and Emily weren't just friends, but also because of the reason for her being here in the first place.

She'd known that she'd have to tell Emily about her summer in Cape May sooner rather than later. It was a big part of her past, something that still haunted her even now, sometimes, and she knows she can't commit to Emily with that hanging over her.

"We don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," Emily says softly, and Alison smiles wryly, wondering when she'd become so easy to read.

"I know," she says haltingly, and she's never told a soul this story aside from CeCe – but even then, it was only parts. "But I… I want to. I need to. I just… I don't know how."

"Take your time." She nods and she clutches that tea that Emily had made for her before they'd come upstairs tightly in her hands as she tries to figure out where to even start. "Can I ask you something first, though?" She glances up, nodding her ascent, and Emily looks like it's a struggle to get the words out. "Beach Hottie…" She trails off, and Alison waits, expectantly, anxiety bubbling up in her chest at the look on Emily's face. "It wasn't Detective Wilden, was it?"

"Detective Wilden?" She frowns, the name not sounding familiar, and shakes her head. "I don't know who that is."

"There was a picture of you and CeCe on a boat with him from that summer. CeCe said he just took you for a ride on it but… after one conversation with him she skipped town, and then not long after that he turned up dead and she was the prime suspect. It's why she needed to run away."

"Oh." Realization dawns, and she shakes her head. "No, it wasn't him. He really did just take us for a spin on his boat – though he wouldn't have minded a little more. Kept trying to get us to keep drinking, leering at us all the time. It was creepy." She shudders at the memory, remembers practically sprinting away as soon as they'd gotten back to shore. "Whatever CeCe got mixed up in with him, I don't know anything about it. But I didn't know him like that. And there's something else you wanna ask me, I can tell."

"It's just…" Emily takes a deep breath, and Alison braces herself. "CeCe said that… that you told her you were late. That whoever you were with would kill you if you were pregnant. And I just… were you?"

Emily's looking at her with guarded eyes, keeping her emotions close to her chest, but Alison can tell that she's upset by even having to ask – she thinks of Emily finding that out, of CeCe letting it slip, wonders how badly it had hurt her, and her heart clenches hard in her chest.

"Em, no, God, I… I was late, but I wasn't pregnant. I took a test. But I didn't have a chance to see CeCe again and tell her." Emily still looks upset, and Alison hates that she has to even talk about this at all, that she'd even gotten herself into that situation in the first place, that she'd been stupid enough to not use protection in a moment of madness.

"But it was with this guy? This guy who… who hurt you?" Alison can only nod, the words sticking in her throat. "Why did you… why did you stay with him? How could you rather be with someone like that over… over me? Was the thought of being with me really that bad?"

The brunette's voice breaks along with Alison's heart when she sees the look on Emily's face, and she's shaking her head even before the brunette's even finished speaking. "It wasn't like that Em, I swear to god."

"Then what was it like?"

"Okay." She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and starts to speak. "I met him my first weekend there, at some party on the beach CeCe dragged me to. And he was nice and he was charming and my mind was still so filled with the thought of you and I… I wanted to forget.

"I wanted to forget about the look on your face when I crushed your heart in the locker room, wanted to forget about how much I cared about you because I knew I wouldn't ever be able to allow myself to be with you. So I threw myself at this guy because I thought maybe if I drank enough I could pretend that he was you and I'd feel a little better about the fucked up decisions I'd made.

"I strung him around for a couple of weeks, tried to convince myself that he was a good guy and that I could be happy with him and that if I went back home with someone on my arm then maybe you could move on, and once you had then maybe I could, too.

"I didn't see the signs, at first. I thought it was sweet that he'd protect me whenever some asshole was leering at me or making lewd comments – I got a rush out of it, that someone cared enough to do that. But then one night he beat a guy up so bad that he was hospitalized and I realized that maybe it wasn't so great, after all.

"I started to pull away after that. But he noticed, and he didn't like it. He changed. Starting dictating when I could go out, where I could go, who I could go with. He got angry at me a lot, would yell at me for no reason. He hit me a couple of times, in places where nobody would ever be able to see the bruises."

"Ali." Emily's voice is horrified, and when she finally opens her eyes she sees the brunette looking at her with a whirlwind of emotion in her eyes – sympathy, anger, sadness, love. "You don't have to - "

"No. I want to." She takes a sip of her tea, tries to collect her thoughts. "I stayed with him. At first it wasn't even because I was scared to leave, though I was later on. There was a part of me that thought I deserved it. He told me I was worthless and I believed him. I was getting A texts left right and centre reminding me of what an awful person I was, about how many people I'd hurt, and when he put his hands on me I told myself that I'd brought it all on myself.

"And then… I was late. And I knew if I was pregnant, if he found out… that he'd do something awful to me. So I left in the middle of the night and I never looked back. I seem to be good at that." Her lips twist into a bitter smile. "I never even told him my real name, so I didn't have to worry about him finding me."

"Ali…" Emily says her name again, and when the brunette stretches a hand towards she takes it, allows herself to be hauled to her feet and enveloped in the comforting circle of Emily's arms, and she sighs in contentment as the brunette's hands slide around her waist and she fists her own in the material of Emily's jacket and she never wants to let go.

She closes her eyes and she relaxes into the embrace, drowning in the scent of Emily's perfume on her skin, her head pressed into the crook of her neck, the heat from the brunette's body warming her, and she wishes they could stay like that forever.

"I hate that that happened to you," Emily says in a fierce voice, before she's pressing her lips to the top of her head and Alison wants to cry because she's sure she doesn't deserve this sweetness from someone she's hurt so much.

"Bad things happen to bad people," she replies, her lips brushing against Emily's collarbone when she talks – the brunette shudders and Alison bites back a moan at the feeling of her. Emily reaches a hand up to cup her jaw, tilting the blonde's head to meet her gaze.

"Don't say that," she demands, her eyes dark and sombre, her thumb running along Alison's cheekbone. "You don't deserve what happened to you. Any of it. And I don't want to hear you say that you do ever again, you hear me?"

"Okay." She'd promise anything, like this, with Emily so close, her eyes dark and hypnotic, the touch of her hand against the bare skin of her cheek sending tingles down her spine, and her mouth so, so close. "I wish I'd stayed." Her voice is quiet, and Emily's eyes never leave hers. "I wish Mona would have left me alone, I wish I'd realized I was being an idiot about you. I wish I could've grown enough of a backbone to apologize for that day in the locker room. I wish I could've admitted to myself and to you that I wanted you."

"I wished for that a lot, too," Emily murmurs, in a voice soft as velvet. "But I always used to think that there's a right time and right place for everyone. And that wasn't ours. I wasn't ready to face who I was, and neither were you – we would've been a disaster, Ali, much as we might want to think otherwise. We never would have lasted. We probably wouldn't even still be friends."

She wants to refute Emily's words, claim that they would have found a way around it, but she knows the brunette's speaking the truth. She wasn't ready for a relationship when she was fifteen, certainly not one that she wanted to last forever (because that's what she wants, with Emily, now, because she knows that there's no-one else for her, even though the mere thought is nothing short of terrifying) – and she's not entirely sure that she's ready for one now, but she knows she has to try.

"So when's our time?"

"I really hope it's now." When Emily tangles a hand in her hair and brings their lips together, it doesn't surprise her, this time – her hands abandon their hold on Emily's jacket and instead fall to her hips, scrambling for purchase as she uses them to yank them closer together and it feels like they'll never be close enough.

Both of Emily's hands cradle her face as they kiss, and when her tongue dips into the blonde's mouth Alison moans, and the brunette kisses her slowly – torturously, devastatingly slowly – exploring every inch of her mouth until Alison is a trembling mess, and when she finally pulls away the blonde thinks she's in very real danger of melting into a puddle on the floor.