APOLOGY: You have no idea how much I wanted to post this last night, but my laptop is the devil incarnate. So sorry!
SHOUT OUTS: elenabee holy cow, thank you thank you thank you for reviewing! It makes me ridiculously happy to have your support and I'm glad to finally hear from you! Never be afraid to say something, good or bad! THANKS, lovely!
umm...do I have more than one -A leaving me guest reviews? Idk but sorry that I couldn't keep up with the pace of your bullying..whoever you are!
It was an endless endeavor. Brown, damp, rampant earth that just wouldn't subside. It was stamped into his senses with its inescapable imprint, clogging his judgment and sullying his jeans. How could there be this much dirt? How long had he been at this, the span of a few seconds or a hundred years?
No matter how zealously he dug, there was only more grimy soil beneath his feverish hands.
"Come on, Spence…"
Toby didn't know if he was pleading or praying, didn't even know if he was speaking aloud. Everything was steeped in absolute hysteria. He either had her and survived or lost her and, consequently, lost himself.
Dig. Dig, dig, dig.
And that's what he did until the muddy desolation gave way to the first heart-stopping shimmer of something else. It was a scrap of subtle familiarity, a vibrant white beacon that seared through to his very core.
"Spencer!"
His fingers ripped through the crumpling ground with a tenacity that he hadn't even known he possessed. Toby would tunnel through to the opposite hemisphere if that's what it took to get to her.
The swatch of submerged fabric expanded bit by precarious bit, extending into a slender sleeve.
His stomach was climbing up into his throat as he shouted hoarsely, "Hold on, sweetheart, please…I…"
Toby's voice broke off but his hands didn't slow. He scrambled to uncover more, his pursuit traveling vigorously upward to reach her head. Please, please, please let her be okay.
There she was, a poignantly beautiful arrangement of timeless angles and immaculate skin. He swiped at the stubborn vestiges of mud that tarnished her otherwise flawless face before folding her into his arms and freeing her from the caving terrain. In a lumbering half-step, half-flop, Toby draped her limp body across a strip of uninterrupted grass.
"Please, Spencer." He was panting so heavily that his ability to actually listen was miserably skewed as he pressed his ear to her chest. "Please, baby, you have to stay here with me…"
Nothing…he heard nothing…but then again, the rhythm of his own maxed-out heartbeat was pounding rowdily through his head. A stabbing level of fear immobilized his brain. No, she couldn't leave him.
But her body was static, lifeless.
Instinct finally surged back in, his hand gripping her chin and pushing it back as he clamped his other hand over her nose. His mouth descended over hers for maybe the millionth embrace in what felt like a lifetime of adoring kisses, but none of them could ever have held as much importance as this one. He puffed out three long breaths and petitioned her lungs for acceptance.
"C'mon, Spencer, c'mon!"
His head bent back over hers again, vital life flowing from his mouth into hers. He withdrew slightly and compacted his hands over her heart for a few urgent thrusts. Her skin was tinged with a frightening shade of blue, surely a telltale sign of treacherous oxygen deprivation. Toby knelt closer, nestling his face against her neck and straining for the promise of a pulse.
And as weak as it was, he found it—a fragile blip of endurance.
"Oh, god, Spence…" tears fell uninhibited from his swollen eyes. "Stay with me, Spencer. Do you hear me?"
Tipping her chin with a newfound gentleness, Toby parted her smooth lips and exhaled once more. If he could tear out his own set of lungs and swap them with hers, he would do it. If there was a way to give her anything—his oxygen, his blood, his heart—he would. He would gladly sacrifice anything, even himself.
Well, she already had his heart in any case.
He delivered another set of compressions and sat back on his heels, watching vigilantly for the natural rise and fall of her torso. He could keep this up all night if it would make a difference, but that wouldn't be enough. She had to want it for herself.
"Fight this," he whispered fervently as he realigned his face against hers. "You're a fighter, Spence, fight it for me."
Another flurry of air left him as he sent up a deluge of unspoken prayers to whoever would listen.
"Spencer, please…" Toby was practically weeping, his only remaining wisp of self-control stemming from the possibility that he could still do something, anything, to save her. He had to hold it together for her sake.
A microscopic cough broke through his litany of distraught pleas. Her eyes were still closed, her limbs were still motionless, and she hadn't articulated a single word.
But she was coughing.
"That's it, there you go," he cleared a few renegade curls from her forehead, his eyes vaulting eagerly over her tiny frame. "Come back to me, sweetheart."
His head was against her chest again, tears slipping from his cheeks and melting into her frigid skin. There it was, the delicate tempo of her heart now matched by the scarce rekindling in her lungs. She was breathing.
"Oh, Spencer…" The weight of his weary muscles suddenly became too much. He was shaking all over as he let himself go, huddling over her mud-streaked figure with boundless relief. An extensive list of outstanding concerns still warred through his mind, but she was alive. Another tremor quaked through him as he lingered on that thought. Spencer was alive.
"What is going on out here?!"
Toby tensed before lifting his head away from the shelter of her neck. "J-Jason?"
"Is that…Spencer?" The sandy-haired man stepped tentatively around the barricade of the back door. It was then that Toby noticed the lengthy glint of silver clasped at his side.
"Look, Jason—"
The older of the two held up his unoccupied hand, effectively dismissing any explanation. "I need you to get up…and back away from her."
Like hell I am. "No, no I can't do that. S-she just started breathing on her own. I'm not moving. She could…if she…"
His inability to put that particular scenario into words didn't come as much of a shock. The very idea of her deteriorating back into unresponsiveness made him lightheaded with an immense grief.
"I'm not messing around. Get up, Toby. Now." The shotgun was propped at attention now, braced brazenly in Jason's demanding grip.
"You think I did this?" Toby's voice cracked pitiably. "You think I could hurt her?"
His unfiltered dejection seemed to soften Jason's countenance for a moment, but then disbelieving formality snapped back into his narrowed gaze. "The last time I saw my sister, she was…not herself, totally inconsolable about something. I never got the full story, but you were noticeably absent if I recall correctly. If there is one thing I've learned over the last several years, it's that no one in this damn town in worthy of my trust. Now get off of her before I murder you."
With a boulder of unease jammed in his throat, Toby crept marginally backward and fixed his rival with a impenetrable look of steadfastness. "Do you hear what you're saying? It's that same damn town that taught me that exact lesson too. You're putting me on trial for something that happened months ago—something you know nothing about—but you've been MIA for how long andI'm supposed to let you tell me what to do? What right do you h—"
"This is all the right I require," he replied inflexibly as he toted the gun higher. "Now tell me what's going on. What happened to her and who just shredded out of here in a black SUV?"
The younger man's vision darted from side to side, realizing for the first time that Mona had vanished from sight. He'd completely forgotten her in the midst of all-consuming terror.
"Answer me, Cavanaugh, I swear to god," Jason had his foot on the first step of the porch, his shoulders stiffened against the night's breeze.
"They…they buried her alive. Mona brought me h—"
"Mona? You came here with Mona Vanderwaal, the girl who spent all of last year intimidating my sister and her friends? The girl who still has her hand in things, things that aren't quite on the up and up?"
Toby scoffed with a disparaging grimace and rose to one knee. "Yeah, the same Mona Vanderwaal that Spencer spotted you with not so long ago. I was there when she tried to warn you off, remember?"
He shook his head indifferently. "Things aren't always what they seem. I had my reasons for playing nice."
"And I had mine. Spencer would be…" his eyes shuttered closed for a brief flicker of agony. "She'd be dead right now if it weren't for Mona. That's more than I can say for the DiLaurentis clan."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Jason's brow creased as he took another step toward the battered pair.
"It means—"
"Jason! Oh, thank god you found them!"
Toby stared in disgust as CeCe Drake scurried out from the other end of the house, a hand fastened theatrically to her collar as her hair fanned out around her.
"CeCe? What are you doing here?" Jason tilted his head warily as she approached him. "You…you shouldn't be…"
"Look, I know what the police are saying about me. It isn't true, not any of it. Mona manipulated me into helping her! I blew out of Rosewood as fast as I could because I knew she'd make it all come down on me in the end. You've known me for years, Jason. I can't even kill a spider, let alone take out a cop! You have to believe me when I tell you that I'm innocent. I came back to stop all of this before it was too late."
The fair-haired man flinched away from her touch. "I…I don't know what I believe anymore."
Releasing a loathsome groan and sinking back to the ground, Toby reached for Spencer's hand and placed two timid fingers to her wrist. "Dammit, Jason! She doesn't have time for this! If you really care about Spencer, you'll drop this charade and call a freaking ambulance."
He nodded emphatically. "You're right, I…my cell phone is in the house…CeCe, will you call it in?"
"Sure, of course." She reached into the pocket of her jeans, eyes trained on Toby. "Everyone just sit tight, okay?"
He waited until she was out of earshot before hurdling up from the grass and stationing himself between Spencer and her half-brother. "You have to listen to me, man. She's lying, okay? I can't prove it right this second, but if you'll—"
His frenzied declaration was met with a sturdy scowl of condemnation. "You can't prove it? Then how am I supposed to take your word over hers? Don't feed me a Mona-approved line. That's not good enough."
Toby raked an anxious hand through his hair. "I…I'm positive that the person who put Spencer through all of this is closer than you think. Is it true that…that Alison, she…"
"That I never died?"
Jason's jaw fell open as his regard circled back to the house. "Ali?!"
She sauntered deliberately over the unholy earth, blonde locks reflecting in the sheen of moonlight and cascading over one shoulder. "I'm finally home, Jason. Did you miss me?"
"How…?" his pale lashes came together rapidly as he blinked in bewilderment. "You can't be real."
"It's definitely me, Jase. I know it's been a long time, but you do remember what your sister looks like, don't you?"
The gun slid almost entirely out of his grasp. "But you're…you're…"
"Dead?" She snickered blithely, tucking her arms around her middle. "I had to disappear for a little while. I made a lot of mistakes back then, but I never thought it would turn out like this. They…they all had a target on my back, so I played the part and let them have their way. But I'm tired, Jason. I'm ready to have my life back, my family back. Please let me come home."
She looked just like Alison, sounded like her, had the entrancing pout and all the same mannerisms. Toby nearly pinched himself to guarantee the reality of what paraded before him.
But it couldn't be her.
He grabbed for the man's arm, his spine tingling with flustering discord. "Jason, you have to let me finish. Mona said—"
But Jason lurched out of his reach, his eyes heated. "That's enough, Toby! Whatever that lunatic told you doesn't hold water with me, alright?"
Alison's duplicate wandered closer, her eyes wide. "Jason? Why is freaky Toby Cavanaugh even here? I don't understand."
"She's pulling one over on you, Jason. She's not Alison, she's—"
Jason swung at him with a hostile fist, Toby barely managing to dodge it as he fumbled sideways into a tree trunk. The older of the two DiLaurentis siblings was positively fuming as he loomed over his wheezing opponent. "The only reason I've tolerated you for more than thirty seconds is out of respect for Spencer. Now you've really pissed me off and I want you off of my property before I stop throwing punches and start firing bullets."
Toby staggered upward, his gut turning at the ghastly implications of the ultimatum he'd been issued. Standing his ground would be the seal on his impending casket.
And the alternative? As he studied the wicked cruelty lurking in Courtney's gaze, he had no choice but to imagine that Spencer's fate was as doomed as his own.
