Thank you for the new follows and the very nice review, and I hope everyone who's lurking is enjoying the story as well! Here's the next chapter, featuring such hits as: Someone's Had Too Much Coffee, Let's Collect the Evidence (And Throw Some Theories Around), and Here's An Idea (Let's Hope It Doesn't Backfire). Oh, and a cliffhanger, just to keep things interesting. ;) See you all next chapter!
[Seventy hours, fifty-one minutes.]
It's Spencer who pulls away first, although Aria would have held on for hours. They've hugged like this before, after a hundred different traumas: when Ian had nearly killed Spencer in the belltower, when Aria had been locked in that godawful box with Garrett's corpse, when they'd finally escaped from the Dollhouse. But this time feels different, and even as she was holding her Aria felt like Spencer was a thousand miles away. As they break apart Spencer turns back to the mirror, wiping the tears off her cheek with the palms of her hands, and Aria takes the opportunity to look at her more closely.
She looks more ragged than a single hour's absence can justify, and Aria can't come up with any explanations that don't sound like they're straight out of a bad sci-fi film. There's no way Spencer could have become this different – this pale, and thin, and scared – in just an hour, but there's also no way Aria's eyes are deceiving her. The lack of any visible injuries does nothing to settle the flutter in her heart as she looks at Spencer, as she tries to pinpoint what exactly is wrong with her. It's more than just the way she looks, the gaunt face and the thin frame. There's something about the way she holds herself, about the way she moves, but Aria can't quite put her finger on it.
A knock at the door jerks her out of her thoughts, startling Spencer in the process. "I'm not -" Spencer starts to say, and her tear-stained face says the rest.
"I know," Aria assures her, turning to open the door. She pulls it open slightly, just enough for her to see Hanna's face, but not enough for Hanna to see Spencer.
"Well?" Hanna asks, trying to peer past Aria into the room.
With an apologetic look at Spencer, Aria ducks back out into the living room, carefully closing the door behind her and standing in front of it. As Spencer had once said, Hanna has all the subtlety of a hand grenade – and that's exactly what they don't need in this situation.
"She's -" Aria starts, glancing past Hanna to take in the rest of the room. Emily is perched on the nearest sofa, her hands wrapped around a full cup of coffee. Ezra is in the kitchen behind her, halfway through tidying the already spotless room, but he stops as he catches sight of Aria. She clears her throat, stepping forward and lowering her voice so that Spencer won't be able to hear her. "She's pretty messed up," she admits quietly, feeling like somehow saying the words is a betrayal, like she's doing something wrong by admitting the obvious truth that Spencer isn't okay. "I don't know what happened, but she…"
"It sounds like she's been gone for weeks," Emily finishes, with exactly the same mixture of bewilderment and concern that Aria feels. "The way Ezra described her… there's no way that happened in the last hour."
"But she hasn't been gone at all," Hanna protests, a waver of uncertainty behind her words. "You saw her, what, an hour ago? And we've all hung out with her, like, every day for the past week. She and I had lunch together today, and she -" Hanna cuts herself off, taking a deep breath to stop her from barrelling into another tirade. "She was fine," she goes on in a more controlled voice. "She was fine."
"Well, she's not fine now," Aria says, glancing back at the door to the bathroom. The sight of Spencer staring at herself in the mirror, that vacant look in her eyes, is more unsettling than she'd care to admit. The Dollhouse look is what the girls had taken to calling it, though none of them have had that look for a long time now.
"So what happened to her?" Hanna presses. "Did you ask?"
"Of course I asked." Aria bristles, stung by the implication that she wouldn't care what had happened, but she clamps down on the anger as she catches hold of a deeper feeling: guilt. She does want to know what Spencer's gone through, but she's also scared as hell to find out. And if it comes to it, she's not sure which instinct will win out. "She wouldn't – couldn't – tell me."
There's a moment of silence while the others process her words, and then Emily says, "I think we should call the police."
"No," Aria and Hanna exclaim in unison, a knee-jerk reaction reinforced by years of experience.
Emily sets her shoulders, prepared for the pushback. "We don't know what happened to her," she says carefully, "but we know it has to be something bad. And something that bad doesn't just happen."
Aria blinks, not following her train of thought, but Hanna's sharp intake of breath clues her in to the fact that she's the only one who missed the station. "… what does that mean?"
"It means," Hanna says grimly, "that whatever happened to Spencer probably didn't just happen to her. Somebody did it to her."
The train of thought catches Aria head-on, the collision knocking the wind out of her. "Someone like A.D.," she says numbly, sinking down onto the sofa beside Emily.
Hanna sits down on Emily's other side, and the three of them sit in silence for so long that Ezra starts cleaning again, clearly unsure how to help, or if he's even welcome to.
"Neither of you have heard anything, right?" Aria asks eventually, her words barely a whisper but still somehow shotgun loud in the silent room. "From A.D.?"
"No," Emily says as Hanna shakes her head, "not since the board game ended."
"Okay." Aria breathes out slowly, trying to force her racing thoughts into some kind of order. She wishes she had Spencer's Filofax brain, the ability to compartmentalize and sort information into relevant slots in her mind. "Okay. I haven't heard anything either, so does that mean that this isn't A.D.? Or that A.D.'s endgame wasn't the end of the game?"
"Or that we have a new A.D.," Emily suggests, "someone who took over the game from the last one."
Hanna leans back with a groan. "Just what we need," she grumbles. "Another copycat."
"We don't know that's what's going on," Aria says, still not sure which outcome would be better – for them or for Spencer. A.D. had been Bad with a capital B, but the key to the A game had always been escalation. Each new iteration had been worse than the last. She reaches forward, grabbing a long-forgotten cup of tea that Ezra had set out for her in her favorite mug. "Do we give Spencer space until she can tell us what's going on? Or will that be putting her – or us – in danger?"
"If she won't tell us what happened, where would we even start investigating?" Hanna asks. From the way her leg is bouncing Aria assumes she'd had more than one cup of Ezra's coffee; of all of them, Hanna's caffeine tolerance is by far the lowest.
By contrast, Emily is seemingly calm, deep in thought. With a sudden burst of Spencer-esque decisiveness she announces, "We start by looking at the evidence."
Hanna gives her a sideways glance, her leg stilling. "Okay… and what is that?"
"Something happened to Spencer," Emily says, holding up a finger as she starts to list the points off. "She was fine when she left earlier, and she's not fine now."
"Ezra found her wandering in the streets," Hanna adds, and Emily nods, holding up a third finger. "He said she was confused, and almost didn't recognize him."
They both look to Aria, waiting for her to add on to their list, but her mind is already a few steps ahead – or a few steps to the side, connecting dots the others have no way of knowing. They haven't seen Spencer yet. "We've seen her like this before," Aria says slowly, and the mood shifts from active discussion to confused silence. "Back in high school," she goes on, looking at both of her friends. "When she found out about Ezra's research, and she was -"
"Out of her mind on amphetamines," Hanna finishes, her eyes widening. "You think that's what's going on?"
"It can't be," Emily counters. "It happened too quickly this time."
Aria does a quick calculation, weighing the evidence. She sighs, wrapping her hands around the now-cold cup of tea. "Em's right," she says in resignation, letting go of the closest thing to an explanation she's come up with so far. "Every other time this has happened, there have been signs beforehand."
"Yeah, signs we always missed," Hanna points out. "She was always good at hiding it… until she wasn't."
"Emphasis on the past tense." In response to her friends' confused expressions, Aria goes on, "She was good at hiding things like this. But I don't think she'd do that anymore. I don't even know if she could. After everything we've been through together, do you really think we'd keep things like that from each other?"
Hanna lowers her gaze, and Emily chews the inside of her lip. Not exactly the heartfelt agreement Aria had been hoping for, but she knows her point still stands. She knows Spencer, they all do, and even if Spencer had fallen back into addiction, surely she would have told them – or at least they would have noticed. That's what they did now. They told each other everything, they asked for help when they needed it and space when they didn't, and they trusted each other. After everything A, and later A.D., had done to them, that was the strongest defense they'd been able to build.
"So calling the cops is definitely a bad idea," Hanna says after a moment. "Who knows what Spencer's taking these days?"
"Spencer's not on drugs," Emily argues, but there's no conviction behind her words.
It probably would be easier if this was an old habit resurfacing, Aria realizes. They'd been there before, and they'd know how to help. But the sinking in her stomach, the clenching in her chest that she can't seem to shake, makes her sure that this is something else, something new and dangerous. Something worse.
"What about a doctor?" she asks suddenly. She takes a sip of cold tea, still trying to organize her thoughts. Behind her she can hear Ezra in the kitchen, no longer tidying but cooking. The scent of onions and garlic is drifting through the apartment, but it's more nauseating than appetizing.
"A doctor?" Hanna echoes, at the same time as Emily asks, "Is Spencer hurt?"
It's a simple question, but Aria knows it doesn't have a simple answer. Outwardly, Spencer hadn't appeared to be injured. There were no visible bruises, no signs of blood. But there was a world of hurt in her eyes, and the way she was acting – flinching at every noise, the reluctance to meet her gaze, completely collapsing when Aria had hugged her – suggests substantial psychological damage, reminiscent of the trauma they'd all endured in the Dollhouse. And… Spencer's wearing sweats. Long sleeves, full-length pants. Aria doesn't know – isn't sure she wants to know – what kind of damage they could be hiding.
"I don't know," she says eventually, feeling helpless in the face of such uncertainty. I don't feel comfortable in the gray area, Spencer had said to her once. I like things to be black and white, right or wrong. Certainty makes me feel safe. "But it can't hurt, right? Even if she gets checked out and they say nothing's wrong, that's better than…"
… better than letting wounds fester and infection set in, letting bones heal wrong or bleeding go unchecked.
"But we'd run into the same problem." Emily finishes her drink, pulling a face that makes it clear that the mounds of sugar she'd undoubtedly poured into her coffee had congealed at the bottom. She puts the cup on the table, and Aria follows suit with her tea. "If we take her to the hospital, they'll start asking questions. I don't want to put Spencer through that, not when she's like this."
There's a pause as they contemplate their options, and then Hanna's face brightens with the spark of an idea. "So we don't," she says. "We don't take her to the hospital."
"Hanna -" Aria says cautiously, but the other woman cuts her off.
"We don't take her to see a doctor," Hanna says firmly. "We bring the doctor to her."
Aria blinks. "Do you happen to know any doctors who make house calls and don't -" This time she cuts herself off, catching onto what Hanna is suggesting. Of course. "Wren?"
Hanna taps her nose. "Bingo. Last time I checked he was still in town, doing that rotation at Rosewood Community. Plus he knows our history, which hopefully means he knows better than to ask questions."
"I haven't talked to him in months," Emily says hesitantly. "Are we sure he'd be willing to help?"
"Help Spencer?" Aria asks, raising an eyebrow. "Are you kidding? There was a time he practically worshiped the ground she walked on."
That was a long time ago, but Aria knows he'd still be willing to help. That certainty falls firmly into the category of black and white that Spencer feels safest in. All they have to do is tell Wren that Spencer's hurt, and he'll come running. "Okay," she says when the other two don't object, "let's call Wr-"
The name is drowned out by the sound of shattering glass from the bathroom. Aria is on her feet in an instant, the others only half a second behind. She gets to the door first, and to her dismay she finds it locked. She yanks the handle, trying to just will it to unlock, but it holds firm.
"Spencer? Spence!" she calls, her heart in her throat. "Open the door!"