AN: I still don't own anything. This is going to be a multichapter, but slow updates. PM me with questions; other details on my profile.
Flight: Prologue
She's tired.
It begins one evening after Christmas, some snowy January evening, after Mona dies, and that's when Spencer of all people freaks out, because A has killed someone who could still be useful. She's not even thinking about how Mona was offering to help herself and the others, but Mona surely knew who A was, and could've made a deal with A.
And normally she'd be all delving into this, analysing and digging into the details, and she does make an effort.
Once the police have swept the Vanderwaal property thoroughly and the funeral has been held, Spencer goes there. She brings muffins, sits with a pale Leona, politely drinks coffee and slips upstairs. It's the oldest trick in the book, pretending to need the bathroom, but she hasn't the energy to be annoyed at herself.
So she looks around a dead girl's room, and the room has been restored carefully, the work of a loving mother, suppresses the guilt she feels at looking here, and doesn't touch anything. It feels weird to be here on so many levels, and she feels like she should expect the other shoe to drop at any moment – maybe A rigged something, maybe Leona will come upstairs for something and see her here. It's illicit and she suddenly wants to cry.
Instead she stiffly hugs the woman, who looks just a little grateful for the hours reminiscing.
(see, mona wasn't a monster. she was just a girl)
Something about the petite woman in the doorway sticks in her mind as she drives away, and she doesn't figure it out until she's retrieving her dinner from the microwave and pouring a half glass of wine because her parents are out and she needs to take the edge off.
It clicks, because she can kind of identify. One woman in a big house where her daughter was murdered, looking small and tired and lost. She gets it, she's in a big house and she's sitting on the couch alone eating dinner because the table is for family dinners and Melissa is overseas, she's pretty sure.
And suddenly her appetite is gone, she surges off the couch with fresh indignation because A still has her secrets, still has secrets of everyone in this damned town and hell, maybe it's her old friend Alison. Before she quite realises it, she's upstairs with a duffel and trying to decide what to take.
No – first to close the curtains, even though the room has probably been bugged. She shuts the world out with heavy material, strips the duvet off her bed when she's dissatisfied, and flings it over the curtain rail. It bends under the weight a little and she's almost certain it will come down, but she can't bring herself to care.
Clean shirts, just T-shirts will do. A heavy jacket, and a less-heavy one. Jeans, and a jumper. Clean underthings and a couple pairs of shoes. Her mind is addled, a little foggy from the combinations of the afternoon, and she drops the bag to the ground.
Call someone, is the verdict she reaches. Toby once told her to call him if this ever happened, but she wants to be out of town because for all she knows he still has some grudge against her friends, and this is the one time she wants to limit information.
Instead, she sends out a short S.O.S to the three others, subsides on her bed to wait.
It's not the first snap decision she's ever made, but this might be the best.