Chapter 13 – Fall Together
Sorry for my little hiatus, I had college business to sort out…but my laptop is 100% fixed, school is in order and updates for all my emison stories are on their way.
"They're alive." Alison's voice was dead, the shock making her lightheaded, the air in her lungs getting trapped and she slumped to the ground light slipping from around her until it was gone altogether.
Hours later and the initial shock subsided into a controlled frenzy. Ali woke up feeling like she could empty her stomach into a bin until she was nothing but a convulsing heap. It wouldn't have worked though; she couldn't even remember the last time she ate. Her head was pounding from her mini blackout but she was atop Mona's bed, assuming her and Caleb helped her up.
Caleb was quiet; he sat in the corner of the room, next to the open window, trying to breathe in as much air as he possibly could. The pain in his chest, the soreness, was still there but his mind stayed in Hanna and how he was supposed to find her, how he could save her.
Mona was the calmest of them all, the gears in her head spinning, trying to fit all the pieces she had into a cohesive puzzle.
"Ali," Mona's voice was quieted, not even knowing what hour into the night it was, she fought her sleep and asked, "what are we going to do?"
Alison almost didn't even hear the other girl, her head slowly lifting, the blue eyes abandoned their sparkle, "what," she croaked.
Mona swallowed, knowing that she had the least to lose, Hanna hadn't really talked to her much since the dollhouse, and that was months ago.
"What's the plan, I mean, you have to have something up your sleeve…right?"
Ali stood from the edge of the bed, walking slowly towards Mona, she fought the urge to yell, to let the swarm of emotions overtake her and instead spoke evenly and low, a tone that Mona feared more than the tone she had expected, "I-I, I don't know, I don't know, I have no fucking clue!" Her voice rose steadily until she was fighting tears again, "I don't know, I don't know," spilling from her lips like she was breathing them, "I don't know." It was a final plea for help, but help from who, no one had a clue.
Caleb lifted his head from where it sat on top of his knees and cleared his throat, "we-we have to find out where they were- where they were last." His voice hoarse and broken, his skin dawned a red tint and the light reflected in the trails of drying tears on his face.
Mona got up from her desk and walked towards her closet, holding a black case the size of a small suitcase in her hands when she returned. She placed it on her desk and walked over to Caleb, "I have an idea, but I need your help." Mona was almost sure that what she had in mind she could do on her own, but for Caleb's sake… "please, Caleb."
Caleb met her eyes, jaw set and nodded, there was no more time to wait and sit and cry, Hanna was out there, -A was putting her through only god knows what and he was going to find her.
Ali stood beside Mona and watched as she pulled a thick black laptop with plastic protective casing around it and start it up.
"This," Mona started, "will help us track where the girls and Emily's parents were last. I can hack into virtually anything and track them through credit card usage, security cameras, I can pinpoint their location from the history on their phones GPS and if we can't follow a trail straight back to –A then at least we can find where they were last before they were taken."
Ali sat on the edge of the bed, behind Mona and made it her job to think of places –A would take them. She left the tech side of things to Caleb and Mona.
"What are you going to need?"
"Um I can find out all of their personal info by filtering through these databases and phone numbers, but Ali, if you can think of anything that can narrow the search let us know."
Ali closed her eyes, it was racking her brain how fast everything had happened. But questions started to bubble up and break the surface.
"I was gone for 4 days until Em came for me; she found me two days later. We had been there for weeks, 3 I think, and the night we finally escaped, we were brought to the hospital, it took a while but when I woke up two days later, my doctor said my family was already contacted, that means, Em's parents and the girls were on their way that same night we were found."
"The flight probably wasn't scheduled to leave until the morning, or a few hours from the time that they all booked the flight," Caleb added.
"That means they had to be taken sometime between arriving at the airport and take off. They were not pulled from that crash, we seen it Caleb, no way –A stole them from a crash."
"But they had to be counted as already boarding the plane. When the news came on, it said that the bodies of all passengers were found, except for, except for 7 bodies."
"Seven?" Mona thought aloud.
"But if it was just the girls and Em's parents, that's five, what accounts for the other two?"
Ali swallowed, "it was –A and CeCe, they must've bought tickets for the same flight to get into the same terminal as them."
"Wait, that doesn't make sense, I thought –A and CeCe were with you when you escaped, how could they have planned a kidnapping and fly cross country fast enough?"
Ali roughly ran her hands through her hair, "I don't know! I'm only saying what I think! I know CeCe is involved, I know Jason had to have had a twin, I was too young to remember but they are our –A's."
Mona nodded, turning to type away at the keys of her laptop, "guys, I think I got it, I can hack into the airport's database and find a list of everyone that was supposed to be on that plane, and I bet we'll see some familiar names."
"-A, well Charles, since he has a fucking name now, has to be too smart for that, CeCe wouldn't have used her real name either, so there has to be something we're missing. Mona, you need to use that brain of yours and recall anything you remember from Radley."
"I'm trying, I am, but Alison, why was CeCe admitted, I mean you said you met her after the fact but why was she there in the first place?"
Ali shook her head, " I have no idea, she never told me, she said it was a misunderstanding that finally got taken care of, I never really asked either, she never gave me a reason to."
"I'm going to work on finding any records from Radley, although from that long ago…they might be documented at the office they have in town. Caleb use this laptop and see if you can pull up the names of passengers that were supposed to be boarding that plane and look for security footage from the airport, if Charles sent minions to kidnap them then their face has to have shown up somewhere."
Ali nodded, "and since we're assuming that they were taken from here, Rosewood, I'm not sure that Charles could've taken them far, right? That many people, they had to have fought back somehow, especially Em's dad."
"Not necessarily, when the girls and I were taken to the dollhouse we were drugged, sedated and put to sleep, if Charles or his help got close enough, they could've drugged the girls and Em's parents."
"But how do you take 5 people without them knowing they were being kidnapped or without anyone seeing you do it?" Alison's head was beginning to throb harder, painfully against her skull it felt like, it was almost drowning her thoughts out in pain.
"We're missing something," Caleb sounded both agitated and nervous, "what are we missing?"
A silence fell picked up by Ali, "let's say Charles knew that the girls were boarding a plane the same night we were taken to the hospital, or whenever the hospital let them know we were found, how did he get them here? CeCe was there the day we escaped, I remember, so it couldn't have been her either."
"What are you saying?" Mona could see the gears in Ali's head grinding together to pull out any sense of what happened.
"I'm saying Charles isn't alone, he has CeCe and I'm willing to bet he has a team in Rosewood to help do his dirty work while we were in California."
"Okay, but why drag you out across the country, why pull you over there and let Emily follow you. If he is so comfortable here and has the team, as you say, and resources, what makes California so special?" Caleb was looking to Alison for answers, answers that she didn't know that she had.
"Shh, let me think." Ali closed her eyes and leaned her head back, "when I was in Charles' second 'dollhouse' if you will, I remember seeing these magazines in the room I was in."
"Okay, what of? Don't tell me he wanted to keep you up to date with all the celebrity gossip of the outside world?"
Ali sent Mona a chilly glare and huffed, "No Mona, I wasn't ready US Weekly and Seventeen Magazine, I just remember them because everything in that room was just like mine here, except for the pictures of the three of us, like he wanted to be a part of the family again, he put himself in all of the pictures of me and Jason and my parents that I remember. And then I noticed the magazines on my desk, I never read magazines."
"What were they of?"
Ali was trying hard to remember but it seemed the slight memory loss was kicking in and the images in her head were muddled and blurry, fuzzy, so much so it felt like her head was shaking. She closed her eyes and envisioned herself back in that room, the mimic of hers, she was standing, turning in a circle, over and over again, Ali could barely get a glimpse of her desk, and the flashback moved faster, she was spinning now but in the spot where her desk should be, she saw glimpses of blue and…
"Wait, I- I – think it was a beach magazine, like one of those travel destinations, I don't know why but I know Charles came to visit me, when he thought I was sleeping, I thought I was dreaming at first, and I was home and it was just my dad, so I didn't move or say anything, except my dad never did that, I sat up but I felt weak, he turned slightly, like he knew I was awake-"
Her voice trailed and Mona and Caleb waited for more.
"He was mumbling something to himself, a-and he was putting another frame on my desk, I don't even remember the picture, I never seen it before, it was of us, Jason and I and Charles was holding me in his lap. We were at a beach…I think, or a sandbox, I couldn't tell, I just wanted to get out of there."
Mona nodded, "it's okay Ali, we'll have our answers soon."
Ali nodded, "I'm ready for this game to end."
x-x-x-x
Ali, Mona and Caleb took turns sleeping for short periods of time, running on coffee and leftover cookies that Mrs. Vanderwaal left behind before going to work the next morning.
It had been 6 hours since Ali and Caleb got to Mona's house and only one since they started to hack away on the computers. It wasn't long until Caleb pulled the airport records.
"Guys, I have the list of names of everyone who was supposed to be on that plane, how am I supposed to know if one of them is one of -A – Charles' – minions?"
Mona spun in her chair, "just see if any familiar names pop up, if not check the data bases pulled from any other flights that had terminals near the girls', they could've bought a ticket knowing how close the two terminals were together and got them there. Then check all the ATMs in Rosewood and the airport and see if any of them used a credit card. Once you finish, find video feeds from the airport."
Caleb nodded, knowing the work ahead would be tedious, but if there was any chance of seeing Hanna again, he would do it for every airport in the country if he had too. "Hey, you don't think Charles caused the plane to go down do you?"
Ali and Mona stared quietly at one another before turning to Caleb. Ali was the one to speak, "I used to think all of this was random, or it was because I was a bitch to so many people, but nothing Charles does is without purpose or meaning. Plus, the news said a storm hit, I'm going to assume that was in Charles' favor, but he definitely couldn't have planned that."
Caleb nodded, "okay, but I think we should still run by the office and ask to see if they ran full diagnostics, if Charles murdered those people everyone needs to know it was no accident."
Ali found it strange, she wanted to defend Charles, that he couldn't have possibly killed that many innocent people for a cover up, but she kept that to herself, saying only, "that would fix anything Caleb, whether it was an accident or Charles, it wouldn't fix-"
But her voice trailed and her mind brought her back to that room she had been in for weeks-
"I have to fix it, they'll see, I have to fix it and they'll see it was an accident."
Ali rolled slightly in her bed, she could hear a voice coming from the other side of the room.
Convinced it was a dream she willed her eyes to shut, until she heard it again.
"I'll fix it and then they'll see, they have to take me back."
Ali's brows scrunched in confusion, was that Jason? Her dad? What was he doing in her room. Ali flitted her eyes to the window and when she realized they were boarded up, she remembered exactly where she was. She tried to sit up but her body felt weak and her muscles fell limp under her skin. She watched as the figure turned around, and walked towards her, her eyes getting heavier, fighting to stay open, straining to make out the face.
"Shh, it's okay Ali, you're safe here, I won't hurt you, they were lying. Shhh."
Ali thought it all a terrible dream within another nightmare until she woke in a cold sweat, locked inside a replica of her room, trapped and alone.
"That's it," she burst, "the beach, Charles has some sort of memory there, he has too have one that's why we were in California, I think he wanted to take me to a beach there-"
"Whoa, slow down, you're not making any sense, what beaches, what memories?"
"I don't know yet Caleb, I don't even know if what I saw was me actually remembering a memory or another fragment of a dream, give me a phone I need to call Dr. Pearson."
No more questions were asked and Mona handed Ali a land line.
"Hello, Dr. Pearson, yes, I'm fine, thank you, no not about Em this time. Yes, I know I just called last night, but this is a question about me."
"Alright Ali, what is it?"
"Okay, so I know you all said I had a minor concussion that resulted in temporary memory loss, you also said some of my memories would come back later, some would return and I wouldn't even know that they were gone.."
"Yes that's all very true."
"Okay well, what if I had one, like a flashback or memory, how would I know if it was a dream or if it was real?"
"Well, that's hard to say, I can't map out what was and wasn't in your head as dreams or memories prior to the accident. You were under extreme stress which may also have comprised the way you stored information during your captivity, what you were going through your brain could have registered as memories or locked away as nightmares. It's a defense our bodies sometimes go through to protect us. This is as much as psychology as it is neurology….so my answer is I wouldn't know how you would know. For this I have to forget med school and say just go with your gut. You got to know what is real or not, feel it Alison."
Ali was quiet as she waited.
"How is Emily doing? Is she okay with Toby and Ezra being there?"
"She's just as fine as she was the last time you called, Officer Toby and Mr. Fitz as I call them are taking care of her, she was hesitant at first to let them in but she knows they're friends and that they knew the girls very well, they didn't say how well though."
Oh god, "did they tell her anything, I mean you know about the accident?" Alison and Caleb were so into starting their search they didn't bother to call Toby and Ezra, realizing since they didn't call her, that they didn't receive the text she did.
"No they didn't, they went with your wishes and told Em that they were away and couldn't get on a plane here yet, they also remembered to briefly mention that Em's parents died in a car crash. She, she cried for a bit again, and asked for some time alone, then she asked for you, but…Toby and Ezra, are with her now."
Alison was silent, her heart numbly beating in her chest, it was a feeling that was becoming all too normal for her now, and she knew it should've hurt and made her want to sit down and catch her breath but it just ached into a dull feeling and she kept going about her business as if she wasn't being crushed from the inside out again.
"Alison? Are you still there?"
Ali snapped from her reverie, her grip on the phone tightening again, "y-yeah, yeah, I'm fine." But she wasn't fine, she was across the country, away from Emily and she felt like she was fighting the clock.
"Um, Doc, can you get Ezra and Toby to the phone, and away from Emily, I have something to tell them."
"Is everything alright Ali?"
Ali shook her head but soon realized Dr. Pearson wasn't there to see her, "I um, I'm not sure yet. The girls and Em's parents are alive."
Ali breathed it and the weight on her chest was lifted only to be settled down harder when Dr. P cleared his throat, speechless, to get Toby and Ezra. How was she supposed to tell them and convince them to stay calm and stay there with Em and not tell her anything.
Her time to think was cut short when Ezra cut through the silence, "Ali, okay you're on speaker and Toby is here."
Ali opened her mouth several times before words stumbled out forcefully, "where are you both?"
"At the hospital, just outside Em's room, why?"
"Can you both find somewhere to sit down."
Ezra and Toby turned heads to share a questioning look, and by the silence Ali received, she could 'see' them, "please, just find somewhere to sit."
"Okay," Toby agreed and lead Ezra a little down the pale blue hall to sit in chairs in front of another room.
"Alright, we're sitting, Ali, what is it?"
Alison found herself heading to a place where she could sit, opting for Mona's bathroom, where she locked the door, closed the lid to the toilet and sat down, trying to find the right order of words to say.
"Ali, you still there?"
Ali nodded, and cursed herself again, "yeah, I'm here."
"Okay, well, we don't want Em to worry, I was just telling her how we met actually, it's funny watching her try to remember."
Toby sounded calm and Ali hated that she had to hurt more people around her with this news. I pained her to remember that Emily didn't have her memory back but a faint smile crept at the corners of her mouth, imagining the small dimple Em would have on her face if she was concentrating too hard on trying to remember something.
"That's good Toby, I hope you can make her laugh soon, it's been too long, i have to try harder each time to remember how that sounds."
"Well, I could be close but I won't know until you tell us what's up?"
"Yeah," Ezra added, "you're making me nervous, what, did you find out something about A?"
Alison felt the bubbles in her chest rise, constricting her airway, her breathing was ragged and her bottom lip trembled slightly between her teeth, "not –A, not yet, C-Caleb and Mona are trying to find out how…"
"How what? They're trying to find out how what? And what do you mean not yet about –A, then what did you find?" A slight panic washed through Toby's demeanor and Ali dropped her head into her hands, placing the phone on the counter beside her and turning the speaker on.
"Alison, if you found anything…you have to tell us."
"I know," Ali choked, "I'm trying."
"Okay, well, try to say something that is less ambiguous. You're making us sweat over here."
Toby agreed, "Ali, breathe, relax, you can say it."
x-x-x-x
"Why do you lock up like this Ali?"
"Like what?" Ali looked at Emily confused. They were sitting on Em's bed, the movie they were watching had just ended and Ali stopped Em from getting up to take it out.
"Like this, this, you know what I mean, you start to say something and then you stop and act like it's not a big deal, but that's all it is, an act. I know and you know I know that it is a big deal. If it wasn't, you wouldn't be having such a hard time saying something to me."
"Em, you're being delusional, I do not lock up." Ali faked a laugh and met the warm brown eyes she begged to keep on her forever.
Em sighed, reached her hand up to rest against Ali's cheek and brushed her thumb across the smooth skin, "Ali, I'm not leaving, you convinced me you've changed and sooner or later everyone will see that too, if they don't, because I know that's what you think, then that's their loss."
Ali leaned further into Emily's touch and thanked whoever was watching over them in that moment that the forces bigger than she could ever fathom brought them two together.
"Em, you know I used to paint right?" Ali asked and it seemed random to Emily, but this was Ali's way of getting to the point of what she was trying to say.
"Yeah, of course I know, you used to visit your grandma and paint with her you used to do it all the time, I don't know why you stopped though, you never told me."
Ali thought that maybe one day she would tell Emily why she stopped, after she found a reason for herself to believe.
"Okay," she ignored Em's last statement, "and I used to think I was good, I painted my grandmother too, it was good she said. And she laughed at all the colors and shades of colors I had smeared over my clothes and my hands."
Em dropped her hand and laid back into the bed, sitting up to bring Ali under her arm and into her chest, Ali's arm draped over Em's lap.
Em ran her hands through Ali's hair and Alison closed her eyes, taking a deep breath to continue, "well I liked painting people, and I wanted to paint everyone I ever loved and give them a portrait."
"That's beautiful Ali, and you should have, they would've loved them, and I'm sure if I was on that list, I would love it too."
Ali's heart skipped a beat, "that's the thing Em, a few years ago, I realized I missed painting, and or course I wanted to paint you. I tried…"
"Well, where's the masterpiece then?"
Ali shook her head.
"Ali, breathe, relax, you can say it."
"I-
x-x-x-x
"-A sent me a text."
"What?!" "When?!" "What did it say?!"
Ali didn't know she had been crying until she looked down at her legs and seen the patch of darker material where the tears had dropped.
"Ali! What did it say?!"
x-x-x-x
"I-I couldn't do it, I hated the way it kept coming out."
"Oh, well that's okay, but why?"
Ali sat up and faced Em, giving herself some distance, the physical contact with Emily sent her nerves in a frenzy, "no matter what colors I mixed and blended and made up anywhere, it just wasn't good enough. I realized there was no color like the color of the blush you get on your cheeks when you're embarrassed, no brown could match that of your eyes, there are too many golden flecks and I couldn't make a color beautiful enough to color an Emily fit to put on such a blank canvas. My blank canvas was already my heart and our lives painted you on it, I couldn't recreate a masterpiece that I already knew existed."
Ali looked up again and Em had the biggest smile on her face.
"Ali, you and you're words, you could've drawn a stick figure and it still would've made my fridge, the highest artistic honor of all time."
"No not even my words either Em, I love you in words and colors that don't exist, and they never will. There will never be words good enough to tell you I love you."
Emily reached both hands to cup Ali's face yet again and brought her forehead to Alison's, "you may not think so, but you're doing a hell of good job using the words we already have."
"Em-"
"Shhh, it's okay, Ali, I love you too, happy anniversary."
x-x-x-x
"It had a picture…"
"Of?!" Toby and Ezra were getting restless.
And Ali sucked in a breath to say with an unsteady voice, "it was of the girls…and Em's parents, he has them, and-and they're alive," she sobbed out, "they're alive and Charles has them all, alive."
Even though Toby and Ezra were sitting, they felt as if the floor was pulled out from under them.
Ali felt her heart sink yet again, how much could she endure.
Emily sat waiting for her new…well, old friends return and after a few hours, her smile fell to a sad weaker smile that she only faked when a nurse would come in to administer her medications. She waited for Ali to call her and her heart sank when no one walked in with a phone in their hand for her.
All the pieces to the puzzle that Caleb and Mona were finding were finally coming together….
So the ball was dropped and everything else seemed to have fallen, everyone was falling, but they were all falling together, pieces of a puzzle, pieces of each one of their broken hearts, falling together, somewhat painfully, back, into their places.
***If you're still with me here, I love you. This is my favorite story at the moment and I would never forget about it. Sorry my updates have been dryer than CA (a joke bc we're in a drought over here) but I have about 70% of my life together and I'm back. Regular updates every Saturday and irregular ones will probably pop up on any given day in addition to the weekly one.
I'm sooooo excited for the next upcoming chapters, please leave me a comment/review telling me your thoughts?! I really miss the reviews, the writer in me is getting desperate lol. And some of you make me laugh, demanding I write faster, come back and hurry TF up! ;D
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Hahaha, Lina