a/n: Hi friends! This story has a mind of its own, so I'll keep cranking it out! This chapter is a bit lengthy, so I hope that is ok with you. Also, just a little shout out to a wonderful reviewer: pll-addiction, you are awesome and I always smile when I see your name in my inbox!

Ok, so here we go!

There's nothing more than empty sheets
Between our love

Wriggling deeper underneath her blankets only to flip sides and toss around some more, Spencer could not get comfortable. She was sleeping in a stolen long sleeved t-shirt from her boyfriend's wardrobe, but the upstairs of the cottage was drafty and her feet were freezing. The usual solution to such a problem was snuggling up to Toby, her own personal space heater. Now if only she could find him…

That was odd. Struggling to crack her bleary eyes against the weight of fatigue, Spencer peeked through the shadows only to find empty space on the other side of the mattress. Sitting up slightly on her elbows, she spotted Toby by the window with his head bent against the pane. She squinted at the glowing red digits of the alarm clock next to her. 2:06.

"Toby? What's wrong?" She called lightly.

She saw his back muscles twitch at the sound of her voice. He twisted noiselessly and lifted a shoulder into a half-hearted shrug. "Everything is fine. Go back to sleep, Spencer."

"But I sleep better with you next to me." The pouting of her lips earned her a ghost of a smile. Padding back to the bed, Toby stooped to drop a kiss to her brow. The pensive look in his eyes lingered.

"Tobyyy," she hummed softly, "Everything is not fine. What's keeping you up?" She interlocked her willowy fingers with his, tugging persistently until he sat next to her.

He rubbed his eyes with his free hand, then raked it through the unruly spikes atop his head. "It's nothing really…I just had a weird dream and couldn't get it out of my head."

"Was it a bad one?" Spencer probed as she absently traced his knuckles.

A dark look passed through his sapphire eyes as a mild grimace took shape on his mouth. "Yeah, it certainly didn't qualify as a good one."

She squeezed his hand. "Will you tell me about it?"

Toby closed his eyes and let out an extended sigh. "I can't remember all of it. I—I was at…" His eyes flickered back open and scanned her face apprehensively. "I was at Radley."

"It's alright, you're allowed to say it." She responded with sad smile.

He swallowed dryly, dreading what he had to say next. "I was standing outside the gate with Mona. We used to meet there when she would sneak in and out before she was released." Toby's speech sounded rushed and he fought to control it. "But it was different this time. She was talking about you."

Spencer nodded, urging him on.

"I don't remember the specifics. I just know I was furious. The suddenly I was standing in this blank hallway. I was alone. Something was pulling me forward, but I felt frozen. And then I was looking through this barred window, and…and you were there, sitting in the middle of the room, but you wouldn't look at me. And I was powerless. I couldn't move, couldn't even lift my hands. I just screamed your name over and over again, but it was like you couldn't hear a sound."

He stopped, getting ahold of his escalating emotions. After a few fortifying breaths, Toby forced himself to finish. "Then I was somewhere else, I don't know where. I was looking in a mirror. I had it all on, the black hoodie, the leather gloves. And I lost it. I started smashing the mirror, pounding it as hard as I could, but I didn't feel a thing. Then I woke up."

In his reverie, he had almost forgotten where he was. Spencer's thumbs stroked across his cheekbones where tears had begun to fall. He hadn't even known he was crying. Toby locked his hands around her wrists, not wanting to lose contact. She didn't say a thing, but simply bridged the gap between them and kissed him gently.

"Can you tell me about it? About Radley?" He requested, his whole face puckering with the question. "I've wanted to know about it since Mona told me you were there, but…I've always been afraid of the answers."

This time the elongated sigh came from Spencer. She recognized the desperation in his countenance, an appearance she had worn often in the weeks spent reeling after his betrayal. "What do you want to know?"

Toby released her from his grasp, searching her hazelnut eyes. "Did they…hurt you?"

"No." She shook her head briskly. Spencer maintained eye contact, wanting to be sure that he knew she was telling the truth. "They didn't do anything shady or unethical if that's what you mean."

Relief coursed through his veins. "Did you have to take anything—well something you didn't actually need?"

That one made her squirm a little. Breaking their gaze, Spencer stared at the comforter in shame. "I did take medicine, but I needed it. At least I did at first."

Exhaling sharply, Toby winced at the implication of her words. "What does that mean exactly?"

"The night that I found—the night Mona staged your death…I can only recall parts of it. A lot of it is a blank. But what I do remember is coming completely unhinged." Spencer's voice cracked. Steeling herself against the harsh sting of her memories, she went on in a fragmented manner. "I still hadn't properly dealt with the immense sense of loss after our…encounter in my kitchen that night. I was already an absolute train wreck. I'm surprised no one had me committed then."

If that were her attempt at a joke, he wasn't amused. Sick was more like it.

Swiping irritably at a tear, Spencer continued weakly. "So after weeks of barely eating, sleeping even less, and blowing everything and everyone in my life to pieces…that was it. I just shattered. Up until that point, I thought I knew what losing you felt like, but I was so wrong. Seeing that body in the woods, the leather jacket and bike helmet, the tattoo…I now knew what it felt like to have what I treasured most…entirely ripped away with a startling permanency."

Toby felt the pressure of hot tears rushing to the surface. He reached for her hand and felt marginally better when she quickly accepted it.

"When they first admitted me to Radley, I genuinely needed to be there. They gave me sedatives that helped me sleep. Plus, I couldn't go on the way I had been. I love my friends, but I didn't know how to let them in and I was drowning. Being in there, as cracked as it sounds, helped me refocus." Spencer let out a deep breath and finally lifted her eyes, knowing the worst of it was out.

He tried his best to filter through all of this information rationally. She was being so strong and he didn't want to be the one to fall apart. "Was that all they gave you? Sleeping pills?"

"Yeah, those and antibiotics."

"What? Why did you need antibiotics?" His voice jumped an octave higher as he clasped her hand tighter.

"Like I said, I can't really remember it all," Spencer said faintly, her brow scrunching in thought. "Mona yelled something from wherever she was lurking, which in hindsight I realize was her way of getting me away from the body before I could figure out that it wasn't actually you. I tore after her, and I swear if I had caught up, she would be six feet under right now…"

"Spencer!" Toby was taken aback, but he felt a little proud too.

"I mean it!" She declared, her eyes blazing. "Anyway, I lost her eventually and I got disoriented after that. From what they told me later, the distance from my car to where the park rangers picked me up was pretty substantial. I must have wondered pretty far, and I picked up some scratches along the way. My chin was the worst…"

"Your chin?!" His eyes filled with grief. Reaching for her jaw with his unoccupied hand, his thumb caressed the spot automatically.

"My chin. I can vaguely remember stumbling a few times and I must have really fallen hard at one point. It was scraped up pretty bad. They made me wear a bandage on it for a few days."

Spencer felt a sincere smile tug on her lips as Toby tenderly laid several sweet kisses across her chin. He raised his mouth just centimeters higher and found her mouth with his own. As they parted, he whispered, "Still looks perfect to me."

And with that, she wanted him that much more. Engaging him in a deeper kiss, Spencer thirsted for an emotional release after drudging up that kind of turmoil. Toby broke the kiss prematurely, panting a little, but determined to finish the conversation without any loose ends. "You said you needed the medicine at first. What does that mean?"

"I decided I wasn't going down without a fight," she replied, impressed byhis unyielding pursuit for the full story. "The sedatives were miracle workers and Lord knows I needed them. I looked and felt like a degenerate extra in a zombie apocalypse movie."

"That could never be true," he interrupted ardently.

"Just ask Hanna. I know she was plotting to tackle me to the ground and attack me with concealer!" She chuckled at her own joke before turning solemn again. "Even though the pills helped me sleep through the night, they put me in a fog. Maybe the dosage was too strong. Either way, I was never fully alert and that started to scare me more than the nightmares. So I quit taking them. I would pretend to swallow them, wait for the orderly to leave, then stash them in my pillowcase."

"You faked them out?" Toby asked incredulously. "Gosh my girlfriend is the coolest."

"Stop it," Spencer laughed as she shoved him away playfully.

"I'm serious. You are so sly! They had no idea who they were dealing with!" He framed her face with his hands, drinking in her beauty. "I'm so incredibly lucky to have you, Spencer Hastings."

She ducked her head shyly at his praise. "I think I'm—" Spencer paused as a yawn broke her sentence, "—the lucky one."

Toby smirked. "Really? Because I think you need to go back to sleep." He ran his fingers lovingly through her chestnut hair, then stood so she could lie down again.

"Not without you," she retorted stubbornly.

He gently pushed back on her upper arms until her head met the pillow. Tucking the blankets around her slight body, he questioned, "Why is that, honey? You'll miss me too much?"

"Nope." Spencer refused to encourage his ego on this one. "My feet are cold and I need you to warm them up."

"Ah, so the truth comes out! You're just using me for heat!" Toby strode around to his side of the bed, acting wounded at her response. Climbing in next to her, he cuddled as close as possible, intertwining their limbs and holding her snugly against his chest. "Better?"

Burrowing her head securely into the hollow of his shoulder, Spencer grinned lazily. "Much, much better." She felt the lull of sleep enticing her, fading away into a dreamland where no one could hurt her, not even A.

Too bad that was only in dreamland.