Which Aria Is It Anyway?
Chapter 4.
Behind the fifth door to the right.
Behind the fifth door to the right.
Behind the fifth door to the right.
Behind the fifth door to the right.
She's behind the fifth door to the right.
Aria felt weird when she woke up. She had this sneaking feeling that her mind was suppressing vital information that she needed to remember. It was as if someone had given her some important information, and she was letting them down by forgetting it. Wait, them? Where did she get that from? She couldn't remember the information that she was supposed to, but she had a strange suspicion that it had been delivered to her by a man and a woman.
She brushed it off, and told herself that if it really was that important she would have remembered, and she didn't so that confirmed the insignificance of the information she had supposedly forgotten.
When she abandoned those thoughts, content with the outcome of them, she noticed that she wasn't alone in the room. It startled her, and she jumped up into a seated position in the bed. She noticed then that the people in the room weren't intruders, but visitors.
Hanna sat in the exact same place as she had done the day before, and this time she'd brought Emily and Spencer with her. The other two had each pushed a chair over to the bed, and were seated in them while they had waited for Aria to wake up. The Radley patient acknowledged her friends' presence with a smile.
"Good morning, Sleeping Beauty!" Hanna was, not surprisingly, the first one to speak. She grinned as she continued; "I love what you've done with the place!"
What? Aria glanced around the room, and noticed that someone had trashed it completely. It looked like someone had tossed the furniture around, and smashed whatever had been possible. There had definitely been a struggle in the room, and an agonizing feeling crept up on Aria.
"What have I done?" Aria cried when she realized it was her fault, and she looked to her friends with tears in her eyes. Then something far more worrisome dawned on her... "Oh, my God! Wren! I did something to him."
"Do you remember?" Emily questioned with a surprised expression on her face. It was obvious that Hanna had spoken of her encounter with Aria yesterday.
Aria shook her head. "No, I'm just assuming that I did. The last thing I remember was talking to him after Hanna's visit, and I was really upset, and he accused me of having an episode, implying that he knew about my condition all along after claiming that he didn't. I was so angry, and I screamed at him that it was possible for me to be upset without it being an 'episode'. The next thing I know is waking up with you guys here, and the room looking like this." As she relived her argument with Wren she became more and more panicked at the thought that she could have hurt him, and she met Hanna's (the person who understood her situation best after their previous conversation) eyes with fear in her own. "What if I hurt him? I'm A, and A is capable of anything!"
Before Hanna had the chance to reply, Spencer cut into the conversation. "Excuse me, but what was Wren doing in here with you in the first place?"
"Hanna?" Aria chose to ignore Spencer, looking pleadingly at Hanna for answers. She felt it was more important to learn of Wren's fate than to reply Spencer's question.
"He's fine. We ran into him before we came in here." Hanna revealed, and gave her tiny friend's hand a comforting squeeze.
"About Wren..." Spencer cut in again, looking expectantly at Aria.
"He's my friend, and he's been supporting me a lot." Aria explained. "You have to understand that I woke up in here without any recollection of how, and Dr. Sullivan has been very evasive of my questions, and Wren wasn't. He answered them the best he could, and he's stood by me during this confusing time. Also, you guys wouldn't visit me, and I didn't understand why."
"Sorry!" Her friends said in unison, each shooting Aria an apologetic look.
A silence fell upon them, and Emily fidgetted nervously in her seat, trying to figure out the best way to say what she wanted. The thing with Aria was a sensitive subject, and overwhelming her with any sort of emotion could prove to be dangerous.
Emily was just about to speak, but Spencer beat her to it. "We wanted to visit, but we knew you'd have a lot of questions, and the answers to those would push you over the edge if you got them too early."
Well, a lot of good that did, Aria thought to herself as her mind was once again brought back to last night when A had freaked out on Wren. However, she kept those thoughts to herself so Hanna wouldn't feel bad about the answers she had given her that were apparently too early.
"Are you upset with us for alienating you?" Emily asked nervously, her voice quivering with insecurity.
"Maybe a little." Aria confirmed with a barely audible tone of voice. She hated herself for feeling that way. What right did she even have to feel that way about her friends, considering what she had brewing inside of her? Despite that, she had to get it out. "When I woke up here, I assumed A was behind it. Then Dr. Sullivan told me that A had been caught, and later that you had declined visitation rights to see me. For a minute it didn't make sense to me, but then I assumed that it was because Ezra really had turned out to be A, and you were refusing to see me because you blamed me for bringing him into our lives."
Emily, being the emotional one of the group, had tears in her eyes, her heart bursting with sympathy for her tiny friend. "We were just trying to protect you."
"I know, Hanna already explained that to me." Aria smiled softly as a way to comfort Emily's worried mind, a smile which the swimmer returned.
"Speaking of Ezra, what's the last thing you remember about him?" Spencer asked, fishing for details in an attempt to figure out how far the real Aria's memory stretched, and how much of her mind that A had been controlling.
Aria searched her mind for the last memory she had of Ezra, and it turned out to be an unpleasant one. "After the whole book ordeal I went to see him, literally demanding that he should leave town..." Her three friends shared a few glances, silently deciding not to reveal Ezra's destiny to her. This went unnoticed by Aria. "... Hanna told me that's what he did?"
"Yeah, he left right before the Alison thing." Spencer lied, and Aria smiled sadly. She refused to admit it, but she still loved him fiercely. Alison had ruined that, but at the same time Aria knew she wasn't at fault. Nobody had forced Ezra to lie to her.
"What's the Alison thing?" Aria asked, deciding to defer the subject away from Ezra.
"The night she finally answered our questions, sweetie." Hanna reminded her as she knew how little Aria actually remembered, and that said night was mostly a blur to her shorter friend, although Aria vaguely remembered getting some answers.
"Yeah, I don't remember much from that night." Aria said, and then focussed her attention towards Spencer as she knew the academic girl would be the best candidate to know how to answer some of her questions. "Hanna told me that I have a multiple personality disorder, and that my other personality is A, and she evidently harbors some traumatic memories that the real me has suppressed somehow. She also said that the reason I was unaware that A lives inside me is because anything that happens as A, I won't remember when the real Aria takes back the control. Obviously, those traumatic memories have something to do with Alison. That's why A is after her as well as you guys because you're friends with her." Aria paused to see if Spencer was following her meaning, and so far she seemed to be. "I barely remember the night of the Alison thing, and that should mean that A was in control for the most part. I was with Alison and the three of you that night, and if A had control over my body then why didn't I attack you?"
"Because you weren't A that night, Aria." Spencer explained which earned her a confused look from Aria, and therefore she elaborated; "A clings on to most of your traumatic experiences, and something very traumatic happened that night so A stole most of your memories from that night."
So A didn't just have control over her suppressed memories, now she stole them as well? Aria had an immense urge to kill the bitch, but that would require killing herself, and she wasn't about to do that. She had to admit that her friends had made the right call when they were instrumental in her admittion at Radley, however much she hated it there.
"What was the traumatic thing that happened?" Aria wanted to know, and this time only Emily and Spencer exchanced nervous glances, unsure if they should tell her what had happened – leaving out the Ezra thing of course.
"A masked man, we assumed A, tried to shoot you." Hanna revealed, and left out the part where Ezra took the bullet for her just like Emily and Spencer would have done.
"That sucks." She simply said without any real emotional reaction, although it seemed odd. If the masked man had something to do with A, who Aria had recently discovered was herself, then why would he be shooting at her instead of her friends? Right about now it would be nice to actually be in possession of her own memories.
Also, if this person had tried to shoot her, in cahoots with A or not, and he'd had a clean shot (which Aria assumed he'd had since none of her friends seemed to have gotten hurt from the encounter) then why hadn't he succeeded? Why had she been admitted to Radley without the slightest impact of a gunshot wound?
She kept those thoughts to herself because it didn't make sense to her, and she couldn't see how she'd ever understand it no matter how many times she twisted and turned it in her mind, and she went out on a limb in assuming that it probably didn't make sense to her friends either. She just had to count her blessings, and not question her unbelievable luck.
The only thing that mattered was that they were all still alive, and that none of her friends had gotten hurt. Spencer, Emily, and Hanna sat before her now, and despite the fidgetting awkwardness and their apparent dance of avoidance around metaphorical eggshells, each one of them appeared to be at good health – as in no recent gunshot wounds. Now, she hadn't spoken to or personally seen Alison, but she was quite sure in guessing that since the former Queen Bee was admitted at Radley and not a hospital, she hadn't suffered any serious injuries lately either.
She was sure her friends were hiding something from her, but she wasn't gonna press them on it. She had to trust that whatever they chose to keep from her wasn't of any great importance, and they could tell her when they wanted to. Of course, that entailed that they had to begin trusting her again which she seriously doubted that they could possibly do at the moment. She was A after all, and that they even wanted to see her face or look into her eyes was beyond her, and again she counted her blessings. One thing was for certain, if the tables had been turned and one of them, let's say Emily, had been mentally ill and been the big, bad A, Aria wasn't so sure she'd have been able to look her in the eyes.
She didn't deserve them, and they were foolish for visiting her. She had been upset, and going crazy not seeing them, but now that she had some answers she really wished she could turn back time, and have Hanna never show up in her room. Sure, she'd still be going out of her mind then, and been very upset that her friends wouldn't visit, but they would have been safe! Did they not get that she was dangerous? Hadn't they yet comprehended that she was (despite what Hanna said) A, and that she could easily hurt them? She didn't want to, but obviously something deep inside, somewhere she didn't understand, disagreed.
A had been after them for years, and although Aria couldn't recall a time that she'd been in control when A surfaced, she was sure that their tormenter still desperately wanted to get the better of them, especially Alison who had been their leader and the root of everything A held against them. Aria wanted to know what traumatic things that had happened in the past that the beast within her used as motivation to ruthlessly torture Alison and her friends, and at the same time she wished she never found out. It had to be severe since she'd forgotten, and A remembered. That was at least how Spencer implied that it worked with having a split personality.
Aria didn't care what Alison had done to her in the past, what kind of resentment A might have towards her. It was in the past, and Aria couldn't imagine that her friends could ever do something to her that she wouldn't be able to forgive, and she decided right then and there that this Aria forgave Alison for whatever it could be. Now, how to convince the other Aria to do the same when the current Aria had no control over her shadow side whatsoever?
It worried Aria to be a patient at the same asylum as Alison, considering the monster that brewed underneath the surface – a monster that she had no strength to call the shots over. It or she just clawed it's way to the driver's seat of her body, and then squashed the 'real' Aria into a position where she couldn't control anything, and A went around and hurt people as she pleased. She didn't want that, and she'd do whatever she could to prevent it – if she could, that is. It was becoming pretty obvious to her that she was the weaker Aria, and she had the horrible suspicion (no matter how much treatment she received) that A would eventually win permanent control over her body.
That couldn't happen, but how could she stop it? The best she could do was to do as much as she possibly could to make sure that when it did happen, she wouldn't be able to get her nasty, little hands on either of her friends. She didn't know how, but she'd be damned if she ever harmed her friends!
"Hey, girls? Can I ask you a question?" Aria questioned, deciding to break the silence after realizing that she'd been quiet for quite a long time. Her friends had seemed deep in their own thoughts as well, but lit up when she spoke to them, and each nodded their heads as responses. "Who is the genius that decided to send me to the same insane asylum as Alison? I mean, I have this thing that's obviously connected to Alison since the whole A scheme started with her, and I'm quite clearly very dangerous so it would take a nut job to decide to send me to the same place as Alison for treatment."
The girls shared a look, and silently elected Hanna to answer their shorter friend's question. "You may wanna rephrase there, Aria. The night we captured A, or you, Alison was with us, and she was the one who pointed out to us that you weren't, uhm... well, you. It's thanks to her that we noticed too, and because of her you're getting help. You were admitted here, and things calmed down enough for Alison to realize that things weren't exactly right with her, and therefore she sought treatment. So the question should be; who is the nut job that decided to send Alison to the same asylum as you..."
Aria smiled stiffly, but the girls didn't seem to notice. Sure, rub in the fact that I'm a dangerous, murderous psycho once again, why don't ya? "So she sought treatment here, knowing full well that I was a patient here?"
"Basically, yeah." Hanna confirmed with one of those annoyingly sympathetic smiles that Aria couldn't express how much she resented even if she tried. "Rosewood isn't exactly flooded with choices of institutions for the mentally ill, Aria."
"I know, Han!" Aria said, sounding slightly more irritated than she had intended, but that's where Spencer cut in.
"It's called Dissociative Identity Disorder by the way. DID for short." Spencer explained, but received looks of confusion instead of understandance, and therefore she decided to elaborate. "Your 'thing', that's what it's called. It means..."
"... that I'm psycho, I'm aware." Aria exclaimed irritably, biting Spencer's head off as well. It greatly annoyed her how nice they were being to her, considering the fact that she far from deserved that.
"Aria, you're not... That's not... It's not..." Emily tried to brave into the conversation, but failed miserably to construct a proper sentence with the fear that Aria would bite her head off as well if she did.
"What? I'm not psycho? That's not true? It's not my fault? Were those the things you were trying to say?" Aria challenged, earning a nod as a reply. "Well, save it. I've heard those words before, and I don't believe them."
"You need to 'cos they're true!" Hanna said, defending Emily. If anyone could take a couple of rudely spoken words it would be the fierce blonde.
Emily nodded her head, agreeing with Hanna. "A is you, but you're not A. It doesn't make sense because technically you did the things A did, but you weren't the real you. We don't blame you for A's actions, and that may be hard for you to accept, but we mean that more than anything. The real Aria could never hurt anyone!"
The real Aria? That phrase was beginning to annoy her as much as the undeserved sympathy she was getting. How could they be so certain of who was the real Aria? How could they not hold her accountable for both Aria's actions when they were both her? What if it never got better? What if she was always gonna try to hurt them? She doubted that she was strong enough to tame A.
She had tears in her eyes. She wanted to be stronger than A, but she didn't know how. She didn't understand the faith that her friends continued to have in her, knowing what her other personality was capable of. She wanted to beat A. She was going to try, but couldn't invision herself succeeding.
"How can you be sure?" Aria asked, failing miserably to disguise the fear in her voice. The tears started sprinkling uncontrollably out of her eyes.
"Because we know you, Aria." Spencer replied in her best 'because I said so' parental voice, and Aria chuckled softly at her friend's words. Spencer always went straight to the case. "This is a confusing time for all of us, but we're in it together. You'll never be Bambi alone on the ice. We will always be there to help you up if you stumble, and I can promise you that if there was any doubt in our minds that you weren't the Aria we thought, we wouldn't have hesitated to leave you to your fate. Mona and Hanna's relationship is the perfect proof of that. We love you, that's how we're sure."
Aria's tears intensified with Spencer's words. There were too many emotions running through her body. She wished she could seperate them, and devide them into groups so she could deal with them one at a time. That would have made things much easier, but while they were there she could least try to verbalize some of them.
"It just terrifies me to know that I have two Aria's battling inside me. One is good, and the other one; not so much. It's scary to me that I can't control the A part of this condition when I know what horrible things that she's capable of. It scares me that I can't remember the nasty things I've done as A, and I'm worried that I might be the weaker personality, and that A will always be able to fight her way to the surface. I don't wanna hurt you guys. I couldn't bear it!"
Spencer smiled sympathetically at the other half of team Sparia, and for the first time in what felt like ages the smaller girl didn't mind a little sympathy. "I get that, Aria, but we're not scared. You could never hurt us."
"But A..."
"... is not an issue anymore!" Spencer finished Aria's sentence with a firm tone to her voice, making it clear that her statement before wasn't up for discussion.
Spencer's fierce determination to calm her best friend down appeared to be helping, and to make sure that Aria knew she had no intention of backing down, she held her gaze on Aria so she'd be able to catch the panic before it struck. Aria had never been a very good liar. She could deliver the lines convincingly, but her eyes always gave her away. Her eyes couldn't lie, they were simply too connected with her emotions.
"Okay..." Aria muttered as she inhaled and exhaled a deep, relaxing breath to calm herself down. She took in Spencer's words, and decided that even though she didn't believe them yet, she was gonna take them to heart and make herself accept the truth in them.
A silence washed over the four friends until Emily broke it by making a Hanna move, causing Aria to completely forget the decision she'd just made. "You know, one time I was watching a horror movie. Madhouse, I think it was called, and it took place somewhere much like this. Well, that might be exaggerating it a bit, but it was an insane asylum. This boy gets mistreated, and then somehow manages to escape the asylum, but he is struck by a car, giving the illusion that he was killed. Then this man comes to the facility as an intern, and he sees how the patients are being mistreated, and he also connects with a nurse who turns out to have the thing that you have, Aria. Then suddenly the staff begins to get murdered, and no one knows who is doing it, but the intern guy suspects one of the patients from the closed ward, although that's nearly impossible since they're locked in at all times and are totally crazy. But intern guy, can't really remember his name, decides to figure who the monster is, and he starts to see the ghost of the boy who implies that the nurse is behind it, but in the end it turns out that it's actually him, and that he has the dissociative thingy as well, and that he was the boy that escaped the facility eons ago, and that he came back for revenge. Also, the guy he suspected from the closed ward was actually an image of himself, and they reunite, and he goes on a rampage to kill everyone. Then the nurse tries to trick him because he has feelings for her, and she wants to save herself, but then she tries to stab him, and he kills her. The movie ends with him going to a new asylum as an intern to continue, I'm assuming, the massacre."
Spencer shot Emily a warning look after watching Aria fall more and more apart by each elaborating word of what was clearly a description of what was obviously a fictional movie, but throwing in that the psychotic murderer in the movie had 'the thing that you have, Aria' threw her mental state way off as it, at the moment, hit a little too close to home.
"Moving on!" Spencer exclaimed in a way that was reminiscent of the time Hanna had kept pressing on the fact that Emily had 'a hole in her stomach' when the swimmer had been admitted at the hospital with an ulcer.
Hanna, however, hadn't sensed their tiny friend's panic or the tone in Spencer's warning words, and carried on where Emily had left off. "I watched a similar movie once. This woman was interviewing this guy in prison who was like on death row or something to see if he had your thing, Aria, in which case he'd get a free pass in the lethal shot department, what with being crazy and all. She was like a shrink or something. She meets this guy who seems really great, but then she starts getting stalked, and someone sends her rotten flowers, and then her cats get killed, and the police won't do anything. She sets up a camera to figure out if it's the guy she's dating that she says she's in love with, and then the next minute she's not. They don't exactly have an easy relationship. Anyway, then her nosy neighbor gets attacked because he figures out who the stalker is, but he doesn't die. Then her ill father comes back to town, and it turns out that he molested her as a child, and shot her mother when she tried to leave with her, and he makes her take the fall for her mother's death. Eventually it turns out that her boyfriend is investigating the death of her ex-boyfriend and a cop, and she admits that she killed her ex when she shoots her cop boyfriend, and then she shoots her father for all that he has done to her, but makes it look like it was the boyfriend after which the boyfriend kills himself. She has this demonic voice, and it turns out that she has your thing, Aria, and she was stalking herself. She then starts dating her neighbor, and she believes that the boyfriend stalked her, killed her father and himself because she doesn't remember what actually happened, and then it sort of ends. I assume she eventually murders her neighbor boyfriend as well."
"Moving on!" Spencer reprimanded their blonde friend, shooting her a warning glare as well, but it was too late.
Aria panicked, the urge to run away clawed it's way back in her mind. The further she could get from her friends the better. Perhaps Emily and Hanna were just making casual conversation, and in the process described what the rational side of Aria's brain knew to be fictional, but she was getting so worked up that she couldn't tell the rest of herself that.
The movies weren't based on actual events as far as Aria knew, and the characters probably weren't real, but the panic had gained control. Fictional or not, what her friends had described was so similar to her situation, and she irrationally became them in her mind.
She tried to get out of the bed and make a run for it, but Hanna was seated on the bed in a position that made impossible for Aria to move. She had to, though. She had to escape before the other Aria, the stronger Aria, took complete control over her body, and went on a killing spree. She sure as hell wasn't going to make it easy for A to kill her friends.
Spencer could preach about treatment as much as she wanted, but Aria knew the truth. No matter how much help she got, no matter how long she received it, she knew she wasn't stronger than A. She'd never been stronger than A, and she never would be. The other Aria would always be able to take over, and push the real Aria to the side to fulfill her evil schemes. Although, who were to say that the real Aria was even the real Aria?
Her friends could say that the real Aria couldn't hurt anyone all they wanted, but A lived within her, and therefore had to be her. When A took the metaphorical driver's seat in her body, and did unspeakable things to her friends, it had to still be Aria in a way, right? A was a part of her, and Aria knew the power A had, and she doubted she'd be strong enough to take her down. It didn't matter how much treatment she got, or how many times her friends tried to seperate 'the other Aria' from 'the real Aria', and it didn't matter how many times Hanna explained to her that the current Aria was the real Aria because the current Aria got more playtime than the other Aria, and that had to make the current Aria the real Aria.
She felt horrible. Her friends had sat there earlier, and they'd apologized to her for not visiting, for not telling her what had been going on, for making her feel alienated. They now sat in silence together, and Aria felt that it had all been a load of crap. Her friends weren't the ones who ought to apologize; Aria was.
"I wonder what she did to Wren?" Hanna questioned the other two visitors with the illusion that Aria was deeply wrapped up in her own thoughts, and therefore didn't hear, but she was pulled out of her trance as soon as Hanna spoke, and she heard everything.
"What do you mean by that?" Aria exclaimed, panicking even more. They'd said to her that Wren was fine, and if he was fine then why would Hanna ask that question?
Spencer glared, for what felt like the billionth time, warningly at their blonde friend, but Hanna didn't catch on and kept going; "Well, it's just... we were in here earlier, and you were fast asleep and tied up, and we decided to visit Alison first to give you a chance to wake up first. I mean, you were still asleep when we got back, but you weren't tied up anymore." She paused when she, for the first time, noticed Aria's terrified expression. "Don't worry, he's fine! However, the place is trashed, and we've pretty much established that the redecoration happened with Wren present, and that just makes me wonder what could have happened to make them tie you up."
An uncomfortable silence filled the room until Aria broke it with an outburst filled with fear; "You have to leave now! Leave, and never come back!"
"What?" Her friend exclaimed at the same time, each of them staring at Aria with disbelief and hurt.
"I'm clearly too dangerous to be around. I'm never gonna beat A no matter how much I try. She's too strong for me, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna let her hurt you." Aria sobbed helplessly as she felt worn out by the situation, and then proceeded to finally explain every single thought that she'd had while her friends had been there to them. She wanted to protect them, but at the same time she knew that they deserved to know, especially after everything that she had put them through.
When she was done pouring out her feelings to them she had lost track of time, but by the end of it they were all staring at her with sympathy, and she was back to finding it annoying. Hadn't they heard a word that she'd said to them? She didn't deserve their sympathy, or their company for that matter, but obviously they were of different opinions.
Aria zoned out as her friends began showering her with well-meaning words of why she shouldn't feel like that, of how strong she was, that she could beat A if she really tried, and that they loved and supported her no matter what. It was nice to know that, but she still refused to believe that she deserved even the tiniest aspect of it. It didn't matter how kind they were; deep down she knew she was a monster.
Finally, they appeared to be done with their well-intentioned compliment session, and Spencer decided to switch the conversation into a different gear. "What I wanna know is why you would attack Wren in the first place?" She questioned as she eyed her petite friend suspiciously.
"I thought we were moving on?" Hanna chipped in from her position, but piped down when Spencer scolded her. There was a time and a place to try and be funny, and now clearly wasn't it.
"You've been in here for weeks, and with the medication they have you on, and the sessions you've had with Dr. Sullivan, you shouldn't be having such a strong outburst. You're not so far into your treatment that your episodes are gone completely, but they shouldn't be that strong that you'd attack someone like that." Spencer looked expectantly at Aria. "So I repeat my question; why would you attack Wren in the first place?"
Aria guiltily avoided her friend's gaze as she mumbled some sort of explanation; "I may not have, this is just the slightest of possibilities, taken my pills. I may have pretended to take them for Dr. Sullivan's benefit, and then spat them into the sink when she left."
"Are you absolutely, freakin' crazy?" Spencer shouted, an outburst that caused Hanna to get such a fright that she fell off her seat in the bed. One had to be Dopey of the Seven Dwarfs not to pick up on the fact that Spencer was very upset! "Do you have any idea how dangerous and stupid your stunt could be?"
"Okay, firstly; crazy is maybe, probably, quite possibly the most insensitive word you could use to describe me with these days!" Aria spoke calmly, but also appeared to be upset. She wanted to avoid raising her voice, and become too angry because the last time that happened someone almost got hurt. "Second of all; I woke up in a strange place with no knowledge of what the deal with me was, and I had no idea that I was A or that A had been 'caught' so assumed that she had put me in here. If you were me, would you take some mystery pill three times a day if you had even the smallest suspicion that A could be behind it all? I didn't want to make it easy for A to drug me." She paused to allow Hanna room to take back her seat on the bed, and then she focussed her attention on Spencer again. "Lastly; after Hanna visited me, and I finally got the answers that I had desired for so long, I realized that I had been wrong in my assumption. I realized that I legitimately needed to be in here, and that there was something seriously wrong with me, thanks to Hanna's 'for dummies' explanation. I decided that I from now on was gonna take my pills because I would never be able to live with myself if I ever hurt anyone when I now knew who I was. However, I didn't get the chance to put my plan into action before Wren came in, and I had my episode!"
"Do you promise to take your medication from now on?" Emily asked insecurely, fearing that she might hurt Aria's feelings as well.
Aria smiled reassuringly, though sadly, at the swimmer. "I promise, Em."
"It's getting dark outside." Hanna said, and gestured towards the window to illustrate her point. "We should probably get going. Visiting hours will be over soon."
Hanna rose from the bed in a more elegant manner than when she fell off, and then she gave Aria a goodbye hug. Emily stood up from the chair she'd been seated in, and gave Aria a hug as well. The two friends left arm in arm, shouting a goodbye over their shoulders as they disappeared through the door.
Spencer stuck around for a few minutes more. She wasn't upset with Aria anymore, but there were some important things that she felt that Aria needed to know. "You need to cooperate from now on, Aria. It's crucial that you do. So please take your medication." Spencer said, and Aria nodded her head to silently agree. "They don't do things to be cruel. They tied you up to help you, they didn't do it to hurt you!"
Spencer rose from the seat in her chair, and disappeared in the same manner that her friends had before. Aria sat behind, staring silently, almost trance like, into space while Spencer's words echoed in her mind; "They tied you up to help you, they didn't do it to hurt you!" Something in her mind clicked, and a foreign memory flashed through her head.
The schoolyard had always been the place where Alison DiLaurentis liked to stir things up, and that day was no exception. The history lesson the class had with Mr. Musso had been dreary, and she felt the urge to entertain herself.
There, across the schoolyard, she spotted Aria Montgomery sitting up against a tree that had been there for decades while she read some obnoxious book. Probably something along the lines of 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. Aria had always been too bookish for Alison's liking, and the former rested so comfortably in being different from everyone else. Alison hated that, it seemed arrogant in a way.
With the target selected, Alison stepped through the grounds until she reached the unaware Aria. The students who were outside quickly gathered around them. They knew that where Alison was there was smoke, and they wouldn't want to miss any drama, at least not if someone else was victim other than them.
Alison smirked knowingly to herself when she noticed that Aria was in fact reading 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. She also sat with a marker, highlighting her favorite quotes in neon. She was so consumed with the book that she hadn't noticed the new arrivals.
Alison cleared her throat, and Aria looked up to see everyone gathered around her, watching her. She felt very selfconscious all of the sudden, and shyness washed over her that she'd never experienced before. She had an uncomfortable feeling that she was Alison's new target.
The Queen Bee saw that a girl nearby stood with a jump rope in her hands, and she went over there and pulled it out of the girl's hand. She needed the rope more; she had plans with the rope. Despicable plans.
"Wasn't Mr. Musso's history lesson today such a yawn?" She spoke to the crowd, and they muttered some incoherent words. "Well, I thought I'd demonstrate his point in a less boring way. Any volunteers?" She smirked evilly at Aria. "How about you, Montgomery?"
Before Aria had the chance to respond, Alison had convinced a few guys to help her tie Aria to the tree that she'd been reading up against. Alison tightened the rope around her, and Aria was already in tears. The torture hadn't even begun, and Alison smiled with satisfaction at the sight of her victim's tears.
"Why are you doing this?" Aria whispered, her eyes begging Alison to release her.
Alison smirked. "Nothing good on tv, I guess."
She stepped away from Aria, and turned her back to the whimpering girl to face the crowd who were eager to know what the Queen Bee had in store. She hadn't many friends, but she had a lot of followers who were eager to do her biddings in the hope that it would lead to friendship, and she intended to take advantage of that.
"In the Middle Ages," She spoke loudly so everyone would be able to hear, "When someone committed a crime or performed an act of treason, they would be taken to the square of town where they would be tied up. The point of this action was to publicly humiliate them. As they were tied up, the people of the town were allowed to have their way with them. They could throw rocks on them, spit on them, anything they pleased basically. I thought we could act it out on Montgomery today."
Alison glared at the crowd expectantly while Aria looked at them pleading, but in the end the fear of Alison won over the sympathy for poor Aria. After the Queen Bee had led an example by spitting Aria right in the face, the people around them hesitantly began throwing rocks and spitting on Aria.
Aria cried through the torture, and tried to gain eye contact with anyone who seemed agitated by their actions, trying to beg them to help her with the eyes. No one dared, not even the chubby blonde Aria saw standing in the background, and she was one of the few who hadn't thrown anything.
"Please stop!" Aria begged through her tears, but no one would listen. Alison wouldn't let them.
Alison grew bored with the situation, and decided to spice it up further. She walked over to a mousy looking boy with dark hair who seemed rather uncomfortable. It was quite obvious that he wanted nothing more than to disappear from the sight.
She whispered something in his ear, but he shook his head, evidently refusing whatever it was that she'd said to him. She tried whispering something to him again, and he firmly kept his stand. "Whatever, Hermy!" She then shouted as he wouldn't do what she'd wanted to Aria.
She then walked over to someone Aria knew the name of since she'd had a crush on him for some time; Noel Kahn. He stood much closer to the tree, and had been throwing a few pebbles on Aria. She definitely wasn't crushing on him anymore.
As Noel stood closer to Aria he was within earshot, and she was therefore able to overhear the words that Alison whispered to him; "I want you to pee on Aria, Noel."
"What, no!?" He exclaimed, seemingly mortified by the suggestion.
Alison kept insisting, every now and again throwing an evil glance Aria's way. "I'm not satisfied with the situation. Quite frankly, I'm getting bored. I want you to pee on Aria, unless of course you want me to make your life a living hell by spreading the rumor that you and the hermaphrodite are an item. Is that what want? No girl would ever want you then."
He shook his head, and reluctantly pulled down his pants, ignoring Aria's pleas not to as he peed on her. He wished that someone some day would teach the Queen Bee a lesson, that someone would be able to put her in her place. He didn't enjoy torturing Aria. She was a sweet girl who didn't deserve to be treated like that.
When he was done with his cruel task he put his pants back on, and spun around and ran back inside faster than lightning travelled. Aria was now soaked with spit and pee, and her skin was covered with small bruises from the rocks. Her clothes had turned into a funky color, and the stench from it was horrible.
Satisfied with her work, Alison spoke to the crowd again; "When they were deemed to have been punished and humiliated enough, they would be released from their tie up."
Aria was finally released, and as Alison walked away from her work, everyone else did too. Aria sunk into a ball underneath what had once been her favorite tree, and bawled her eyes out in the hope that it would make the memory go away, but she knew it didn't work like that
She stopped crying suddenly, glancing around the schoolyard as she wondered how she'd wound up on the ground with her clothes soaked, and with a distinguied smell of pee. Had someone done it to her, or had she done it to herself?
She removed the covers from the bed, and stood up with great determination. She walked over to the window that Aria had had her quarrels with previously. She clenched her hand into a fist, and smashed the window with it, ignoring the throbbing pain from the hand that she didn't doubt blood was now flowing from. Aria could deal with that later.
She bent down to pick up one of the pieces of glass that had landed on the floor. She opted for the largest piece as it would be the most efficient. She held it tightly in her hand, and she could feel it breaking skin. That didn't matter either.
The only thing that mattered was that she now knew what "She's behind the fifth door to the right" meant. She, Alison DiLaurentis, was behind the fifth door to the right, and she deserved everything she got. She deserved to die, and tonight A was determined for it to happen!
With her weapon in hand she left her room that had been left unlocked. Someone was either forgetful or wanted Alison to die as much as she did. She turned to the right, walking down an unfamiliar hallway. She sauntered past one door, and then the next, next, and next until she finally reached the fifth door to the right.
She barged through the door, and came face to face with a frightened Alison who seemed very surprised by her visitor. A smirked evilly at the thought that Alison was at last getting what she truly deserved. Alison had tortured her, and for that she deserved to die!
"Aria, what are you doing in here?" She exclaimed, but she knew that she wasn't dealing with the real Aria when she saw the hollow look in her intruder's eyes. It wasn't her best friend, Aria. It was A.
"I want you to pee on Aria." A spoke in a hoarse tone that sounded as possessed as it did the night she'd been caught, if not more, and Alison immediately knew what day she was referring to. It was, to this day, still her least proudest moment. She'd never regretted anything more.
Alison knew what the intention behind the visit was when her intruder's hand was raised with a large piece of broken glass firmly held. "Please, Aria. I'm so, so sorry. Please, don't hurt me." Alison pleaded as A stepped through the room towards her. She wanted to appeal to Aria. She knew the real Aria was in there somewhere, and despite of how strong A was, Aria was stronger than her. She just had to believe. "Please, Aria, this isn't you. Fight her! You can't do it, Aria. Please!"
A stood before Alison, and tried to stab her with the sharp piece of glass she held, but Alison managed to grab her arm before she was struck. She struggled with A, trying to think of something, anything, to stop her.
Which Aria Is It Anyway?
Disclaimer; Have I bought the rights to Pretty Little Liars since the previous chapter? No, sir!
Dedication; Who of my wonderful, amazing reviewers have I chosen to dedicate this chapter to? Prettylittletaylorswift, congratulations. I dedicate this chapter to you. Your words to me were so kind, and I really appreciate them. Plus, your name references two very awesome things; Pretty Little Liars and Taylor Swift. But yeah, thanks for your sweet words, and I hope you stick with me (even after this delay).
Firstly; I am so, so, so, so, very much so sorry for the long delay. It wasn't meant to take this long. I have excuses, lots of them, but they're gonna make you think I'm crazy – which I sorta am, by the way. I had to go on a trip of sorts, and then I was distracted by shiny things (that in this case weren't shiny, but were books), and my cat's birthday. Yes, you heard right; my cat's birthday. She turned 5, so it wasn't just any birthday, you know! However, regardless of the reason behind the delay, I promise that I'll do anything I can to stop it from happening again.
Next up we have the most important thing on the agenda; my gratitude. Thank you so much for all your incredible reviews. They mean the world to me, and they inspire me to keep going. I hope that you'll continue reading this story, and leaving me your feedback in whichever form it may come in ;).
Also, shout out to HeartBelongsToEzria. You asked me a question that I forgot to answer. I meant to. In the previous chapter I told myself; okay, remember to answer her question in your author's note, but then with my lousy memory I somehow forgot. I'm answering it now, though. Will there be any Ezria in this story? Yes. Yes, there will. It won't happen for some time as I think I've mentioned that his life hangs in the balance, and he's in a coma, but eventually there will be some Ezria. They both need to recover first.
So, what did you think of this chapter? Aria finally got some real visitors in the form of her three besties, and then she went a little crazy. Then there was the flashback that I kind of wanna discuss with you guys. I let myself be inspired by something that happened close to where I live some years ago (I'm not quite sure how many), and a guy was tortured in a way quite similar to the way Aria was because he came out of the closet. So yeah, they tied him up, and did those things to him, and then he went home and killed himself. It's quite a sad story, but I just wanted to make the point that horrible things like that do happen in case you thought the other Aria's memory sounded a little farfetched.
Lastly, I thank you for reading this chapter, and I would love to hear what you think. I would also love to know your guesses of what happens next. Hints; Dr. Sullivan is back (although she visits Aria three times a day, we haven't seen her since the first chapter). Alison will also be back, but in what capacity (as you were sorta left with a cliffy)? Wren pays a surprising visit. Thoughts, guesses? Again; thanks for reading, and please review :).
Laters,
AK-tutti :)