Hey so how 'bout be forget that it's been over a month since I've last updated... I actually can't believe it's been that long. :( It all started with my *minor* setback a few weeks ago when I was almost finished when the entire thing got deleted and I nearly had a mental breakdown. Yeah, minor setback. Anyway, started over from scratch, attempted to sew together anything I could remember (which was basically nothing) before i finally accepted it and stopped cursing out my word processor. And now, after finishing it, I actually think in turned out better than the other would have. Or at least a hell of a lot longer. Like I had to cut off a good chunk of it toward the end to save for the next chapter. Anyway, the moral of this annoyingly long story? Always back up your writing (or never write in the notes section of your I-phone) (…what it's very convenient for when an idea strikes me) (and I can nonchalantly write in front of people)... Okay, enjoy!

It was a short time later that Spencer was awakened to beams of sun peaking through her eyelids in the form of early morning light. The rays pried her eyes open unwillingly, causing her to make a groan of protest. She shifted uncomfortable in bed, stretching her stiff muscles. As she moved, she took in her surroundings. Her first acknowledgement, she no longer felt the warmth of the body that had been next to her all night. The feeling was validated when she turned over and found nothing but a creased pillow beside her.

Then suddenly, a pleasant scent filled her senses. Something hot and savory. The smell was met with the crackling of a frying pan, the combined effort of which was enough to draw her up from her restlessness.

She pulled Toby's T-shirt down over her shorts as the shock of cold air hit her. She slowly crept out the doorway and into the hall as all her senses began to enunciate the clear finality of food.

But still, as she entered the kitchen, she couldn't help but be surprised by what she found. Her boyfriend, the one she had slain with sarcastic comments a few short hours prior, was standing hunched over the stove top, creating something her nose was clearly telling her she wanted.

And, despite everything, she couldn't help but look at him in admiration.

It took a few moments before he finally turned and recognized her presence. "Morning." He spoke flatly.

She attempted to quickly whip the glossy look off her face. "Morning." she repeated in monotone.

He turned back to his cooking, "Do you uh - want an egg?" He spoke as he pushed around the contents of the frying pan.

She almost licked her lips at the sight, "Uh no - no I think I'm just gonna," she motioned back the way she'd come, "grab a shower…"

"Right, yeah." He mumbled without looking up.

She hesitated for a moment, her mind wavering on weather or not to leave. It was then that she noticed the two plates he had perched on the table behind the working chef. A lump formed in her throat.

He had expected her to say yes. Despite everything, he was making breakfast for her.

She then quickly decided to take her leave, before questioning another move. She didn't think she could spend another moment watching the man that couldn't even give her eye contact. Besides, she did need to shower, for point of cleanliness and a few minutes to think. It wasn't as though she didn't want to eat, in fact, her stomach moaned in revolt, but she needed to form a calculated plain of an attack for the problem A had so eloquently informed her of.

So with a flick of her hair, she was gone, back into the bedroom to retrieve her things, still hearing the sounds of the man shuffling about the kitchen. Another lump formed in her throat but with a guilt far more heavy.

Everything bad that had happened to Toby always seemed to come back to Spencer. Why did Toby have to carry Jenna out of a burning building? Because Spencer and the girls had caused the fire. Why was Toby convicted of setting the fire and set away for a crime he didn't commit? Because Spencer let Ali blackmail him and was too chicken to come clean. Why did he almost get sent to jail for murder? Why had he fallen off that scaffolding? Why did he have to join the A team? Spencer. All answers led back to Spencer. Even his mothers death, before she had even really known him, was turning into something that had to do with Spencer.

A wouldn't have cared, A would have never bothered with Toby had she not brought him into all of this. A was there to torment the girls, in anyway that she could, and what better way than by going after the people they cared about the most?

Apparently threatening them with secrets and torment wasn't enough anymore.

A had escalated things. They'd gone after loved ones before but never like this. Not only did A call family services on the Fields, threatening to take away Emily's family but she was also making look look very guilty for a sort of crime you don't want to look guilty for. Apparently A ran out of ways to hurt the girls directly, and was now forcing them to watch as she destroyed everyone around them.

Spencer felt slightly sick as she undressed and stepped into the shower, the text she received last night still ringing out in her mind. Maybe she was right last year, when she broke up with Toby to protect him. No matter what she did, as long as they were together Toby was in danger. Maybe that's what A meant, they'd never be happy because they'd never be able to escape her rathe. They'd never have a normal relationship where all they worried about was who would pay for dinner. Spencer should have just stayed away, she'd already cost him enough anguish before she'd even fallen for him.

They'd barely had a handful of conversations before he was send off to Juevie. Before the Jenna Thing. Yet still, she found a way to cause him anguish. And she didn't even have anything against him.

There was one particular encounter that still, to this day, stuck out in her memory.

It was the first time Spencer had ever talked to Toby alone, back when they were in middle school. Back when the most Spencer knew about Toby Cavanaugh was what Alison had told her. And she'd gotten quite loathing of him around that time. Just a week before their upcoming chat Ali'd said what a pervasive horndog he was when she supposedly spotted him peeping through Emily's bedroom window while they were having one of their weekend sleepovers.

"I don't think Toby would do that -" Emily had said without pause.

"Then why do I see his buggy eyes poking out from behind the curtains?"

The girls all rushed to Emily's window seat and crammed their faces to the glass. Their eyes flickered to the house across the way for any source of movement.

"I think I saw him!" Aria noted what they'd later realize was only a trick of the mind.

"Why would he want to spy on us?" Spencer had asked.

"He's reached that age, girls." she spoke matter of factly. "He's upgraded from comic books to playboys."

"Ali!" They all laughed in unison.

From that time onward, Alison never had a good word to say about that pubescent boy. The girls had questioned her change of heart, she'd never talked much of him before hand, if she had, it had been that of simple indifference. But she had shrugged her behavioral revelation off.

"He's the one that's changed, not me."

Her hatred ran strong a few days later at school when she spotted Emily gabbing with him over by her locker. Alison reacted like a pitbull watching a mailman. She pounced.

"Get away from her you creep!" Alison belted down the hallway, striding through waves of people, the rest of the girls in toe.

"Ali we were just -" Emily said meekly.

"It doesn't matter," she put up a hand to silence her, "the more you talk to this weirdo, the more he'll have to put in the shrine of you he has in the back of his closet."

Some people around them snickered, it seemed a crowd was beginning to encircle the young trio. It should have been expected, people seem to follow Ali like sheep to a shepard.

"What did I ever do to you?" Toby spoke sourly through rosebud cheeks.

"Don't associate with him girls," Ali spoke with a glance over her shoulder at Hanna, Spencer and Aria, blantinly ignoring Toby's questioning. "he's a loser and a freak," her eyes flared viciously, "just like his mother…"

"My mom is not a freak." He responded heatedly, but his face had gone ghost white from her words. His eyes began to dart between all those that had gathered around then. Whatever Alison did always created a show.

Toby gave Alison one last loathing glance before pushing his way through the crowd.

"What did I tell you?" Ali said, the corners of her mouth curling up.

She really was twisted. It's like she found joy in peoples insecurities. And now she'd added Toby Cavanaugh to the endless list of people she thought were beneath her, right along with Mona and the kid who ran the science club.

But why? Other than being a bit quiet, Toby didn't seem to be anything very out of the ordinary. He had average grades and he took woodshop, that's all Spencer knew about him. Then again, Alison never really had to have a reason to be callous.

Still, Spencer was curious, especially after that comment about his mom. If her anger really was from what she allegedly saw through Emily's window, what could his mom have to do with it?

Spencer figured asking her mother - the all knowing women of Rosewood - would be her best shot at getting an answer. Especially when Alison wasn't the most reliable source for information. Besides, her mother really did seem to know everything about everything. It must have been a lawyer thing.

So that afternoon, as soon as her mother walked through the front door, Spencer hurled the question at her. And her mother, briefcase still in hand, had been reluctant to give her the answer, which she unsurprisingly did know.

"This really isn't any of your business Spencer. It's nothing you need to concern yourself with."

But Spencer was persistent, telling her it was important and that she promised not to tell anyone. Veronica watched warily as her youngest daughter stared at her with her doe eyes. And while that may have been a contributing factor, what really swayed her was Spencer's semi-honest admittance, 'people at school were talking about it'.

Her face grew concern. "It's none of any of their business, they should just leave that poor Cavanaugh boy alone."

Spencer pleed again "Maybe if I knew I could help him."

"Spencer, I don't think there's really anything you can do -" The relentless doe eyes cut her short.

After a few moments and a long breath, her mother finally told her. She told her that Toby's mother had been seeing a psychiatrist for a few months. Just recently though, the doctor recommended she receive 'further assistance'. Based off that and numerous other factors, her husband checked her into Radley Sanitarium the next day.

"Why? Why did she need 'further assistance'?"

"Goodness Spencer can I at least sit down before you bombard me with questions? I think I've gotten enough of that today."

Spencer kept her eyes trained on her mother.

Her mother signed defeatedly, "She was thought to be a danger to herself… possibly others."

After getting answers she wasn't excepting, Spencer's mind was racing with hypotheses. Maybe Toby's mom had done something to hurt Ali. That may have been enough basis to be upset. Even if it was misplaced aggression. But saying that in her head, Spencer really didn't believe it. Most likely, it was just Ali being cruel like always. She actually wished it was the former.

It was later that day, after her new revelation, that Spencer and Toby were due to have their run in.

Spencer had managed to escape her house on the grounds of a science project on volcanic rock she and Emily had to finish.

She had just conveniently failed to mention that they had handed the project in the previous day.

In high spirits that she would be able to spend her tuesday night outside of a desk piled sky high with textbooks, Spencer paraded joyfully down the block to Emily's house. Her mind was void of anything Cavanaugh related until she reached a white picket boarder immediately before the fields front yard. She slowed her steps when she caught a human sized shadow on the properties porch. She studied the figure as it became clearer with every smooth stride. It seemed to be fiddling with some large object on the top step. It wasn't until Spencer mindlessly halted in front of the stubby white gate that she was really able to take in the mass and his task.

Unsure of what move to make from her current position, Spencer touched he knuckles gently to a piece of fence and knocked softly. Toby's head shot up towards her, his blue eyes flashing from startled to bewilderment before returning to the gears on the bicycle his hands were furiously working on.

"I don't think you're suppose to be here" he spoke in a matter of fact tone.

"I'm sorry," the words flooded out of her in a waterfall "for - for what Alison said, about your mom…"

There was a slight pause, possibly of surprise, possibly of disgust, before a muffled sarcastic comment was responded, "Thanks."

"I didn't know before," she continued, in a grasp for an excuse. She still stood planted in front of the unlocked windblown gate "about what happened…"

Toby's eyes grew wide, she could tell now because he was finally making eye contact with her. But dispite his wide eyes, his voice rang out with coarse resolve.

"That's comforting" He spat.

Spencer's eyes narrowed, no matter her reason for stopping in the first place, she was not one to be pushed around. "You know I'm trying to apologize -"

"Yeah, and your apology means a lot."

She took a few aggressive steps through the gate, "What is that suppose to mean?"

"It means that if you didn't like what your friend Alison was saying, you could have said something then."

"I didn't know -"

"You didn't know what? That she was treating me like I was roadkill? No one should be treated that way, regardless of what you do or don't know."

They stared each other down for a few moments as Spencer tried to formulate a response. Spencer'd watched Alison torment people's lives for years, in private, in public, to tears. But no matter how much the girls had told her it was cruel and to stop, they would somehow stay stuck in the Ali vortex, watching themselves stand idly by as she basically shoved kids into lockers simply because she thought they were 'beneath her'. How do you validate someones behavior you don't agree with? The vortex pulled at her and her loyalties forced her to try. "Look, Alison…"

"I know about Alison." He interrupted. But he didn't say it in the way people who'd heard rumors and gossip about the blonde did, the people who would turn a corner if they saw Alison strutting towards them. There was experience behind his words, like maybe he knew something about her friend that she didn't.

As though on que, another voice broke in, "Are you girls just looking to get killed in your sleep?" Alison's rang out.

Spencer's blood suddenly felt hot and all the defending she was planning to do was lost. Her head snapped around to Alison, "Knock it off Ali."

"Sorry if it's a little too gruesome for you Spence but that's what you'll get if you hang around with Toby the-phsyco Cavanaugh"

"Can you ever not be so malicious?"

Alison placed a domineering hand on her hip, "Excuse me?"

"You heard what I said. Do you think you could possibly go a single day without being a bitch to someone?"

Her mouth slid slightly open before she turned a blaming eye on the boy still parked on his porch behind Spencer, "What are you trying to do to her? Get your crazy weirdo thoughts into her head?" Toby simply glared at her.

"This isn't about him, Ali." Spencer shouted "this is about me, about all of us, being so tired of you and how you treat everyone."

Alison's eyes narrowed to snake like proportions, a fire blazing behind her pupils. "This is a lot coming from the girl who made Trisha Howard cry this afternoon."

"What? What are you talking about?"

"You going around boasting about that mathlete award you got while Trisha has to go tell her crazy strict parents, who'll probably beat her for it, she didn't."

"That's not -" Spencer fumbled through her distracted anger, "I didn't make her cry."

"Might as well have." Ali snipped, "Maybe if you weren't so conceded Trisha wouldn't be getting whipped by her fathers belt right -"

"Stop it!" Spencer cried out.

The putrid curl of Ali's lips at Spencer's anguish was enough to put her on the naughty list for life. "We better go inside," she sang pleasantly, "Emily's waiting for us." So with a slit eyed glare at the silent observer, Alison turned on her heels and marched down the sidewalk.

Spencer watched as she walked, not bothering to look if her friend was following her, out Toby's gate. Spencer stayed planted, trying to comprehend the conversation that had just unfolded. Turning her head slowly, she looked at the boy behind her. She was almost afraid to look, for some reason, she cared what this boy thought of her and she knew he couldn't be thinking much after Ali's confession. She had come with the intention of apologizing for Ali's deeds and he had found out she was doing very much the same thing. Spencer prayed for any sort of understanding for her misgivings in his deep sea eyes but the boy on the porch's features were unreadable, his jaw locked and his lips formed a hard line. His eyes were the only think Spencer could take anything away from as she watched them, trained like daggers on the blond leaving the premises. The sharp look didn't waver when he sent his gaze at Spencer. She wasn't sure if he was still thinking about the event that had just unfolded, or about sticking an actual dagger in their backs.

She couldn't really blame him for the latter.

Spencer quickly made the obedient move to follow her friend, pretending she couldn't feel the metal blade poking her in the spine.

Five years later and that conversation was still vivid in her mind. No matter how hard she'd tried to get it out.

She wondered how Toby was ever able to love her after days like that.

Hey, using the B word is a much bigger deal when you realize they're only about 13. haha

Another thing, I believe Toby's place is suppose to be a loft but for the purpose of this story I think it was important to have rooms to separate them so it's now more of an apartment (yup this stories going completely AU haha) Anyway, we don't even really know the whole layout of Toby's loft yet (but I think we'll get to see a lot more of it in 4B ;D)

Also, you get a cookie if you can tell me what you think prompted Ali's sudden change in behavior. ;)

(ps: sorry for the winky faces...)

Some intense Spoby talk next chapter :)