Disclaimed: I own nothing except the storyline and the laptop I'm using to type this out and publish it. You know how it goes. Still has possible spoilers for those who haven't read Wanted.
Reflections
Emily reflects on how things in her life were so boring before she met Alison. She was a great swimmer, sure, but never really close to anyone. Her swim team friends were kind of default friends-she knew them well because of so many hours spent practising together and travelling to and from swim meets together, but never really spent much time with anyone. Between swimming and schoolwork, she was pretty busy as it was.
She remembers how dazzled she was by Ali when Ali first approached her, and she especially remembers how Ali had mocked her for kissing her-particularly because she had been so nervous about it, and so sure that Alison DiLaurentis could be the love of her life. She wonders if now, she had idolized Ali because Ali was the first to make her feel like she had the potential to be someone interesting and important.
She took all the photos of Ali off her walls and mirror, and is now replacing them with new photos of her with Spencer, Aria and Hanna. She did feel bad about burying all her Ali memorabilia with the pink change purse from Ali, but saw that it was for the best, especially if she was to move on with her life.
She recalls how shocked she'd been when the truth emerged: she wasn't friends with Ali in seventh grade, but her twin sister pretending to be her. She feels a pang of bitterness as she thinks over how successfully Courtney DiLaurentis managed to dupe them all-and not just her, Spencer, Aria and Hanna, but the rest of school. Hell, she duped all of Rosewood and did it all so well. She quickly came to realize that she hadn't been in love with Ali, but her twin. However, that all changed when she saw the real Ali.
She wonders now if the reason she came to like the real Ali so fast was because she thought she'd been in love with her all those years ago. Maybe her crush had transferred over from one twin to the next. Or maybe she wasn't sure who she wanted.
She thinks over all the trouble that her friendship with Ali-and Courtney for that matter-brought her and her family. Thanks to Ali and then A, she'd had to try to go a program that would make her 'gay demons' go away, and then been sent to Iowa. This was after A had outed her to the school, and her parents. Thanks to A, she'd messed up things with Maya and broken up with Isaac, who'd accepted her for her.
She realizes that maybe it wasn't all bad. She doesn't like to dwell on the hurt Ali caused in her life, preferring instead to look on the better side of things. Like how she and her old friends were able to reconcile, first out of fear from one A and then progressing to meeting for coffee and creating new memories of the four of them together. After she'd run away from Iowa, her family had made more of an effort to accept her as she was and even tried to get along with Maya.
She thinks that that's another relationship she could try to fix: she could apologise to Maya and they could try to be friends again. She knows the pain of losing a friend and could try to help Maya cope with Jenna's death.
She wonders if Ali and her twin sister were some sort of catalyst for so much happening. Because of one sister's jealousy and the other sister's desire to get back at her, several people had died needlessly, causing pain for their families and friends. They had lost a sister, a brother, niece or nephew, friend or cousin, son or daughter. Toby, Jenna, Ian, Mona. Hanna had come close to death, but recovered.
Emily considers how she had had Ali put on a pedestal for so many years and believed nothing but good. Admittedly, it was easy to think of her as the victim: the beautiful golden girl who everyone loved, or loved to hate, and that made the reality of her as the killer a little harder to swallow. It was hard to place the two images side-by-side: the fiction of Ali, beautiful, innocent and blamesless beside the reality of Ali: still beautiful, but scheming and manipulative, someone who was so hungry for revenge that she could be driven to such horrible acts. She thinks that without Alison DiLaurentis, her life is easier somehow.
And there you have chapter 2. Hope you liked it. I'm going to do my best to get the next chapter up soon, but I'll be impressed if I manage to have it written by the end of the week. One Anthropology essay, a Classics essay and a Physics test to study for, are not conducive to writing fanfiction. I'd love reviews or any suggestions you might want to make. This only has two more chapters though-I don't want to drag things out longer because then ideas would run dry and it'd change the way I want it to be somehow.
Reviews would be lovely :)