A/N: Maxi-Luca, xDDD. A controls the whole communication system in the States; and outside. xDDD No, I'm kidding. A didn't know Emily was typing a text. It just happened at the same time. Good point, though: if it was ambiguous, no, A didn't know about that. ninja awesome monkey: I don't mind your leaving as many comments as you want at all. Please, feel free to write whatever. Comments are very much appreciated. Even if they criticize something you don't like :)
This is angst. Please don't hate me?
She shouldn't have dealt with it this way. She wasn't supposed to deal with it this way. She was strong now, and brave, and she believed in herself and in everything good that was inside her.
And, really, at the very beginning she was brave about it. She was prepared for whatever she could do to stop it. She could've searched, if she'd been in Rosewood, every house, every place looking for A, looking for clues, looking in the eyes of every possible murderer or stalker or dangerous person who lived in their town, trying to catch that spark of darkness that she thought A should have, although she hadn't really been able to see it in anyone before, not like that, not so dark and mean and bad. Maybe she wasn't really used to looking for that kind of darkness. She was used to understanding the kind of bad feeling that made all of them behave badly and cruelly sometimes; not that she excused that kind of behavior, or even really understood it, even in herself whenever she felt like that (which wasn't that often anyway), but she was used to trying to put it in context, and of course she knew people like Jenna might have had her reasons to hate all of them, to seek revenge against Alison and against them, or to wish them the worst. She was blind, after all, and it was their fault. And Alison had behaved badly too, and was dead now, and it was too hard a punishment, because, yes, she was dead and death had no repair beyond it. Even Spencer had behaved badly from time to time, whenever she chose to pick up a suspect and throw all her forces (the whole group, and her intellect) against him or her, but she didn't deserve to go to jail for things she hadn't even been close to doing. Especially because she wasn't even that good at throwing forces against anyone. She just worked her brains out, pushed herself and the others to the limit, tried to question everybody and everything (except people that she'd never question at all), sneaked around trying to find her suspects' weaknesses, but it was a game too big, too scary for her too. At the end, no, she was just a driving force for all of them, she was the one who was always on the spot, she was the one who took the falls and who mostly showed her face whenever they were wrong about something (which was all the time), and it wasn't fair that she had both A and the police after her, and she was a good person. She was a good person. They were all, fundamentally, good people. But they'd made mistakes. They didn't want to be in this position. They wanted to tell the truth and live their lives. Emily knew her friends, and she knew this was the only thing they all wanted.
Now, A was a completely different story. She couldn't see A. Whoever it was, she couldn't see it. She couldn't understand a single thing about it.
This wasn't a game, no matter what A said in his/her/its messages.
So she waited for the next text. She prepared herself to put her strength to the test so she could pass the audition for teenage heroine of the year that A was staging for her. She waited every day for the next text, but it never came while she was in Texas.
She talked to Spencer on the phone constantly. But it wasn't fun or even romantic, because they were both too eager to know whatever A had to say about this. Spencer basically agreed with her theory about girlfriends, although she was still convinced that the third picture was directed strictly against her. She tried to keep the appearances, tried to look strong, tried to reason and talk and theorize about it, the same way she always did when she was really worried and obsessed, but Emily could tell she was also scared of whatever A had in mind. The cookie plan hadn't gone well. They'd gone back to the house to find only the box, but no cookie. The cookie had gone missing. Apparently, Spencer was right about that and the cookie had a very important meaning. Emily almost felt guilty that she'd wished for the cookie to go away, since it turned out A had conceded her the wish to stop the encounter with Wren from happening. She felt bad about it, as if her own jealousy had caused the cookie to disappear, although it wasn't her fault. She didn't have that kind of psychic powers yet. But Wren didn't really matter; the cookie did matter and it wasn't there anymore. Perhaps this was also a part of the game. Frustration was part of the game. Impatience. Uncertainty. Isolation.
On the fifth day after A-day, she took the plane and went back to Rosewood. The girls came to pick her up along with Ashley Marin. Happy she was coming back, there was also a high pitch of anxiety inside her, because by now she'd already realized A was waiting for her return too. Spencer took care of everything, arranged a little sleepover at her house, and since Aria and Hanna were there too, they were allowed to sleep in the same room, which turned out to be more of a torture game, this time invented by the Hastings, because how could you sleep peacefully next to a person you wanted to touch when you couldn't really do anything? So they decided Emily would sleep with Hanna and Spencer would sleep with Aria. It made things a little easier, since humans were not born to sleep together when they wanted to do something that was way beyond sleeping.
They discussed A that night. The text. Emily on the spotlight. The weakest link. Dr. Sullivan. Hockey sticks. The dumbest friend (Hanna argued strongly against it). Bluffing.
The text came the day after, when she was already at the Marins', unpacking her stuff. A welcomed her back, only to add "wanna bet on it?" That was it. She understood A was referring to the blood on Spencer's hockey stick. She called Spencer. They discussed it on the phone and they discussed it later when they met in person.
Nothing else happened.
But what was she supposed to do? Pull out a heroic gesture out of nothing at all?
She hated her own capacity to just wait for things to come. She was impatient, but she felt unable to break the riddle. Was she supposed to stop this just by closing her eyes shut and praying aloud we will make it, I will destroy A and stuff like that? Was she supposed to rally the streets, vigilante-style, superhero-style, stopping suspicious people in the middle of the night, ransacking Jenna's and Garret's rooms when they were out, or to hack everybody's computers and cell phones and the entire Social Security System and national Bank System to at least find out if Dr. Sullivan was still alive? But she was no Caleb. She was no Spencer. She was just a sixteen-year-old student and swimmer who was considered to be nice and cute by most of the Rosewood population excluding those who were A or homophobes. Was she supposed to run again? Was she supposed to find a solution once she put her running shoes on and started pushing her body further?
She did go running the next morning, but it didn't help clear her mind. She stopped by Ali's house, or rather Jason's house, feeling helpless. It was a normal, burningly ordinary summer day. After observing the house for a while, wondering if she should just go inside – maybe that was the whole point, since she'd missed it the last time – she left for the house across the street to see Spencer and spend the day obsessing about this again. And then, hours after that, when she was of course already alone, the next message came. She should have expected that kind of message. But, at that point, stupidly enough, she was still waiting for a heroic kind of request. Something she could work on. A strategic move where she'd had to find this, do that, play cool, play bad. She could never get the whole point of a monstrous, shadowy ghost whose main purpose was to really, really break them down from the inside.
"Break her heart or she goes to jail. You have five more days. – A"
So that was the plan. Five days. The court hearing was in a week.
Heartbreaker and heroine. The roles she was destined to play didn't really suit her.
It was the kind of twisted reasoning that only A could come up with. It was such a nice, perceptive touch to tie both things together: breaking a heart was surely the most wicked way to become the main character of the play, especially if it was the leader's heart, right? Especially if it was Spencer's heart, because Spencer was unbreakable and, at the same time, vulnerable; and she just couldn't, wouldn't go to jail for something she hadn't done. Not if Emily could stop it. Heroine turned villain, and back to heroin again. That was A. That was what A wanted her to do – against Spencer, for Spencer. She was calling Spencer when another text came. "Keep it a secret. I know you can do that. – A". Of course, she was expected to shut her mouth up. She already knew that, but she wasn't going to do it. However, there was a picture attached, so she opened the document feeling dumbfounded and sick, knowing that picture was the key to her silence.
Dr. Sullivan's body was lying on a linoleum floor.
Her legs and arms were spread in a weird posture, her face turned towards the opposite direction from where the person with the camera was, partially hidden by her dark, slightly tousled hair. Emily's knees trembled at the sight and her heart jumped to her throat, so she had to flee to the bathroom to puke. Once dinner was out of her digestive system, she forced herself to look at the picture again. You couldn't really assure she was dead. She could be, but she could also be unconscious. The part of her face shown in the picture was extremely pale, that was for sure, and she didn't look healthy and good at all. Obviously. That was the point again, right? She looked closer but couldn't see very well, so she downloaded the picture to her laptop and amplified it to be able to appreciate every detail. She had to do it. Her heart wasn't jumping anymore; it was as if it had stopped beating too. Her movements were groggy and zombie-like, and she just felt she had to check every detail before even starting to think about what it all meant. There was a bloody stain in the back of her head, both hidden and mingled with hair, and Emily felt sick again when she amplified the image to look closely at it, trying to decipher if that was the mark of death or just a bloody wound that would heal with the proper treatment.
So that was the blood. That was the blood.
She panicked.
There was a body. There was also blood. And that was Dr. Sullivan.
She hated to panic at night. It was always better to panic in the morning. But during the night you couldn't do anything. You couldn't walk out, run, swim, talk. Besides, she couldn't talk to anyone. She couldn't even go talk to a psychologist like that other time. Well, that was ironic. She'd basically put Dr. Sullivan and then Spencer in this position when she had run away because she was the weakest link. With that other text she'd been blackmailed to tell Aria's parents about Mr. Fitz. She had run, she had refused to break down and betray Aria, or any other friend; she'd decided to open up to an adult, it had been her decision even though they had all gone there looking for her, and they had all finally spoken about it, and they had all asked for help. Only for this. Only to be met by this picture now. Now that Aria's parents knew about Mr. Fitz, now that she hadn't had to betray Aria, now that she was happy, that she was in love, that she was protecting (well, sort of) Spencer, now it was the moment to be met by this concrete consequence of the whole movement that A had set in motion that night when he/she/it tried to force her to betray Aria. She had to break Spencer. She had to break Spencer to save her from jail. To buy at least some time for her, while they tried to find out what was happening and if Dr. Sullivan was really dead or if this was just another set-up.
It was late at night, and Emily decided she'd run anyway, no matter how late it was.
Her feet touched the soil's hardness through the airy material of her sneakers. The constant, rhythmic blow provided a momentary, scarce sense of relief.
Deserted streets, parked cars, streetlights illuminating the night, a couple of groups of people coming home after a party or a dinner or a get-together, teenagers sitting against a car, talking about other boys and girls, outside of a store, maybe waiting for someone else to get alcohol for them, wasting their time, laughing and yelling and playing games. She passed all of them, and some of those people glanced back at her solitary, running figure with curiosity, in wonder that someone so young would come out to run at that time of night. No one approached her, though. She supposed that was better. What was she going to say? That she was being blackmailed and forced to break the only thing she actually cared about and that she was trying to desperately save? Like someone could even understand what was going on inside her without actually ending up dead – or kidnapped - or hurt.
She tried to be cold about it.
There was a chance that Dr. Sullivan wasn't dead. The picture was not totally convincing. She was no doctor. She had no idea. She couldn't risk it.
There was a chance she could do this coldly and intelligently. So where was that chance? Why didn't it jump to her eyes and her hands to grab it? How could she find it? Where were her intelligence and her coolness now that she needed them?
There was no way Spencer could ever believe her if she just appeared at her front door to tell her she wanted to break up. Spencer was too smart. Spencer knew her too well. Spencer would know it was A. Spencer couldn't believe that in a million years. Spencer was not Samara. She couldn't be fooled with a gross, obvious trap. What in the world did A think she could do to break Spencer's heart if Spencer perfectly knew everything about A and everything about her? A was crazy. There was no way. Not even if she decided to do it.
She stopped where the town ended and the forest begun, out of breath and in muscular, relieving pain. She wanted to go in there. To put herself in danger. To get physical about this fight and not to think about it.
To pay for her mistake of talking to Dr. Sullivan and maybe sending her to her death.
But, instead, she turned around and went home.
Getting into a fight with a tree or a squirrel wasn't really going to change the way things were for her and for Spencer now; it wasn't going to save Dr. Sullivan either.
She waited for her own brain to illuminate her with a brilliant idea during the next two days. She waited for the chance, she looked for it inside and outside. She tried to forget the image of Dr. Sullivan's bloody head wound. She even snooped around Jenna's house on her own, only to be discovered by Toby's questioning, startled glances that made her leave in shame and sorrow. She convinced Aria to go with her back to Dr. Sullivan's office downtown; but none of them were Spencer, so they came back empty-handed, with nothing that they could subtly steal or take a look at. Both Spencer and Hanna knew she wasn't all right, but she kept saying she was really worried about A and about the hearing, which was, actually, the truth; she just kept quiet about the rest. They were all used to saying half the truth. It was always easier than trying to make up for a whole new lie. You could actually believe yourself when you just said half of what was going on inside you. Spencer did try to question her a couple of times, almost as if she suspected she was up to something she hadn't said, but at the same time she was too worried about her own obsessive theories about Jason and the lost cookie and she seemed to trust Emily's word, which made everything even worse, in a way, because she did trust her. She did trust her word.
And that only made Emily's love for her grow deeper and higher.
And love only caused her to feel more anguish and pain, because she knew she couldn't risk it. She couldn't let Spencer go to jail. But she couldn't break her heart either. Hanna was more aggressive, for once, than Spencer. But still Emily didn't crack. A was right about her: she did know how to keep a secret when she knew it was important. If she cracked, the hockey stick would be released; maybe Dr. Sullivan's lifeless body would be released too, if she was actually dead.
A sent another text after they had dinner on Thursday night. Hanna was keeping a close eye on her. It was probably Spencer who'd asked her to do it; or both of them had decided it in view of her recent anxious behavior. But she got the text when she was preparing to hop into bed for another sleepless night. She still had two days, but A was getting impatient. Almost as if he/she/it knew she needed to be pushed further to jump into the empty pool. When she was little, her dad had taught her to swim. It didn't come naturally to her, although now she felt as if she'd been born knowing how to do it. Her father had been patient and nice with her as he always was, but when the moment came to jump from a diving board which seemed to be really high, she chickened out. He had pushed her on the back and, although he'd been gentle and she'd known what to do when her body splashed the water and went down before resurfacing again, she'd been mad at him because his shove had taken her by surprise. A wasn't gentle and nice like her father. A was a disgusting piece of shit and, if she could, she swore she'd be the first one to send him/her/it to jail or to the grave the second she finally managed to reach a conclusion about who this monster was, even if he/she/it had his/her/its motives to hate them all. But apparently A knew she needed to be pushed further when she was chickening out and paralyzed by doubt. Yeah, of course A knew that. She was the weakest link precisely because of that, right?
So A told her time was running out and instructed her to kiss someone else. It was one of A's jokes to stress the fact that it shouldn't be difficult for her, since she was well known for being a really great kisser.
Even if she did something like that, would Spencer really buy it? She'd be mad anyway. She wasn't sure if she'd be as mad as to be heartbroken, though, or if she'd just unleash the forces of nature against her for doing such a thing. Unless she kissed someone meaningful in her life, someone Spencer already took as a rival. Maya. Or Paige. But, even if she did that, she wasn't sure Spencer would buy it. Spencer knew Emily was in love with her. It wasn't a secret. The only person Spencer would ever truly fear was Alison, and she couldn't kiss Alison because Alison was dead. There were two things she could do: kiss someone, which would certainly inspire a heinous reaction from Spencer, or do something more subtle and awful that would show Emily's untouchable, unbreakable bond with Alison, the bond Emily herself knew didn't exist anymore, except as a pale shadow of what had been long ago; but that was the one Spencer would still fear or resent the most. A was not in favor of subtlety, though. A just told her to go kiss someone else.
What was she even thinking? How could she really, actually be considering the best way to break Spencer?
The mere realization that she'd been put on that spot sent her into shock again, more violently than ever. A wanted her to go there, to her darkest place. She knew Spencer better than anyone. And A wanted that knowledge to be the key to take Spencer down, but also to break her. She was being used as a refined instrument for rupture. And somehow her brain was working in that direction while she tried to escape from it. She couldn't let her brain do that. She couldn't allow herself to think about that and to be instrumented for that kind of evil.
She had to shut herself down, and at the same time force herself to come to a decision that would keep Spencer out of jail.
Kiss someone.
It didn't actually need to be a relevant, meaningful someone.
It could be anyone.
It could be a boy, for all she knew. It could be as meaningless as that.
And it'd keep Spencer out of jail, even if she went furious.
Emily hopped out of bed again and decided to wash her face, trying to use the cold water to anesthetize her nerves. It didn't do much, the same way running hadn't done much. Hanna was still awake when she came out of the bathroom, pretending to be normal and merely asphyxiated by the heat waves of the summer when all that was asphyxiating her was the burden A had placed on her shoulders to push her against the ground and make her crawl, the burden of her own love and her responsibility and her priorities and her doubts.
She sensed Hanna's eyes on her the whole time.
And, when she opened the door to the bedroom, she heard Hanna's voice calling after her, the underlying edge of concern and warning in her voice.
"Where are you going?"
She turned and forced a smile.
"Running."
"Isn't it too late to run?"
"Yep." It was too late to run away, that was for sure. "It is. But I can't sleep and that'll help me do it."
"I can't sleep either", Hanna said. "Why don't you stay? We can listen to some music."
She had her earphones on, although Emily suspected she wasn't really listening to anything.
She pretended to hesitate for a brief moment. "I need the fresh air", she finally explained, using the heat wave as a excuse. "But I'll be back in fifteen minutes."
She closed the door and ran down the stairs, trying to put as much distance with Hanna or with any other caring human being as possible. She was reaching the front door when she had a sudden, strange moment of inner idiocy. The light didn't strike her; it was another thing. Maybe she had it because she was thinking about Hanna and Hanna was not dumb at all but had a tendency to use alcohol in certain conflictive situations. Somehow she decided to come in the living room and search for the cabinet where Ms. Marin kept her bottles of wine, from where Hanna had also taken the vodka and the tequila bottles for that little gathering at Spencer's house when she'd kiss her the first time.
She felt like she was going to throw up again at the abrupt, happy irruption of a good, nice memory.
Instead, she looked for a bottle of tequila and, since she couldn't find one, she grabbed one of rum and left the house.
She went running in her car. Hanna wouldn't buy that in a million years, but she couldn't just run around town with a bottle of alcohol in her hands. She was the dumbest friend. Not Hanna. She was the weakest link.
But she had to kiss a person tonight, she had to buy time for Spencer.