You all seemed to get a kick out of Aria in the crawl space, and I really enjoyed reading some of your theories! As for whether some of them are RIGHT or not... you'll just have to wait and see ;) REVIEW TIME!
TotalCowGirl: Well, you might be right! Only time will tell, though. And thanks so much!
Sarah: Typical Spencer, typical girls. They SUCK at sleuthing! But if they were good, we wouldn't have a show, now would we? Plus we wouldn't have anything to make fun of, haha. And I gotcha. I'm tiny like Aria, so I totally know what it's like when someone needs you to get something under a bed, or from behind a chair, or a bookshelf, haha. People like us at extreme heights (too tall/too short) are just too damn useful! And isn't that why we all love Spencer? I can relate to Spencer's #nerdpower especially, and all of the pressure put on her, and she really is SO much better than Melissa! Aria as 007... that is a sight to see. You'll find out why Aria's so freaked out. Granted, you won't find out until much later, but you will find out :) and HIGH FUCKING FIVE! The ghosts of the creatures she killed for her closet?! YOU ARE A TRUE #BOORADLEYVANCULLEN-ER! I literally laughed out loud.
Titanium Wolf: Haha, that's Aria for you! She will rip you in half if you cross her, don't be fooled by her petite frame! Need evidence? See 4A finale for her KICKING CECE DRAKE'S ASS! And I was so mad that Mona was hardly in the finale! She's basically god. You don't exclude god like that. That's how you get run over by a bus :P
lucy: Wow, thank you so much! Happy you're enjoying it! :)
Sgdp1261: Haha, Aria's kind of a clutz, so it made sense/I thought it would be funny :D and indeed, you're gonna get a LOAD of surprises coming your way. And wow, seriously thank you so very much for that compliment. How sweet are YOU!?
Alicia: Thanks! So happy you're enjoying it!
elggup: Well, keep those theories at the front of your mind, because one of them could end up being true! ;)
EmmersonTiriel: Wow, thanks! And well, we haven't seen Maya in a while, so I'm pretty rusty on her :/ and YES! Aria is so out of character on FanFiction, it annoys me so much (even if I'm somewhat guilty of that in my other fics, haha). People write her as such a wimp, when she's actually one of the feistier ones of the bunch. And all of the relationships will have their fair share of drama instore, no worries! And well, I'm gonna TRY not to make one character OOC, because I know that gets annoying, but one spouse has to win out in the end, so it's hard. I just write the characters how I see them in my head, and how I feel their personalities make themselves clear. Thanks so much for reviewing my story with such grace, hope to see you more on here!
Ava B: Haha, thank you. YOU'RE awesome! ;D YES YES! You just described all of my feelings toward Toby. Like, dude. You were A. You drove your girlfriend to the point of no return. You literally have no room to get mad at her/act like a douche. And haha, it's been a rough night for Aria. And you'll see in this chapter that it's not even OVER!
Goldenheart11: Emily really is a sweetheart XD and seriously, everywhere Spencer goes she's gonna be buried in expectations. There's no escaping it ._. and yes, hopefully we'll be back to sweet Toby next season (it's about damn time).
Bagilia: No worries, I'll try to ignore the typos ;) yep, here it is! Here's the chapter you've been waiting patiently for! We really are so much alike, it's almost scary. Hope you enjoyed your coffee, and hopefully you enjoy this next chapter!
WideOpenSpacesGirl045: Spencer's always gonna be worrying about Aria. "You're really tiny! And I love you!" They're so cute XD aww, sorry about the almost tears! As much as I kinda WANT that to happen because it's so cool when your writing makes people emotional, I always feel so bad afterward, haha. Minnesota, eh? That sounds really cool! Best of luck to you :) and thank you for the kind words, can't wait for you to read the rest of it!
ShadowsOnTheMoon: You have EARNED that shout out, my friend. And haha, classic Aria. Ruining a moment with her clumsiness ;) and Spencer's just like "Oh whoops, sorry, I spaced. Too busy trying not to crack from chronic insanity." And man, it's always gotta be foreshadowing with you! How good of a writer do you even TAKE me for? Well, I could kill off one of the girls, but I don't know if I have the heart to... we'll have to see though! And seriously, you're one to talk! You made TWO of the main girls A, and killed off Vanderjesus about a dozen times! But I love you, so it's fine ;D thank you again for your fabulous reviews!
PrettyWitchyVamp: No worries! Better late than never, as I always say. And haha, between the box and the crawl space, and now THIS, she's gonna develop some serious PTSD. And true, Spencer doesn't need her family; the liars can be her family! And as for what's going on with Aria, you'll find out! And haha, I really didn't know that already. You're too kind! Thank you :)
Alright, here we go. A lot of you have been waiting PATIENTLY for this chapter, and I am here to deliver. This is one of my favorite chapters, and I really, really hope I did it justice. I present to all of you: Haleb.
Aria walked into her dorm in the tower, letting out a long, heavy sigh. What a night. She tried to ignore her pounding head as she tiptoed along the granite, sidestepping misplaced clothes and opened, unattended textbooks sprawled across the floor. Barney was in his cage, happily pecking at the metal bars when he saw Aria. She smiled as she placed the books from the restricted section onto the bedside table and then reached out to open the cage and stroke Barney's feathers, but the minute she extended her arm and released the metal clasp, someone grabbed her.
Aria gasped, but someone put a hand over her mouth before she could make any further noises. She tried kicking and flailing, trying her hardest to escape her attacker's harsh hold as they dragged her across the floor, but she soon realized whom it was when a lock of long brown hair fell into her face, and it sure as hell wasn't her hair.
Caleb dragged her out of the door and into the hallway, shutting it closed as he flung Aria out of his grasp. Aria stood back, as soon as she managed to catch her breath, and glared at Caleb.
"Really?!" she exclaimed. "You actually managed to sneak into the girls' dormitory and kidnap me? Now I just think you're taking this magical hacker status too far."
"It couldn't wait until morning," Caleb said firmly.
"Then just come up and ask me like a normal person!" Aria retorted.
"You know boys aren't supposed to be up here," he said. "I had to sneak my way in, tap a few barriers - "
"You just don't wanna admit that the gargoyles think you're a girl with your long hair," Aria scoffed.
"Okay, now you're taking it too far - "
"Seriously, though," Aria interrupted, not giving him a chance to react to the previous statement. "Why would you sneak up on me in the middle of the night and scare me half to death to the point that I would've woken up my roommates for nothing?"
At this, he just smirked. "That," he began, "was simply revenge for you scaring the shit out of me earlier tonight."
Aria just rolled her eyes. "We're not talking about this now."
"If we're not talking about this now, we're not talking about this ever," Caleb snarled, and Aria was surprised by his fierce tone. "And you know I won't settle for not talking about it ever. So spill it, Aria!"
"No," she said stubbornly, ignoring his long, well-thought-out monologue. "Now move away from the door so that I can get inside; if I leave my owl alone for too long with the cage open, he's going to eat the rest of my jewelry."
"Aria - "
"It's not my place to say!" she finally cried. "Hanna would kill me if I told you!"
"Hanna needs to understand that I am trying to protect her," Caleb spat.
"Caleb, please, I'm exhausted, and my head is ready to split open," Aria pleaded. "I don't wanna do this now."
"Good, then I'll make it simple," Caleb said curtly as he crossed his arms against his chest, blocking the entry into the dorm. "Tell me what you know, and I'll let you go to bed."
"Well then we're gonna be out here all night."
"Aria," Caleb said, desperation crystal clear in his voice, in his eyes. "Please."
Aria stared at him, conflicted. He needed answers. He just wanted to keep Hanna safe, and she felt horrible for keeping him from doing his job. She loved Hanna, and Hanna would hate her forever for this, but Caleb was her friend, too.
Finally, she bowed her head as she sat down on the stone steps leading up to the dorm. "Well, I guess you know about the fangs, right?"
"Yeah, I could infer," he said dryly as he sat down next to her. "You got one, Spencer got one, Hanna got one - "
"And Emily got one, too," Aria finished for him, causing Caleb to raise his eyebrows all the way up to his hairline in surprise. Aria sighed. "All four of us did, and that's about all we know. But someone is trying to hurt us with those fangs. You were right from the start; this isn't some childish prank." As Aria said it, the words seeped into her head, and it became more and more real to her. It also became more and more terrifying.
Someone wants to hurt me and my friends.
Taking a shaky breath, Aria continued. "We think that the fangs could have something to do with what happened to Mike, and the Chamber of Secrets."
"Enemies of the Heir, Beware," Caleb quoted ominously, before turning to Aria. "What is the - "
"No way," she said as she stood up from the stairwell. "I'm not saying anything else. Just work with what you've got from that."
Caleb groaned, not bothering to change her mind. "Fine," he said as he got up as well. "I'll see you in the morning."
With that, he made his way down the stairwell, but he didn't stop at the statue of Rowena Ravenclaw, where he would turn to go up the other stairwell to the boys' dorms. Instead, he kept going down the steps.
"Where are you going?" Aria called, noticing this.
He looked up at her from the bottom step. "I've got some amends to make," he said determinedly as he exited the the hall, while Aria shouted after him, "Do you ever sleep?!"
Hanna lay in her bedpost, staring out the window as she stroked her cat, Cocoa - yeah, she was a tabby cat, but she always looked like a "Cocoa" to Hanna - and pondered over whatever just happened in the common room earlier. Lucas had kissed her. He had kissed her. She always thought it was strange how he acted like an overexcited labrador around her, but she never viewed it as actual puppy-love; she always saw their relationship as purely platonic, and that his dog-like behavior was just a response to the drastic differences between the two of them: he was the shy, awkward nerd, and she was the "it" girl. There was supposed to be awkward tension. Wasn't that how it worked in the movies? Or was it that the two of them were supposed to get together and find something in common among their drastic differences? She didn't know; she kinda tuned out whenever Aria would make a reference to any of the sappy chick flicks her mother used to make her watch... even if deep down, Hanna kinda wished she owned a TV so that she could watch every single one of them.
She brought Cocoa up further against her chest, snuggling her face against her soft orange fur. She was just about to drift off to sleep when she heard a thud-thud-thud against her window. At first, she just assumed it was a tree branch or something, but then the thudding got louder, and she soon realized that there were no trees that close to the castle. Frightened, Hanna scooted away to the far edge of the bed, away from the window, with Cocoa still in her arms as she reached for her wand that was resting on the shelf above her pillow. With a shaking arm, she held up her wand for self defense, preparing for the window to open and for some horrible beast to come bursting through, about ready to kill her.
But after practically staring a hole through the window, she finally saw the source of the tapping; Caleb was tapping his wand against the window, hanging upside down, trying to break into her dorm. Gawking, Hanna set down Cocoa as she sat up on the bed and climbed over to the window, undoing the latch so that Caleb could get in.
"What are you doing?" she whispered frantically. Caleb rolled through the window onto her bed, coughing and gasping to catch his breath.
"Waiting for you to open up," he gasped. "Took you long enough!"
"That's twice now you've scared me half to death in my dorm. I thought you were gonna kill me!"
He gave her a knowing look as he rolled onto his stomach. "And that's twice now you've proven to me that you're hanging around Spencer too much. Quit it with the accusations!"
Hanna just stared at him as she climbed off the bed and stood in front of him. "You know," she started steadily, trying hard not to laugh, "some people would call this trespassing?"
"Are any of those people in this room?" he said quizzically.
"Well, if there are, none of them are awake," she answered back cryptically, causing him to break out into a smile as he rested his chin on his fists and lay flat on the bedspread, gazing admirably at Hanna, who felt self-conscious under his gaze. She was in a pair of plaid pajama pants and a white, see-through v-neck, with her hair in a loose side braid. Little did she know that Caleb didn't give a damn; to him, Hanna could wear a trash bag over a tribal skirt and still look knock-you-over stunning.
"What are you doing here?" she asked seriously as she leaned down in front of his face, getting down to business. He just kept grinning as he took her hand. "I wanna show you something."
"Show me something?"
"Yeah," he chirped as he got up on the bed. "C'mere, and bring the cat if you want."
"Her name is Cocoa!" Hanna whined as she blindly followed him to the window. "You've known that forever."
"Yeah, well I prefer her to be nameless," Caleb retorted snarkily as he opened the window further. "We haven't been on the best terms since she scratched my face on the train that one year!"
"Well, that scar above your eyebrow will always be a way for you to remember me by!" Hanna said optimistically as she scooped Cocoa up in her arms, but then stopped at the window that Caleb was climbing out of. "Now what are you doing?"
"Just trust me okay?"
"I am not going to climb out of a window at two in the morning with my parkour master of a boyfriend!" Hanna whispered hastily.
"Hey, I'm just happy to know that after our little spat yesterday, you still consider me your boyfriend," Caleb said smartly.
"I'm serious, what good is out there? We live in the cellars."
"So much, Hanna," Caleb said in a worldly voice. "You don't know what you're missing. Just c'mon!"
Sighing in defeat, Hanna took Caleb's hand tentatively as she held Cocoa in her other arm. She should be angry at him for the argument they had the previous night, but she just couldn't stay mad at him... it was impossible. And if he was coming to apologize, then she was all for it.
She stepped over the window sill onto the landing. "Okay, now what?"
Caleb turned to her, the moonlight bouncing off of his perfect features. "I'm gonna show you how I got down here."
"Oh, you cannot be serious."
"Hanna, c'mon," he whined. "It has the best view. Please?"
Still not sure where he was going with this, she followed him. They walked along the landing until Caleb brought her to a cylindrical brick tower; it looked awfully similar to that of the Ravenclaw tower. Caleb held up his wand and pointed it straight at the brick. "Aparecium!"
Immediately, the brick started to rumble, and seemingly out of thin air appeared a series of protruding metal groves, much like that of a ladder, for one to climb up. Caleb turned back to Hanna. "Ladies first."
Giving a nervous smile, Hanna held Cocoa closer to her chest as she started up the ladder. Willing herself not to look down, even if looking up was just as scary, she climbed up.
"Are you sure about this?" she said in a quaking voice to Caleb, who was right behind her.
"Don't you trust me?" he said from behind.
I did before, she thought grimly to herself. After this, I'm not so sure!
Finally, after what seemed like hours (the tower was very tall), they reached the top. Hanna let out the breath she didn't even know she was holding as she climbed over, Caleb not too far behind.
"That... was... way too scary," Hanna gasped in between breaths.
"I know," Caleb agreed as he climbed the remaining groves. "But look!"
Hanna looked at him, puzzled, before following where he was pointing. Instantly, her breath was taken away. "Oh... my god."
Out in the distance, from where they were standing on the tower, was a view of everything. The Black Lake, the Quidditch fields, the hills and mountains in the distance, the Forbidden Forest, all of it. And when bathed in the moonbeams, it looked even more beautiful.
"It's... it's gorgeous, Caleb," Hanna whispered breathlessly.
"Yeah," he said softly as he came up to her, although he wasn't looking at the view. He had his eye on something else.
"Yeah, you are."
Blushing, and thankful that he couldn't see her blushing in the dark, Hanna turned to him, and was met with an embarrassed, apologetic look on his face.
"I'm sorry," he finally said. "I shouldn't have picked a fight with you. I was just tired of being left in the dark, and..."
"I'm sorry for keeping you in the dark," she said bashfully. "It was... stupid."
"No, it wasn't," he said denyingly as he took her hand in his. "You were trying to protect me, I understand that. But I'm trying to protect you, too. And now I finally can."
Hanna froze at this, nearly dropping Cocoa from her one-armed embrace. "Wait... what do you - "
"I made Aria spill everything," he admitted. "Well... mostly everything."
Hanna's heart sank. "Why would you do that?" she asked softly. She was tired of yelling, tired of being angry. Now she was just hurt.
"Because I'm tired of the secrets," he said painfully. "I want you to be able to trust me."
"It was never a problem of me not trusting you," Hanna snapped as she pulled her hand out of his and stalked over to the edge of the tower roof, where she promptly sat down. "It was a problem of you getting involved, and something happening to you the way it's happening to us!"
"What's happening to you guys?" he said desperately as he walked up behind her. "I can help, Hanna!"
"We're figuring it out," she muttered, still not turning around to face him. Caleb sighed as he got down to his knees and sat next to her.
"Remember the first time we met?" he said incongruently, almost giving Hanna whiplash by the way she turned to him in shock.
"Umm... yes?"
"You were dating that guy Sean," he continued, looking out into the starry night sky, looking so concentrated that one would presume he was trying to count every single star. "I think it was in... Potions class?"
"Yep," Hanna confirmed with a head nod. "You asked me for a spare quill and I told you to fuck off."
"I was so impressed," Caleb admitted with a laugh. "No girl, especially not a pretty girl, had ever told me off like that!"
Hanna giggled as she took a risk and rested her head on his shoulder while she calmly stroked Cocoa's soft fur. "Why are you telling me this, Caleb?"
Caleb took his hand and lifted her head from his shoulder as he turned her toward him. "It was that day that I knew I wanted to make you mine," he said genuinely. "Sean could jump off a cliff for all I cared; I wanted you in my arms, next to me, and I never wanted to let you go... I was in love with you, Hanna, and I still am."
Hanna could feel her heart grow wings inside her chest as she impulsively leaned forward and kissed Caleb right on the mouth. She forgot about Lucas completely, and it seemed irrelevant now to tell Caleb about the kiss; it meant nothing, and wasn't like she had leaned into it or anything. He was the one who had pursued it. After several minutes, Caleb finally pulled away.
"So you understand where I'm coming from?" Caleb said hopefully.
"Yes," Hanna said through the widest, brightest smile she had to offer. "I love you, too, Caleb! I mean, look at us. We can't even survive one day of being mad at each other!"
Caleb matched up with her smile on his own face as he wrapped her in a big hug, until he heard a sharp MEOW! along with a hiss and short, searing pain on his left arm.
"OW!" he yelped, as Cocoa leapt out of both of their arms and onto the center of the rooftop, only to turn around and stare back at both of them with her yellow, haunting eyes.
"That damn cat," Caleb muttered as he he wiped the blood off of his arm with the sleeve of his robe, while Hanna just laughed and laughed.
She was certain now; there was no place she'd rather be at two in the morning.
Side Note: Magical hacker Caleb reporting for duty. Sorry for this haleb scene that is probably like salt on fresh wounds for everyone who'll be upset when Caleb makes his departure :( BUT you've gotta admit, they make a cute couple, and their moments together are ADORABLE! Also, knock-you-over stunning? I have to give credit where credit is due, and that phrase is a full on Heather Hogan-ism. She used it in her 3x16 recap when describing Lucy Hale without make up, and I thought it was so brilliant that I just HAD to use it in my writing! ANYWAY, hopefully you enjoyed this chapter as much as I HOPED you would, and be sure to review with your thoughts! Also, get ready, because next chapter starts HALLOWEEN! :D
