I forced myself to sit down and finish this chapter for all my wonderful loyal followers of this story. You all always make me smile even on my worst days. Thank you.

AND thanks to kayweston for editing and helping me finish. She's absolutely wonderful.

"Rise and shine my beautiful angel."

Alison's eyes blink sleepily as she hears a light, soft voice close to her face. They flutter open to see Emily buttoning up her collared, sheer work shirt just inches away from her. A smile creeps across her face and she hums pleasantly as she snuggles deeper in the sheets, burying herself in them since Emily's warmth isn't there to keep her naked body cozy anymore.

"Leaving already?" Alison murmurs sleepily, stifling a yawn.

"I slept in, I should have left an hour ago but it's okay," Emily tells her gently as she gives her a quick kiss on the forehead before getting ready to go.

"Wait, wait," Ali whines in a tiny voice and Emily turns back to see the blonde sitting up and bringing the sheets up around her to cover herself. Her lips are pouting and she stares longingly at Emily. "Emmy."

The brunette can't deny the blonde anything. She goes over to her and gives her a soft peck, their lips colliding gently.

"Mmm," Ali moans quietly, kissing back more urgently as she lets her tongue move purposely against the brunette's.

"How do you not even have morning breath?" Emily mumbles as she breathes quickly and Alison laughs gently, dropping the sheets as she brings her tiny fingers up to cup Emily's face lovingly.

"Mouthwash, lots and lots of mouthwash," Alison murmurs before kissing her one more time.

"You're so gorgeous," Emily breathes as she pulls away and stares at Alison's naked upper body. Her eyes appreciatively linger on all the right places.

"As are you," Alison blushes as she yawns and gets back under the sheets. "And I'm all yours."

"I gotta get to the office, I've delayed it an hour," Emily says as she leaves. "And you should wake up. Hanna's gonna be here in an hour."

"I'll see you when you get off? You'll come won't you?"

"Of course I will. I'll be done at two, and I'll be there at three."

"I'll see you then babe."

x-x-x

Alison grows antsy in the passenger seat of the car as Hanna and Spencer and Aria gossip about who is back in Rosewood and who has changed the most and blah blah blah, all things Alison could care less about. She's a little envious that they're all old friends and able to catch up about such things but she doesn't mind when she realizes she wins because she has Emily. But the nervousness of seeing her parents is beginning to get to her. Well, forget her parents- Courtney is an even scarier thought.

"Hello? Earth to Alison," Hanna nudges her with her elbow from the driver's seat and Alison is pulled out of her thoughts.

"What? Sorry, I spaced," the blonde apologizes as she grins sheepishly.

"No shit," Hanna scoffs and Spencer swats at her from the backseat.

"Hanna! Be a little more sensitive. She's seeing her parents for the first time in a long time," Spencer reprimands and Alison gives her a grateful look in the rearview mirror. The two of them have come a long way from their dysfunctional first meeting.

"Yeah, seriously Han," Aria chimes in. "She's probably nervous as hell."

"I just don't know what to expect," Alison admits truthfully.

"Give me a recap of why we hate them," Hanna requests as she tries to split her attention between driving and chatting.

"When I was growing up, my parents paid all the attention in the world to my druggie brother and my psycho sister, and they never seemed to really care about me. When I moved out with Darren, they flipped shit- and when he made me look like an attention depraved slut, they blamed me for their financial despair since they hired a lawyer to help me. So I moved out thanks to Cece and haven't seen them since even though I still wired them money, mostly when I was stripping and now it's here and there."

"You're too nice," Aria shakes her head. "My parents would never have seen any of that money."

"Same, why the hell do you give them money?" Hanna asks incredulously.

"I don't know," Alison says quietly, hesitant to explain. It's not that these girls won't understand, it's that Emily already does- so opening up again is hard. "I guess I still feel guilty, and I want them to care about me like they never seemed to."

The silence that falls over the car is powerful, and Alison sits alone in her own thoughts until she feels Hanna reach over and hold her hand with a smile.

"It'll be okay," the spunky blonde tells her with a grin and she hears Aria and Spence agree. But the three girls are finally beginning to piece together Alison's emotional trauma. It's a lot greater than all three of them anticipated, and that was saying something since none of them ever forget the Wilden incident. It seems to them that until Cece came along (and then Emily) the poor girl had never had anyone show genuine love for her in any capacity. Her family didn't show her love, and then the first guy she really trusted and fell for abused her until she was a timid frightened girl, and then her family acted as though it was her fault.

Alison misses Cece some days so much that she has to deal with it privately, on her own. Sometimes she'll just think of her and it'll set off a series of memories and the next thing she knows she's missing her fiercely and doesn't know how to function for a brief moment. She wishes the rebellious snarky blonde was here today to face her family with her. Of course Ali loves Emily with a burning passion, but Cece was her sister- Cece wasn't afraid of anyone, she would put the DiLaurentis' in their place in a heartbeat. Alison smiles briefly at the thought of the blonde storming up to her parents and telling them off with a tirade of inappropriate words. Cece was her only true family.

Before she knows it, Hanna is parked outside a small house on the outskirts of Philadelphia and they stare in silence. Alison suddenly feels like vomiting- she doesn't want to face her family. Hanna was right- they abandoned her, she almost died and they didn't care enough to find their little girl and reach out until now.

"Are we going to sit here all day brooding?" Hanna asks as she unclicks her seatbelt.

"Seriously you are so not tactful," Spencer shakes her head. "Take as much time as you need Ali."

"I'm scared," she squeaks out accidentally as her thoughts linger on bad memories. Her family is one of the few things that makes her weak. She's given them so much power over her, and she doesn't know how to take it back. Because all she wants is for her real family to love her and be proud of her and accept her. But there's so much history of anguish and separation and pain that she's not sure it could ever be a healthy relationship.

"We're right here, we got your back," Aria tells her gently and rubs her shoulder from behind. So Alison takes a deep breath and wishes she'd waited for Emily to come with them. But Emily would be just as nervous and panicked as her, so this was for the best.

Alison manages to make it out of the car and eventually the four are at the door. They all look to the nervous blonde who reluctantly raises her hand and knocks on the door.

No one answers for a bit, and Alison shrugs, not having thought about this possibility. "Maybe they're not home. I didn't tell them we were coming."

"Well what do we do now?" Hanna crosses her arms. "We didn't drive all this way for nothing."

"Let's just wait in the car," Alison says nonchalantly. They turn to leave when the door opens behind them and they hear a chilling and taunting voice behind them.

"Leaving so soon, Ali?"

Alison is frozen in her tracks and the other girls turn around in surprise to see who they perceive to be Courtney in the doorway.

"Wow that's fucking trippy," Hanna comments with her jaw dropped as she looks between Courtney and Alison.

"You look identical," Spencer adds in a hushed voice.

"I didn't know you were coming, or bringing friends," Courtney says with an airy yet cold voice. With great hesitation, Alison turns around and finds herself peering into blue eyes that resemble the very ones she sees in the mirror every morning.

"Hi Courtney," she says quietly, bringing her arms up to cross over her chest defensively.

"Hi sis," the other blonde says with a smirk as she saunters outside over to her twin and stands in front of her. "Long time no see. Don't I get a hug?"

Alison slowly undoes her arms and awkwardly hugs Courtney, who embraces her a little too tightly for comfort.

"They are literally identical," Aria whispers to Spencer and Courtney giggles, over hearing. Ali looks a lot more eloquent in chic skinny black jeans and a long sleeved red shirt. Courtney on the other hand is dressed in ripped blue jeans and a black sweater that hangs off one shoulder.

"Careful, Ali. Your friends might mix us up and mistake us for each other."

Alison struggles to smile at the joke but something about her sister intimidates her in an unpleasant way. It makes her stomach twist and she doesn't feel safe.

"Where's mom and dad?" Alison asks following Courtney into the house and once she steps inside, a wave of nostalgia hits her. She hasn't been here since the day Cece took her to grab the rest of her stuff and she left, her parents angrily yelling unforgiveable words at her.

"Come on," Cece coaxes with a small smile. "Don't be a baby. You run in grab your stuff, I'll distract them. You just have a few things left don't you?"

"Just the rest of my clothes, we took everything else last night."

"I'll wait in the car with the engine running," Cece encourages. "Unless you want me to come in with you?"

"No, I guess I should do this by myself," Alison sighs as she stares at the door. Cece nods and saunters back towards the car leaving Alison on the doorstep uncomfortably. The nervous blonde enters her house and quickly goes up to her room. She sees her packed bags and is relieved to know her parents haven't touched them. Alison doesn't have many clothes- just a large duffle bag and a backpack. Everything else she lost at Wilden's or didn't need.

So she gathers the bags quickly and tries to make a clean break. She's so close, but freezes in the doorway of the house when she hears, "Where do you think you're going?"

Much to her chagrin, her mother stood behind her with her arms crossed and a look of thunder on her face.

"I told you already that I'm leaving," Alison tries to say in a defiant voice but it comes out small and intimidated.

"You think you can do whatever you want? That you can cause this family so much grief all because you couldn't keep your legs shut! And then just run away like nothing happened!"

The blonde can't believe the words coming out of her mother's mouth, and she can't believe that her father appears as well and says nothing. But she's used to their lack of sensitivity and their harsh blows. The look of disappointment and accusation on both their faces cuts her deep. They've never been there for her really, always focusing more on something or someone else and inadvertently causing her to be thrown to the wayside.

"It's not like that," Alison tries to protest. "You have to believe me-"

"We already tried that," Ken DiLaurentis says in an alarmingly low voice. "We tried to raise you properly, and this is how you repay us. By causing us to go farther into debt while embarrassing yourself and this family."

"It wasn't my fault," Alison fights back, shaking from frustration and she feels a great depression settling inside of her.

Jessica DiLaurentis takes a step towards her and raises her voice. "I can't believe I raised a lying whore-"

"That's enough!"

Alison turns to see Cece marching up the driveway, her face dark and angry.

"Who the hell are you?" Alison's father asks in a pointed voice, clearly disgusted with Cece's blaringly gorgeous yet seductive charm.

"Ali get in the car," Cece tells her quietly. Alison opens her mouth to protest but Cece shoves her gently behind her. "Go wait, I'll be there in a sec."

The younger blonde obeys and as she walks off she hears Cece fight with her parents.

"You have no right to talk to her that way," Cece says in a firm, unwavering tone of disapproval. "Don't you dare stand here like fucking saints and pretend that she's the problem because she's not. It's your lack of paternal skills…"

Alison drowns out the rest and doesn't realize she's crying until she reaches the car and is inside, her vision blurring as she tries to take deep breaths. She hardly acknowledges Cece who gets in the car moments later and mumbles a string of curse words before driving off angrily. When they slow to a stoplight, Cece takes a deep breath.

"Your parents suck," she says with a huff and Alison looks at her before she simply laughs. Cece looks at her puzzled, and the younger blonde just continues to laugh because there's nothing else she can do. The older blonde eventually smiles and pushes Ali's arm lightly. "You're so weird. You're lucky you're cute. "

"Did you hear anything I just said?"

Alison is brought back to the moment by Courtney's voice as she yelps, feeling an unpleasant sting on her head as her hand flies up to hold the back of it.

"Did you just flick the back of my head?!" Ali asks as she stares in disbelief at her twin who comes around to face her.

"Well you weren't listening," Courtney shrugs.

"She just said your parents were coming home any minute now. That's basically all she said," Hanna says gently, glaring at the evil twin. She's deemed Courtney as evil- there's something she doesn't like about her. She can't put her finger on it, but there's more than just sibling discourse between her and Alison.

"They're never gone for long," Courtney rolls her eyes at Hanna's sympathy towards her sister. "So tell me. What are you up to these days?"

"I just work a lot," Alison says cautiously, sitting down on a couch next to the other girls while Courtney sits perched on an armchair.

"Where do you live now?"

"Rosewood, it's a small town outside Philly."

"You live by yourself?" there's something about the way Courtney asks and stares in concentration at her twin that makes Alison nervous.

"Not exactly," Alison says hesitantly and looks to the other girls for help. "I live with-"

"Alison!"

All heads turn to the doorway to see Jessica and Ken DiLaurentis standing there in surprise. "Mom, Dad!"

x-x-x

Emily looks at the clock on her car dashboard. She's making good time, she actually managed to make a few phone calls and managed to postpone some work until later on in the week. Instead of finishing the rest up, she decided instinctively to just leave earlier to meet up with the rest of the girls.

When she finds Alison's family house, and she's sure that's the one, she just stops the car and stares awkwardly at the driveway. So that's where her life horrors began. The thought crosses her mind very quickly and she flinches at all the memories and stories Ali had unpleasantly reminisced about with her. She wishes she could turn back time and undo it all, even though she knows she would never have met Alison if things didn't happen the way they did. She selflessly wants, more than anything right now, to go back in time and somehow make this house in front of her a loving home – one in which Alison could've felt welcome in while growing up, felt loved and taken care of. One, where she would've felt safe.

She takes a few short breaths, and unfastens her seatbelts. All that matters is Alison's well being now, she can't let –

A sudden knock on her car window makes her jump, only to relax slightly after seeing it's actually Hanna with an uneasy yet decisive look on her face.

"Em! Is your ass glued to this freaking seat or what?"

She smiles a little at that and gets out of the car, her heart still heavy, but Hanna never ceases to bring a special kind of lightness to everything- a certain freshness- and she could never be thankful enough.

"Hey Han, how are things?" she greets with a dose of anxiety as she gives Hanna a quick hug. And she knows this unsettled look on the blonde's face – knows all too well that's it's taking her too long to reply to such a simple question, knows that her reply can't be good.

"Han?"

"I don't know how to start, but –"

"Just say it."

"You should just come in already and save your girl from this hell hole of a home and this farce of a family," she says in the same breath and closes her eyes before she has the chance to see Emily's face.

"That bad?" Emily only manages to murmur back in a low and quiet voice, because her heart has just clenched inside of her chest so hard that she can barely move. She feels silly but sometimes she thinks she can feel Ali's pain. And she can't imagine how this is hurting the blonde.

Hanna merely gives her a pointed look and adds, "Oh, and don't freak out – they're identical."

Oh right. The twin. Emily had almost forgotten about her. Regardless, she thinks, she'll be able to tell the difference. Alison is her home, she'll always be able to distinguish the two.

"Em I'll be inside, I just needed to step out to escape the horrible display of parenting. Except for the food they made. The food is delicious."

Emily rolls her eyes and nods. She takes a moment to compose herself, and then she walks towards the front door that Hanna went through.

She opens the door cautiously and enters the DiLaurentis house. She allows herself to look around, surveying the environment. She's caught off guard by how cozy the house seems.

But as Emily is looking around, she suddenly feels a tight grip on her wrist and she's dragged to the driveway in a matter of seconds before she has a chance to say a word. The soft hands, blur of blonde hair, and quiet "Shhh, it's me" instantly put her mind at ease and make a small smile appear on her face.

Her body is pinned to the garage wall, and she barely manages to steady herself with her hands. Arms reach around from behind her, hands touching her possessively, and so she smiles gently as she feels them on her waist. She silently hums when she feels those hands slip down to her hips and thighs, exploring her entire body. Slowly, her inhibitions slip away and she lets herself relax a little bit under the seductive ministrations.

"Hey," Emily utters softly between whimpers because god this feels good, "it's not the right time or place." And that's when the blonde behind her turns her around, a mischievous smile on her face.

"Your car, then. I need this, now."

And Emily has never been one to deny Alison what she wants. The blonde drags her to the street, and it's all a blur for Emily as she aggressively pushes the brunette against the car door and kisses her, hard.

"Let's go inside your car," the blonde whispers huskily in Emily's ear. She can't really think about walking inside to meet Mr. and Mrs. DiLaurentis when the blonde has her against the door of her car and is kissing her neck while rubbing her through her jeans.

"Ali, not right now, I want to meet your parents finally," Emily tries to say but her voice is strangled and she struggles to speak through a whimper.

"But I was waiting for you to come," the blonde purrs with extra emphasis on come. She grabs Emily's face and kisses her hard, her tongue sliding in when-

"Courtney! Get the fuck away from her!"

The brunette hears Alison and looks up to see her girlfriend come storming out the front door with the three girls behind her. She looks in horror to the blonde in front of her. She's almost an exact replica of Alison, but Emily can suddenly see the subtle differences, like the coldness present in Courtney's brilliantly blue eyes.

Courtney smirks. "I had to try."

"Ali!..." Emily says, completely caught off guard, her eyes wide with realization.

"We're leaving, now."

Alison's eyes are dark with fury and she grabs onto her arm and rips her away from Courtney, inserting herself between the two.

"Courtney! Alison! What's going on? Are you leaving already?" The brunette looks up to see an older lady in the doorway who she can only guess is Mrs. DiLaurentis. She has a frown on her face, clearly displeased with the situation.

"I'm going home, with MY girlfriend," Alison practically spits as she shoves Courtney out of the way. The twin just wears a devilish smirk as she stands, unabashed. Emily thinks to herself that the blonde must have told her parents about the liking-girls-thing, and they must not have taken it well. This was definitely not the impression Emily wanted to make, but then again she was expecting the meeting to be horribly uncomfortable.

"Don't go yet Alison," an older, colder looking man says and Emily realizes that's her father. The resemblance between father and daughter is definitely present in both of their hard, defiant jawlines. If he was trying to plead, he was doing a horrible job. The man merely sounded demanding, and Emily can instantly see how he would have been neglectful of Alison's feelings while growing up.

Ali doesn't listen as she practically marches Emily to the driver's side of the car and shoves her in. The blonde's hands are trembling as she tries to calm down. She quickly goes around to the passenger side and gets in, ignoring her family's stares.

"Drive," Alison says in a steely voice as she looks at Emily intensely.

"But-"

"Just drive!" Alison snaps, on the verge of a breakdown. Emily does as she's told in fear of setting off the blonde, and she sees the other girl's following suit in the car behind them. It's going to be a long drive home.

x-x-x

A/N: There's more coming, I promise. I finally found the energy and emotion to edit and write this story once more. Christmas & Strippers is like my baby, it's my favorite story of mine and I'm so fucking happy that it makes other people happy too. I'm glad you guys have stuck around this long, and I'll do my best to continue to make the story worth it.