Chapter Text
VI. Emily
When she starts driving towards Rosewood, she is planning to go to her mom. She remembers about halfway through the drive that her dad has just moved back in, again, because he at least had the decency to be the one to move out the last time they broke up. She’s going to have to face him eventually, but she can’t stand the thought of him knowing that he was right about Ezra all along. She considers turning around and crashing with a friend back in Philly, she’s only about an hour away, anyways, but she doesn’t really have any friends there, and there’s too much of a risk that she’d drive home and beg Ezra to forgive her. She keeps driving.
She thinks maybe she’s cried herself out. Or maybe her body just hasn’t quite caught up with the fact that she just left her husband, she’s basically homeless, and she walked out on the life she’s spent the past two years building. More than two years, really, because she’s been giving everything she had to her relationship with Ezra since she was sixteen.
It’s not until she passes the “Welcome to Rosewood” sign that she realizes where she is going. She pulls up in front of the DiLaurentis house – she supposes it must be the Fields house now, but she will probably never think of it that way. Hanna and Spencer both moved back to Rosewood, too, but they are going to be even harder to face than her father. She’s burned a lot of bridges in this town, but even though Aria has been ignoring her for months, Emily still calls every Sunday.
She speed-walks to the porch, hoping no one will see her – she’s not even been in Rosewood fifteen minutes, and she already feels her skin crawling like she’s being watched. Or maybe it's because she knows Spencer is just next door. She almost loses her nerve, but the thought of Spencer looking out the window and seeing her is enough to get her to pound on the door.
When Emily opens the door, she is dressed in a blue Sharks tracksuit – she must have just gotten back from coaching swim practice. Her eyebrows shoot up and her mouth hangs open. She blinks once, twice, three times before breaking into a wide smile. “Aria!” she says, and sweeps her into a hug. She lets go quickly, probably because Aria’s arms are limp at her side. She pushes the door open with her hip and steps aside, letting Aria into the house. “What are you doing here?” Emily sounds so happy to see her, and Aria’s heart clenches even tighter.
“Where are the twins?” Aria asks instead of answering, not quite ready to say the words.
Emily leads her to the living room as she talks, carefully picking a path through the floor which is covered in toys. “Jason’s in town. He says he doesn’t care that Ali’s left, he’s still they’re uncle. He practically begged to have the girls for a sleepover – I think it’s sort of a test run to see if he’s ready to have kids, but I’m not gonna say no to free childcare.”
Emily looks her up and down, her brow creased in worry. She probably is waiting for Aria to respond, but Aria can’t think of any response to Jason wanting to have kids. Emily reaches over and places her hand on top of Aria’s, which she’s realized are clenched in her lap. “It’s really good to see you, Aria,” she says quietly.
Aria bites her lip, feeling her throat constrict. The best she can do is force a small smile, but it falls away almost immediately.
“Do you want something to drink? Water? Tea?”
Aria shakes her head.
“Vodka?”
Aria jerks her head up. Emily’s face is schooled into a poker face, but her eyes are wide and full of worry. “Yeah,” Aria is surprised to hear herself answer. When Emily starts suggesting different drinks, Aria tells her to just bring the bottle. Emily snorts, but she comes back with a half full bottle of vodka and two shot glasses. She has to clear away two coloring books, loose crayons, and some construction paper before she puts them on the wood coffee table.
Emily is quiet as she pours the shots. Aria doesn’t even clink her glass against Emily’s like they used to do in high school, instead downing it as soon as it's in her hands. It burns through whatever was constricting her throat, and Aria gasps in what feels like the first full breath she’s taken all day, maybe even longer.
Emily relaxes back into the couch. Her head is tilted, and she’s staring at Aria, but she doesn’t say anything. Aria is reminded, again, of sitting next to her on that porch swing all those years ago. Emily isn’t going to ask her again.
Aria breathes in one more time, swallowing hard. She looks away from Emily and stares at a naked barbie doll that has been folded practically in half and left on the floor. “I’m leaving Ezra.”
She feels the couch shift as Emily leans forward. Emily is quiet for a long moment before she asks. “What happened?”
Aria finally looks at Emily, who has a worried crease in her forehead, but otherwise isn’t betraying anything – that damned poker face. “I went to visit him at school. There was a girl, he–” she cuts herself off with a dry sob – “she looked so young, she was just a kid, she–” and then she is full on sobbing, and Emily is holding her tight and rubbing her back.
When she calms down and Emily pulls away, she makes for the bottle, but Emily grabs it first, and pours her another shot. After the second shot, she convinces herself she imagined the whole interaction at the school and Emily has to take her phone away so she doesn’t call Fitz. After the third shot, she is yelling about how she should have called the police when she found out about the book, and how he probably got Alison pregnant, and how she needs to make sure he doesn’t hurt that girl, Emma, or Cassidy, or whatever her name was. After the fourth shot, she finds herself sobbing into Emily’s arms again.
***
The next morning, she wakes up in Alison’s old bedroom. It’s basically unrecognizable, painted a neutral beige, with Ikea art on the walls. She grasps at the beeping phone on the nightstand and turns off her alarm. There is a thick layer of dust on the surface of the nightstand. Aria runs one finger through it, making a long line across the wood. She pulls her finger away and it is tinged gray.. She stares at her fingers for a long time before forcing herself out of bed.
Emily is gone, but she left a note taped to the bathroom mirror – she had to go pick up the twins, and should be back before Aria is awake, but just in case she should help herself to anything in the house, and the ibuprofen on the sink. She swallows the ibuprofen dry and goes down stairs.
Emily cleaned up, overnight. The floor is devoid of toys, and all the surfaces are sparkling. Aria shakes her head – that girl really is turning into her mother. She peaks into the kitchen and sees some muffins on the counter, but she feels slightly nauseous, and she doesn’t think it has anything to do with a hangover. Instead of breakfast, she runs out to her car and grabs her bag (she runs, literally, in fear of anyone she knows walking past). She goes back up to the guest room to change, and by the time she’s back downstairs, she sees Emily through the window, walking up through the front yard, a toddler on either side holding her hand.
She’s seen pictures, but this is the first time she’s seen the girls in person since they were babies. They look much more like Emily, now, with dark hair and big brown eyes. The one on the right is swinging her hand back and forth, and Emily’s with it. The one on the left trails behind. She stops for a second and points at something, and Emily turns to nudge her along, then does a sort of half step to catch up with the other twin, who is pulling her other arm forwards.
Emily introduces her as “Aunt Aria”, and tells the girls to say hi. One of them, Lily she learns, lets go of Emily’s hand immediately, hugs her leg, and starts babbling at her. She can make out maybe one of three words, including ‘aunt’, ‘hair’, and ‘phone’. Grace lifts a hand in a shy wave and hides behind her mom’s leg.
They spend the morning playing with the twins, and Aria is grateful for the distraction. There isn’t any chance to talk about Ezra, as Aria is too busy chasing Lily around to really have much conversation at all, other than Emily making sure Aria knows she can stay as long as she likes, or at least until the twins drive her mad.
Playing with Lily is a little exhausting, but she finds herself genuinely laughing at the little girl’s antics. She can’t remember the last time she really laughed. It certainly leaves little room for her to dwell, and she decides she’ll take Emily up on her offer and stick around, at least for a little while. Grace sticks close to Emily, and when Emily goes to make lunch, she clutches a stuffed rabbit and watches Aria with wide eyes. There’s a goal, then, she thinks: she can’t possibly leave before getting her God-daughter to play with her.
VII. Spencer
Around two, the girls have nap-time. Emily starts cleaning up a bit, because the house is already almost as much of a disaster as it was last night, and when Aria starts to help she is very firmly told to sit down and relax. “Besides, when Lily wakes up, you’re probably in for round two,” Emily says. She opens her mouth to say something more, then closes it and bites her lip.
“What?” Aria asks.
“Spencer and Toby were supposed to come over for dinner last night. They want to know if they can come tonight instead.”
“Oh.”
“I didn’t tell them you were here. I know you’re not really talking to Spencer right now, but they’re right next door. You’re probably going to run into them, soon.”
“Right,” Aria said, heart suddenly pounding. “I know I need to apologize, I just don’t know if I’m ready…”
Emily’s head snaps up to look at her. “You don’t need to apologize to Spencer. She’ll be thrilled to see you.”
Aria shakes her head. “I haven’t spoken to her in a year, and our last conversation… She probably hates me. Or thinks I’m an idiot”
Emily puts down the doll she had picked up and walks back over to the couch, taking one of Aria’s hands. “Trust me, she doesn’t hate you. If you’re not ready, I can tell them to come another time, though.”
Aria chews on her lip. “No. I– you should invite them over.”
“Are you sure?”
No, she thinks. “Yeah.” If she chickens out, she can always just leave before dinner.
“Do you want me to tell her about-about why you’re here?”
Aria remembers, what feels like a million years ago, calling Spencer to tell her that Alison had left Emily, and how Spencer had very quickly gotten over her initial disbelief (“I just had dinner with them last week!”) and moved on to rage (“I swear to God, I will track her down, grab her stupid blond hair and drag her all the way back to Rosewood to apologize”). Aria had to cut her off during her second plan to murder Alison “for real this time” to make sure she would be less angry and more empathetic when she talked to Emily, who would probably always love Alison at least a little.
“No. I’ll tell her.” Aria is still oscillating between grief, heartbreak, and anger, and she doesn’t want a tamed-down version of Spencer’s reaction, because anger feels the best, and there’s still that voice in the back of her head, the one that sounds a bit like Spencer, that is reminding her that she should be angry.
***
When Spencer and Toby arrive, the twins are ecstatic. Toby is pretty much immediately herded into the living room, where the girls basically treat him like a jungle gym. Aria, Emily and Spencer watch from the entry for a moment, before turning to face each other.
Spencer hands Emily a bottle of wine, and Emily takes it to the kitchen, leaving Aria and Spencer alone. Aria folds her arms, clutching her elbows tightly.
“It’s really good to see you,” Spencer says hesitantly.
Aria presses her lips together, wishes Emily hadn’t left her alone, and says quietly “yeah, you too.” She means it – in her head, Spencer had been replaced by her 17 year old self, pale and desperate. The real Spencer looks healthy and tan, despite the bags that have lived under her eyes for as long as Aria can remember, probably ever since teachers stopped marking papers with smiley faces and started giving out letter grades. She hugs her arms to herself, and Aria mirrors the movement.
“How long are you staying in town?”
“I’m not sure yet.” She licks her lips, and then Spencer starts talking, but Aria’s words are already tumbling out and neither of them stop.
“I’m leaving him and you were right–”
“I didn’t mean to push you away I was just so scared–”
“I should have listened–”
“Because we never should have–”
“And I’m sorry for blocking you.”
“And I miss you.”
They both stop at the same time, and stare at each other.
“So you’re not mad at me?” Aria asks.
Spencer’s eyebrows shoot up. “No, I was never mad at you. You don’t hate me?”
Aria shakes her head. “No.”
“Good. Because I love you, and I hated not talking to you. Can I – is there anything I can do to help?”
“Do you know any good divorce lawyers?” Aria asks with a shaky laugh.
Spencer smiles. “I’ll make sure to find the best.”
VIII. Hanna
Living in Rosewood is strange. While she has adjusted to thinking about the DiLaurentis house as Emily’s house – the style much cozier, more colorful and familial than the refined atmosphere of the DiLaurentises – it is impossible to walk through the rest of town without being flooded by memories of the horrible things that happened to her here. There is the church where they attended too many funerals. The park where Alison’s memorial was smashed. The bar where she met Ezra.
Aria goes to get coffee at the brew with Spencer, and a part of her is expecting Emily to come around the counter and spend her break chatting with them like she always used to, even though she knows full well Emily is at the school. She finally asks Spencer how she can stand to live in Rosewood, why she would buy her parents house when she could live anywhere.
Spencer takes a long time before answering. “Do you remember when we thought Ian killed Alison?”
Aria’s eyebrows shoot up at the non-sequitur. She hasn’t thought about Ian Thomas in years. But she nods.
“He was living with us. With Melissa. I begged my parents to kick him out. I was terrified. I used to shove my desk chair under the door handle, to make sure he couldn’t get into my room.”
Aria bites her lip, about to apologize for not doing more, not asking Spencer to stay with her. But she can tell Spencer isn’t done making her point.
“It’s not like that anymore. It’s my house. I can decide who to invite, who to kick out. Even my parents clear it with me before they come to visit.”
That night after Emily gets the twins to bed and comes back downstairs to have a cup of decaf tea with Aria, which has become their nightly ritual, she asks Emily the same question, why she didn’t move, after Alison left.
“This is our home.” Emily answers, as if it's the simplest question in the world.
***
When Hanna finally returns from Milan, Spencer hosts a dinner party to welcome her back. It's not really going to be much of a party, as it’s just Spencer and Toby, Hanna and Caleb, and Emily and Aria. Maybe if there were more people, more of a buffer between her and Hanna (and Spencer is hardly a buffer, they’re still trying too hard, still straining their voices in politeness and avoiding tricky topics) she wouldn’t be so nervous.
They go over an hour early, Emily to help Toby with some disaster in the kitchen, and Aria because she has nowhere else to be, especially as the twins are already with their grandmother for the evening. So she sits on the couch with Spencer, drinking wine, waiting with an odd mix of dread and excitement to reunite with Hanna. Spencer doesn’t seem to notice her discomfort, and talks about how excited she is to see Hanna again, how it's been almost a month since they last talked.
Hanna doesn’t bother knocking. She bursts in through the back door with two glossy black shopping bags, Caleb on her heels, ducking his head almost apologetically, though he is laden with even more bags of varying colors and sizes. Hanna throws the shopping bags on the ground, and smiles so wide Aria can practically hear it as she launches herself at Spencer. Emily comes out of the kitchen when she hears the commotion, and gets the second hug.
When she lets go of Emily, Hanna turns to Aria, her smile suddenly frozen and false. She looks at her for a moment, before wrapping her in a hug as well, which Aria only takes a beat to return.
“I brought presents for everyone!” Hanna says, gesturing loosely at the pile of bags by the door. Caleb shakes his head and goes back to the kitchen with Toby.
“Did you get us all new wardrobes?” Spencer asks. “Because this is a bit much, even for you.”
Hanna rolls her eyes. “No. But since I have no idea when Aria is going to grace us with her presence again, I brought all the stuff I’ve bought for her that’s been cluttering up my closet.”
Aria learns that every city Hanna goes to, she buys a gift for everyone back home, usually an item of clothing. Aria has missed nearly three years of travel, so four of the bags are filled with dresses and shirts and belts and hats that stylistically fall somewhere in the middle of her high school preference for bold patterns and funky designs and Hanna’s more refined fashionista senses.
It takes Aria a moment to realize what she is looking at. A lump forms in her throat, and she hugs Hanna again, tighter this time. “Thank you,” she says quietly, and hopes Hanna knows she doesn’t just mean for the clothes.
Hanna smiles, just a small, close lipped smile, and squeezes her hand. “Of course.”
After dinner, Toby and Caleb take beers out to the back patio, while the four of them try on the clothes Hanna bought, pretending to model for each other. She giggles with Spencer, the two of them calling out suggestions from the couch as they watch Hanna trying to help Emily put on a dress with so many straps she can’t figure out where to put her arms. She feels like she is back in high school, and for the first time, she doesn’t have any trouble understanding how the other three girls have moved back to Rosewood.
IX. Aria
The divorce is settled quickly out of court, mostly on the advice of Ezra’s publicist, who wants to avoid anyone digging too much into the circumstances of their relationship. It doesn’t matter, though, because someone writes a blog post about the beginning of their relationship, and it goes around twitter until there’s so much bad press the movie studio cuts ties with Ezra. Aria knows he’ll still get plenty of royalties, but twitter seems to take it as a win. (The blog post was written by Vivian Darkbloom. Aria calls Alison to thank her, but the number has been disconnected.)
She gets an apartment on Main Street. It is the first time she’s lived by herself, and she turns down both Spencer and Hanna’s offers to help her design it. She doesn’t worry too much about whether it’s refined or classy, and in the end, it’s an eclectic mix, all of Aria’s personalities layered together – a modern sofa, a vintage lamp, a brightly patterned rug. She buys a blank canvas and hangs it on the wall before she even buys paints.
After she finishes decorating her apartment, she spends as much time as she can outside of it. She brings Spencer coffee at work, goes to play with the twins nearly everyday, third wheels to Hanna and Caleb at dinner. Because when she is on her own, there is little to distract her from her new obsession: stalking Emma’s instagram. The problem is, it’s so familiar. Six months ago, it was a mix of artsy shots of buildings in Philadelphia, candids of other teenage girls, and pictures of Emma and her boyfriend. But recently the boyfriend is gone, the other girls are gone, there are no pictures of any people at all. Almost like she can’t post pictures with the person she’s spending her time with.
She knows she should probably just go to therapy – that’s what Spencer keeps telling her, anyways. Instead, she picks up the phone and leaves an anonymous tip. The Philadelphia police department has good timing; they enter world famous author Ezra Fitz’s apartment and find him in bed with a fifteen year old girl. The articles won’t name her, as she’s a minor, and Aria stops checking Emma’s instagram for updates. The next time she sees Spencer, she finally takes the phone number for her therapist’s office.
She takes up running. She’s never been into exercise, but there’s something relieving about running aimlessly, not towards something, not away from someone. Rosewood starts to lose some of its power, when it blurs past her. The church is just a church, there’s no one falling from the bell tower. The Brew has a new owner, a woman with a son who sometimes has playdates with the twins. The high school is full of kids who think they’re adults, but none of them have been accused of murder.
She still has panic attacks, on occasion, but she never has to lock herself away. She relearns all the exercises to get through them, and after she’ll call Emily, who never pushes her to say anything more than she wants to, and even if she catches Emily in the middle of a swim meet and she has to hang up quickly, she feels the same calm as she did sitting with her on that porch swing so many years ago.
She finally starts writing again. Ever since she was sixteen, a small part of her was always writing with Fitz in mind. She used to crave his praise, forcing her stories into his literary sensibilities. When she finally lets it go, she finds that her multi-year writer’s block disappears. She writes a picture book, which she illustrates and binds by hand as a gift for Lily and Grace. In less than a month she finishes a script for a rom-com, and, perhaps to salvage the bad press from the Vivian Darkbloom blog post and Ezra’s arrest, the same studio picks it up for development.
The twin’s fourth birthday party is in the park where Alison’s memorial once stood. An entire class of preschoolers is there, along with their parents. Aria came to paint faces, and Spencer brought some weird math games that none of the kids are into. Hanna is there too, for no discernable reason, and after Aria paints the last cheek, they all sit together at a picnic table and watch the kids, who gather together to watch the magician Emily hired.
Emily sits next to Aria with a relieved sigh, and Aria pats her shoulder. “How old are kids when they stop having birthday parties?” she asks.
“I don’t think I’ve celebrated my birthday since I was fifteen,” Spencer says. “None of us did, I guess, after Ali disappeared.”
“Um, are you forgetting Emily’s seventeenth birthday?” Hanna says.
Emily groans, and shakes her head. “I am never letting the girls go to a party at a lake house, ever.”
“Or a graveyard,” Spencer says.
“Or a train.”
“Maybe just avoid themed parties altogether.”
Aria is surprised to find a smile tugging at her lips, but when she looks away from the magician and back to her friends, they are all smiling as well.
***
That night, Aria finally paints the blank canvas on her wall. She globs different shades of blue on the bottom, thinking of Emily ripping through a pool. She dips her finger into pink and lightly covers the top in misshapen hearts and blobs, thinking of Hanna’s design for a fashion show in Italy. She streaks lines of golden brown across the whole thing, uneven and jagged, thinking of Spencer’s hair and the way her eyes light up when she’s figured out a clue.
Together, it’s a bit of a mess, and it doesn’t match anything else in the already eclectic room, yet ties it all together perfectly. Some of the blue paint drips onto the floor, but Aria doesn’t worry about cleaning it up. She’s going to be in this apartment in Rosewood for a long time. She wants to make it hers.