Chapter Text
Emily’s dream always began the same way.
She was in Alison’s room, but Alison wasn’t there. Emily hadn’t been in Alison’s room since she went missing, and it felt wrong to be here without her. All the same, Emily couldn’t resist moving about the room to take it in: the sight of Alison’s notebooks, the feel of her clothes along Emily’s hand, the smell of her shampoo still lingering on the pillow.
It was always at that moment—that pitiful, hopeless moment when Emily was sniffing Alison’s pillow—that the girl in question would appear. Emily could never figure out how she got there; just that one minute, Emily was alone, and the next, Alison was beside her. Alison smiled, rolled her eyes a little when she saw the pillow. Emily thought she’d be chastised, but Alison just fluidly pulled the pillow from her hand and tossed it on the bed, before taking Emily’s hands in her own.
“I love you, you know,” Alison whispered then, warmly. “I’ve always loved you.” She twirled Emily in an impromptu dance, and Emily smiled. She felt something blooming inside her, almost like a light trying to shine its way out of her chest. Alison loved her.
Alison continued, “I want to be with you, Emily. Do you want to be with me? Do you want to run away with me?”
This was where the dream became something else. Because Emily tried to nod, but her head couldn’t move. So she tried to speak, but no words would come out.
Alison's eyes widened in fear and her voice became more pleading: “Emily, won’t you please take me away? Emily, can’t we run away together? Please! Emily? Emily?!”
It was that second utterance of her name that always woke Emily up. The dream occurred enough that some mornings Emily, in that hazy place between sleeping and wake, would be convinced that there was more memory than phantom to it. And yet a dream it was, too hopeful to be a nightmare but too sad for a fantasy.
In the year before Bethany Young’s body was found in the DiLaurentis yard, in the year when Alison was still just missing—before she was dead but not really—Emily had this dream more times than she could count. Even after Alison returned, every once and a while the dream would too: Ali’s questions always frantic, Emily’s voice always absent.
But once she’s left Rosewood, said her goodbyes and angled her car out of Ali’s driveway and her life, the dream finally goes away for good. In fact, once Emily moves out of Rosewood she stops dreaming pretty much all together. And when she does, she rarely remembers them.
Emily hasn't even thought about the dream in years until, at twenty-five, she finds herself in front of Alison, eyes wide, Emily’s hands in hers, about to ask a question that will leave Emily unable to speak.
Alison does not tell Emily she loves her. She does not beg her to run away. Instead, she says, “I need to have a baby. Can you help me with that?”