Work Text:
“Hey, Spencer,” Eli calls from the doorway, breaking the low hum of sanding in the workshop. She glances up from the oak cabinet she’s been smoothing down, dust clinging to her forearms. Eli lingers awkwardly, chewing on a toothpick. “There’s some guy here to see you.”
She blinks. “There is?”
Eli nods and shrugs. “Didn’t say who. Just asked for you.” He disappears down the hall, leaving her with the faint smell of varnish and confusion.
She wasn’t expecting anyone and none of her friends would turn up unannounced at her work. Plus other than Caleb the only male friends she had she worked with and Caleb’s in New York, geeking out at some hacker convention. The only other men who come here are clients or contractors, and none of them ask for her by name.
Wiping her hands on her work pants, she walks toward the front of the workshop. Her boots scuff against the concrete, the familiar sound grounding her… until she steps out into the light and her body freezes mid-step.
Jason.
He’s standing by the door, sunlight hitting the side of his face. His hair’s longer than she remembers, messier. His posture, though, is the same: defensive, coiled, like someone braced for a hit. Her breath catches before she can stop it. She hasn’t seen him since the trial. Not at the sentencing, not at the aftermath. He vanished, and when the podcast aired, he stayed silent.
No calls.
No emails.
Just absence.
“Jason,” she says, the name falling from her mouth before she’s even aware she’s speaking.
“Spencer.” He takes a tentative step forward.
Her instinct betrays her. She steps back. She might be out of prison but some lessons stay with you forever.
Jason notices. He stops immediately, hands half raised in apology. “Sorry,” he says quietly. “I didn’t mean to…I just wanted to talk.”
The way he says it, careful, like she’s a stray animal he doesn’t want to startle, both irritates and disarms her. He looks uncertain, almost lost, standing there in his paint-splattered jacket and worn boots, like he drove straight here without deciding what he’d say once he arrived.
Spencer swallows. “Talk,” she repeats, tasting the word like something fragile. “Yeah, I can take my break. Just… let me tell my boss.”
Jason nods.
She turns back into the workshop, the air suddenly thick and sawdust-heavy. Her heart thuds too fast. She shouldn’t feel this shaky. He’s her brother, not some ghost returning to haunt her.
And yet it feels like seeing one.
Jeff barely looks up when she pokes her head into his office. “Taking my break,” she says, voice steadier than she feels.
He grunts in acknowledgment, already absorbed in a set of blueprints. She lingers for half a second, palms damp, before forcing herself to go back.
Jason’s waiting by the picnic table outside, hands shoved into his jacket pockets. The fall light glints off the metal tools scattered nearby. He looks up when she approaches.
“You look different,” he says.
“So do you,” she answers. Her tone is flat, but not cruel. Just careful.
They stand there in silence for a few beats. She studies his face - older now, lines forming around his eyes, the sharpness softened by something she can’t quite name.
Regret, maybe.
Or exhaustion.
Finally, he exhales. “I didn’t know how to reach out. After everything that happened… I didn’t know what to say.”
“You could have said anything,” Spencer replies. The words come out sharper than intended, but she doesn’t take them back. “You could have called.”
Jason nods slowly, looking at the ground. “You’re right.”
The silence between them stretches again. She’s not sure if she wants to hug him or tell him to leave.
He’s her brother.
But he was also Alison’s brother.
And he never reached out, not even after the truth came out.
Spencer crosses her arms. “So why now?”
Jason meets her eyes for the first time. “Because I heard the podcast. And I heard your voice again. And I realized I might have lost Alison but I still had a sister left.”
Something twists in her chest. The word sister feels heavy, like it’s supposed to mean something clean and simple.
But nothing about them ever was.
“You and I were never really siblings, not the same way as you and Ali,” she says quietly.
Jason nods again, accepting it. “Maybe not. But I’d like to try.”
For a long moment, neither of them moves. The workshop hums faintly behind her, Eli’s hammer clinking against wood. A breeze picks up, carrying the smell of pine and varnish. Spencer studies him, the same boy who used to drive away from Rosewood just to breathe. The same man who turned his back when she needed him most.
Her chest tightens, but she nods once. “Okay. We can talk.”
Jason exhales in relief, almost a laugh. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” she mutters, sitting down at the table across from him.
As he joins her, she can feel the space between them - filled with everything unsaid.
Prison years.
Family lies.
Alison’s ghost still somewhere between them.
And beneath it all, something raw and unfamiliar: the smallest flicker of hope that maybe, just maybe, there’s still a version of family left to salvage.
Spencer sits across from Jason at the picnic table, the wood rough beneath her palms. The air smells faintly of sawdust and rain. He’s still studying her, like he’s trying to memorize who she’s become, and it makes her uneasy.
“So,” she says after a moment, voice brittle. “You heard the podcast.”
Jason nods. “Yeah. I wasn’t going to at first. I didn’t think I could stomach it. But then I… I heard your voice.” He hesitates.” I heard your voice and I knew you were telling the truth, that Ali’s killer had been walking free all these years while my sister was in prison.” He lets out a deep sigh. “It’s just, you sounded so convincing back then and everyone was pushing me to accept it as the truth.”
She looks up, meeting his eyes. “I said what A wanted me to say. What the police wanted to hear. Everyone was ready to believe I did it. After years of manipulation, threats, and setups - by then, I was just… tired. The trial was the only way to stop the chaos. I thought if I took the blame, maybe it would end.”
Jason’s brow creases. “And it didn’t.”
“No.” Her voice cracks. “It got worse. A might have stopped while I was in prison but once I came out he was right back to his old games and it’s not like prison was easy either.”
The wind moves through the trees, cool and sharp. Jason leans back slightly, eyes narrowing. “When I saw your face on the news, when I heard the sentence -” He pauses, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I lost it. I drank for the first time in ages that night. And I didn’t stop. Not for a long time.”
Spencer’s stomach twists. “Jason…”
He lets out a humorless laugh. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not proud of it. But it felt like everything went backwards. You were in prison for killing my sister and at the time I hated myself for having trusted you. Alison was dead. And I…” His voice falters. “I was just her brother again. The screw-up. The addict. The one who couldn’t keep it together.”
Spencer studies him, the weight of guilt heavy in her chest. “You weren’t the only one who fell apart.”
Jason looks at her. “What do you mean?”
She swallows hard, the words thick in her throat. “Prison wasn’t easy. Not just because of the walls or the rules. It was the silence. The constant noise in my own head. I started using. Heroin.”
Jason’s face goes still. “Spencer.”
“I didn’t plan to,” she says quickly. “It just… happened. Someone passed it to me, and for a few hours, I could breathe again. I could sleep. I didn’t have to think about what I’d lost, or about Alison, or you.” She exhales, shaky. “By the time I realized what I was doing, I couldn’t stop.”
He looks at her for a long time, something raw flickering behind his eyes. “How did you get clean?”
“I didn’t have a choice,” she says quietly. “I overdosed. They put me on lockdown. I spent three days shaking and hallucinating. After that, I just… stopped. I had to. If I didn’t, I wasn’t getting out alive.”
Jason nods slowly, running a hand through his hair. His voice softens. “I wish I’d known. I should’ve been there.”
She looks at him sharply. “You left. You didn’t even come to the sentencing.”
Jason flinches, shoulders tightening. “I know. I told myself I couldn’t handle it. That I couldn’t watch one sister confess to killing my other sister.” He stops himself, eyes glistening. “I made excuses. Truth is, I was selfish. I didn’t want to feel responsible again.”
Spencer leans back, looking at the horizon. The clouds hang low, pale and bruised. “We were all responsible, in some way,” she says softly. “For Alison. For what happened after. But the person who made sure I paid for it… was A.”
Jason looks up. “You really think it was Ezra?”
She nods. “I know it was. He built everything around control - first Alison, then Aria, then the rest of us. Every lie, every message, every threat - it all tied back to him. And we couldn’t see it because he was standing in front of a classroom pretending to protect us.”
Jason exhales slowly, sitting back. “You make him sound like our Dad when he was trying to justify the things he did.”
Spencer gives a small, hollow smile. “Maybe that’s just what the Hastings bloodline does. Pretend, conceal, survive.”
He studies her face again, softer now. “You survived more than anyone should’ve had to.”
She shrugs, though it feels heavier than it should. “So did you.”
Jason lets out a short laugh that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Barely.”
Silence stretches between them. A car hums past in the distance. Spencer stares at the dirt beneath her boots, tracing patterns with her toe.
After a long pause, Jason speaks again, his voice quieter now. “You know what’s funny?” He gives a small, bitter smile. “I thought drinking would make it easier. I thought if I could just blur everything, it wouldn’t matter what I’d done. Or what you’d done. But all it did was make everything louder.” He exhales, the sound breaking slightly. “The guilt doesn’t drown. It floats.”
Spencer looks up at him, startled by the honesty in his voice.
“I know that sound,” she says quietly. “That noise that gets so loud you’ll do anything to shut it off.”
He meets her eyes, and for a moment, there’s recognition there, two people who have burned in the same kind of fire.
Jason looks down at his hands, rubbing his thumb over a faint white scar on his wrist.“I went through rehab twice after you were sentenced,” he says. “I’d get sober for a month or two, then relapse. Every time I thought I was fine, I’d see your name on a news headline, and it would hit me all over again. The shame, the guilt, the helplessness. It was like starting over every time.”
Spencer’s chest tightens. She can picture it—the endless cycle of regret and release, the hollow mornings that follow. She feels it in her bones. “I used to count the days until someone came to visit,” she says, her voice trembling despite herself. “I kept the girls off my visitation list because I knew they’d make me spill the secret, admit the lie. But I kept Mom, Melissa, Dad, and you on it. I was counting, waiting. And then I stopped. Because no one came.”
Her voice cracks, the last word splintering. She laughs softly, a thin sound without any humor. “The day I stopped hoping was the same day I started using.”
Jason’s throat works as he swallows, his eyes flicking toward her but not quite meeting hers. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I should’ve come.”
Spencer exhales slowly, a mix of anger and resignation bleeding through her tone. “I don’t know if it would’ve changed anything,” she admits. “But maybe it would’ve reminded me that I was still something more than just a number in the system.”
The words hang in the air between them, soft but brutal. The wind shifts, stirring the sawdust that clings to the porch, carrying the scent of cut pine and varnish.
Jason leans forward, elbows on his knees. “It’s strange,” he says. “Addiction makes you selfish, but recovery makes you feel everything you tried to avoid. Sometimes I think being sober hurts worse.”
Spencer nods, her voice almost a whisper. “It does. But at least it’s real.”
He glances at her, a small, broken smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You sound like someone who’s been through a few meetings.”
“Court-mandated,” she says. “Then voluntary. I went back after I got out. Mostly just to sit in the back and listen. It’s different hearing someone say they hate themselves for the same reasons you do.”
Jason nods slowly. “There’s a comfort in the honesty. In not having to pretend you’re fine.”
Spencer watches him, the light falling over the lines of his face. She sees the man he became in her absence - haunted, but trying.
For a while, they just sit in silence. The noise of the workshop hums faintly behind them - wood scraping, a saw buzzing somewhere deep inside. Spencer’s chest feels tight, but lighter too, as if something locked inside her has finally started to loosen.
Finally, Jason speaks again. “Do you ever think about her? About Alison?”
“All the time,” she admits. “Not like I used to, though. Before, it was guilt. Now it’s just… wondering who she really was. Who we were around her.”
Jason nods, his gaze distant. “She scared me sometimes. The things she could make people do. But she was also… lonely. I think she wanted love, she just didn’t know how to ask for it without hurting someone.”
Spencer looks at him, startled by the tenderness in his voice. For years, she’d imagined Jason as someone hardened by anger. But now she sees it - grief sitting just beneath his skin.
“Maybe that’s something we all learned from her,” she says quietly. “How to love in the wrong ways.”
Jason gives her a faint, weary smile. “Maybe now we can learn how to do it right.”
Spencer doesn’t know if that’s true. But she nods anyway.
They sit there for a long time, the silence no longer sharp but fragile, like something finally beginning to thaw.
Jason runs a hand over his jaw. “Do you still go to meetings?”
“Sometimes,” she says. “When it gets bad.”
He nods. “Maybe we could go together sometime. I don’t know… just to not do it alone.”
Her throat tightens. “Yeah. I’d like that.”