The Dawn of Autumn

San Antonio Sunrise (I)

A/N: I have been insanely neurotic about posting these next four chapters, mostly because I wrote something similar for a previous story in weaving backstories of characters in and it was met with a lukewarm reception. I have been worried about the feedback, so go easy on me...cuz I've already done the critic thing myself.

Initially this chapter had a 34-35k word count. I did polls on tumblr and twitter to see what people preferred as far as whether or not to split it. The vote itself was...ironically split. But given that it's such a monster of a chapter I did split it.

Some of this will look familiar. You've seen some of Emily's past through her eyes, but there is a lot more to the story. Also, I will be doing my best to get these chapters posted very quickly.

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Chapter 39:

San Antonio Sunrise (I)

He remembered the day Emily Fields had moved next door. He'd liked her immediately. She had a cool vibrato about her. She'd moved from California, and he'd heard that California girls were freaky. What he remembered most about that day was the way she'd brightened up his day, like a sun rising over the plains.

He'd stormed out of his house after a particularly brutal fight with his parents. They were such assholes. They were assholes to him and they were assholes to each other. He didn't know why they stayed married. His mother was a whore. His father was a total wuss.

"Nicolas, you get back here!" His mother had shouted.

He'd just ignored her. He knew she wouldn't follow him. She never did. She didn't care enough to come after him.

The screen door slammed shut behind him, making a loud 'thwaking' noise. He'd bounced down the front porch steps and walked towards the side of the house mumbling about how he couldn't wait to get the hell out of Texas.

He'd been working his ass off in school. It was the one place in his life he didn't slack off. He owed it to his fourth grade teacher. She was the one who noticed that his work was different than the other students in class.

She'd gone through his records and found out that he'd failed second grade, but the classwork that she was seeing didn't indicate why.

It took him some time to realize that he hadn't failed because he lacked intelligence. He'd failed because he wasn't being challenged enough. He'd always been a very bright child, but his parents were too busy ripping each other apart to notice.

Once his teachers put him on the right track he'd started to excel, especially in science and math. He really liked robotics and technology. He liked taking things apart and figuring out how they worked. He liked putting them back together, bigger and bolder.

He'd tested out of his regular computer science classes and had been in advanced courses for several years. He was on the fast-track to any university he wanted.

The sound of his mother screeching at his father rang out in the air. He sighed and leaned back against the house siding.

He pulled his cigarettes out of his cargo shorts, smacking the bottom of the pack to make sure all the tobacco would stay in the paper like it was supposed to. He flipped the top open and pulled out his favorite silver lighter. It was a cool old relic he'd found in the attic.

Years later he would lose the lighter in a bar outside of Rosewood, Pennsylvania after a night with Alison DiLaurentis. A boy named Caleb Rivers would find it with his DNA on it.

He slipped a cigarette into his mouth, letting it hang loosely at the corner of his lip as he popped the cigarette pack back into his shorts. He popped the top of the lighter. It made a hissing sound as he held it up against the edge of the cigarette. He cupped the lighter and the embers sparked the edges of his cigarette until it turned bright red.