Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was… truly something.

Borderline unreal, maybe, but not entirely. Yet it's the first thing that springs to her mind when she eventually struts backstage. The quintessential feeling that grips her suddenly and holds her, that pulls her into a lulling sensation of awe as everything unveils, one gilded moment after the other.

It's a rush. An almost-dreamlike magnitude of overloading sensory that embraces her just as naturally as one blinks and breathes -which she had done often, like a lot- because it doesn't feel real. To leave one life and step into the next. Anxiety is something of a fleeting medium that rarely, if ever, unbalances her. Sure, she feels it. Probably more than she likes. Yet it's the tension, in all its terrible weight. Quite often it can be undoing. In the past and now, even, she's often been the proverbial shoulder to cry on. Been the gal to bolster effect, to reassure rather than be the one asking. She's never really been a people person. She doesn't have to be. But it doesn't stop her from caring. It's always been of her caliber to build up the allegorical rubble that's collapsed into a crazy pile of feelings and breathless doubt.

That's it. That's what it is.

Breathless. Yeah, she'll go with that.

She feels breathless.

Head skyward in wordless marvel, mouth agape. Just all sorts of breathlessness

Because, yes, it all feels decidedly unreal to her.

It doesn't feel like she's just essentially secured her once dubious future, turned clear-cut stairway to heaven, as a soon-to-be-signed solo artist with an EP in the mix. (Like, God, seriously?!) It doesn't feel like her world has officially changed for the better. Like the people beyond the stage are all cheering and clapping with approbation, for her. It's not exactly what she imagined for herself.

Her, of all people. With her curiously melodramatic life, her forthcomings, her voice, her girls. Oh, the girls.

She feels her mind clear as she puffs out her chest.

There is a literal sea of people out there. Barely half an hour had since passed following her pivotal debut. Her set of covering the classic anthem penned by George Michael had been nothing short of tremendous, phenomenal, and dazzling even. Theo's way of embellishment had been to use a lot of colorful adjectives. He'd quickly made off before they could be intercepted by five different journalists, each sashaying their VIP lanyards like it'd been their God-fearing rights. Bless him, he'd ushered them away to answer a few of their questions as she quickly escaped backstage. The girls had since evaporated into different directions as the intermission lapsed, but she knew where they'd be after. For now, she really just needed to quell off the shaky adrenalin before she leaped into the Mediterranean like a crazy lady.

The belletristic Roman theatre was now a kaleidoscope of aimless movement, suffused in brilliant color. Flashing strobes of silver, gold, crimson, and blue illuminate the mass of uniquely cultured individuals like fireworks. Citizens, servicemen and woman, and celebrities alike. All had been congregated together to inspire and celebrate the electrifying finale of the USO tour.

After Beca's opening, heralded by the man himself, Khaled, with the Bella's by her side, she felt she could barely keep it together. Sometimes happiness and sadness get all mixed up. Her heart had hurt, laden with feeling, and her eyes had felt uncharacteristically heavy with unwept tears. Everything had felt like a wellspring of bubbling emotions all wrought with bittersweet significance. It was perfect, and it'd been damn-near impossible for her not to lose it. But she hadn't. Not completely. Not with those idiots by her side. Just, being them with their invisible ties stretching onto her.

Flo, with her enduring happiness and determination to persevere.

Aubrey, even, and her ability to strategically (frustratingly) analyze every foreseeable mishap, yet still remain miraculously optimistic.

The 'rise above' outlook essentially silkscreened into everything Cynthia Rose does. Beca's secretly a major sucker for it.

Sweet, beautiful, stupidly unassuming giraffe-like Emily and her stupidly infinite glee.

Lilly. Esther. Whatever the hell was going on there. If that geek monstrosity can prance around apparently bedeviled by some mute, malignant spirit for near-seven years, then Beca can sure as hell grin and bear through this, she thinks.

Pinpointing Amy is, well, freakishly beyond the bounds of what Beca credits as being normal. The bits-and-pieces making up that eccentric yo-yo of a woman certainly has her perpetually questioning everything in creation. So why bother, right?

Stacie, if she were here, with her astonishing, questionably moral, and unrestrained sexual prowess and self-confidence. Stacie, the mother. With precious little baby Bella. When Beca thinks of that tiny, toothless human all she wants to do is bite down on her fist and lay in a tragedize fetal position because God damn it, it's just too fucking beautiful.

Jessica and Ashely. Meh.

And Chloe.

There's an interesting notion.

Oftentimes, Beca's inclined to believe that Chloe is something of a curiosity.

Not in the sense of an exhibit, where the oddity of something so strange stirs within her feelings of alarm or worship. No. It wasn't like that. It was, well, another type of curiosity. One stringed within a wavelength of constant surprise and an intense desire to know something. To simply understand. When Beca thinks of Chloe, she thinks about the sensation of being curious. Like the woman exudes a sort of question that Beca feels is quite often directed at her, but she can never really place it. It's like looking at someone with the intention of speaking. Eyes like saucers. Mouth parted, lips on the cusp of forming actual words, yet nothing ever comes. The breath dissipates like smoke and instead of coherent sentences, there is instead a loss of something vital, something worth mentioning. But it's gone. It fades just as quickly as it materializes and then there's just… silence. A weight and a flicker of an enigma. An atypical awareness. Yet the feeling remains though. Imprinted. Along with the question… the curiosity. To know.

It's not exactly odd. Maybe it's odd. She's not too sure.

Actually, yeah, she is sure. Positive that it's not.

Might it be odd?

Chloe is Chloe though.

And when she really thinks about it, all that Beca is today is, in no small part, because of that curious girl.

Confidently walking into an already occupied shower stall stark fucking naked, with blue starry-eyed demands, can be quite the incentive apparently.

But it's easy to call all of the Bella's family. Natural, like water. When she sees them, she's seeing a cluster of people who fit together seamlessly. Like easily recalled memories that linger. Because memories are a flair of the mind and the most sublime memories are better remembered, right? They're always there, at the forefront and simply waiting. Associating experience to an easily wayward moment solidifies its magnitude. It makes it golden. Makes it forever.

Beca knows without a flicker of doubt, with seamless conviction, that she'll remember tonight until the day she dies.

Things have changed, yes, but none of them, her. They're not that different.

It's all in the way one looks at things, really. Perspective, and all that shit.

"Things are going to be enormously different now, I guarantee it."

Then there's Theo, who's so allegedly certain of everything. It takes a second before Beca realizes that the man is standing next to her. It seems he'd successfully managed to maneuver his way out from the topics of half frenzied publicists, seeing how no one was following. She resists smiling, only slightly, but it's a marginally useless battle in the end. Really, the guy's likable, if not a little overly amicable. Charming, yeah, why not? In conjunction with being offensively cavalier. Beca can't really fault him for much other than his gnarling persistence. A zero-cool personality with a meritable eye for talent. The swanky British accent and suave looks were, maybe, an added side benefit.

"Oh, well, if that doesn't make me feel a little edgy," she quips suddenly, voice dripping with barely concealed cynicism.

Theo's response is merely a quick roll of his eyes.

"You have nothing to be nervous about, Beca," he says, "You know the full particulars of the business, the structure. It's second nature, right? And you're already capable, with a singular talent and an ear for boss tunes. You've no doubt stood where I'm standing, and I know you've probably fed the same quintessential nonsense to some chancy musician stumped before their prime but-…"

"Wow, look at you, with all your words."

"Seriously. It means we can be plain to one another. Speak easy, I hope. Different is good, Beca, but different can be scary. It'll just take a little adjusting."

And she knows he's right. Knows little other than to be cautiously optimistic when Theo suddenly smiles that ridiculously debonair smile. His hand is on her shoulder, albeit a little hesitantly. It's a small gesture of reassurance that, in turn, prompts Beca to smile because she knows he means well. That ultimately he means to safeguard any burgeoning anxieties she may or may not have because if there is one thing she can admire about him, it was his abiding confidence.

If tonight's turnover was any indication of what her future may conceivably look like, then it feels good knowing someone like him has got her back. Regardless of said British swankiness. Standing out here under the blistering stage lights, though hidden, she takes a small breath. Label appointed technicians roamed to and fro. Some stared, while others simply paid no mind and were otherwise absorbed with preparations for the next set, sporting masses of cables or clipboards.

"Yeah?" She knows the answer, but asking him anyway feels kind of nice.

"Yeah." With a quick squeeze of her shoulder, he releases her, then starts promptly, "Also," He frowns, slightly at a loss, "I feel, as is my burden that I should maybe… apologize? About before…" He pauses, pursing his lips as he thinks suddenly. She waits, with an inkling of knowing where the conversation was heading but instead opts to let him finish. She was nothing, if not cordial. Though to herself, it was admittedly hilarious watching him try to formulate semi-coherent sentences when he couldn't even look at her without getting laughably flustered.

She throws him a wordless nod as a little incentive when he seemed to struggle. It was comical, really, if not a little intriguing. "I, well, before when I…-" he summons every ounce of breath and pushes through when she begins smirking almost mirthlessly. "Well, when it looked like I wanted to kiss you."

There it was.

"Oh," And she's not even surprised, despite how she parades it, very deliberately, because it's funny watching the man's words careen into a bubbling cesspool of indecision, "You mean before? When you definitely wanted to kiss me?"

"It was terribly unprofessional of me and I-…"

"Cause I was confused when your head started to, like, lean down-…"

"-… Yeah, yeah. Well, I just thought you should know, because I am…"

She squashes the heel of her palms together then, as a crude precedent, of what she believed perfectly imitated two faces, "Is this, wow, is this how kissing works?"

He releases a labored breath then, resigned to ridicule but nevertheless astonished. "Jesus. You weren't kidding."

"Aaah…?"

"When you said you'd be a handful."

"Does Khaled get this much attention? Because I feel that might warrant a very serious political discussion, about a lot of things, worth discussing," and at this point, she's not even bothering to conceal her thinly veiled amusement. He's watching her, smiling but not smiling, and she sees that he's trying to keep it together. If not a little precariously. "Inequity of power, and all that," she finishes.

Theo lets out the biggest sigh of relief and scarcely looks around before he's settling his eyes back on her again. "This all seemed… rather simpler… when I was rehearsing it over in my head."

She tries to adjust her look of feigned guilt, but she knows there's little to no point. "Dude, that was barely half an hour ago. We haven't even started living like hermits or gone through the stereotyped plot of ceasing all contact from one another yet." She can't believe the words spewing from her mouth. Jesse would be nauseatingly thunderstruck if he heard her.

"Yes. Well, my poor deflated vanity has pushed me to do the unthinkable. I just want to ensure that we're on the same page. Classic movie elements aside."

"Oh, we definitely weren't."

"Weren't, yes. Now, I'm… something shy of hoping that we can maybe forget that I attempted anything at all. Ever."

"Really?"

He pouts. "Pretty please?"

She hums thoughtfully, mulling it all over until a small semblance of sense slips decisively through her brain. She can see the insistence in his eyes, the rose-colored flush, and flicker of something optimistic. She can see that it was actually genuinely bothering the executive. Her silence probably wasn't helping the situation much either. Hinging him on her word, however, was a gimmick all for theatrics. It was fun. A little cruel, maybe, though the man did just try to kiss her. In that though, Theo was extending a truce, of a sort. Not that they really needed something so terribly theatrical as that, but the fact that he felt it was necessary to apologize in the first place meant enough to her to convince her of his priorities.

And at this point, he was literally holding his breath, so, "We're alright, dude."

His expression turns skeptical. "Really?"

"Yes. Really. I mean, I can't really afford to hold grudges right now anyway, and it's physically exhausting, so."

"So." And he's smiling again. Though eying her carefully, he appears more relaxed despite the later. Beca was still holding her microphone. It was secured snugly into her crossed arms. When Theo's gaze falls to it, he points suddenly. "I had intended to tell you how incredible you were on stage, you know, before… well. Plus, there were things I wanted to discuss."

She nods, smiles, and takes a short moment to look around her once more before hastily cantering her gaze back to him. "So you mentioned."

"Intriguing song choice."

She scoffs before giving him a pointed look. "Uh, care to elaborate, Tin-Tin?"

He chuckles, rubbing his beard contemplatively. "Well, do you?"

She grins sheepishly, pausing only to tap her microphone against her chest. "There's nothing," she says pensively, "really to it."

He nods, frowning slightly. She doesn't miss the note of cynicism in his voice when he replies. "If you say so."

After a moment's consideration, Beca gives him a disbelieving look, one eyebrow rising slightly. "What-what is this? What are you doing right now? Stop it."

"What? Nothing. Calm down," he tells her, shaking his head. "Are you," he starts then, "alright? Honestly. Like, how are you feeling?"

She feels like she should defend herself, for whatever self-conceited reason concocted by her mind. She doesn't exactly feel clear-headed, but she'd regarded that as being merely high-strung up on psychedelic energy evoked by the opening. Instead of motor-mouthing an illicit string of words, she says simply with a punctured sigh, "It's a little overwhelming."

"Look, it will be. I won't lie. Promising otherwise would be a little unfounded on my part," he declares without hesitation, and it strikes her just how thoughtfully candid he sounds suddenly. Is. Like he genuinely means for her to feel better or untroubled about everything without having to resort to lying. Because lying is easy, she knows. So is evasion, because sometimes openly lying about something is out of the question. Sometimes the guilt is too much. The retreat, for example, all those years ago. When she'd made the conscious decision to avoid telling the girls about interning with Residual Heat. It'd been… anything… but harmonious for the Bella's, especially with Chloe. Because lies are lies and Chloe is Chloe, and Beca might as well have just laid down on her mud-strewn back and pretended to be a filthy bedraggled rug for all the good she felt afterward.

She hadn't lied, only avoided, and for a while, it'd been okay. Sort of. Until the retreat, anyway.

Lying can be safe, only because most people don't want to hear the truth, or can't bear to tell it. Others would even settle to hear a misconstrued half-truth. There's no accurate way of telling when people are being honest or not, so what's the harm right?

She's confident about Theo though. Surprisingly. What little she information she'd managed to garner from his personality over the tour has quickly led her to surmise that clever antics, such as trickery and evasion or lying, is simply not a medium for him. She likes that about him. Especially since, during her turbulent stint as a music producer, Beca could scarcely say or remember whether she'd afforded others the same courtesy that Theo was currently affording her. Actually, when she really thinks about it, she can probably say with certainty that it'd been a tireless and near-repetitive constant in her life. Unfortunately for her, her previous job often involved consoling up-and-coming artists with personalities as mundane as soup. Just… a bunch of featherbrained fools who were duller than a capital-centric Marxists debate on bread and cutlery patterns. Terminating her contract had been a blessing in disguise.

The point. The sad, universal truth of the matter was that her deliberate razzle-dazzling of the enterprise had been necessary then. When your boss periodically assigns you to singers/songwriters/rappers/fucking muppets with downright ridiculous names such as Pimp-Lo, who have little to no clue or leeway or experience, then it becomes an inescapable point of action. To lie.

She never enjoyed it, of course. The lying. The overwrought confidence. The need to sprout bogus smiles and acknowledgments far too comically superficial to be accepted even remotely, but were taken anyway. Because idiots. The hijacking tracks and demos afterhours, and stripping them down to its elemental base, layer by layer, to rework it pro bono because she cared if the artist surmounted to more than your typical wordsmith. Only then to be rejected in favor of an unoriginal stereotyped sound. It became a tiring obligation to perfect the make-believe happiness by that point, and when Beca finally capsized… when she'd finally clung to a realization that made her seriously toss around the idea of wrecking physical bodily harm to one Pimp-fucking-Lo, she succumbed. She accepted it. Fell, head first and willingly, to failure, to bed. Doomed to repeat and wake up and see, in plain painful clarity, what had essentially become her life. That she was working simply for the income. That she didn't care, and that the career she'd worked for and argued so passionately for was nothing but a means of currency to live off of.

It'd been incredibly… depressing, to say the least.

She often wonders about that. Like, a lot.

How different things might have been, if Aubrey had never reached out to her militaristic father in the first place in order to arrange a spot on the USO tour.

Because overanalyzing things to cultivate the negatives out of positives is something of a peachy pastime for her. It's unhelped, it's really not necessary, but Beca dwells nevertheless. She lacerates her mind about things better left forgotten and she sweats it. She's a muser, and she thinks, knows, that maybe there's something wrong there. Yet nonetheless, she doesn't see the point in changing what she believes to be merely a slight downside to being a self-anointed freethinker.

Amy had once heralded her, "Ah, thee th're, Prophet of Doom, thy nameth is Killjoy."

But Amy says a lot of things.

It takes her moment, a fickle second blurred in amongst the near-constant diversified haze of ongoing music, voices, and energy charged by the neon-fuelled night, but when she realizes that Theo, bless his little heart, has been talking to her, guilt pools within her like muck. "… and if I were to hazard a guess," he continues, blissfully unaware of her wayfaring mind. It prompts her into a gracious smile. "I imagine our mutual friend, DJ Khaled, would say something along the lines of, 'it's straight to the victory line from here.'"

Stupefied, but nevertheless unwilling to maim his encouragement, she quickly nods and breathes in. "He's a… special guy, that one."

"Well, certainly enlightening in a sort of savvy way, I'll give him that."

Nodding. More nodding, "Yeah, sure. I can see that."

He laughs. "Though I'm happy I could alleviate some of your concerns. I know it can be rather stupefying. It's a big thing…" He signals with his hand, gesturing to the throngs of aimless people wreathed in digital light and fluoresces, "… all this. I appreciate you listening."

She nods mechanically, once more, with little to no deviation. Though in reality, and admittedly without saying, she's grateful for his fortitude, "Yeah, that's… awesome. Fine, I mean. It's fine. Sure." Jesus H. Christ, Beca.

"So we're definitely good to check off the nitty-gritty publication of 'Beca Mitchell's au'naturel autobiography' from the itinerary I just talked about then? It was the only way I could elude further questions from the journalists."

Fuck.

"I, actually," she starts, and in the name of all that is secular and non-vulgar, he's already hoisted an absurdly manicured brow and grinning down at her like the Cheshire cat, "maybe, have some choice ideas for… that. Namely, the whole thing."

It would be insulting if the whole thing wasn't so ridiculous.

"It's my turn to be coy," he says.

She lets out a breathy chuckle. "Dude, what are you…? Twelve?"

"Oh, what gave it away, the beard? Accede to defeat, Mitchell. Or… maybe pay attention next time? Because aside from your inattentive hearing, you seem to lack the cognitive ability to properly see with your own two eyes. Twelve, really? I thought you were original."

She forces herself to try and relax, despite the overwhelming part of her that's competitive, easily agitated and vociferous when presented with a challenge. It's straight up screaming for retribution. She's aware of his teasing, the deliberate goad and willful intent behind it, but she can't help but take it personally. In a sort of defend-thy-honour habitual kind of way. With an exaggerated eye roll, she says, "Well, there's no need to repeat yourself, sweetie. I ignored you perfectly fine the first time, and you picked me. Remember that."

"Yes, you like to dally away to far-off things, don't you? It's hard to get your attention back, let alone keep it. I should know."

"Well, that's just rude."

"It's… accurate?"

"That's, totally, not that true." Her face, she knows, is crinkling up into a laughably pained expression. Mostly because she doesn't believe what she's saying, or how she's saying it.

"What just happened?" His own face was quickly becoming the epitome of skepticism, a pinnacle of which she'd already ascended in her highly colored mortification. She must admit though, between the both of them, the banter merited a medal. "Before. You had absolutely no idea what I was saying."

"Apparently I was off in la-la land or something. It's hard to keep up with the semantics of it all. You should really write that down somewhere."

He's shaking his head, and he doesn't know what to do with his hands because they're all over the place by virtue of his ever-tangling bewilderment. She counts it as a victory. If you can't slay 'em, she thinks, confuse 'em. "I… don't even know where to go from here, to be perfectly honest."

"Hm, well. I accept apologies in the form of blundering invasive Brits, thank you."

He spends a long moment just looking at her. "Seriously?"

"Too soon?"

"Is this, here… is this going to be a constant?" He's motioning a finger between them and simultaneously scrunching up his face at the notion, like he already knows the answer, and it's terrible. "Because if we're going to be doing this on a regular basis then I'd like to take a monthly sabbatical. Please, and thank you."

"You're welcome, and that hurts my feelings."

"Would you like a fruit basket to compensate?"

She caves. "If you ever," and he's frowning slightly with his head slightly inclined, listening, "ever," she steps forward and thrusts her microphone threateningly into his chest, "mention a fruit basket to me again, or any other well-prepared assortment of fruit condensed into a nimbly woven container," Theo, completely taken aback, has already splayed his hands up in defeat. His head is shaking from side to side, unsure and taking it all in and still grinning like an overweening bonehead, when Beca bites out the last sentence. "I will design a machine that will throw your body down an eternal flight of carpeted stairs so you die by carpet burn and broken limbs."

Mortification quickly flashes like an unforeseen panic attack over his face as triumph brightens hers. She's a reservoir pompous self-satisfaction when she hastily adds, "Also, I'll shave your beard."

"I'm done."

She scoffs. "Done? We're done?"

He stares at her, completely dumbfounded and shamed beyond all reason, "You don't threaten a man's beard, Mitchell."

"Listening to you right now only validates my belief that you need to seek therapeutic treatment if that's what you picked up from all that just now."

"Okay, but… white flag here. Don't shave my beard, please…" he shoves his hands complacently into his pockets and leans forward a little with a whisper, "Fruit baskets? What on Earth… do I even want to know?"

"It's a sore spot, I'll admit."

"What a wonderful example of eye-popping stupidity."

"Take a note, underling."

The look in his eyes. It's almost hard to place, she thinks. It's something akin to unsettled confusion and astonishment, with a portion of willful ignorance. "Anything else I should know?"

Tapping her chin, she considers, "What, like, dislikes, passions, pet peeves? Are we playing twenty questions now?"

"Whatever tickles your fancy, I suppose. We're going to be spending a lot of time together. So…"

"I don't like brown MM's."

"Um, excuse me?"

"Like, if I wanted regular chocolate, I'd buy regular chocolate. Brown MM's are just nonsensical items in an otherwise colorful collection, right? Not to mention, there's also more artificial coloring in the brown than other MM's."

He immediately sweeps his hand through the air, automatically ticking off the non-existent checklist above her head with a tapered finger. "Weird, but oddly concise. Anything else?"

"Rain makes me sad."

A nod, then another short tick through the air. "Deep. Likes?"

She ignores the stupidity she feels circumvents the question, and instead begins to methodically number the points over her hand. "Music, obviously. Playing it, writing it. Showers. Food. Having something 'click.' Flannel shirts…"

"Flannel… shirts?"

"No fabric epitomizes the free spirit so much as a flannel, my friend."

"Alright, New Age traveler. Any regrets?"

She likes this. Whatever it is they're doing that constitutes a friendship. And that's what it is, really, she thinks. She honestly hadn't expected it, because there hadn't been any prior evidence to suggest that she'd actually get along with Theo apart from their mutual interest in music and whatnot. His very-obvious interest in her, romantically, had been a little off-putting. His apology, however, kept her doubt in check. She wasn't interested. At all, and professionally, in a hypothetical romantic scenario, it was all kinds of messed up and just… absurd to her. There's a part of her that thinks that Theo knows this, she hopes. It's weird. But he'd apologized. Wanted them to forget it, even. So she's inclined to believe that, yes, he knows. Now that she's officially going to be a soon-to-be-signed solo-artist and possible songwriter onto the label he represented, having this little on-going repartee with him suppressed whatever imbalances she felt in regards to, well, the whole damn thing. "I once forgot my headphones, then ended up on public transit next this incredibly loud speaker."

He rolls his eyes sheepishly and she's almost certain he wants to get into that further, but he expunges any and all questions regarding said memory. "That sounds almost horrifying," he mocks, "That's your deepest regret, is it?"

"Two words: Candy Crush."

He smiles a touch too darkly and casts his glance furtively once again over the crowds amassing into the beautifully constructed and cobbled citadel. They were finally beginning to converge. Taking their respective seats and preparing, no doubt, for another stellar performance or commemoration for the occasion. From where they were standing out of the public view backstage, it looked almost remarkably rhythmical in the way they all settled in accord.

"I think I can have a guess at something," Theo interjects suddenly.

She raises a brow, with a glinting blue eye and a smile gleaming over her lips. "Oh yeah?"

"One word," he begins.

"I'm riddled with anticipation."

Without a breath of hesitation or delay, he says, "Chloe."

Her eyes slide into his, just as quickly and unexpectedly as the smile on her face vanishes away.

There's a hollow moment, tensed. Ringing was the sound in her ears.

Far off, in the distance, Beca can make out the rolling of applauses and uproarious acclimations as the next act begins. A din pandemonium of thermionic music starts up, bass noise, full-toned and beating rapidly, so heavily and thickly just as the blood within her veins suddenly beats too hotly to bear. It's a resounding, repetitive thump, thump, in her ears.

Theo, at least, has the aptitude to look somewhat apologetic. The nerve was struck. "There it is," he says quietly.

She opens her lips, with a small breath. "What?" She's beginning to shake her head incredulously. "I mean, I don't…"

He only stares, for all that's worth, not daring to blink even for a moment. "I get it, you know."

"Get what?" She's partially aware of how her voice sounds right now. Can see, how he absorbs it after a few incalculable seconds, one pregnant beat after the other. She knows just how unjustifiably annoyed she's become. It's a light of exasperated frequency, sounding almost bitter against the mounting pressure she feels within her chest. It's not enough that she feels vulnerable all of a sudden, a sensation of which she neither wants nor cares for, but it's not knowing why, exactly.

Thump, thump.

She exhales, rallies herself as well as her wits, and blinks.

Takes a moment.

Beca does know. Is… at least, reluctantly aware of it. The urge to forgo it was irresistible, though useless in the end, really. Only, acknowledging it simply makes it real.

"I'm sorry," Theo. A light gleams across his eyes as a beaming strobe attuned to the cybernated rhythms flashes against the backdrop. People are singing, clapping, cheering. They're methodically trilling to the music and equal parts matched to the beats given. She wonders fleetingly, regretfully, if the Bella's are there, all collated together in blissful harmony. She wants to be there with them, she realizes. Wants to be wherever they are. Only…

"I saw it. Well, saw you, actually. How you looked, when she locked lips with that soldier."

Her voice, grave and low, softly chuckles as she absorbs his words, one awful word after the other, in all their biting transparency. "And yet, you still tried to kiss me."

He shrugs his shoulders, a light of laughter returning to his guiltless features. "I'm a scumbag."

"A sympathetic scumbag, at least."

A novella of remarks look like they want to escape his grinning mouth as he opens it, then promptly closes it before opting for anything. It doesn't escape her that, along with the adorning merriment accompanying his charismatic face, there's a subtle flare of pity there as well that weighs like lead. It's barely there, underlining, but there nevertheless.

"Does she know?" he asks, voice genuine.

She bows her head. Breathes. Long, plaited hair falls over her face. She pushes it back with an air of frustration and sighs a little too loudly for comfort as her eyes drift skyward in defeat. "Dude, just… leave it," and when Beca's clouded eyes fall back, gaze trailing dispiritedly over the man standing dubiously before her, she's remiss not to realize the burden, in all its painful gravity, of just how twisted and ripped her resolve has now become. "Please." Stinging.

Quick. Easy. Like a papercut.

The executor, with his seemingly heavy heart and unexpected benevolence, nods. There's concern there, she notes, for her. Genuine. It makes her forget for a moment, however cursory the feeling. He knows better, she thinks, and she's grateful for it.

"You'll be alright," he states then, with not an ounce of ambiguity. He's walking, watching her still with careful sincerity. He saunters passed her and she follows with a punctured frown, wondering. When he settles by the foot of the stairway and stares off and over at the stage with his hands secured above his hips, he looks back as she wordlessly fixes herself beside him. "You're Beca Mitchell, right?"

She can see them from here, and automatically she feels lulled into serenity. The Bella's are standing up in front of their allocated seats, along with the rest of the enlivened crowd. They're clapping to the ongoing musical cadence, laughing together, singing in unison, and gravitated to the sound and echoing the thrill of the occasion shared by many. "You think?" she asks suddenly, albeit with a smile now as her glazed-over eyes spot each of the girls within their perfectly content demeanors. There's Amy, and Cynthia Rose, in all their shameless glory. Lilly is dancing with Mr. Social Anxiety, and Jessica and Ashley are typically in their own little upbeat world, hand in hand and always laughing. Her heart sores with affection at Emily, who seems hopelessly forsaken to glee as a child is in a toy store on Christmas. Aubrey is there trying to curb the brunettes sprightliness, though she appears much the same, and Flo is off on a tandem all on her own. Her heels are off and in her hands.

Chloe is not there.

Neither is whatshisname.

"Of course," He throws her another narrowed-eyed glace. "Trial and error, Mitchell. Trial and error. The universe can be a whimsical thing, like life, really. Just imagine it being the music industry for a moment. It's okay to restart and recreate. Just remember there's always another chance."

In truth, she wants to agree. Acknowledges, even, that there is some wisdom in his endearing optimism.

But Beca's lips have parted, ever-so-slightly, and she's breathing in, lost.

Her eyes draw thinly far afield despite the self-shrilling protests, and she cannot help it. The heaviness of her heart…

And sees, with a sudden aching lurch beneath her rib cage, Chloe and Chicago on the other side of the theatre.

Completely and undeniably enamored with one another.

"Yeah. Sure."

There's something so terribly poignant about realizing an abrupt and unforeseen truth, Beca thinks.

It's like nothing you've ever felt before. Every little thing is reconsidered. Every minute detail; deconstructed, rendered abruptly, into tiny little pieces, then analyzed into a near passing hysteria. Until truth and illusion become interchangeable. You become an unbeknownst slave to history and all its probable hidden meanings. It's strange, really, how it happens. How you can live beside someone in ignorance, with the inability to realize the cues screaming in the limelight. It's a fantastic disregard of sorts, as the pale imitation of the world lightens and burns in the reflection of the eyes you find yourself suddenly doting upon. Harmony is the spirit of your existence, and you revel in it, in all its wonderment, because it's safe. It's nice, and it's understanding.

Until, with waking clarity, the ill-lighted scope of reality closes in around you, and darkens.

Because it's the frightening realization that you've known something of substance all along, for a long time, yet never acted upon it, which hurts the most. It's a muscle ache that won't go away. Water that you can't quite drink. It's a… constant, gnarling curiosity, with all its terrible weight. And fuck, it hurts. It really does.

So when she sees Chloe smiling brilliantly from across the stage, laden in close-fitting black leather, all legs, bliss, and sunlit red hair rolling brightly under the glittering film of light… something interesting happens to Beca then. It manifests into an abrupt reality, a wave of a larger existence where everything else is merely just an afterthought. It hits her just as quickly as it frightens her, and all at once it fills her with the worst kind of yearning. She's breathless and torn because what she feels now is too far gone. It's wrong and it's misplaced. She's feeling nothing because she's feeling everything because there's nothing she can do. There's nothing she can do without feeling rash or dumb because whatever it is she's feeling now… it's become unreachable.

Magnetized, powerless, Beca sees her.

Looks, without forethought.

Their eyes merge together from across the luminous amphitheater. The world around her falls quiet as Chloe, hand in hand with Chicago, flashes Beca a gorgeous smile coupled with a friendly wink of voiceless implication. She's all excitement, bubbly exterior, and beautiful harmony. She's waving with a small bounce in her step and then turning away before Beca can even think to concoct a smile to field back in acknowledgment. She's latching onto the soldier, fingers pulling and eyes enraptured. His inviting arms are around her, locking, and his grin is so unbelievably far-reaching and happy and suddenly Beca feels all her thoughts and feelings explode all around her. She's pinned against the truth, defenseless against its sway and seized once more, quickly, when Chloe's eyes flitters back to Beca. So she smiles back. She shows her teeth, she accedes to the redheads draw and waves back with a beam of playfulness because she can't help it. It's fruitless and it's too late.

Cracked in her defeat and, still smiling, she grits her teeth and exhales in a throaty whisper, "Fuck."

Chapter Text

The journey home was painfully uneventful. Aside from becoming suspicious of Amy and her near-unending lineup of cautionary glances cycling back and forth between the aisles of the plane -which was starting to really fucking creep her out- Beca found herself admittedly grateful, and a little at ease, that their extremely melodramatic tour was finally at its end.

Not to say that she's isn't sad either. Because she is. A little sad. Regretful, even. Time spent with the Bellas is time treasured, and the tour had been a delightful rendition of everything she cherished the most. An inspiring raiment of music, travelling, and performing? Hell yeah. A goofy ensemble of kickass women with ridiculously beautiful pipes to boot? Uh, hard-core dancing yeah. For sure. There's a certain time-tested sturdiness to interpretive wit and laughter, and when you add that to the gusto of being with the people you love the most in this world, well, who could resist?

It'd been an obvious yet welcomed excuse to revisit old roots, but it's not a definitive scenario that colours her mind when she imagines The Bellas singing together again anytime soon. Of course, if the opportunity ever presented itself, she imagines everyone quickly jumping onto the aca-bandwagon, headfirst, without question. She's known for a while that their inevitable divergence from one another needed to be accepted. A point of inescapable change, and all that. It's just paradoxical, she thinks, how quickly and certainly she clings to things like that now. To people. Girls, even.

Though cycling back, it'd taken them three years to arrange this, the tour, and it'd been an impulsive decision at that. A decision fuelled by bitterness, beers and Lilly's wicked firewater. With the added weight of their morbidly unsatisfying lives, failed jobs and crushed dreams alike, it was probably not a great mix to stir into the already gigantic weeping pot on indecision. Neither were Lilly's cocktails, but like their quickly slumping lives, it was a thing. A shit thing; that they consumed with little to no regard. Hallmarks of a signalling train wreck, with a sticker screaming QUARTER-LIFE CRISIS stapled to the forefront.

If Aubrey's father had been anything but a military man with connections, then they all might as well have just settled for their usual periodic and short-lived reunions. Which wasn't a bad thing. God, no. They were just… fleeting, unfortunately. A tiny bleep in an otherwise flat line.

Touring with the other bands had been a genuinely enjoyable and amusing experience. Their slight debacle involving one crazily coy yet psychotic Australian –who'd proceeded to kidnap and ransom the girls off to his equally unhinged daughter- had not been. Yeah, that was probably overstepping something. It'd been a total fucking fanfare of, unsurprisingly, wacky proportions, and the guy, Fergus, had been literally blown away in the end like some sort of real-life Wile E. Coyote. Though thankfully, the poptart had been dutifully locked up and sidelined. No doubt settling in to be extradited back to Australia, where some magistrate was just itching to throw the book at him. Amy didn't seem fazed though, like, at all. Which was probably odd. Or not. Maybe. Who could know with that one? What happened, happened. Strangely enough. With a little meaty finesse from the French authorities and overseeing MP's, they could now, mercifully, wash themselves clean of one Fergus Hobart.

Anyway.

They were flying coach. The plane was typically divided into three sections with the Bellas seated among the afforded rows. Though Beca had been initially allocated to the window seat, Emily had, unfortunately, been dumped into the middle, with sweet ol' Amy in the aisle. In what had likely been one of her most ill-thought out ideas since knowing her; before Worlds, Emily once fumblingly admitted to a noxious fear of flying. It'd been the result of some prior negative flying-related experience. Anyway, she was perpetually shook. She often suffered crippling bouts of anxiety as a consequence, and while mostly everyone had sympathetically shared a collective "Aw," for their teetering Legacy, a short few were less than considerate. Some more deliberate than others.

Amy, foam at the mouth, was adamant about listing IMDB's top ten films involving horrific plane crashes, and point-of-fact Flo was then only too happy to identify the statistical likelihoods of seven out of ten of those aforementioned movies in a way that was somehow, typically, both breezy and dire. Naturally, the poor girl had been a mopey grape and a wreck travelling to Copenhagen for Worlds, and to top it all off, she'd been seated next to Lilly. Who had, according to her, inaudibly muttered, "Belphegor tells me you look like the girl from Lost,"

Yes. Fucking, what.

And before, when they'd optimistically boarded this flight, Aubrey's unhelpful input of, "You should really choose not to be anxious," was, of course, good for nothing and no one. Despite her slightly skewed perception of things, at least the ex-captain, turned drill Sargent, meant well. Counterproductive advice aside.

So between Beca, Chloe, Cynthia Rose, Stacie, Jessica and Ashley, they'd each made it their sworn mission to keep the girl as far away from the others as possible whenever flying was involved. Having her sit next to the Australian now would be downright contrary to reason. On any scale. With Amy being Amy and Beca knowing all too well just how ridiculously outrageous the woman's antics could be given the opportunity, she'd swiftly opted for Emily to take the window seat, with her taking the middle.

Which would be fine, all things considered, if Amy wasn't skating her eyes fanatically all over the compartment still, while simultaneously looking Houdini-shit crazy all at once. It'd been slowly chipping away at her ever-tested patience when first she'd noticed it, and the look that was no doubt plastered all over her face screamed all the tightly-woven profanities necessary. She can feel a muscle in her face twitch somewhere involuntarily and her mouth forms into a rigid grimace, considering. When she finally caves and flings her head to the side, it's with a renewed determination. "What… the hell are you doing, dude?"

It's the wrong thing to start with, apparently. "Quiet!" Amy flails and moves almost too quickly, which is a brief shock. Beca feels then, to her horror, a clammy palm smack her squarely in the jaw in what, naturally, seems to be a crude effort to silence her. Before she can protest, and recoil, Amy is mumbling into her ear, "Sssssh. Are you insane?"

"What the fuck?!" She pushes against her palm and elicits an embarrassingly loud and droning sound, which then quickly punctures the mundane thrum and lulling of the plane. It's all she can do, really, as she begins to mutter uselessly against the hand. She doesn't have the fortitude to put up with this right now. Silenced without relent for reasons unknown, Beca is saddled with her only option; to glare with what she hoped were two frigid, soul-shaking daggers tipped with acid. Her fingers are pulling at Amy's sleeve like a maniac when she wales uselessly against the larger woman. Yet nothing. Amy's looking around still, seemingly non-fazed and decidedly all sixes and sevens about whatever. She considers chewing threw the hand, a momentary shock but not entirely illogical given the sheer ludicrousness of the situation. Whatever she hoped to convey with heated words, however, had been promptly muffled.

It's at that point when Emily resolves to spin around in her seat. Her eyes widen guardedly like a gazelle and they zoom in suddenly on Beca's. They both share a startled look of encyclopedia proportions before she throws a timid glance around both of the struggling girls and shifts to remove her headphones. She hesitantly opens her mouth. "Guys?"

All four pairs of eyes suddenly fall to the younger Bella, as both Amy and Beca stop short and stiffen, seized. "Oh, hello, you. Emily… yeah. How are you?" Amy asks, all too quickly and far, far too casually to be considered even partially sincere. She watches as Emily regards her carefully. Looking and opening her mouth, closing it, then skating her eyes over at Amy. A mad frown sports across Beca's forehead as she resigns herself to defeat, and watches as it succeeds in deepening the debate currently flashing like a warning in the younger girl's eyes.

"I'm… fine?" she stammers.

Beca mutters darkly against her restraint as Amy's face morphs into a strikingly doubtful grin. "Excellent. Nice talking. Turn around please?"

Her eyes narrow as Beca's nearly rolled in disdain. There's a cautionary swivel of curiosity and hesitation before something else begins to shadow Emily's glare. Mute consideration, perhaps? Whatever the girl appeared to contemplate, it looked like she'd already decided to pay no attention and forget whatever was currently happening. "Oookay. Yeah. Sure… thing." She turns, still a little perplexed, and then fastens her headphones back in place. She says nothing else.

As soon as Amy brings her hand back, Beca moves. She vaguely considers the five finger death punch, which is, probably, almost as terrifying as her actually remembering something of note from Kill Bill V2. Instead, and just as Amy is lifting her hand once more, as though to taunt, she smacks it away, shooing. "Are you serious right now? What the hell is wrong with you? Get a grip!"

There's a heady chuckle in the other woman's voice when she replies, though looking once more toward an oblivious Emily. "I'm always serious, Beca. I'm a very serious person. Don't be so hurtful." Typically evasive. Clockwork evasive. "It hurts," she finishes.

She's groaning before she can stop herself and pinching the bridge of her nose. "Literally everything you just said then is a complete lie."

Amy rolls her eyes, but whenever Amy does anything ever, it's always with a flair for being overly dramatic. She should have expected this. Yet for whatever obtuse reason beyond that of rational thinking, Beca had thought that, maybe, the Australian would stick like a barnacle to her assigned seat and just stay put. She'd been far too quiet since they'd left France. It'd been as weird as the odd part of YouTube and more than a little nerve-wracking at best. So when Amy does roll her eyes, of course she crowns her head back like seagull, into the headrest, and groans a little too loudly for Beca's emotional tandem. It was not that dissimilar from a wild animal, either, which was infinitely worse. And… weird. Beca just watches her oddly, eyes wide and flickering doubtfully up and over the aisle to scout for any possible wondering eyes. Though, to her relief, Amy settles after audibly running out of breath, but not before breathing in once again and blowing her hair back with an abrasive rush of air. She sniffs, begrudgingly begins to pout, of course, and Beca can't help but seethe at the psychobiblical bullshit. "Stop it." she says. Simple. To the point.

Amy acts oblivious. The whole thing is on purpose, she knows, a ruse. But it's becoming far too exasperating to handle. "Stop what?"

"Don't. You know, so stop it."

"How can I stop, I don't know what to stop. Should I stop breathing? Eating?" Her eyes draw thin, souring. "You monster."

"That," she summons an accusing finger and points at the woman's moping face. Of course, said face is in its fourth degree of Kubler-Ross's stages of grieving, and also trying very, very earnestly not to break the bogus façade. "This! Whatever it is you're planning… just stop."

"… Planning?"

"Amy!" Beca breathes in an abating breath to steady herself. They'd been flying for an insurmountable number of hours. Which was an overt exaggeration of time, yes, but time painstakingly ceased to make any cognitive sense when seconds seem like minutes. No matter how many times Beca cast a disinterested glance at her phone, thirty-fucking-seconds later, the hand had barely inched to the next stupid decimal. The point being; she was hardly in any mood to deal with Amy and her mischief right now. "And, also…" she whispers a little irritably, leaning in close and willing for the other woman to listen as she stared, and she, her. "Leave that poor, defenseless girl alone." She tries to point her thumb inconspicuously toward Emily, who thankfully, in Beca's peripherals, was looking out the compartment window. Blissfully, stupidly unaware.

"Beca," Amusement hustles her words. Her stare is a little too blasé for the smaller woman's quickly dissipating tolerance, but then she continues and her next words make Beca absolutely livid. "I don't have the time, patience, or the crayons to explain to you… just how wrong that assumption is."

"I swear to-…"

"You two!"

For the second time in what was, likely, only a miniscule amount of minutes, both girls swiftly ceased all verbal fencing. The sound of another voice suddenly pervading the air towers above them makes them stop. Searching out, Beca looks up, same as Amy. They seemed impishly in-sync as both of their eyes promptly connected with red hair and a sure-enough puzzling look that spoke definitive volumes in the following silence. Chloe stood behind them, blue eyes boring down and waiting. Her perfectly manicured brow rose slightly, if not a little tantalizingly, and Beca suddenly feels her lips start to curve into a slightly inelegant smile at the familiar sight.

She breathes a wispy, "Hi!" before freezing in her seat. Amy looks at her pointedly just as she clears her throat. She can feel the thudding of her pulse beneath her temples as she takes a moment to rehearse just how utterly ridiculous that sounded. What the hell. "We're being loud," she says finally, decidedly. It's hardly a revelation. It's true, she knows, but Beca can't seem to find a plausible reason to care anymore. If she were being honest with herself, she's still thinking about how neurotic her greeting had been. It feels like she just wilfully aged a decade.

For a brief moment, all she can quietly discern is the distant, yet not far-off, humming vibrations of the engines pulsing over the wings of the plane as she just stares, bug-eyed.

Chloe cocks her head a little haphazardly, eyes slipping squarely onto Beca for a moment. There's a peculiar glint sharpening her stare. The scrutinizing of which temporally causes Beca to feel slightly uncomfortable, only because she feels like a petulant child who's about to receive scornful lecture for being too loud. But the redhead is cautioning a glance toward Amy too, yet not before quickly, fluidly, cycling back to an unmoving brunette. She's holding out her IPod, Beca realizes, and now she's slowly sashaying it between them, "I can overhear you through Shania," she says a little accusingly, though not without a sly hint of something else. Laughter, Beca thinks. She grins.

The kick of gravity dampens her chest.

A probable cause of being suspended at an altitude of 30,000 feet in the air, no doubt. Yeah. That was it.

"I'm sorry." She looks at Amy then, "We're both sorry."

She observes them comically from behind the seats, smirking, ever so slightly, with some sparkling secret that eludes Beca and, possibly, all formation of coherent thought. "Is that so?" Her curls bob freely as her head ganders between one woman to the other. "Should I call for an air marshal before you two have a rom-com beat down in the middle of the plane?"

"That's not…-"

"Chloe!" Amy is punctual, without delay, all sunshine and sickening light-heartedness wrapped in a piece shiny aluminum foil. As quick as a wink, she's smiling, and Beca wants to strangle her. "You beautiful tropical fish. Relax. Woosaa! Ms. Killjoy here and I were just discussing the philosophical merits of being kind to one another. We've made progress." She fights the urge to slap her, and scowl. Or both. Yes. Though, strangling her still seems like the more suitable choice at this moment.

"Oh," The look she gives is one of pure dubiousness. She's tapping her fingers thoughtfully over the headrest and actually considering, in a way that's almost adorable, and it takes everything within Beca not to laugh at it. "Well, thankfully that's a topic you're well versed in."

Amy strikes Beca lightly over the shoulder, "See?" and then sprouts a thankful nod toward the slowly waning redhead. She hasn't stopped smiling. "Da, darling."

"Sarcasm was never a part of the school's itinerary where you hail from. Huh, Amy?" Beca quips suddenly.

"Mm, nah. Although," she clicks her tongue, "on a slightly unrelated and monotone note; chap your crusty lips, bitch, and kiss my ass."

A laugh suddenly rolls out like a piece of lost music, lovely and choral-like. Chloe is smiling broadly with a slightly guilty look, and Beca can't help it. She concedes to the sound, to the silliness of it all and joins in, because the blank face Amy is making begins to slip at the seams. Not before long, all three of them are sputtering in cohesion, between laughing and grinning incessantly like a bunch of hearty old women. It's within small moments such as these that Beca can't help but imagine being someone else for a moment, if only for a couple of minutes. Just to observe. To be a furtive stranger looking up, jolted by the sound of crowding laughter and seeing, for the first time, a bunch of artlessly grinning girls like them carrying on like they do. She wonders what goes through their mind. Thinks, maybe, that she doesn't want to know, but then considers it a cause for flattery, to be even noticed at all.

Emily takes a moment of reprieve from her daydreaming, or whatever she'd been doing up until now. She notices Chloe above them. Once more though with a little leisure, she removes her headphones and looks up toward the bumbling redhead with a slightly baffled expression and pocket-sized smile, "Oh… hi, Chloe."

And Chloe is Chloe, all charming integrity and full of eloquence, who safeguards affections for her friends like a thief does with prized and priceless jewels. She quietens and beams down at the younger brunette with eyes like blue saucers. "Hi, sweetie, are you feeling alright? Do you need anything?"

The ever-watchful and youthful face of Barden Bella's current captain brightens, quickly to trust and doting. It's nice to see, Beca thinks, as she settles in to watch the exchange dotingly. With her suspicions seemingly eased by a few selectively sweet words, Emily is suddenly the epitome of what constitutes as a happy expression. Chloe outwardly has that effect. Effortless, in all her softly knitted candour. Like winking or blinking. The grass is green, clouds are pretty and Chloe is a natural, and it's easy to imagine her being from a magical land full of smiles and rainbows when, in actuality, someone like her can just… simply exist. It's something freshman Beca had once considered a fact, with abject horror, and being slightly helter-skelter about it, because who the hell acts like that? No one. Well, her. She does. Just her. Ah, fuck it.

Leave it to Chloe, of course, to barrel through a bunch of carefully constructed walls meant to stand forever.

She's mentally asphyxiating herself and bowing her head slightly. Her smile slipping but not entirely. Just, lingering. There's a discomfort like a bruise sparking in her chest somewhere, suddenly, and she shifts quietly in her seat. As quickly as the thought surfaces, it was gone.

"Yeah," The massed smile and laugh Emily emits isn't quite what both are really meant to articulate. A sullen mixture of nerves and turbulence, no doubt. "Yeah," she starts again, fumbling inadequately, "So, so totally fine. Um, I think we're supposed to be landing soon, or something, so the worst is over really. Right?"

Amy is already twisting her head before Beca can stop her, and makes a face, "Bless your heart, child. Without Jesus you'll never succeed."

Confused and wondering, Emily's eyes are darting between each girl like the ball from a pinball machine. "Ex-excuse me?"

"Oh no, you're mistaken. There's no excuse for you."

Something the equivalent of a twig snapping in her mind hits her just as awfully as a ball of hypothetical white lightening, and then no sooner the words leave Amy's mouth, an equally stunted and horrified Chloe gasps in realization at what they all just heard, "FAT AMY!" And Beca is sure that their collective voices can be heard. Which no doubt sound more like shouting than anything. She knows that they've probably prompted people to turn or double-back in their allocated seats with suspicion painted over their faces, as if they were all a part of some kind of ancient psychic tandem. Which is just unrealistic, but still. People are looking. People are gaping with startled faces and Emily is shrinking and fidgeting in her seat and quickly reattaching her headphones. Then bleakly, almost laughably, –but not really- she slams her forehead against the reinforced window with a punctured exhale of near-breathless dismay.

And Amy's chortling chuckle from the aisle seat is unnerving. She stands up, gaze seeking and locking over Emily, "Careful you don't break the window with a head like that, Legacy. You'll get sucked through the cracks like a meat and bone flavoured whirl-Slurpee." She makes a terrible sound, rolls her tongue deliberately under the hood of her mouth, and sloshes the accumulated salvia with a sickening sluuuurp.

Beca sees Chloe's hand quickly solidify itself over Emily's shoulder, before Beca herself is spinning in the middle of her seat and using her foot to kick out maddeningly at the still laughing Australian. She's now painfully aware that they still have an audience when she whispers, almost vehemently, "Get out of here, asshole! You. Are. The. Worst." Her words provoke nothing. Like, at all. The woman is an impenetrable stockade of mirthless laughter and electric relaxation, all cheek and carefully constructed ripostes. She's aware that Amy has made it her sole and ridiculously curt purpose to terrorize the poor Legacy. Who, really, wasn't even a Legacy anymore, but things had a tendency to stick with them if it suited, and Emily, being the youngest and most tenderfoot among them, had remained they're fumbling Legacy despite her current reign over the Barden Bella's. Because their horizontal reasoning dictated nothing else.

Unfortunately, that also meant the girl would be on the receiving end of Amy's often unprovoked clapbacks. Beca's never had an older sister. Not a blood relative, anyway. Bellas aside, but if she'd did, which she's thankful she doesn't, then she imagines them being exactly like Amy, and the thought doesn't exactly fill her with a pretty vote of confidence.

The woman's whisking away fake tears and scouting ahead now, before making it publically known that she was, in fact, heading to the restroom. "I shouldn't have guzzled down that curry before take-off. I'll see you guys at the terminal. I'll be prepped and clear for seconds."

Somewhere, wherever, in amongst the sea of tightly condensed seats, Beca can clearly make out a boisterous laugh belonging to an eavesdropping Cynthia Rose.

Amy throws out another shameless glance at Emily before attempting to subtly tap her nose. She winks as she leaves, and Beca takes the short juncture of silence as a soundless victory. Peace at the western front, for however long. It's enough. God, it's enough. At long last and not entirely restrained, a groan springs forth from her mouth. Loudly. She closes her eyes almost painfully. She can feel just how heavy they'd grown, in an attempt to block everything, anything. She's tired, she's hungry. She'd refused to sample the in-flight menus as a principal when the opportunity sprang by a billion minutes ago. The stuff they served and passed for food had looked unappetizing. It felt unappetizing when she'd poked Amy's. So it almost certainly tasted the same. She was eager to get her feet on solid ground. Furthermore, more than anything, Beca just wanted to arrive at their lonesome shack of an apartment, safely. She wanted to shower, and throw on a soft-peddled mix from her plugged in and recharged laptop. She wanted to wrap herself in a cocoon of seemingly unending blankets and just relax, with a hot chocolate. Definitely. Possibly for the ensuring 24 hours after said hot chocolate, and foodstuff. Yes, great plan.

She can feel the seat beside her dip without warning. Eyes still solemnly closed, she briefly marvels at the sheer impossibility of Amy relieving herself so quickly, before opening her eyes and realizing that, yes, it's impossible. Unquestionably, because Amy is still thankfully gone. Emily has calmed down and it's Chloe who is suddenly sitting beside her on the aisle seat.

Her eyes are so heavy with fatigue and she feels like utter shite, yet still she manages the smallest of smiles. She notices too, with an arching glance, that all of Amy's stuff has been removed. Chloe's small carryon is at her feet, along with her travel neck pillow and loafers, which she'd obviously taken off at some point. Her ripped denim pants are rolled up, just above her ankles. Evenly polished and manicured nails are on display, in a turquoise lacquer that looks unmistakably Chloe. There's something else there too, a hint of a fragrance or moisturizer. Lovely and light. Coconut. She recognizes it. Has, unashamedly, grown familiar with its perfume.

Beca cranes her head slightly, to peep through the open gap between their seats and is already grinning a little more. This time with half enchanted eyes before speaking up with a coy glance at the redhead's direction. "You sly Devil, you." Amy's personal effects; a blanket, carryon, her phone, a few packets of unopened chips, and a book actually titled "Get Your Sh*t Together," by some chick. They've all been methodically relocated and organised onto the other seat, neatly. Of course.

Chloe appears a little affronted, with the merest inclination of her head as she replies lowly, with a tinge of mischief. "Well that's terribly endearing."

"Please," she counters with a small scoff, seeing through the bluff. She rests her head back against the headrest, though she achieves little comfort from it. "It's a point of fact that there have been correlations drawn between redheads, the devil and witchcraft. I was complimenting you on your whizical ways, Beale. I'm in awe."

A deep crease forms in the middle of her brow, and then her eyes are rolling with the barest iota of disbelief. "Are you even aware of what happened to people like me between the sixteenth and eighteenth century?"

She thinks briefly, "Uh, yeah," she decides. "Impassioned hypocrisy."

"Sure. We'll call it that."

She's biting her lip to contain her softly simmering laughter, bearing the emotion freely over her face before quickly casting a furtive glance up and toward the front of the plane. She murmurs quietly, "Do you think Amy will be impassioned when she comes back to a hijacked seat?"

"If she's not already impassioned defecating in the ladies room, then yeah. I imagine so."

Silence reigns for the briefest of moments, then Beca's nods curtly, once, with clouded eyes and images she'd rather not mentally check off. "That is… so, so gross, and weird. Jeez."

"You two were actively sending each other poop selfies at one point." There's a kernel of laughter underlining her voice.

"That… um." Poop selfies, as anointed by Fat Amy. Not as inherently disgusting as it sounded but rather a misunderstood practice and only superficially horrid. Simply put, it is a photograph typically taken with a phone much like a normal selfie. Only, in this scenario, said selfie is taken on the toilet. In the midst of business. "… was one time."

"You used the crying make-up smear as a filter, Beca," she deadpanned.

Her eyes move skyward to the roof as though searching for some far-seeing, ethereal guidance. "Purely to articulate just how oppressed I felt. Besides," she asserts, with raw confidence and not at all embarrassment, "it was conditional. She said she'd pitch in my half of the rental payment."

Laughter akin to mockery escapes her, and she looks at Beca, hard, "And if you can recall, her 'pitch in' was an uploaded screenshot to Facebook and a late payment of exactly $10.83."

She'd known that wouldn't stop her. Damnit. "Yeah. I recall. You pinned the laminated copy of the eviction notice up on our fridge as a friendly keepsake."

The original, luckily, had been torn up when both Beca and Chloe made an instant, frenzied, New York minute beeline for the superintendent no sooner they'd found it, in a pile of Fat Amy Winehouse headshots.

"With," Chloe added brightly, flicking a doting index finger over Beca's nose, "your pretty little poopy face stapled above it."

She bristles and, more or less, feels herself turning a little red in the cheeks. "I wasn't making any sort of face, at all," Chloe is already laying it on her thick with the half-cocked nod and skepticism. Her groan of frustration is ignored, though she continues anyway, determined to validate her argument, "or trying to be anything. You hear me? I was consciously blank during the whole process. Fake make-up smear and all. Okay?"

"Eh. Still super pretty though," the redhead says, with a playful wink. Completely, airily serious.

She stops short, caught off guard for some peculiar reason, but… not really. She just stares, unhelped.

And she can't be sure if she's hearing something, or seeing something. A hidden proclamation, maybe, or that she's just idiotically overthinking some piece of non-existent vibrancy that may or may not be there. Buried, perhaps, just below the surface. Probably the later. She's not sure what to make of it. What it means. Whether it was to say that Chloe knew what Beca was trying to authenticate, or that -despite the fact that Beca Mitchell in the aforementioned photo did indeed have a blank face, and that yes, she had actually been using the toilet, but never mind- that Chloe Beale, with little to no dilemma at all, thought she was pretty. Super pretty, as in attractive? Clichéd pretty as a flower pretty? As in, regardless of whatever cheap filter, action, or forced facial response she'd used?

And she knows it's pathetic. Cannot, for the life of her, believe that she's actually internalizing the credibility of something as stupid as that, because it is stupid. She's fully aware of how it all sounds. She's particularly conscious of the fact that she's orbiting around something that just… doesn't exist. She's looking a gift horse in the mouth and being incredibly dumb and short-sighted and it makes her feel a little slow on the uptake and somehow inelegant, because why? What for? She's locking herself in unnecessary details with the minute particulars of a figment. Of something that isn't there, that's wrong. It's just static.

Chloe has said that she's pretty before. Gosh, she's thrown that word out, more than once, whenever the redhead says or does something meriting a compliment. Jokingly. Endearingly? Fuck. It's disillusionment, at best. A far cry from anything even remotely significant, and it hurts.

"Yeah, well," Forget it, she thinks. Does, and knows, because it's for the best. To simply move on and pretend otherwise. Like it's all perfectly normal. "Treasure it, Beale. It'll be the only one in existence soon."

Chloe hasn't noticed anything, of course, because unlike Beca, she isn't turning over, examining, and deducing every possible line of reasoning behind a passing glance or word.

"What do you mean?" she asks.

Her sight is trained on her as finitely as the wings lifting and keeping the plane aloft. "Theo suggested that I go through, like, every social media account that I own and sanitize them of any possible incriminating goods. You know, before I hit it up and stuff, with the celebrity bigwigs. I kinda agreed with him."

"Rebecca Ann Mitchell!" She chides, a sing-song tone giving leeway to a hint of a scold, but not entirely. A wry smile quirks at the corners of Beca's mouth then. Usage of her full name, though uncalled for, is quickly disregarded. Just as similarly as the other troublesome things plaguing her mind. "If you think, for one second," Chloe presses, halfway between amused and offended, and leaning closer, "that I'm going to just stand by and twiddle my fingers as you systematically eradicate years of precious, digital memories…-"

"Just the incriminating memories, you freakin' crazy train."

"Am not!" She looks torn, but Beca can feel the misfigured feelings and melancholy lighten within her chest at the entertaining sight. It's hard to stay dull and glum when those big, brilliant, electric eyes were simply wide with feeling and as insistent as they were blue. "And you know every single one us; the Bellas, I mean," she urges, "You know we all have that photo of you, right? Amy uploaded it to our group chat."

That women. She grimaces, "You're all signing non-disclosure agreements."

"Becaaa," the whine is nearly pathetic, but adorable. She sounds like a horrified puppy realizing that their owner has decided against walking them, after already promising to do so.

"I know where you sleep."

"That don't impress me much," she intonates, the musical lilt of the Shania Twain lyric rising and falling to the camber of her beautiful voice. "At least let me be there when you decide to go through them. Pretty please. Please."

"What? No, just. No, dude. You'll just dish out all these really profound reasons as to why I shouldn't, with all of them."

She's nodding fiercely, eyes alight with elation and clearly overjoyed at the prospect of them sifting through nostalgia-filled images, like it was the stupidest thing for Beca to assume any differently. "What are friends for, silly?" She smacks her knee lightly.

Beca swallows the lump in her throat. "You're setting me up for a loss. You know that right?" Right?

And then it's there again. She can see it, and feel it. The reel of imagery plays much like a movie in her head, almost immediately, like the combination of thoughts and feelings had always been there. Waiting, maybe, just beneath the surface. Not elusive but locked, loaded and ready to go at the mere push of a button. She can feel herself warming as she willingly presses play, becomes confused. Then accepting. Watches, as she sees herself lean over her laptop. It's night. She's sitting on her side of the pull-out in their unkempt apartment, legs crossed and frowning intently, with the only shade of light being from the bedside table. A soft, orange glow. Chloe's side. She's there too, imitating her, propped up and sitting and they're scrolling through unseen images and pointing, laughing, and just… existing, together. It shocks her at first because she doesn't quite know what to make of it, again. Doesn't really know how to feel, but she can see red hair like the sun. There are cerulean eyes as bright as wildfire. Always kind, open, with a beseeching smile that beams brighter then both, and they had all agreed, years ago; that Amy would have her own bed, and that they would manage together. Because it was easy, natural. Plutonic, and Amy was Amy. It hadn't bothered her in the slightest.

And it hits her then, quickly, and almost painfully; just as the reel of imagery fades away from her view, and darkens.

She knows, cannot think any other way now.

Because it's going to bother her now, because… it's different, for her. Altered, somehow.

It makes her heart sink, like stones beneath water.

How had it come to this?

Beside her, reality kicks back with a familiar voice. Chloe lightly clears her throat, before questioning, "Becs?"

She stops, breathes. The plane fades away from them to nothing as they stare at one another suddenly. "Uh, sorry," She angles her head slightly to the left and see's that Chloe is doing much the same. Greatly. "Um…" She's mirroring her, sticking her head out toward the brunette and gazing intently, waiting still. Worry is etched plainly over her carefully levelled brow, and all Beca wants to do, in that secular moment, is smooth it out with the pad of her thumb. Just to reassure her. Because she's fine, really. She has to be, because anything else would because to worry. Right? To question, and that was far, far from what she wanted. From what was needed, and what Chloe deserved. "I just, think, that I really want to be home already," she says finally.

Her ever-abiding smirk is like a prowling taunt she can't shake. Never of two minds, only clarity. "Well, we're landing soon," she coos, bringing her legs up and curling them snuggly into the seat and tucking them in against her. She rests her arm over her knees and curls the other into her body, "I can't wait to finally shower," she heaves out an ostentatious sigh. Beca can feel it ghost over her skin. "and sleep."

The enormity of that simple statement is dangerously close to overwhelming her. Beca bites down on the inside of her cheek as she takes another short breath and smiles impishly. "Isn't that, like, an extremely odd thing to say for a future veterinary physician?"

Chloe's grin turns distinctly pliant. "Future vet. Future. Strong emphasis on the word future, Mitchell." She watches the way the redhead shoulders shift, like her eyes, as something unseen briefly flickers over them, a passing afterthought, and Beca wants to ask her what it is that suddenly bothers her.

But the sound of heavy footfalls quickly disturbs their delirium, and Amy's voice punctures the air like a startling whip. "Well, well. I see how it is." She hears an unappreciative hum as Amy marches behind them and takes the only available seat. "You know, Chloe," she sighs, feigning sadness for dramatic effect, "I know your kind are, technically, one soul short from being an actual human being," Beca's eyes widen in horror, "but that in no way permits you to crush us poor cherubs, who do have souls."

Without looking up and otherwise unfretted by the insult, Chloe happily chimes, "I thought we were meeting you at the terminal, Fat Amy?"

"Oh, yeah. See," Amy pauses, and Beca can suddenly make out the undeniably loud and abrasive sound of her tearing open a chip packet, "the lighting was just right and the ambiance was comparable to that of a Matt Moran star restaurant, so it all came pillowing out in one fell swoop. Only had to wipe twice."

She's too tired for this. She vaguely hears Chloe whisper an "oh god," obviously just as mentally repulsed by what was, probably, an accurate representation of what constituted as the perfect scene for Amy and her movements. Beca shifts a little to peek a glance through the tiny gap behind them. Amy catches her. She holds up two fingers and murmurs, "Two times," as though more clarification was really needed on the subject. She shakes her head, giving up, completely disgusted but not at all surprised and turns back around. Chloe is starring at her, lips drawn thin and grinning, cheeks red. She looks as though she's refraining herself from laughing. Attempting to, anyway. It's clear to Beca that she knows, much like herself, that any sudden sound or indication of merriment would only encourage Amy. Her eyes are burning and her brows are pinched plainly in restraint, and it's not enough because in the end, watching Chloe struggle is enough to tip her over the edge, and then Beca's the first to break the silence with a sudden, riotous laugh.

And when Chloe finally joins her, it's like music.

 JFK airport is a chaotic cesspit of people, intercoms, screens and action, even at one o'clock in the morning.

With agonizing defeat, each of the girls made it through the overcrowded terminal to the baggage carousel. After waiting in what was, most likely, a collective hive-mind comprised of fatigue, irritation and starving appetites, they each collected their bags and, finally, stumbled haphazardly out towards the commercial outlets.

It struck Beca as hilarious, really, because when they'd arrived firsthand in Spain, each of them had made a point to dress immaculately. Designer jackets, chic shoes, make-up utilized to perfection; just, ridiculously excessive in all but their fucking underwear, really. Except for Flo. Who, apparently, with a wink, had happily admitted to going commando, "For the occasion."

Everything had been one notch up from being glamorously on point and perhaps a little shy of luminary. Or as Aubrey had so eloquently asserted: a sophisticated show of empowerment, because, "I will not have us get off that plane looking like a bunch of flabby abbey's in wheat sacks." Which, you know, whatever.

The complete opposite could be said of them now.

Right now, they were probably something more akin to the Spice Girls after a solid hit of LSD, simultaneously easing down and recovering from a turbulent night of heavy drinking and electric Kool-Aid. They were an entourage of loosely fitting sweats, jumpers, old t-shirts and ripped jeans. All sported varying degrees of dishevelled, loosely tied hair with bulging buns carelessly sticking up, and with the occasional pair of shades thrown uselessly atop of their heads for good measure, or sitting at the bridge of their noses. They all looked fed up, and they no doubt oozed the founding principles of a bunch of certified coach potatoes. Flo had wrapped herself in a small blanket. Lilly was quiet, which was odd now. Cynthia Rose dragged herself like the weight of the world had been hoisted atop her shoulders. Aubrey had purchased and downed two bottles of water like a deprived elephant and Chloe, seemingly on alert to the wraithlike signs simmering within the blonde, had promptly flung a protective arm up and around her shoulders -just in case- because apparently she had been, "one accidental nudge away from dick-punching a slut." Emily looked like she was going to spill her guts everywhere –which she had, repetitively, into a complimentary spew bag when the plane had ploughed into the tarmac- and Amy clung to her chips like Jessica clung to Ashley. Only she was knowingly eating them in front of a very pale, very nauseated Emily.

From her pocket, Beca can feel her phone vibrate suddenly. Having little to no care if someone ran into her, she slips her fingers over the device, quickly pulls it out and stares dumbly at it for a second. Her eyes adjust to the bright hue of the mailbox application. It's from Theo. She fingers the unlock button and reads:

Hola, New Age Traveller. U arrived yet?

She scoffs. The subtle shake of her head causes a few loose strands to fall from her rookie bun as she quickly types a reply. Thankfully. You keeping tabs on me, creep?

The brits reply is instant. I may have set an alarm, yes.

Weird.

Gotta appraise & baby-sit the talent, B. All prt of the job. Enjoy the wk off. I'll be in touch mday 1pm. Tlk more thn.

Beca can't help the groan that pulls from her mouth. Looking forward to it.

Your sarcasm doesn't transl8 well thru txt, u no tht right?

IlLiTeRaTe bItCh.

There she is. Take care, Becs.

You too, man.

She slides the lock bar back into place just as Cynthia Rose tiredly, and mutely, pulls herself up outside of a communal lounge, and because everyone is apparently surgically attached at the hip, they all stop. Emily's crestfallen face mellows into one of pure relief when she notices, and is all too happy to lean gingerly against the wall. It's not just a lounge, Beca realizes, but as she casts an ambivalent glance around their surroundings, she discerns quite easily at the furthermost point of the lounge, the sparsely dimmed –and open- bar wreathed in smooth light and the laid-back atmosphere.

Cynthia Rose turns a sharp eye toward Emily, "You're over twenty-one, yeah?"

She shrugs a little non-committedly and seemingly unfazed, but Beca knows the answer, "Ye-yeah, I am. Twenty-one, I mean." she stammers. She makes no attempt to look at anyone but the ceiling, probably to stop herself from regretfully spilling more than just half-jumbled words. Beca suddenly has this overwhelming urge to just sweetly brush the ailing girls hair back and whisper nonsense into her ears, because she gets like that now. Emotional, and she's a fucking sucker for poutiness, even when it's hopelessly unintentional.

Cynthia is undeterred. There's a mission in her eyes. "What time's your flight?"

"Same as mine," Aubrey announces, with a downcast sigh as she removes her glasses and stares vacantly toward the rapper. She provides a thankful nod and delicate, not-all-there-but-there smile at Chloe, "It leaves for Atlanta in just under two hours."

She considers for a moment, clearly pondering something that was otherwise unseen to the rest of them. "And you two?" her eyes skate over toward Jessica and Ashely.

The girls look like two frightfully reminiscent fishes pulled out from the water. Startled rigid and wide-eyed at having being addressed so openly, in public too. They're markedly blinking like they've been given a life or death question, and it's so, so precious and unbelievably heartbreaking all at once. Eventually, Jessica is the one to speak up between the two, probably having telepathically convened with the immobile brunette holding her hand in, what appeared, to be a vice-like grip of ungodly proportions. "I-I think we're on the same flight as Emily and Aubrey."

"We are," say's Ashley, very quickly.

Jessica looks down at her, and then nods. "Yes. Yes."

Cynthia turns to Flo, already expecting an answer. The bassists tone is clipped and a little croaky when she gives a petulant sigh and starts slowly, "I live in Queens with my brother, culero."

And that seemed to be the golden answer, despite what was, probably, an insult in Spanish. The best, because CR claps her hands together in palpable glee and points towards the bar, hands still intertwined aside from the single guiding digit pointing ahead. "My flight is in three. I'll be over there, ladies, and ya'll need join me for one last hoorah before we all make a break for it. C'mon."

They're all tired, overwrought, and dreadfully sleep deprived, yet it washes away effortlessly just as Cynthia Rose strides into the bar without further regard. They're all dead to the ground for a moment, undecided, but then a still enveloped Flo waddles after her with an ushered grin, who is soon followed by an oddly silent yet agreeable Amy. She lofts her chips into Emily's hand and moves along with a brusque wink and a completely disagreeable smirk. Beca snatches the packet out of the poor girl's hands. She tosses it into the nearest garbage can, and then interlopes her arm with the reluctant Legacy's and drags her along, smiling slightly, and then behind them; Aubrey and Chloe, a doe-eyed, and ever-oddly-amazed Lilly, as well as Jessica and Ashley, all spring from their rooted spots in the airports floor and follow after them with a favoured look of newly discovered vibrancy. All agreeing.

Late hour be damned. She could use a drink.

Chapter Text

The aim was not to get drunk. Far from it in fact, and honestly, none of them were particularly capable, let alone physically equipped, to handle such a feat at this hour anyway. Rather, it was universally agreed upon that settling in for a mellow drink or two, just a few short hours before the other flights would be, as slated by Fat Amy, fucking tops.

So here they were, with an entrée of cheap junk food and beer being tonight’s impromptu selection. Water, for Emily, by choice, and Aubrey blithely settled for a simple gin and tonic. Their commemoratory ‘hoorah,’ was in full swing by the time they’d all played pyramid with their luggage and bundled them within an empty booth. Flo and Cynthia Rose volunteered to chaperon for food and immediately made a beeline for the closest outlet, just as soon as everyone doled out whatever cash mintage remained in their pockets and purses. They soon returned with a bulk purchase of beautiful greasy goodness. It was, she knew, a calorie-hazard galore of below-par foodstuff, but no sooner the bouquet of flavors found her nose,  Beca was quick to reject any previously bias opinions.

She spares a glance, an eyeing sweep merely to observe and not at all judge. Every single one of them, save for Emily, are indistinguishable from the other where their appetites are concerned. The sight of them eating together and sipping periodically from their drinks, sharing collective hums of approval intermixed with airy gossip and chitchat; it makes her feel all sorts of warm and fuzzy. Maybe even whimsy, secretly, and she wants to laugh at them, at herself even, because it almost reminds her of their time in Barden at the Bella household. Their old-school midnight diddle-daddling and procrastinating was never complete without a few choice chocolates, sweets, fruity mocktails or an acropolis of pillows and blankets.

The amusing acceptance of contrasting then and now makes Beca feel profoundly content in the knowledge that she still has these few lingering moments to keep, with them. That they’re still here, together, years later and still outstandingly inseparable from the other, no matter the distance in between. The only one missing was Stacie.

“O Lord, Christ,” Aubrey sounds like she’s weeping into her food. Although with each ensuing mouthful of her burger, the no good prayer for forgiveness barely stops her from taking another bite, one tantalizing morsel after the other. Still, “Redeemer and Saviour spare me mercy…” and then quickly, rather dramatically, the hymn breaks off and knifelike eyes are suddenly narrowing in on Beca, “Give me that, now. Give me those!” She’s waving an aggressive hand toward the curly fries far out of her reach, which was ostensibly closer to Beca than anyone else was. Realizing this a little too late and frowning, the brunette’s heart makes a lewd jump in her chest when she discerns the cold fury behind the blonde’s heavily lidded eyes and gapes at her. “Now, shorty!” She jumps.

“Jesus, try not to have a fucking tit fit before you board, okay. Here.” She quickly throws a french fry cup toward the woman’s fanlike fingers with a half-offended sigh. Aubrey’s glare is nearly arctic by default, naturally, though rendered mutely by the slight widening in response to Beca’s kickback, she gladly accepts the fries without so much as a scathing retort for good measure and Beca nearly scoffs at her, smiling preferably.

She lifts her beer to her lips a touch too eagerly and takes a huge swig, relishing in the carbonated liquid trickling down her throat. It wasn’t the best. It was hardly anything, really, but it was cheap and cold, aerated in a way that was pleasant, so it was enough. Beside her, Emily sips her water wordlessly. Her face bore a little more color, thank God, and her seemingly debilitated body looked less ill given the ease in her posture now. Beca even noticed her sneaking a fry every so often, testing.

Wanting to query, she nudges the Legacy with her knee softly under their table and their eyes meet upon contact. “You, uh, holding up there alight?”

Emily looks briefly at her hands, at the pale fingers wrapped a fraction too tightly around the clear plastic cylinder of water. “I think,” she starts, steadying herself with a few labored, counted breaths, “that I’ll be a lot better and a lot happier once I’m home, to be honest. I think. Um…” A pause, with a few seconds passing listlessly in silence just as Beca’s brow raises in question, and then Emily’s lurching up beside her, startling them both. She’s apologizing profusely, seemingly projected halfway to a plain of paranoia and explaining away before Beca can stop her, “I mean, I’m happy! Like, super, super happy. Not, like, depressed or anything like that. I love you guys, I do, I just, I’m thinking about flying again, I’m exhausted and I just upchucked my weight in beef stew and…-”

It takes every little thing within her not to roll her eyes at the girl, at her adorable insecurity. Recap of beef stew and all. Like, it’s unhelped, she knows. Emily has always carried herself with a quiet air of vulnerability. She’s this adorable amalgamate of both child and adult, and she’s tragically uncertain about many, many things, unfortunately. About herself, with others. In Beca’s eyes though, that uncertainty stems from just caring, way too damn much, about everything. That doesn’t make it any less heartbreaking and/or equal parts lovable.

She’s quickly sashaying her hand from side to side in front of the incoherent girl's face, shaking her head and smiling. It catches and holds her attention. “Hey, hey,” she intones, with a heartening grin and another small nudge to comfort, “Reign it in, dude. Hold up. Its fine,” Emily’s face evidentially slackens at the sign of her shoulders giving way. “So you’re a little homesick,” she comforts. “No biggie. You don’t need to apologize for that, man. We’re all with you on that.”

Cynthia Rose’s voice shoots up accusingly from across the table. “That’s easy for you to say, B. You four,” she tips a motioning finger up between Beca, Amy, Chloe and Flo, “only need to hail a cab and drive to a radius of about twelve kilometers or less. The rest of us still have to tow our asses skyward,” she takes a short moment, before eyeing a grinning, whimsical Lilly up and down strangely, “and I don’t even know where the hell you’re at, Esther.”

Lilly. Esther. The girl pauses briefly when she’s addressed, tilting her head suddenly toward the ceiling and leering at it for a few questionable seconds. Then she’s beaming, cycling back tenfold, “Oh!” A few of them, including Beca, spring up from their seats at the loud and oddly joyous voice. “It’s all a strange, waking blur to me,” the beatboxer continues serenely. “Thank God my old memories are still available otherwise I’d have no idea either!”

The silence after that, she thinks, feels something akin to seeping paralysis, like a cold liquid over their skin. They all just stare, completely dumbfounded. Chloe’s mouth parts wordlessly. Jessica places a consoling hand over Ashley’s hand. Aubrey is the one to counteract the atmosphere completely with a tentative voice, treading carefully, “Well, good on you… for having a go. You little… go-getter, you.”

All at once, everyone is fumbling with amateurish-at-best compliments, which then cumulates into loose nonsense after that.

Lilly responds simply by raising two perpendicular fingers and a thumb to mimic a handgun. She pulls back the proverbial trigger and simultaneously clicks her tongue with a wink, saying no more.

They agree then, with carefully interlocking eyes over the table and drawn brows. Mutely, they all accede and decide to leave it alone. Forget it. It’d been one hell of a strange day anyway.

Voices start to prattle away happily as if they’re all a mass of teaming chipmunks soon after, littered with smiles and practiced disregard. They eat together in a sedated sort of melody, though it’s punctured occasionally by the sipping of their drinks, or more talking. Her best friends socializing and teeter-toting together, delighting in the time they’re given. The smokey blur and drawl of the airport around them, the intercoms and the many distinct people passing within it through Beca’s ears and peripheries drift by aimlessly until beside her a quite sound, like a tiny cough, announces their presence and Emily is suddenly clearing her throat.

Turning towards her, Beca feels like she’s probably bearing the facial expression of someone who is about to be presented with a great gift, until, “You’d have to move though, right?” Emily is looking at Beca with wide, beseeching eyes. Her question is sincere, yet spoken unsurprisingly with a small inkling of uncertainty, maybe even caution. Whatever the carefully founded emotion lining her kind voice, it all hits Beca the same. “To L.A.? What with being a new, evolving soloist and all,” Hastily, out of the blue. The reality of the words spoken coursing through her like ice. “I mean, I’m assuming that’s where you’d have to go, right? Eventually, you know, or soon…”

“Yeah, no. Um,” She’s made aware of all the eyes centred on her now, drawn in by the implication behind Emily’s question, waiting. As if they hadn’t been overhearing. Beca bites down on her lower lip and her eyes turn gingerly over toward the others, not at all comfortable with the attention suddenly careened over in her direction. It’s as if they’re hopeful, strung up suddenly on every possible word she may or may not say.

And it’s nice. It is really is. To know and feel that kind of support rolling off them effortlessly like waves and smiles. She’s grateful, and she wishes it were enough. It should be, realistically. Yet, for some reason, her stomach is a cistern of nerves. Her chest feels cramped, knotted. All choky, constricted and unsure as though someone with prying fingers had reached into her of their own volition and just twisted.

Her eyes, for whatever vague and enigmatic reason, are unanticipatedly pulled to Chloe’s suddenly.

Their eyes slip into each other, drawn.

Voiceless from across the table.

Her face was straighter than a poker players.

“I mean, probably?” She trills lightly, eyes hurriedly skating away without further regard and choosing to look at anything but. She’s grinning from ear to ear now, swallowing thickly with her teeth showcased for good measure. Its two-thirds put on, admittedly. Shaking her head skeptically and appearing so unlike her chaotic mental musings. Thank God. It’s easier, right? Because she wasn’t about to broadcast her insecurities to a bunch of first-rate awesome and highly considerate women with a penchant for being fiercely maternal when in need. Which, obviously, there’s nothing wrong with that. At all. It’s just… not what she needs right now. “There’s a lot of things,” she continues, “Tiny things, and big, things, that need appraising. Minute details and such. It’s, uh, a shortlisted component of just things on the agenda for Monday.”

“So you have a week to collect your bearings then? Cool, cool. That’s… awesome!” Emily appraises excitedly, smirking with an almost inquisitive-like gleam to her eyes.

Beca tilts her head once, agreeing, and sporting a brave face. “Yeah, to do… whatever, really. Call it a brief intermission, of sorts. Before the long haul.”

“You need a lawyer,” Aubrey positively asserts with a nod, taking a sip from her glass. “Take this week to prepare. Methodize yourself.”

Again, she’s inclined to agree, nodding once more in settled acknowledgment, though not at all surprised by the blonde’s sound conviction. “Obviously, yeah, where money and contracts are involved. I planned for some sort of independent research during the week but I had, have? Have, this long-term relationship…-”

“Semen demon,” Fat Amy punctuates flatly, whirling her beer in the air in front of her and then dragging out one long, showy swig of its contents.

Beca’s eyes narrow as she draws in a deep breath, growing rigid. She bites out, “Professional. Professional, long-term relationship with a guy on retainer at BFD. Christ, Amy.”

Amy just shrugs her nonchalance with an impish smirk. “Sure.” Clearly not caring whether she’d overstepped anything permissible, at all. Typical.

“Anyway…” The lines on her forehead smooth out as she wills herself to relax, ignoring. She taps the palm of her hand over the table with newly ascertained confidence, “I have a mental checklist of core questions rehearsed and I know my way around this kind of stuff, yeah? The raft of agreements involved, legal alternatives and whatnot. It’s nothing I’m not used to. I’ve overseen recording contracts before but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to go in blind or anything. I’ll get in contact with this guy, gauge some shit or look at his recommendations and bracket some ideas with him. Whatever it takes, you know? Plus, I sort of trust Theo to have my back as well, so…-”

“Oh, you mean the guy who’s also in a position to judicially screw you over?” Aubrey’s punctual laugh is sardonic at best, as she fixes Beca with a look that screams idiot. “Oh, Mitchell.”

Beca glances dryly at her, scoffing. “I’m not a Neanderthal, Posen. I have a low prosperity to trust, I know, but Theo’s an alright guy. He’s earned it, like a few other uppity geeks I know.” She fixes her with a flippant, spilt-second wink.

She expects Aubrey to retort with a stringent remark, but rather, she just stares grimly and then rolls her eyes. Instead, she just sips her drink more willingly.

Flo is suddenly quirking a brow and leaning forward, resting her chin on interlocking fingers. There’s a keen sparkle floating around her eyes as she interjects brightly, “Ooh. You’re talking about that bedeviling bearded music executive with the shiny haircut and pretty eyes, no?”

Her face is stern as she takes that all in, even a little bewildered. She smacks her lips before she answers slackly, “Uh, yeah? Sure.” She drags out the s of the last word, like she’s undecided on how to properly continue. “He has a beard, on his face, which also, certainly, has eyes. That’s… very observant of you.”

She’s gifted with a patronizing glare. “What, am I not allowed to appreciate the snazzy trappings of a Caucasian male because of my Guatemalan heritage?”             

“That’s not what I…-”

Amy, once again, naturally, interrupts the conversation. Only this time with a purposefully loud and abrasive cough, “Of course not. I thought Beca made herself clear? Vamanos!”

Flo’s face drains with a gaunt, venomous glare. “Sweetie. Can you at least try to understand the words you’re saying and how to say them before you actually say them?”

“Eh, guacamole?”

A varying throng of colorful words suddenly fly out from different mouths at different intervals, mostly directed at the Australian. There’s very little time to duck and cover at the rate that people moved.

Flo’s face is mottled crimson, wrathful and rolling fire and brimstone all at once, as she begins wrangling inarticulate words intermixed with Spanish curses toward a very gibelike Amy. Amy, who without fail, appeared not even the slightest bit dismayed. Only gleeful. Evidentially so, as she sits back and pops another chip into her mouth and chews. Ashley, with a mouth still full of food and a gleaming look of utter horror, sweeps an arm out and over the hoard of accumulated glass bottles and junk food wrappers just as Cynthia Rose stands up to urge an extremely livid Flo backwards with two wary hands enveloping her heaving shoulders, albeit with a barely concealed smirk.

Aubrey is glaring at Amy, for all the good that did, and speaking furiously, “What the hell? Apologise, you great big albatross!” Emily is mouthing one too many “Whoa, whoa, guys,” with both hands trying placate them. Jessica, much like Beca, merely gapes from one body to the other with a look of pure disbelief.

She feels like an asshole, just watching, but then she witnesses Lilly pull out her phone suddenly and purposefully direct it over the ongoing pandemonium. Beca watches, frowning, and then mouths, “Are you serious?” just as the sound of a camera shutter snapping several times over, bookended by a high-pitched giggle as well as a cavernous grin, answers her question.

It’s all becoming rather obnoxious and teetered toward unbelievable. It’s all sorts of mortifying as the crescendo of their loud squabble comes to the finely attuned attentions of the bars wait staff. Beca can see them from afar, just talking, then pointing and convening like a cluster of pretentious old men. By that motion alone Beca’s eyes are suddenly growing wide and panicky. The sudden awareness of them having an audience, complete strangers stopping and observing them, flabbergasted and stunned into open-mouth repulsion, prompts Beca to swiftly step the hell up. Because, seriously, they were the equivalent of a fucking fanfare right now it was not how she imagined their last night playing out.

However, ridiculously, it doesn’t surprise her even the slightest. They had a good run.

Nevertheless, she doesn’t need to do anything in the end.

“Holy crap, guys! Guys!” It’s Chloe’s voice, rising to beam and landing itself squarely in amidst the heat of the fro. The taut tone of her words sound strangely alluring despite their coarseness over the resounding jabber of everyone else’s voices. It’s diplomatically cheerful, like a cupcake, only sprinkled with poison instead of frosty icing. She’s holding out her phone enthusiastically and forcing herself in and out between flustered bodies. “Stacie is calling again! Facetime, Facetime! Movie it.” It’s a mantra, one they all adhere to. They scramble together suddenly. She’s easing in and out and waving her phone like a fiery veteran with a red flag, exuding all manner of excitement and lulling smiles. Everyone is bustling about in reanimated eagerness and congregating together. Just like that, the slate was wiped clean.

Chloe doesn’t stop until she’s standing next to a notably tongue-tied Beca who, more or less, feels unexpectedly self-conscious at the proximity. She toys with her hands restlessly as an otherwise unsuspecting Chloe chatters along. “Here, here. C’mon! Scooch closer.” And she does.

It’s like flicking a switch, oddly enough. Though probably as accurate as history textbooks pretended to be.

Chloe is once again front and centre, her phone displayed out and turned toward them. It’s a matter of fitful seconds, suspended by a barely audible dial tone, before everyone is collectively huddled in close around the redhead and Beca, sporting award-winning faces full of joyous accord and happy-go-lucky grins. Like they all hadn’t been trying to ostensibly kill one another beforehand like a bunch of hell-bent, she-devils in a WWE Smackdown event.

Stacie’s face flashes up onto the screen as the accepted call transmits. No sooner her gawking eyes are peering through the lens of her own device, she squeals. “Bellas!”

A near-teeming jet of overjoyed greetings pool out at the phone. It’s all fireworks, gibberish, and immediate chatter, overlaying voices and question after question as all their superimposed voices mingle together into complete nonsense. Stacie grins brightly, glowing in the afterthought and listening, with the corners of her mouth seemingly extending beyond that of her gorgeous face and gaping with wide, burning eyes. “I’m so, so happy that I caught you all!”

“What the hell are you doing up at this hour girl? You should be sleeping!” Cynthia’s quizzical voice filters through first. A few heads nod in accord. There are hums, too.

She rolls her eyes lazily at the camera. “I was already up, C. Bella gets fussy at night but she’s settled now, thank Christ. Plus, Chloe was snapshotting me tips from Parents.com.”

“Were any of them helpful?” Chloe asks, shuffling from foot to foot.

“Obviously. The little psycho banshee is asleep now, so.”

Behind her, Beca can eerily feel Aubrey foam at the mouth, “Stacie!”

“What? Are you going to bitch slap me through the fucking phone, Posen? Please. Shit out a watermelon through your bajingo, with a major case of Rhoid rage, then come talk to me.” There’s nothing particularly hostile in the way Stacie says this, save for the selective use of a virile curse word. It’s fairly obvious how sarcastic she’s being. One only has to spend a few hours with her to realize that, yes, aside from being an overly sexually driven soprano/mezzo and all round deadest flirt with a pair of killer legs, Stacie is almost always cheerful. She’s incredibly upbeat given any situation and warm-hearted in a way that’s painfully sweet, and she does a fantastic job at seeming completely humble when she’s in the mood for it.

Plus, her thoroughly wicked sense of humour was just as hotly motivated as her sex drive. It’s a venereal attribute that, apparently, Aubrey never quite latched onto with enthusiasm. Only endured. Much like Beca’s continued state of planetary existence, probably. Most likely.

Stacie blows a few plucky strands of hair out of her face as she momentarily peers away from the angle of her camera. From their perspective, via the not-entirely-perfect enmeshed resolution of the phone, they watch in no particular interest as she ambles into a dimly lit kitchen. “What, nothing? I’m shocked.” She unseals her fridge and begins to rifle through its contents, settling on something unseen.

Aubrey begins to stutter airlessly, only mildly reproachful, “Yes, thank you, for that enlightenment.”

“Rhoid… rage?” Emily pauses, mulling over the words before visibly wincing a bit, obviously carrying some slight aversion to the phrase despite never hearing about it before. Beca sighs a bit melodramatically.

Without warning, Lilly peeks over the Legacy’s shoulder and whispers a mousey, “Hemorrhoids.”

Everyone hears it, however, which was no doubt the underlying intention. Just as Emily throws the beatboxer a sidelong glance, there’s a collective murmur of “Ooh’s.”

“The Devil’s raisins,” Flo spits.

Amy makes herself acutely known with a sound akin to disgust, “My crotch hurts just thinking about it.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Ames.” Stacie sarcastically intones. For the most part, she’s apparently taken a seat as she adjusts the camera on what Beca quietly deduces is, maybe, a coffee table. She’s in her living room now. There’s a feeble wavering of distorted sound punctuated lowly by an, “Ah, shit,” as she positions it in front of something. She bites her lower lip, clicking her tongue before leaning back at last on her modular. “Okay,” she breathes, relaxing, “Fill me in, girls. I’m assuming that you’re all still at the airport?” She unscrews the lid of some kind of drink and takes a few long, coveting sips.

There’s a near-comical assemblage of nods and “Yes’s,” that are accompanied by the occasional weary exhale of breath. It reminds Beca just how late it actually is, and just how thoroughly exhausted she feels. It’s in her bones, slinking and articulated through an enervated bout of aches and pains. It’s easy to forget something so improbably simple as sleep when you’re otherwise occupied with anything and everything but. The problem is, it just fucking hits you. Hard.    

“We weren’t picked to be the opening act,” Jessica ventures, pipping up a little too quickly.

“No, no, but,” Chloe’s free hand erupts into a flurry of energized motions as she gushes excitedly at the phone. “Beca was!” she spouts, beaming. Beca’s head abruptly twists around and she gives her indirect look. “Beca was picked. She opened for DJ Khaled!”

“Wait, what? Really?” Stacie fixes Beca with an incredulous stare through the phone. She looks as though she’s just been pulled briskly from a daydream. Mouth agape in dumb surprise, with elation clearly written upon her face. Her eyes narrow impishly as she finally continues in a daze. “Like, without the Bella’s? What does that even mean, for you, I mean?”

Beca adopts a mask of utter neutrality at first before she realizes that Stacie, along with everyone else, is waiting for her to speak. “Not the Bella’s, unfortunately, no. Though it does mean,” she starts, smiling gently down at the screen, almost apologetically. She feels a few fingers nudge her excitedly in her side, urging her on, like always, and someone’s hands are gripping her shoulders. She doesn’t have to turn around to know that’s its Amy. “It means that not too long from now,” She’s blushing profusely, managing a near-imperceptible smirk, “That you’ll be looking at a newfangled signed and sanctioned, DJ Khaled endorsed, solo-artist, baby.”

As wonderfully happy as she feels in the moment, truly – saying it out loud even, it’s still completely stupefying - there’s this tiny abnormality within her chest that makes her feel nauseous about the whole damn thing. She has to will herself not to grind her fucking teeth.

There’s a light flutter in Stacie’s eyes as her mind dutifully takes in everything, assessing point after point, and then she screams. Bellows, actually, far too loudly then any of them could have anticipated through the phone. Then with more adamant swiftness, she quickly covers her mouth with her hands and looks around with wide, buoyant eyes. “Are you fucking kidding me?!” She squeaks through her parted fingers. “Oh my god! Oh my…” Her fingers fall and she’s clutching her phone again, pulling it close to her face. It’s radiating and she’s smiling like the sun was bursting from within her. “Beca! That’s amazing! You… I mean. DJ fucking Khaled signed you? The guy who screams his name in every song? Makes millions from it?”   

“Also, there was a tax commercial that one time!” Aubrey quickly asserts over Chloe’s shoulder.

Beca dips her head quickly, her face swimming with an array of jittery emotions far too fleeting to pinpoint with words exactly. There’s a persistent flurry of chatter going back and forth now, voices all around her alternating erratically between excitement and mild disbelief.

She hesitates before looking up again, before choosing to speak up. “So, yeah,” she continues, her tone equally measuring amidst caution and exhilaration. The girls quieten, though she can still feel the almost unkempt energy vibrating off of them like soundwaves. “He’s a super famous guy. A bit of a public spectacle. Very odd, but I talked with him briefly and he’s actually really awesome, if not a little formidable but whatever. He makes his own albums, unlike most EP’s, and while I haven’t signed onto his label yet, he wants to sign me. For real. There’s some items that need canvasing, legally speaking, but yeah. Yeah it’s, uh, all happening, Stace. It’s all true.”        

“You should have seen the performance, Stace,” Chloe trills from beside her, “Beca’s opening. She slayed it. The vocals, the crowd, all of it, and she even got us all up there, in front of everyone! It was just so unbelievably incredible!” Her voice seemed to carry a sentimental light of awe that quakes somewhat. It echoes a lovely impression, Beca thinks, like that of a small, overly-enthusiastic child. She takes in a languid breath to stay herself from gushing, and there’s no denying it, with how she says it, the absolute sureness of utterly believing every single word that slips from her mouth. It settles something tender in her stomach, warm. Like kindling. “We just wish you’d been there with us, in the end. It would have been complete.”

“God,” she breathes, “Me too. I wish it’d been possible, but Beca… Holy shit…” Her hands begin to move dramatically over her face, as if to somehow forcibly to quell her nerves by flapping. Beca’s head pounds as she watches, speechless, when she realizes that they’re tears. “I’m so happy for you. I…” she drones, a little exasperated. She wipes a finger under a teary eye with a long, shaky sigh. At least she’s smiling. “Ah, fuck me.”

“We all cried too,” Emily lightly admits. “When she finally told us, anyway. And, well,” she shrugs, “during, the actual thing.”

“Uh, not all of us,” Amy admonishes suddenly. Her voice is nearly ear-splitting with how it quickly shoots up from her mouth. “Some of us were loathed to be the ironclad backbone in this shtick for brains of a group. Thank you very much.”

Stacie barks a short laugh. Unbelieving, but nodding along anyway. She sniffs. “Of course. Where would they be without you, Ames?”

There’s an overdrawn hum, stringed with a nervous chuckle, before a response is afforded. “More than likely diced up into itty-bitty pieces and floating somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea, if I’m to be brutally honest.”  

“Okay!” Beca laughs uncomfortably, then hisses under her breath. Her cheeks ache uneasily with feigned cheer as she takes a quick moment to whirl her head back to stare accusingly at Amy. “Anyway,” She turns her attention back to the screen quickly, “France was a real hoot and not at all menacing or borderline traumatizing.”

There’s a shared murmur of agreement and coinciding motions – all extremely showy - pivoted down at the phone.     

“Wait, wait. Hold up just a second now.” She is so sure that Stacie is going to press the matter further. She’s many things. Many, indefinable things. An idiot being the least. The sudden lack of breath in Beca’s lungs nearly incapacitates her she’s so very sure. But on the other end of the phone, a newborn suddenly screams in a way that is positively heart wrenching for all in earshot, and Stacie freezes almost immediately. Her expression sours and grows rigid. She takes a slow, deep breath and then mutters disdainfully, “Oh, fuck me!” This time, however, she’s not at all concerned with lowering her voice. The blonde takes once last pull from her drink before clasping the lid back on and setting it down on the coffee table. She stands with her neck arching. “Alright, pitches. Mommy needs to sign off. It’s tit time.”

Beca grimaces, and somewhere behind her, she can hear Cynthia Rose suck in an audible breath. “Damn.” And she has to refrain herself from laughing at how uncouth she sounds.

“Oh. Alright… well,” Chloe’s face falls faster than a leaden weight in water. Straightaway Beca’s eyes land on her, unhelped and peering wide-eyed. They sweep over the redhead once, then slowly twice, as though by reflex. Chloe’s eyelids seemingly trail in absent thought and there’s a slight lolling to her head and Beca can almost feel her pulse beating deeply beneath her skin as it skips, almost fretfully by merely observing, and listening, to the tangible sadness in her voice.

It doesn’t take a distinguished genius to understand that it’s because they are here and Stacie is there. It’s fairly obvious how compassionate Chloe is. In all the shimmering, sunshiny traits that make her, her; she is, at her core, gentle. Well, at least to Beca, anyway. She wears her heart proudly on her sleeve. Willing to give. To sacrifice. To help, whether the sentiment was called for or not. No matter. She supplies it in bundles tied up in pretty pink ribbons. It’s so cognitively inherent to her that’s its natural. She’s a natural.

And sometimes Beca wonders if that’s a good thing. Whether it’s even worth it. To be so… open. Like that. Like, it doesn’t matter. Yet, then again, who the hell was she to determine something that was clearly so deeply intrinsic to one’s state of being? It frustrates her to no avail, mostly because she doesn’t understand it. She thinks, maybe, that it’s because she’s so adept at hiding her own insides that she sees it differently. A blank sheet of paper is better than a muddled scribble of mismatched colors. She’s so tightly reigned in and carefully poised that it’s become natural to her. She just swallows down the bitter pill and continues to subsist. Whereas Chloe… God. She’s a beacon.

The problem with that little anomaly, unfortunately - and she can’t speak for anybody else in this matter - is that when Chloe gets sad it’s, honestly, the equivalent of being stabbed in the heart a thousand times with a blunt knife. Without dying.

So, yeah. She can’t speak for the others. Maybe she does see things differently. Who cares? Knowing that her emotions are her own and no else’s is a power, and it’s good. To feel that control, that raw understanding and certitude of oneself. And to know that no else has that power, just her, feels like absolution.

But there’s a tumultuous thudding in her chest right now. A defiance, fission, and a flux of feelings that provokes her to unravel her fist by her side. She clenches it again once more, opens it, and then moves it suddenly. She doesn’t even hesitate, at all, when she lofts a gentle hand over Chloe’s shoulder. She squeezes reassuringly, white-knuckled and strong, and something akin to relief washes over her. She breathes out. Then in once more.

It feels nice, to give. She thinks, maybe, that it’s not so bad. Her thumb circles her shoulder blade languidly and the fluidity in which it relaxes beneath her touch doesn’t elude her. It’s a small motion, she thinks. Barely there, but it’s there nevertheless. It’s no more trivial or impacting than a cursory stare. Yet, Aubrey’s hand is there too, on the opposite shoulder and doing very much the same thing as Beca’s hand. Whether unintentional or not, it feels as though everyone has consciously shifted closer as Chloe begins to sign off with her heartfelt goodbye. It’s not just Beca.

And regardless if they’re all feeling exactly as she is right now; threaded by the identical need to console, eyes wet with tears… She still feels fabulously stupid for doing anything at all.

In hindsight, it feels incredibly desperate, actually.

She sends a rueful glance out to nowhere in particular. Just away, anywhere. She clenches her jaw.

“We won’t keep you any longer,” Chloe laments. Her watchful eyes are peering down with a childlike pout. “Go be a mommy. Get some sleep, but don’t forget to give little baby Bella all our love and kisses, and you have all of our numbers. So please, please don’t hesitate, not even for one second, Conrad…-”

“Christ, Beale. Relax, alright. I won’t. Promise.”

“Bella’s oath?”

The other girl bites out a derisive laugh, but the smile is anything but. “I swear. Or may my vocal cords be ripped out by wolves. Satisfied?”

Beca can hear Aubrey giggle as Chloe nods, a small, doting smile finding her lips. “Good.”

“When was that ever a part of the oath?” Emily asks, concern wrecking her voice. “Was that omitted at some point?”

“They were darker times, Legacy.” Beca simply says.   

Stacie grins widely through the phone, evidentially teary-eyed and blubbering with an unhelped sniff. Somehow, through some unseemingly implausibility coupled to only Stacie, she still looks fucking attractive, even with the icky snot visibly running down her chin. Yet the atmosphere grows somber with each lingering look as she begins erratically waving her farewells as though it was downright imperative to her survival and their own. Which, if she’s being honest with herself, wasn’t all that far from the truth.

All at once, several voices begin to overlap the other as one emotional goodbye after the other was then dramatically tossed into the phone. Warmhearted declarations and assurances were met with an overly affectionate Stacie. She blew out an array of kisses, “I love you, I love you, I love you!” Until sadly, at long last she punctured the scurrying voices with one last, warm goodbye. Bella’s loud wailing was still discernible through the phone, and Stacie was near-running by the time her lovely face finally disappeared from view as she ended the call, and the Bella’s themselves were left looking at the now blank screen of Chloe’s phone. And then silence.

It was impossibly palpable to the ear and perforated only by the unfluctuating sounds of the airport around them.

She can feel a few bodies beginning to reluctantly separate from their little throng just as Jessica and Ashley begin to murmur amongst each other, walking aimlessly with no intended direction. With a trifling sigh, Beca spins herself back around on her seat, looking down at her half-eaten burger. She scrunches her nose up at it. Chloe is still beside her, quiet now. She rests her palm beneath her chin as she sets her elbow atop of their table, and beside them both, Emily grumbles something indistinguishable with an unhappy sigh.

It’s Flo that speaks, “Say again, chicka?”

“I said,” She says lowly, “That we should check in our luggage.” She doesn’t look up, just stares down at her lap morosely. “Again.”

But then Aubrey, as well as Jessica and Ashley, stop in their tracks abruptly and look up at one another. They each share a few begrudging looks, measuring in their impending withdrawal from the group to fly back to Atlanta, and then all at once they seem to agree, albeit unenthusiastically.

Aubrey pulls back the sleeve of her absurdly oversized hoodie and checks her watch passively. “We have about twenty-five minutes.”

“Oh,” Flo smiles sadly, adjusting the blanket over her shoulders, “Time sure flies, no?”

If it hadn’t been true, Beca probably would have laughed at the ridiculous idiom. She nearly does.

Only it was true. They had to leave. It was time to go their separate ways with time being the inevitable factor against them all. Except now, it seems to slow as they all begin to clean up after themselves in uncomfortable silence, even despite the insistence of the now lax barkeep to just forgo it entirely.

One by one, they play Jenga and collect every article of baggage and personal belonging owned in the vicinity. Beca swiftly casts Emily a curious look in the process. The poor girl appears positively mortified. Her mind; a far cry from her stomach no doubt, looks riddled already and she hadn’t even boarded the plane yet.

Though thankfully, almost dutifully, Aubrey is by her side in an instant and threading a comforting arm through her own as they slowly begin to walk side by side toward their gate. Jessica and Ashley followed suit, hand in hand. Everyone else lags behind, with Beca skating one last glance around their surroundings, just to make sure.

“I can’t believe this is it,” Aubrey murmurs. She presses a soothing hand to Emily’s forearm, who just sighs. Her eyes are skating around as though she were chasing flies. “It’s too soon.”

“Hey,” Beca is by her side, having hurried up, smiling. She feels that’s all she can do, really. “No one’s dying, dude. Chill.”

Amy snorts a dry laugh. “I dunno. The plane looks a little dodgy. Like… Jesus, Ouch!” Whatever she intended to say thereafter quickly dies with Cynthia Roses slap to her arm.

“And before you know it, we’ll be reunited again. Time, distance. Whatever, you know? It doesn’t matter. Not when you’re a Bella. Not when we know that we have each other like family.” There is a lilted bounce in Chloe’s step when she speaks, with an adoring smile that preaches volumes and then some. It’s tempting to just jump into her happy little vortex, especially in the way that her face brightens, like always, whenever her aptitude for congenial reassurances surface. Like every word or meager action that slips from her is water. Her voice flows out and people relax. It’s invigorating, because she’s usually right, and everyone usually agrees with her. Like they do now.        

So when the dreaded moment finally comes around and they have to see each of their friends off, it’s no less temperamental or emotionally constricting then when they’d been saying their goodbyes to Stacie.

Time seemingly slows once more. Emily allows herself a few tears. They fall down her red cheeks like rivulets, helpless in her dispiritedness and laughing nervously all at once. “Don’t look so sad,” Beca grins up at her. She pokes her nose and takes her in her arms. She has to stand on her toes, but she doesn’t mull over it. Later, maybe. In silence.

Amy enfolds the younger Bella under two suffocative arms after Beca releases her and pulls her close. She picks her up and spins her around and almost misses a hovering Lilly. Aubrey and Chloe share what is essentially a hug meant to crush. With love, of course. Unyielding in their doting affections for one another, fingertips skittering lightly over their arms, neither are wanting to let the other go. Beca ultimately found herself beside them after seeing off Ashely and a near-hysterical Jessica, having shuffled forward to join and feeling the urge to comfort them both. They gripped each other as if they were dying.

She hates goodbyes. The bitter cruelty of reality pushing at the seams like an invisible entity. It hits her like a hammer. She was never good at them. The mere act of doing anything in regard to it makes her feel so painfully claustrophobic that often, it hurts. It makes her throat tighten, her heartache out of her chest. Makes her visibly upset, which is never a good sign. Not for her. She didn’t do upset. The deep-rooted sorrow can be unexplainable sometimes, but no more avoidable than a single drop of rain in a hurricane. It must be something to do with ending chapters.

They’ve all said them in the end. They’ve clutched at each other like sappy fools now and bore the stinging tears. They wave them away. The three girls walk away with Emily swaddled in close. The panicky impulse to vomit was no doubt at the centre of her anxieties. The poor girl was going to be a mess if she didn’t get any sleep. Beca was at least partially grateful that she wouldn’t be alone in her brewing torment. She only hoped Aubrey would ease up on the bootless advice.

Then, they were gone. Disappeared around the corner.

Cynthia Rose is slightly more amenable when it was time to find her gate. Her eyes are glinting, sure, and her face grows both softer and unhappy with each closing step, but she keeps it together. When they stop by her side, they all turn to her suddenly and sheath her into one giant, clumsily conjoined bear hug. “You guys are the worst,” she laughs shakily, eyes wet with tears. They never fall. “Also kinda the best. I’m gonna miss ya’ll like crazy. Until next time.” She looks like a poster child for the uncompromising. Strong. Inflexible. She’s a trooper through and through, and she purposefully encapsulates it, with absolute conviction, when she finally stands tall and salutes them off with a backbreaking, “Hoorah!” Then she, too, disappears.

Beca stands there, forestalled for however many seconds, just staring. She’s caught at the void space where Cynthia had ushered herself away, with Lilly and Flo to her right. Amy’s somewhere, lingering. They’re all just as eerily silent as the other. “Well.” It barely seems enough, talking. Saying anything at all. Her emotions are high strung and chaos, a complete mess. If she didn’t say something, Beca felt as though she might actually cry. It’s a raw quality she allows herself in only the smallest of doses, when it’s absolutely necessary. She’d cried during her opening for Khaled, unashamedly, with the Bellas by her side in all their wonderful glory. She’d thought that maybe she’d been good for six months after that.

Right now, it was proving difficult to keep herself in check.

Chloe quietly ambles up a little to her left then, exuding every manner of wistfulness and fidgeting like crazy. She allows herself a drawn breath to lull her stress to ease, and all the while, Beca’s eyes achingly stay on her, cemented in their intent.

Her insides turn a different kind of jagged and she finds herself frightfully at a loss for words when her eyes linger over the redhead. It’s starting to aggravate her, in a way. Her defences are just dried leaves. Crinkled, susceptible. Crushed, apparently. It’s the beating pull of a tell-tale figment of feeling that makes her forget every supposed reason for remaining poised in the first place.

Chloe’s eyes seek Beca’s almost instantly, and they flood into her, and it’s amazing, really. The unhealthy pattern she feels emerging by merely looking at her, medicating her brain and breaking through her chest like a fucking alien. It sends her reeling, and it’s almost painful, too, how she welcomes it. Like it just doesn’t matter anymore. Being… open.

Yet as Chloe blinks her eyes once, then twice, they shift suddenly to the side and slide away from Beca. They become glazed in a glassy layer of tears and lost as she breathes out slowly. She looks so tired, she thinks. Just sad, and frightfully on edge. Teetering, like all her feeble resolve needed to crack into tiny little pieces was just one more trowel of bad news. Then boom. Beca doesn’t really know what to say or what to do with that. Stuff like this. It’s not that she doesn’t want to say anything at all. Far from it, in fact. She’s just not overly comfortable putting her thoughts into words, really. Body language and tone are apparently integral when it comes to communicating. She’s socially inept on a good day and a piranha at her worst, and when she’s not singing or composing music her vocal tonality is, for the most part, downright pathetic.

But she imagines that their positions have switched and she wonders, however vaguely, for just a moment. That if she were there and Chloe were here, watching Beca just as she did her, would Chloe be just as conflicted, she wonders? Would she even hesitate?

No. Of course not. You fucking ignoramus.

It rocks her mind, but it doesn’t surprise her. At all. It was simple, really.

It’s not enough then that the shrilling voice of desperation and reason hollers at her like a harpy, screaming for her to move suddenly. To girl the hell up and inch that little bit closer to her and comfort her, to reach out, but before she can so much as twitch a finger or blink, someone’s head falls heavily against her shoulder. The abrupt action instantly halts her in her steps.

“Can we go home now?” Amy whines against her. She blows out a stray knot of hair from her face and into Beca’s cheek. Her nose twitches.

Chloe looks back at her, then at Amy. Her stare is blank yet searching.

Then her eyes suddenly twinkle with laughter and something lifts inside of Beca. “God, you’re such a child,” she says, and yeah. Everything seems to wash away. Effortlessly. Beca can’t see Amy, not really, but she understands her well enough to know that she’s sporting an impressive pout right about now. One for the record books.

Beca feels herself smile unabashedly at that, at the ridiculousness of it. She’s grinning from ear to ear and her face hurts that little bit, but she doesn’t care. Then she raps out a poor excuse for a laugh. It’s more of a scoff, punctured by a curt sound resembling that of a laugh. She’s aware of how it sounds, how she looks. She’s also aware of the way Chloe’s eyes tenderly flick back to her, charmed as though by impulse, and remaining. As if that same galling sound had been music to her ears rather than nails.

They gaze freely at one another, with just the right blend of shy and sweet, and Beca decides then and there that it’s all she needs to spur her on. Seeing Chloe’s slender smile reinforces that truth. So she breathes in. She takes the breath without delay. Their air fills her with confidence and she allows it to circulate through her body like blood.

She reaches for Chloe’s hand wordlessly and Chloe reacts with the subtlest of encouragement. It’s enough. Her eyes trail Beca’s hand and she reaches out as well, grinning. Their fingers slip in between each other’s and they lock together in a gentle grip that pulls Chloe closer. Flo and Lilly shuffle in close to Amy, just as Chloe moves beside Beca, and it feels almost perfect despite their missing friends. Neither let go of the others hand. She can feel her fingers within her own. The rush of warmth, delicate yet so utterly unrelenting. It shouldn’t mean much. At least, not in the way Beca envisions. It’s an action, really. A simple action. Yet it means so much it scares her in a way that’s almost staggering, because it’s Chloe. It’s Chloe needing her, and she’s not letting go.

It’s selfish, she knows. It feels like her brain has been miraculously reprogrammed and she’s only now just starting to relearn all in the intricate, nitty-gritty details via some crinkled, washed-up manual. When Beca casts one last furtive glance around her and says, almost relievingly, “Let’s go, nerds,” they start to walk, heading for the closest exit. She feels Chloe’s hand squeeze her own.

And it is, in a way.

Almost perfect.

She breathes out a smile.

It takes her by surprise then, when the sound initially hits her. It’s a sudden succession of shrilling rings that cuts away at their perfect silence like a runaway train heading for a broken bridge.

They stop. Chloe’s hand immediately slips out from Beca’s, to reach for her phone. The ringing continues as she stares down at it, just as Beca’s brows slowly knit together in a sort of pique of frustration. Amy stops, seemingly laid back despite the roll of her eyes, and Flo follows her. Lilly happily stands a little far off.

Chloe’s a meticulous person by habit, with a lot of things. One thing in particular; each of her contacts in her phone has this particular song, usually a classic, which she feels best matches said contacts identity or characterizes them uniquely in some way. To her horror, she’d set Beca’s contact to the song from Flashdance, ‘She’s A Maniac,’ after a forced screening of the film in their dingy little apartment. They’d both had the night off, which was rare. Amy had been somewhere, though she couldn’t remember what for or where. What she does remember is Chloe flippantly remarking about “working hard for the money.” Of course, Beca had absolutely no fucking clue what that meant. She’d just stared at her dumbly. “Excuse me?” That, apparently, was just downright unacceptable to one Chloe Beale. So they’d watched it. Or rather, Chloe watched. Beca just stomached it, which was in part the reason why Chloe set her ringtone to Beca’s number in the first place, but it wasn’t the sole reason. Rather, Chloe had insisted it was: “because you’re essentially Alex Owens in your own little Flashdance, Beca! Seriously, you both have this unequaled grit and tenacity to chase your dreams regardless of whatever preconceptions you have shouldered against you. Own it!”

So she had, for the most part. Simply because she couldn’t really argue with the redheads logic, and doing so anyway would essentially be pointless. There was no winning there.

The ringing brings her back and she’s watching Chloe now, suspended in hesitation.

It occurs to her that there’s no song, just a keening tenor of sound blaring like a gunshot over and over.

It’s an unknown number, but she already knows who it is.

It settles in her chest like boiling lead.

“Well, well. An international call, eh?” Amy skates her eyes briefly over the screen before making a point of seeming unfazed. “Looks like someone’s got ginger on their mind.”

Chloe’s face erupts into a bright beam of happiness that seems to soak into her bones and travel throughout her body.

Beca’s face turns blank. Her mouth falls into a thin morbid line and she desperately tries to look away. Anywhere, at anything. The elated joy spanning Chloe’s rose-colored face, however, solidifies her gaze. Her smile never leaves her face when she looks back at Beca suddenly and, almost immediately, Beca contorts her lips to mimic the redhead’s toothy smile, just like that, but her cheeks are barely compliant and it feels wrong. When Chloe averts her gaze, her smile falls lifeless to the ground.

“Oh, my. Shoot. Um, you guys go on ahead,” Chloe tells them, her voice hurried. The glee is transparent as it streams from her like a flamboyant gush. “I’ll catch up with you!” Then she quickly spins around, her thumb pressed to the screen. She’s walking away and Beca just gawks, stunned into silence and rooted to the spot. There’s an uncomfortable taste in her mouth and she can’t quite place it. She doesn’t want to.

“Was that bedeviling handsome man number two?” Flo asks lightly with an artful smirk. Beca glares at her, but it’s unseen.

Amy snorts back a derisive laugh. “Yep. Soldier Boy.”

“His eyes are prettier,” Lilly says absently.  

That’s it. “Yes, you’re all exceptionally observant.” There’s nothing in her voice that indicates precisely what she’s feeling. Not exactly. It’s merely an air of grade-A-Beca exasperation that everyone is so painstakingly familiar with. It’s nothing noteworthy. Not anymore. The bitterness, however, is rising like bile into her mouth and she hates herself for it. “C’mon, let’s go.” Her head is pulling her in all sorts of directions, caught between opposing needs. It abominably confusing and rushed and all sorts of fucking annoying. They all feel so terribly improper that it’s maddening. So she settles for the one direction that feels about right: the exit.

Besides, what’s one more bitter pill?

Chapter Text

Beca Mitchell considers herself to be many things, and she accepts them.

Well. For the most part, anyway.

And that is, intrinsically, perfectly human.

Children are told that it's alright to make mistakes. It's how people learn, facilitate growth, experience. It's normal.

But not for adults.

Funny how mistakes stop being okay no sooner you join the Real World.

The trick is to avoid punishing yourself.

Knowing your flaws is not a weakness. If you can recognize them without prejudice, and gird yourself a hypothetical pair of ironclad loins against every eventuality, then you can account for them. You can better anticipate them and improve upon them. It might be difficult, sure. Definitely. Even a little disheartening. To know, and understand, the glaring imperfections that are simply ingrained into the multi-layered tapestry of what makes you, you. But it's virtuously an admirable milestone and one with a few benefits in the end, once you see those flaws as strengths.

Of course, it's all hypothetical if you can't move beyond your own unhelped, self-conceited bullshit.

Beca knows without a flicker of doubt that nobody on this tiny blue planet is perfect. Anyone who says otherwise is likely one notch down from crippling discombobulation or, more realistically, nothing but a shriveled wreck of worm-meat at their very core. That, however, doesn't necessarily make them a bad person. It might, maybe, but understanding the why is key. A principal. Why?

There's more to a person than their shortcomings. More, than the complexities you disagree with or despise innately. It's just easier to spot the things you hate, really. It's human nature. An ease, a poisonous quality, to place people into categories. It doesn't take much, unfortunately.

People, in general, subside in a materialistic world where reacting, rather than thinking, is considered prevailing. Yet if one can just simply understand, then one can effectively look beyond. It imbues one with a level of sophistication and self-preservation that embellishes the soul, and its qualities such as those that can make any man, woman or child intellectually invincible.

Beca believes wholeheartedly that society can be a harbor of rational scholars. She does.

She's also aware that it can be full of fucking emotional illiterates.

She's one of them.

She knows she's one of them.

Beca is, by and large, a stubborn woman. It's her defense mechanism and scapegoat in all things apparently rational. Her mother once told her, albeit with no shortage of affection, that she was so innately stubborn that it took an emergency C-section in order to get her out of the womb. She'd been three weeks late and a sputtering mess because the umbilical cord had been firmly wrapped around her neck. In protest, apparently. Which makes sense to her, in retrospect, because there's no realization more accurate and unpleasant to her than the one that hits you when your alarm goes off in the morning, and you know you have to get out of your sweet, sweet bed. She'd rather a warm blanket wrapped around her than the biting of frigid air when it hits her skin any day.

Amy, unfortunately, knows all-too-intimately; the hair-raising consequences when said blanket is pulled from her unexpectedly.

It's no surprise she'd been a sputtering infant. Being an adult doesn't change anything.

Her mother was never one to unduly exaggerate either. In the face of all things, any nagging anxieties or misgivings about the truth were non-existent to one Sarah Mitchell. Tell it once, tell it all, and tell it straight, she'd say. No fucking excuses. Her father apparently never quite clicked onto that tiny, essential, bit of information when he resolved to marry her. Yet the nostalgia Beca feels when she repeats those few impacting words to herself, even, have become all too familiar over the years. Unlike her father, Beca's tried to live by that ideology.

It's an on-going battle, but at least she battles.

She doesn't lie. It's just that sometimes the truth can be little hard.

An ultimately natural side effect, really, when one possesses their very own sarcastic personality and all the triumphs and pitfalls that come with it.

Beca knows she's many things. She's stubborn predominantly. She's terribly sarcastic, probably obnoxiously too. Prideful, impulsive, cynical. Perhaps a little unsociable, but that's largely moot since becoming a part of the Bella's and their unceasing knack for communal and, quite often, invasive escapades.

Regardless of whatever Beca considers herself to be or not to be, the sum and substance of what defines her do not rule her. It might shape her world for the most part, somewhat, but ultimately it's what one believes that truly characterizes a person.

What Beca believes in is change. It's one of the scariest words in the dictionary. Yet for her, it's an abiding conviction and the one thing that stands out to her as a constant. Everything that's done today is always different tomorrow, and something made differently is something new. Always.

People, for example. People are prone to change just as easily and naturally as autumn turns to spring. Things are going to happen. Positive or negative. It's absolutely unavoidable.

Now, the wrinkle in that little doctrine of reform, is that the catalyst for such an occasion can be a complete curveball. Something that might be expected, or not. It's the spark the calls to attention what was formerly an unknown. The flicker and heavy beat, or soft. A rhythm. Resonant. It can be any event. Any person. It can be an idea, a feeling, having a dynamic energy that, in turn, reacts and elicits a reaction once it's put into the mix. Once it's known. Felt. Understood.

Beca accepts who she is. What it is that makes her, her. It takes a firm once-over of yourself to get passed the poison. To see beyond, or to want to.

But there's always something. Something new and tangible, to stir the proverbial pot.

Like jealously, for example.

In all its terrible substance and sickening shades of endless green.

She never imagines jealously being a crutch in an otherwise accepted array of fatal flaws, and it's unlike any kind of poison she's dealt with before.

And she's stubborn enough to not quite accept it, too.

She doesn't get it.

This… severe bout of hideous moping that is essentially, at current, her entire fucking demeanor.

She vaguely remembers reading something back at the apartment, a glossy magazine geared towards women. Amy amasses magazine subscriptions the same way an overly-hyper four year old consumes candy; promptly, without delay and excessively. There are literal piles upon piles of disposable printed matter inside their pygmy-sized abode. Yet despite Beca's general loathing of the things, they do tempt her. Its cheap entertainment and the crossword puzzles are admittedly relaxing with a decent cup of coffee.

One thing she remembers browsing, a particularly nasty case of slanted popular culture; that angsty men were apparently the perfect storm for women's attraction. Dark pasts, heavy issues, tortured souls. The world-weary and infinitely pissed off, sexy, sexy, ridiculous sexy pining puzzle, pretty boy, and gloom of a human being. Yadda, yadda. The glossier spanned at least two pages, and she'd read every frivolous line of it. She thinks Bruce Wayne was used as an example. Because, Batman. What could possibly be more broody?

And maybe it's just her. Maybe she believes that those types of unrealistic fantasies are severely out of the norm but, a point of actual fact, it's seriously the worst kind of bullshit that's ever graced her disinterested fucking eyes.

It's bullshit, because it's true, all of it, and she hates that it's true. So, in a word, bullshit.

And it's not a phenomenon catered to one specific gender, either. It's all over the fucking spectrum.

She can't count the number of times someone has mockingly said, "You look happy to be here," or asked her, "Is something wrong?" Complete strangers passing to and fro. All sorts of people. It might be rude. It might not be. Either way, she responds by saying nothing. Was that rude? Probably. There's a social stigma stapled to everything these days.

Apparently, her blank, default expression gives off the impression of being constantly pissed off. Who knows? If the pair of shades perched over her eyes didn't scream 'manic pixie dream girl', then perhaps her middle-aged scowl and crossed arms did.

And she doesn't really think that it provides her with even a mildly mysterious edge.

Standing outside JFK international, her head resting slothfully against a concrete wall, Beca can feel the humming recurrences of the airport pulsing like clockwork around her. The unerring sounds, blaring; a distant resonance of classical music in a chaotic hive of activity. People were milling around in a curious mixture of tired or excited temperaments. The air smelled of diesel. It smelled of cars and buses stopping and starting as though tuned to a conveyer belt of constant, repetitive motion. And above it all was the periodic puncture of aircrafts landing or taking off beyond the thick ambiance of everyday life living in changeless ecstasy.

The night was a rich blanket of black, yet the world was filled with lights. The city that never slept glittered in the air. Architectural wonder in all its superficial glory. It was too dark to make out any distinct buildings, aside from where she was now, but the lights were enough.

She always loved the view of the city. Tall buildings as far as the eye could see in a precise grid pattern. There was always a beautiful view to look at wherever she looked. She just had to tilt her head. There's a creative energy offered in the hustle and bustle of cities. Something corporeal, and something she feels that is particularly unfelt anywhere else. It's loud, it's raucous. It's filled with the typical razzmatazz of day and night city life, but that's just it, really. It's easy, to lose herself. It's relaxing. It's her antidote and muse, and ironically, it's gifted her the chronic ability to tune things out when absolutely necessary.

Mostly.

"Hey, Beca," Amy begins, head tilted up in mild curiosity under a military green Heineken cap. She's standing just a little to her right, hands clothed securely inside denim pockets and staring out halfway to anywhere over the vast cityscape. "Why do you think toasters always have a setting that burns the bread to a horrible crisp, which no decent human being would then eat?"

She draws in a long, exaggerated breath. Lord, give me strength. "I don't know, man." She shakes her head. "For pyromaniacs with a bread fetish, maybe?"

Amy, of course, actually takes a moment to consider that, before nodding curtly. "It's really the only thing that makes sense." Her voice sounds like an enigmatic narrator, on the cusp of unraveling some kind of terrible, metaphysical conspiracy.

"Nothing makes sense," she deadpans.

And it might not, ever again.

Jesus.

They'd been standing outside by the taxi stand for little under forty minutes now. Alone. Both Flo and Lilly had gone their separate ways. They'd chosen to stay, at first, with Beca deciding to patiently wait for Chloe with a less than agreeable Amy. Yet, ultimately, their patience and general sleepiness had worn thin.

In which, then, an interesting scenario had played out:

Flo justifiably opted to quit the scene only after fifteen minutes of waiting; having already hailed a cab, with her motivated reasoning being primarily because they were now tottering into the wee hours of dawn, and also, she simply didn't want to wait any longer.

It'd been hard to disagree with her. They'd never accounted for the setbacks traveling home, and really, it shouldn't have surprised her. So for Flo to linger around now, and wait for an otherwise preoccupied Chloe when instead she could be relaxing, sleeping, and thus, "detoxify from life, the universe and everything," meant that their stretched time with the Guatemalan sweetheart was, unfortunately, at a signifying end.

She'd quickly offered up her nostalgic goodbyes with a promise to see them soon. They saw Flo more often than the other girls, when they could. Having Brooklyn being geographically adjacent to Queens afforded them that luxury. No doubt they'd be reunited sometime soon, perhaps through some recurrent coffee or meal outing in one of the boroughs, like they'd always manage. Sooner, even, because by the time they'd cocooned her into a fierce hug and squeezed out their final adiós, Chloe was still, maddeningly, a no-show twenty minutes later.

So Flo merely stamped out a shrug and resolved to see her at later date, before Chloe's modules began and preferably once Flo verified all the exclusive nitty-gritty details to her newfangled juice franchise. Which, still, had amazingly thrown Beca for a loop, again. Flo had been talking about it a little as they'd waited. Beca was still trying to wrap her head around it. So was Flo, apparently, though excitingly. She'd smiled at that.

Her luggage had been loaded and all she had to do was take a seat in the cab. Yet before poetically driving off into the lowly ascending sunrise, so to speak, there'd been a small pause in Flo's step. Something fell over her face. A flicker and a switch of momentum, driven by impulse perhaps, or something more. So with a serious frown, she'd slowly backtracked a little, and then stood pryingly in front of Lilly, whose infectious smile seemingly sported a tooth to gum ratio.

Her voice had been drawn out jadedly with a sigh when she'd finally asked, "Lilly, do you even know where you're going?"

And it's almost funny, in a sense, if not a little morbid, because it'd never occurred to Beca that Lilly mightn't have actually had the faintest fucking idea due to her weird, dark descent into amnesia. Possession. Or whatever. What's more, it surprised absolutely no one when the beatboxer merely offered a nonchalant shrug and, frighteningly, something ungodly along the lines of a giggle and a snort and two wide, gaping eyes that could rival, if not surpass, a satanic squirrel.

"I'm not touching that," Amy declared wholeheartedly, wasting not a single breath. "We're not taking that home with us, Beca."

She'd puffed out a perturbed laugh, unbelieving, and looking first toward a smiling Lilly, and then to Flo, before settling with widened eyes onto an incredibly rattled Amy. "Oh my God," she'd coughed, questioning, "You're serious? Really, Amy, what the hell?"

"I'm just saying. If the Devil had a face, it'd be hers."

"Jesus! She's standing right here, dude! Calm the hell down." Lilly, to her credit, had looked incredibly unfazed. She'd thought Flo had looked more riddled.

"I'm Australian. I'm never calm! Call a Catholic priest, alright. They'd make a better babysitter."

Her face was irresolutely unimpressed. "I'm not… no." She cycled her gaze back and forth once more. "We're not doing that."

This is where the scenario became fundamentally weird, real quick.

Neither of them needed to do anything in the end. Except maybe stare, goggle-eyed, like a pack of in-doubt nincompoops promptly dumbfounded into the next century.

Because without warning, a van with tinted windows blustered up behind Flo's cab like a billowing thundercloud. It screeched to a deafening halt, cracked with an outrageous amount white smoke bellying out from the tailpipe in excess, and to top it all off, it was absolutely roaring what Beca could only describe as harsh noise. It was some genre of metal. Death, or black. She wanted to say grind? Thrash? Fuck it. Regardless, the music was completely rabid. The guttural and shriek vocals literally sounded like a musical martyrdom of obscenely slurred lyrics, brutal chaos, and unrelenting speed, and it all resounded from within this big, unwieldy looking thing of a vehicle. A fossil-fuel mechanical monstrosity with a jet black acrylic coating, and as a feature, there was a ridiculously pompous painting of a unicorn on it, ferociously galloping across a bridge of rainbows. An armored samurai, spewing flames from the mouth of his fiendish-looking mask, rode in the saddle, and gripped what appeared to be an AK-47 spraying dragon bullets.

The samurai wore a pair of winged, blue LED high-tops.

She couldn't make this shit up. She'd blinked and it was still there. All of it. The whole damn thing was a fucking phenomenon. Yet lo and behold, there it sat, idle; a black van spewing Grindcore metal into the air like the carbon monoxide it produced, decorated with a fucking samurai sporting a pair of pimp shoes like today's fashion, and a unicorn.

It rendered every single one of them utterly speechless. All without the crude impediment of a straitjacket and a chemical cocktail for their brains.

At that moment, Lilly paraded up from out of nowhere, her suitcase in hand and a black kitty backpack slung over her shoulders. They watched, stunned, as the chipper beatboxer's entire body slackened and seemingly breathed cheerfulness. With a pair of electric eyes and a grin that beamed brighter than an illegitimate glow worm, Lilly held out her free hand and gestured toward a mutely rendered Beca and Flo with an "ILY" sign.

And then swiftly, once she turned to Amy, she slung it into a pair devil horns and stuck out her tongue in what was apparently an archetype of heavy metal worship. "Peace and chicken grease!" She spun around. The door to the van flung open from within and she leapt inside quicker than either of them could blink. No sooner it'd sealed shut, the van accelerated into gear and blasted off and thankfully, taking along with it, the crazy guitar riffs and vocals.

There, in petrified silence, they'd stood.

Metaphorically dumbstricken.

It was Flo who'd broken it. With a stringent slew of mumbled curse words, she'd exhaled a cognitive sigh and then groaned, frustrated. "That is it. I am done. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye!"

Words had swiftly latched in Beca's throat. Both she and Amy quickly shared a perturbed look that went virtually unnoticeable, yet before either of them could so much as breathe a single letter, Flo was already buckled in and relaying directions to her driver the instant her passenger door sealed shut with a garish click. She wound down her window. She threw them one more furtive glance, though something must have decidedly amused her because when Beca frowned, Flo laughed. An actual laugh, real, and not at all comically weighed by the unbelievably absurd whirl of events that'd transpired barely three minutes ago. "Hasta luego, lovelies," she'd beamed artfully, and blew out a kiss. Beca consciously raised a brow. Amy was still deathly silent. "And please, kindly inform our hopeless little romantic that I am an impatient creature by nature and, therefore, do not like to wait. Pretty-eyed private Ryan or no. Okay? Great! Adios!"

And she was gone. In less amount of smoke and music, but gone, nevertheless.

With a few selectively sweet words that should have been just that. Sweet.

Not at all irksome, by any definition. Or grating. Like nails over an eroded chalkboard, abrasive in its sound. It shouldn't have sounded like any if that.

End the interesting scenario, and cycling forward:

Beca is now unequivocally aware that she is just, fabulously, fed up. And angry, or something. Whatever.

And apparently that sort of discontented attitude polls well with the relentless dregs of society. Because if said dregs aren't game enough –some have been, evidentially– to ask her whether or not she's feeling alright, then they're just plainly gaping at her like pupil-punching morons with little to no sense of propriety. The world sucks.

In truth though, with the way she's presenting herself, she knows the fault doesn't entirely lay with society. She knows she's being spectacularly sullen, about whatever. There's a considerably large part of her that just doesn't care, and at the moment, she's exuding that in stacks. It's a sort of clumsy kind of aggression that just gets worse the longer she ignores the issue at hand.

The problem with that, however, is that she's classically gifted in that department; ignoring, and she's perfectly aware of it, too.

It hadn't escaped the hyperobservant Australian, either, that Beca was being especially quiet. She's known Amy long enough to understand that random questions involving arguably hazardous toasters weren't random at all. In fact, the categories vary depending on the situation. They've morphed over the years since they've known one another. Amy can be frustrating, to the point of insanity, even, but she knew when to caution boundaries. She knew Beca's mood, and she knew Beca's mood. Which, logically speaking, doesn't actually make sense. But it does to Amy, somehow, and when it does, Beca's actually kind of grateful.

Because bless her big, iffy heart; the woman actually put's in a solid effort to distract her when she really, really needs it. Though, right now, she'd probably merely written Beca's mood off as some sort of melancholic-inspired tandem fuelled by sleep deprivation. Which was, in truth, only part of the dilemma.

The truth in its entirety was a dilemma all on its own, ironically, and really, not something she wanted to unpack right now.

"My mom used to cook potato waffles in our toaster," Beca begins, sighing pensively. Amy turns to her, visibly intrigued. Her eyes narrow as Beca smiles impishly with a small shrug. "When I was younger. It was like this… family tradition, or something. Like pizza nights. Except we had potato waffles. We practically subsisted off of them. It usually required turning our toaster up to the max setting."

"Potato… waffles?" Her mouth sets into a slight crease as she thinks about it, meeting her eye. "Please explain. My stomach is intrigued."

Her eyes roll, though not to express exasperation or anything. It was merely by impulse. "It's just potato, man. With oil and seasonings, or anything savory," she explains, noting the way Amy nods along almost dutifully. It makes her smile. "My mom, you see…" She looks carefully away, choosing to instead fix her eyes over a random skyscraper rigid in the urban sprawl of the glittering city lights. "Her family's Irish," she continues, "My Gran and Pa immigrated to Quebec sometime after she was born, I think. Something like that. Anyway, potato waffles are a staple of the Irish diet apparently, so they kinda like, ingrained a little tradition. It wasn't a big deal. They used to make them all the time, for my Mom. Me. My Dad, even. Though he never really caught on to it." Her mind suddenly propels back to more unpleasant times and she chuckles darkly. She quickly shakes her head of the tempered memories, before muttering, "Surprise, surprise."

Amy doesn't say anything at first, oddly. Bowed to a sudden quietness and scrutinizing, she's uncharacteristically silent and it's slightly off-putting. Because it's Amy, and when she's quiet, things like danger, paranoia, and cunning trickery start a cacophony of alarm bells in Beca's head. It's not negligent thinking on her part. It's merely a point of fact that when Amy is silent, something seriously wicked comes this way.

Decidedly curious, Beca fixedly cranes her head back toward the eerily unresponsive Australian and motions with a raised brow. "What?" she asks, though it's nearly a scoff.

"Oh, nothing," she replies a little too quickly, and in a way that sounds deliberately twofold. Like curiosity and doubt intermingled, and Beca doesn't quite know how to respond to that. Amy, however, is only quiet for a few more moments before the corners of her mouth turn upward slightly. "Don't go all Kerchak on me or anything," she starts, "but all that, there," she circles her hand through the air in front of Beca, "was remarkably personal of you. Are you ill?"

Beca swallows her chuckle suddenly, looking down first and shaking her head with a soft smile. Without premeditation and surprising even herself, she calmly removes her sunglasses and sits them atop her head. She fixes Amy with a dull stare that no doubt screams exhausted. "Shut up."

She straightens up. "Oh. Are you on your mensies?" Her iota of slippery sarcasm stumbles back effortlessly into her words, and she sounds so casual too.

Beca barks out a humorless laugh. "No."

"I'm just saying, if you're running the red lights, Beca…-"

Her eyes widen nearly venomously, briefly, before her expression turns taciturn. "I will literally throw my suitcase at you if you say one more word."

"You, literally, can't even lift it, mate."

"Care to test me, genius?"

She catches her eyes. To one and the other, they considered mutely, in a somewhat tense stalemate. Beca can feel the familiar tidal wave of annoyance usher her into a poisonous glare just as Amy's lips draw up into a weirdly malevolent grin. She watches her carefully, biting back the words and daring, at her masterfully yet noticeably controlled expression of mirth. It's suddenly all so painfully familiar and vexing that Beca actually considers throwing her suitcase for good measure.

Amy's lips part slightly with a small tilt of her head, and Beca shoots her an incredibly dissatisfied look. "Don't you dare," she bites out.

She doesn't.

Though she might have, definitely, if weren't for the voice of Chloe suddenly melting into existence from the air itself. "Oh! There you are!"

Beca's eyes focus; unblinking.

She emerges from the throng of aimless movement, like clockwork. Tolled to the comically baffled expressions of both Beca and Amy as she slowly approaches, practically prancing from toe to toe with each nimble step. She clutches her suitcase as it wheels behind her. There's a hint of a flippant smile playing at the corners of her mouth. Barely there, but reaching. Like she's physically determined to resist the urge entirely and it makes Beca's heart feel heavy with painful clarity. Chloe looks so happy. It's barely suppressed joy, at best, and it's poisonously sweet and gorgeous, and it's all undeniably owed to the illustrious charms of a ridiculously attractive soldier stationed at least 5,000 kilometers overseas, give or take.

He's not even here. Yet he might as well be, given how happy Chloe looks now.

There's a part of her that feels resentful, irritated.

There's a bigger part of her that just feels guilty.

And Beca doesn't quite know how to deal with any of that. Actually, she's quite certain, given how formlessness her thoughts have become, that she doesn't want to deal with any of it at all.

Chloe's veil of patent bliss erodes somewhat when she finally comes to a standstill in front of them. She stands now, as if paralyzed from the neck up, carefully observing. A flicker of realization crosses her face just as punctually as she raises a brow, and it almost makes Beca feel partially immoral. Because she'd been staring and hadn't even considered that, maybe, she'd been staring at her far longer than necessary.

"Are you guys seriously arguing again?" Chloe asks. There's a small lilt of laughter to her voice that doesn't go unnoticed. Dainty and amused and accentuated with another well-forming smile. It's like she'd expected nothing short of mayhem upon her arrival.

Beca's mouth opens and shuts like a stupefied goldfish without a word, before she answers grudgingly. "No." It's a harmless lie and she knows it. Knows that Chloe knows it, too, and the renowned knowledge of the fact is only confirmed by the timely nod of Amy, who says nothing. Just nods, on repeat. Like a fucking bobblehead. Still, it was worth a shot. Regardless of the extent of its doomed logic.

Chloe shakes her head, grinning slightly but otherwise undeterred. "Right."

"Well," Amy begins, and Beca can already surmise on a whim that every word is about to be stagily over-exaggerated. She steps closer to Beca and slowly cants her chin haughtily in Chloe's direction. "Did you seriously force us to wait one long, excruciating hour, just so you could play a little hotline bling with Sargent Snuggles over in whoop whoop?"

And it's really all Beca can do; to stand and simply close her eyes, inhaling languidly, as Amy's premeditated taunt is absorbed by Chloe's ears, one word after the other.

Beca feels her whole body twitch automatically and just stares down at her feet, somewhat disbelieving. There's something else there too, maybe. Unhelped. An anticipated swell of some godforsaken emotion that she doesn't really want to deal with. Though what that is exactly is perhaps still a little grudgingly debatable. She shoots Amy a slightly aghast stare and mouths a nearly inaudible, "Dude." To which, without battering an eyelid, Amy simply shrugs. Beca shakes her head at her.

Chloe, though only temporarily incapacitated, manages to abide by a small portion of composure when she finally addresses Amy. "Was it…-" Her eyes and her mouth begin to freeze wide open in an expression of stunned surprise. And it's almost depressing, in a sense, seeing it materialize so suddenly, because it makes Beca feel sheepish and weirdly downhearted. "No," Chloe laughs, though it sounds numb. "That, um… Wow. It couldn't have been that long. Right?" She stares straight at Beca then. "Right?"

"Oh, bless your cotton socks," Amy says slowly, all through a literal yawn.

Chloe's eyes skate around immediately, searching the taxi stand with a small frown. "Lilly and Flo have already gone?" An air of sadness dampens her voice. Something else, too. Guilt, maybe, brimming to the surface and lingering. If her voice didn't give it away, her face certainly did.

"Yeah, um," Beca starts, and Chloe's eyes quickly solidify onto hers once more. "They're gone. They both left like, I dunno, probably thirty minutes ago. Flo caught a cab and Lilly," she swallows noticeably, before breathing out an exasperated breath. The eye roll comes naturally after that. "I don't even know where to begin with that one. But," and she shrugs, not really knowing what else to say. She's pretty certain that everything and anything in regards to Lilly/Esther will perpetually render her speechless. "She disappeared too. To somewhere. I'm not sure. It's probably clandestine."

"The netherworld." Amy spits.

"Oh." She ignores Amy, but something in the way Chloe says that strikes Beca hard in her chest.

"I don't mean to intrude upon this little pity party," Amy shoots out again, clearing her throat unsubtly, though Beca doubts she needed to do that at all. "As you can see," she gestures out with her hand, pointing beyond the bustling horizon of the city. Fog softens the hard lines of the towering skyscrapers now, but there, under the fumes of the crowing traffic, a tincture of dawn slowly begins seeping through the night's visceral framework like smoke, lighting the way to a new day in monochrome. "It's early morning, kids," she says, point of factly, "We have literally spent the entire stupid night time munching in an airport. I would very much like to go home now. Yes. Okay? You both down with that?" Amy is trying to play it cool, Beca realizes. She looks at them both with feigned boredom and she's slouching slightly, unblinking at first, probably to further articulate said boredom. It's Amy. So, definitely.

Though after what is sure to be merely a minute, she sighs melodramatically and glowers like a pouting kid. "Please," she whines.

And Chloe's looking at her again, staring with those vividly tired eyes and breathing in a lax breath. Her hair falls freely in an abundance of disheveled curls as she looks down briefly, and then up. Beca can barely help it, either. The sudden jolt in her chest when she realizes that she's been holding in her breath. She exhales, softly, giving nothing away but feeling entirely too unbalanced. Metaphorically, and probably nearly literally. Completely allured by the simple order of motions one does when they're acting utterly and altogether, perfectly normal.

What the hell is happening to you, Mitchell?

Chloe's eyes gingerly skim to Amy as a glimmer of gentleness eases over her face. "Only because you asked nicely."

And Beca laughs. Like a fool.

But she's kind of okay with that.

Chloe thinks so too. With how quickly her eyes slipped back into Beca's.

And that's enough, she thinks.

She'd fallen asleep, at some point. On several occasions.

On each, the world had fallen away into a passing, listless blur through her window as they drove. Her focus diminished, drifting into consciousness, and then out. She tried to keep her eyes open, she really did. But she was so comfortable now, and warm. It was all that she was soon aware of: of the unapologetically urban cityscape slipping by like a neon painting under the rain. Monoliths of soaring concrete lofted out of the sidewalk, spanning with crown moldings and sprawling banisters, and she had watched it, perfectly content. Or she tried to, until her eyes began to predictably droop.

She was nestled comfortably beside Chloe. Amy sat at the front, complacently occupied by a chirpy sounding video game on her phone. Rule of thumb; Amy never calls shotgun, but dare to brave that elusive passenger seat, and you might as well have told her that eating is just a daily act of sustenance rather than a lip-smacking enjoyment. It's indisputably suicidal.

The dawn sun was peaking. A sliver of thin, milky light slipping through the hazy screen of clouds and dimness of the receding night. It grew comfortingly brighter with each involuntary slip of her eyes.

Close beside her, Chloe gently nudges her ribs. Beca's very much aware, at least of that, anyway. It's just that moving right now seems like an incredibly pointless use of energy. She sniffs dejectedly and buries her face into the tiny pillow she'd quickly swiped from her suitcase before crawling into the cab. It's pressed against the door, and soft. So soft. Cosy. Like she's already in bed and wrapped in all her blankets. It's perfectly familiar, cushioned, and arranged in such a way that Beca's sure that she could sleep for a millennium if left alone.

But she can feel Chloe shifting against her, "Beca," she says, edging that little bit closer to coerce her from sleep. Her voice a sirens call to her mind. There's a warm part of her that's pressing against Beca's hip, and it makes her heart hammer out of her chest suddenly. It shouldn't, but it does. It's instant. How the resonance of her simple touch emits over her body like sonar. The electricity over her skin. The way her pulse beats like thunder beneath her veins, wholly chaotic yet completely unseen. Too loud to hear the startling protests of her brain. Chloe leans in to whisper, oblivious. Her delicate fingers grasp at her forearm gently, "We're nearly home," and it feels impossibly nice, Beca decides, with a subtle smile barely hidden beneath the dark. Awake, but not awake. How warm her ear feels at that, suddenly. Unable to really comprehend, but accepting. Her neck, her entire body, singing in all the finest ways no sooner the woman's breathe flutters over her skin like a quiet breeze.

Panic.

It hits her like a freight train.

She's hyper aware now.

Cognizant of all the tingles plunging down her spine, skimming like fingers, and she's awake, staring wide-eyed and exhaling very, very slowly.

Her voice again, impossibly closer, "Becs?" And that same feeling hits her, only intensified, and rolling down again like warm shivers.

What…

Oh.

Oh, no.

Fuck.

Beca's head jolts upwards, far too quickly. Her vision goes a little wild and it's fuzzy for what is probably only a second, but it's enough to throw her off. Apparently into another plain of existence. The dots send her reeling and she groans sheepishly with a cautioned blink, and then another, and so on, until everything starts to clear. All the parts of her brain synapses are firing like a hyped up internal aurora borealis, and it's not okay. It's not. It can't be.

She's tired. Too tired.

It's why things appeared, felt, far too muddled.

No other reason.

No.

At some point, Chloe had shot back into her seat with a startled laugh and it punctures the air like unrestrained mirth.

Beca turns to her, staring. Just… stares. Her eyes are like giant blue saucers when Chloe's hand slowly covers her mouth, grinning through her fingers despite what looks like a caricature of frazzled nerves painted all over her face. "Holy crap," she giggles, "On edge much?"

Their cab abruptly curbs to an accelerated stop and the jolt echoes impossibly, all the way to her heart.

Her mouth parts mutely, and she's sure that words are meant to be spoken.

But the world falls as quiet as the abyss and she just stares.

A door opens and Amy is suddenly hauling herself out from the cab. She mutters something derisive to their driver and then, shockingly, foots the payment for the drive with a crumpled note from her pocket. The sound effectively ushers Beca into a modicum of rationalization and she takes the opportunity to quickly climb out of the car herself, pillow and, she thinks, sanity, in hand. She shoots Chloe a forgery of a smile and it seems to placate her, though Beca doesn't really look long enough to determine anything else. She can only hope.

She arches her neck.

Looks up.

Sees, beyond the skyline, the coral hues, and yellows of the morning sky.

She breathes in.

They unload their bags from the trunk and the driver accelerates off into the burgeoning morning traffic, the beams of his headlights lighting a clear path, and then they're alone.

The streets were threaded in dotted lights as well as the early morning hum and drone of Downtown, all sharp edges and corners. Sidewalks in smooth cobalt grey, though punctured by weatherworn cracks or past damage, were slowly beginning to teem with a sea people heading in different directions, either chatting or silent as they go. There's nothing like hearing and feeling this city, she thinks. It's home for her. It's an odd sort of comfort that weaves an almost narcotic sense freedom. The clear familiarity, the relief when she breathes in and smells the underpinning impressions the city always has to offer. The rich aromas of different foods from street vendors, the fumes belching off of vehicles, a hint of frangipani, coffee. Coffee.

It's the worst idea, but it's an idea, and there's food. "Hey, guys," she says, already decided. "I think I'm going to get an egg and cheese bagel, and some caffeine, or something. Do you…?"

"I'm on it, pal." Amy doesn't even wait for a response. She just veers off into the weaving crowd and disappears like smoke, leaving Beca staring after her, completely bug-eyed, as if she'd just produced a rhinoceros from her pocket.

"Um. Thanks?"

From beside her, Chloe clears her throat. When Beca turns, frowning, she notices instantly that Chloe is staring down pointedly at the sidewalk. There's an inkling of a smile toying at the edges of her mouth and Beca doesn't need to ask her what for to understand. Amy has left all her luggage standing by the door leading into their apartment. Stacked, neatly, and perfectly piled. The infuriating woman might as well have pinpointed a sign exclaiming: Here I am.

Releasing an irritated breath bordering onto a growl, Beca trudges over with a heaviness to her steps and lofts one of the, seriously, heavy bags against her side. "I was at least going bring my bags up before I headed out," she puffs, securing her own luggage. There's a bitter limp to her step, deliberate, and very angry, as she drags herself through the dimly lit threshold. "Christ, this is heavy. That shady motherfu…-"

"Is it silly of me," Chloe blusters in a trice, also grabbing hold of Amy's other bag and following close behind, and sounding acutely optimistic, "to hope… that, maybe, the lift has been repaired… since we've been gone?"

"Well, let's not be unreasonable now." With her determination renewed, she sluggishly makes her way over to the lift by the foot of the stairs and fumbles somewhat to push in the button to go up. She waits. She taps her foot impatiently, then pushes it again. Then again. Her jaw sets firmly with a glare. She's pressed it several times now, she thinks. Once more. Can she do it again? Fucking hell. Agitation quickly leaks into her posture like muck when nothing happens. She can feel herself edging dangerously close toward the hysterical. So she opts to press her head firmly against the cool metal of the doors with a resigned thump. She exhales crossly, "I hate her."

Chloe sighs beside her, and gently touches her elbow, pulling at the fabric of her bomber jacket. Beca's eyes dart around, head still pressed loathsomely against the barred doors. "C'mon," Chloe says a little drowsily, with a pitying look admissible for the both of them. She reclaims one of Amy's monstrosities without further delay and begins an unhurried strut toward the stairs. With a groan, Beca straightens. She takes in a deeply languid breath to distil her frustrated nerve and spares one last, woeful look at the other suitcase before taking the handle firmly in hand. She drags the thing with her, following Chloe, and begins the long trek upstairs toward the fifth floor.