Hi all! I've had this idea floating around in my head for a while. This is just a really angsty, slightly AU Mitchsen fic. The main AU thing is that the big brawl took place after semis, not regionals.

I hope you guys enjoy. Just beware: sensitive subjects ahead.

One last push. That's all it took to send Beca Mitchell to the rooftop of the apartment complex where she lived. Tears streaked down her face as she surveyed the ground below, well aware that the distance between her and the ground was more than enough to severely injure her, but more likely kill her. If that didn't, then the surprised traffic surely wouldn't have time to stop before she was run over. As she stood on the ledge, she embraced the feeling that all of her pain might finally end.

All of her years of suffering. Years of abuse, anger, neglect. Years of pain, sadness, and despair. Years of feeling that there was no hope.

But not even her lack of hope could compare to how she felt now. Now that all of her hope was forcibly ripped away from her, just before she decided that she would be capable of maybe, just maybe, finally getting past enough of her pain to talk to someone. No matter what she tried she was never enough. She wasn't enough for her mom. She wasn't enough for her dad. She wasn't enough for Jesse, or Chloe, or certainly not the blonde-haired ex-Bellas captain whom she had been crushing on for almost two years.

She desperately wanted to feel that someone would love her unconditionally. She wanted someone to stay with her long enough that she could open up about her troubled past, however long it took, and someone who would listen to all of her present insecurities and future fears. She wanted someone to be by her side through everything, but no one was. Not since she was 14.

Now she just wanted it to end. She had given up on all of the hope she had ever held. She felt empty. She had hoped against hope that for once she had found lasting friends, who wouldn't become impatient over her guarded nature, and might finally accept her for who she was, and help her become the person she wanted to be. But they left, just like everyone else always and inevitably did.

And with that she stepped up onto the ledge and braced herself to jump. Her vision blurred, and she began to lose control. She just wanted it all to end.

"Beca! Wait!"

When Beca was 14 and returning home from school, everything became worse. Her happy family suddenly disappeared, as soon as she walked in the door.

"Mom! I'm home!"

Upon hearing no immediate response, Beca walked further into her house, and was met with the last sight she ever expected to see. Her mother was crumpled unconscious on the floor, a piece of paper neatly folded on the table beside her, and an empty bottle of pills on her other side.

"Mom!"

Beca immediately went to check for a pulse. Upon feeling none, she panicked, and allowed tears to start slipping down her face. She placed two calls that night. The first was to 911. The ambulance responded relatively quickly, but Beca knew in her heart that it wasn't quick enough. Her mother had already succumbed to her demons, and nothing would change that.

The paramedics pronounced Mrs. Mitchell dead at the scene, and Beca just crumpled to the ground in tears. She wanted it to just be a joke. She wanted her mother to sit up and say "Gotcha!" But it wasn't going to happen. She sat there and cried for hours and hours.

Upon hearing the news, Beca's father was distraught. He dropped everything and rushed straight home, where he did his best too comfort his daughter. But it didn't last. Nothing good in Beca's life ever did.

After his wife died, Beca's father drank. He drank and drank and drank, night after night after night, leaving Beca to fend for herself against the world, and him. The first few nights were filled with sadness, but soon anger took their place.

"Fuck you, you bitch! You're the reason she's not here anymore. She would have stayed if it wasn't for you! I would still have her if you weren't always screwing shit up!" Beca's father screamed at her.

"How is this my fault?" Beca raised her voice in turn, causing her father's to drop dangerously low.

"Do not raise your voice to me, and do not talk back!" His sentence ended with a vicious slap, sending Beca sprawling to the ground.

"This is all your fault!" Each word Warren Mitchell said was punctuated by a kick to his daughter's ribs, hard enough to cause pain, but not hard enough to cause severe damage. He didn't want her to be sent to the hospital. All that would come of that would be questions, and even in his inebriated state he understood that that would be unacceptable.

"Do not let me see you again tonight!"

Beca managed to drag herself up to her room, where she locked herself in and curled up into a ball, sobbing until she cried herself to sleep.

It only escalated after that. Every day was worse and worse.

"Give me my wife back!"

"I hate you, you disgusting whore!"

"I wish I'd never had you."

"You don't deserve to be alive!"

Each day the beatings got worse and worse, but never enough to break a bone, or otherwise severely injure her enough for a hospital visit. Beca's father needed his punching bag, after all.

And each night, Beca would somehow manage to crawl up the steps and into her room, locking herself in and crying herself to sleep. Until one day, two months later, she decided something had to change.

Beca couldn't fix anything. She couldn't control anything. Her life was dictated by her father. Her pain and her feelings were dictated by her father. And she wanted it to change.

This was where the razor blade came in. She had found it among her mother's old belongings, and it was sharp enough that it could cut her skin. And with it, she realized that she finally had some semblance of control over her pain.

Suddenly, Beca was the one to dictate when and where her pain would happen. When she wanted it to happen. Because once she started, it was incredibly difficult to stop.

The first time was after her dad's 60th consecutive beating. Yes, she had counted. She counted every single day, just so she would eventually be able to tell when it had stopped. She wanted to know how long it took for him to maybe finally care about her again.

The number 60 was what finally broke her. So, she carefully fingered the blade, and sunk it into the flesh of her wrist. Horizontally, of course. And not too deep. Just enough to cut the surface, draw blood, and make her feel her own pain.

And it was thrilling.

She had been craving some way to feel on her own. And she had finally found it. And she was unwilling to give it up.

She did a good job of hiding her scars, not that anybody cared enough to look for it. She was the little withdrawn alt girl. She didn't care to make friends, and people didn't care to make friends with her.

Her natural don't-fuck-with-me aura was enough to drive both friends and enemies away, to the point where the only other humans she had any meaningful contact with were her teachers and her father. (Of course, contact with him was completely hated, but also completely unavoidable).

It was because of this that she was able to build up her prison. Layers and layers of stone walls, and then an iron gate surrounded a portcullis, that led into a courtyard with an excellent view of an extremely well-fortified keep. Beca took shelter in this keep behind even more walls, separating herself from anybody and everybody around her. She wanted nothing more than to stay away from everybody.

And for five years she was successful (at least, where her father wasn't involved).

Enter Barden University.

The biggest wrench in her plans ever. And it all started with a bubbly redhead and a bitchy blonde. Beca had no intention of ever joining a group in Barden. For that matter, she had no intention of going to Barden anyway, but her amazing father could be thanked for that. The acapella, however, was because of someone else.

Chloe Beale was the friendliest, most outgoing person Beca had ever met. That coupled with her lack of respect for personal boundaries meant that she roped Beca into joining the acapella group after invading her shower, when both of them were naked. Beca was unappreciative at best, but idea of joining the group also triggered the memory of the blonde at the activities fair.

A blonde who Beca was inexplicably attracted to, despite the uptight air around her that practically screamed, "I have a stick up my ass!"

So, Beca found herself auditioning for an acapella group by singing a song and banging a cup. Maybe not her most glorious moment. But for a while, it felt like it was the best idea she had ever had.

Beca found herself growing gradually accustomed to the strange people surrounding her. They were easily the most unique group of people she had ever met, and eventually she got to the point where she considered them as friends.

Of course, the blonde (whose name was Aubrey Posen) remained as uptight, and their arguments over the setlist were a biweekly event. The fact that she even cared enough to bother with this was surprising to Beca in and of itself, though. It meant that she had finally found something to care about that wasn't as painful as her razor blade.

It still ended up in disaster, at least, for a while.

Their first three performances were all terrible, and they only got by on luck. Beca had been arrested at the end of her third one, and she had received the worst beating she had ever experienced. Thank God that by that time the Bellas had disbanded (temporarily), and there had been no one besides her uncaring roommate to witness her in her weakened state.

When that same damn redhead had invited her back, Beca decided that friends were good, and so she had come back, dispelling a rather disturbing fight involving vomit and rape whistles in the process.

After the blonde finally decided to step down from her dictatorial pedestal, Beca found that the two of them got along pretty well. To the point that they were both each other's second-best friend (behind, of course, Chloe).

But this also hurt Beca in a way that none of the other girls could, because she was completely and utterly convinced that her crush had no feelings for her outside of strictly platonic ones. And so, every encounter with the blonde hurt her in the same way that it healed her, leading to a confusing mix of emotions swirling in Beca's head every single time she saw Aubrey.

It all came to a head after her finals performance with the Bellas, where she kissed Jesse in an attempt to get over her (admittedly massive) crush on Aubrey. For a while she was even able to convince herself that a relationship with Jesse was better for her. It took a year for her to be proven wrong.

"How could you, Jesse? How could you cheat on me?" Beca was practically hysterical, tears carving their way through the same paths they had taken for years.

"I needed something! I've been waiting over a year for you and I can't take it anymore. Men have needs, you know!" Jesse's response was nothing but arrogant and entitled, and it made Beca break down even more.

"Was I not enough for you? Was it really that bad? You needed to resort to some other girl just because I wasn't letting you in my pants fast enough?"

"No, you're not enough. Quite frankly I don't think you'll ever be enough for anyone! You are so fucking frustrating! I've been trying all year for you to open up to me, and so has everyone around you, and you never do. You sit there moping in your little shell, and you don't let anyone in. No one will ever love you because you don't have the capability to come out of your fucking hidey-hole enough to love them back!" Jesse's rant exploded out of his mouth, and it sent Beca running away and sobbing, as she sought comfort in the only place she really associated with positive feelings.

Upon her arrival at Chloe's apartment, Chloe opened the door and her face immediately shifted from her normal happiness into concern. She let Beca in, and they sat down together on the couch as Beca sobbed for all she was worth while Chloe held her.

"Beca, what's wrong? What happened?"

Beca just shook her head in response and sobbed more, her body convulsing with each sound of grief.

"Beca, please, just tell me. I can't help you if you don't let me!" Chloe said, desperately hoping for something.

Upon the reminder of what Jesse had said to her before she ran away crying, she began wailing even more, wrapping her arms around Chloe.

"Beca, please, for the love of God, just tell me what happened." Chloe was beginning to become frustrated, which just upset Beca even more.

"I can't. Please, please, don't make me! I can't." Beca seemed completely desperate for the interrogation to stop, but Chloe wasn't having any of it.

"Goddamnit, Beca! I can't do this anymore. I have been trying my ass off these last two years to get you to actually talk to me and I've had it. Do you not trust me? Have I not done enough for you? Because the way I see it, you haven't done anything at all to repay any of the kindness that any of us have showed you! You haven't even tried to open up to any of us, to make all of our efforts worth it. What can we do now? I'm done trying." Chloe quickly stalked off, forcing Beca off of her.

And Beca began running. She reached the stairwell and ran up until she reached the roof. She had her one last push, and she wanted it all to end.

"Why should I?" Beca's voice was that of someone who was totally broken. When she looked at Aubrey her eyes were dull and lifeless, and red-rimmed from all of the tears she had cried. "Who would miss me?"

"Chloe would! Jesse would! The Bellas would!" Aubrey said, her eyes beginning to brim with tears as well.

"No, they fucking wouldn't! No one would fucking miss me!"

"Why wouldn't they? They love you. We all love you!" Aubrey's tears had begun falling as well, and both of them were reduced to sobbing messes. "Please just get off the ledge. Please!"

"No one fucking loves me! My mom committed suicide when I was 14. My dad beat me for four years! I had no friends at school until I came here! And then guess what happens! Jesse cheats on me with some bitch just because I wasn't moving fast enough for him! Chloe gives up on me because my walls aren't come down fast enough for her! Who's to say anyone else would be any fucking different! Jesse was right. No one will ever love me. I'll never be enough for anyone." Beca trailed off as she once again began to ready herself to jump.

"Goddamnit Beca, you're already enough for me! I love you!" Aubrey screamed.

"What?" Beca was floored, and momentarily forgot about everything. She forgot about where she was, and why she was there, and she could only focus on the image of perfection standing behind her, and it's beautiful, angelic voice.

"Why?" Beca's voice was so quiet that it was barely audible, but Aubrey understood.

"I've had a toner for you since I saw you at the activities fair. When I looked at you, I thought you were the most beautiful girl in the world, and I know I was a bitch, but that was only because I didn't know how to deal with my feelings. And then we worked past our differences and we were able to actually talk to each other. I realized that you had a beautiful personality to match the rest of you. Do you remember the night that we just sat next to each other and looked at the stars? A year ago? That was when I realized I was in love with you.

"And I won't be able to bear it if you leave because I haven't gotten a chance to tell you that I love you, and I haven't gotten a chance to kiss you and I haven't gotten a chance to take you out on a date! I don't care how long it takes you to open up about everything! I just want to be there when it finally happens! Please don't go. Let me try to convince you that it can get better. Please, for both of us." Aubrey finished her speech with a mixture of fear, hope, and anticipation.

"Ok. I'll try it. For both of us." And Beca stepped down from the ledge, turning fully towards Aubrey.

The blonde rushed forwards as soon as she was convinced that Beca was safe, and she enveloped the brunette in her arms. And when she pulled back enough for the two girls to look at each other, she leaned forward and gave Beca a tender kiss. Beca allowed herself to melt into that kiss, and her heart almost exploded when she heard Aubrey whisper an "I love you" into her ear.

And as she responded with an "I love you, too," Beca was revitalized. She allowed herself, one more time, to think that there might be a light in her omnipresent darkness. She allowed herself, one more time, to believe that her hope might not be torn away from her.

I hope you all enjoyed the fic!

To anybody interested, I'm thinking of making this into at least a two-shot, if not a multi-chap fic. I originally just wanted to write out this part as a one-shot, but as I did, I got more and more ideas for what to do after. Let me know if you're interested, or if you think it's okay as is.