All These Lives
AN: Originally, this oneshot was going to be based on Daughtry's "What About Now", but I got stuck on it, and couldn't finish it, so I decided to go with "All These Lives", also by Daughtry, instead. I guess "What About Now" just wasn't meant to be. Though, who knows, maybe once I'm done with Straying From Tradition, and one or two of my Buffy stories as well, I might turn "What About Now" into a full-length story. Maybe. It would help if you ask nicely though! ;)
Doesn't come down when she calls
"It's time for breakfast".
Mama can't get down those halls
Fast enough to see
Glass is sprayed across the floor
From the broken window.
She can't breathe anymore
Can't deny what we know
...
"Come on, Sam! Breakfast is ready!" Beca calls up the stairs for the third time.
"What's wrong?" Chloe asks.
"Sam's not answering." Beca replies. "Samantha Jane Mitchell! It's time to eat!"
Chloe puts her hand on Beca's shoulder worriedly before darting up the stairs to check on their daughter. Beca sighs and rolls her eyes. Chloe was always worried something was going to happen to Sam. She was paranoid like that. To be honest, though, Beca loved that Chloe worried about Sam. Even though Sam wasn't her daughter biologically speaking, blood couldn't have made the two most important girls in Beca's life any closer.
Samantha was Beca's daughter from her brief marriage to Jesse Swanson, her college sweetheart. They worked as a family for the first year of Samantha's life, all of them loving each other very much. But after a party Fat Amy threw for the Bellas' five year reunion, only two years into Beca and Jesse's marriage, Beca felt old feelings for Chloe resurfacing, and Jesse noticed. He'd gone berserk on her, throwing her around and beating her in a fit of rage, telling her she was nothing but a disgusting dyke. She took their daughter and showed up on Chloe's front door thirty minutes later.
Despite his anger towards Beca, he was still a loving father towards Samantha, so the judge presiding over the custody hearing saw that the girl was in no danger from Jesse, so he gave them joint custody over her. Jesse gets her during the summer, when school is out, and Beca gets her during the school year. Jesse always was a smooth talker.
And now, six years later, everything is running smoothly. Jesse and Beca are back to being... well, close to friends again, his one moment of rage towards her forgiven, though, in Chloe's case, not forgotten. He'd showed up at Beca and Chloe's wedding and begged Beca for forgiveness five years ago, saying he was just scared that she was going to take their daughter away from her.
Chloe's scream snaps Beca out of her thoughts, and the short brunette materializes beside her. Beca walks into the room, afraid of what she'll see.
Sam is gone. Nowhere to be seen as Chloe sobs with grief. Beca doesn't react to anything. Not the empty bed, messy as though there was a struggle. Not the mess all over the room, indicating that the seven-year-old girl put up a fight. Not the broken glass from the window all over the floor. None of it. Beca instead withdraws further into herself than she'd ever withdrawn before, so that she's almost comatose. She can't breathe. Her vision is growing cloudy and dark. Before she knows it, Beca's no longer looking at the room, but the ceiling, the ground having reached up and pulled her down. Then, the ceiling, the light in the room, it all goes black.
(They're gonna find you, just believe) They're gonna find you, just believe
(You're not a person) You're not a person, you're a disease.
All these lives that you've been taking
Deep inside, my heart is breaking.
Broken homes from separation,
Don't you know it's violation?
It's so wrong, but you'll see,
Never gonna let you take my world from me.
The world outside these walls may know you're breathing
But you ain't coming in.
...
"When did you first notice Samantha was missing?" The detective asks Chloe, who's still crying, using a handkerchief to blow her nose.
"Um... this morning... about eight... Beca... she... she called her downstairs for breakfast, and... and she never came down, so... so I went upstairs to check on her, see if maybe she was still asleep, but when I got up there..." Chloe breaks down sobbing again, and Aubrey wraps her arms around her comfortingly.
"And where's her father?" The detective asks.
Aubrey nods inside the house. "In there, with Beca."
"And Beca is...?"
"Samantha's mother." Aubrey takes over answering questions.
"I thought Mrs. Mitchell here was Samantha's mother?"
"She is... They, um... They both are."
"Then..."
"Oh, for God's sake, Beca and Chloe are married. They raise Samantha together, and during the summer, Sam's dad, Jesse, gets her." Aubrey snaps.
"I see... Well, Mrs. Mitchell, is there anyone who'd want to hurt your daughter?"
"I don't think any more questions is a good idea right now." Aubrey says.
"Okay, I'm sorry. I'll ask the other Mrs. Mitchell, then."
"No." Chloe says. "No, she... she can't answer anything right now." The thought of the near-comatose state her wife is in makes Chloe sob even harder as she buries her face in Aubrey's neck. "No... No, Sam was... is a sweetheart. Everyone loves her."
"Is there anyone who'd want to hurt you or Beca that might possibly do it through Samantha?"
Chloe shakes her head. "No... No, I don't think so. I can't think of anyone..."
"Do you know how the assailant got into the house?"
"I, um... I think it was through Sam's window. When I, um... When I got up to her room, the window was broken, and glass was all over the floor, so I think he had to have come in that way."
The detective nods and closes his notepad. "Alright, I think I've got all I need. I'll call if I have any more questions. And here's my number..." he hands Chloe his card. "Call me if you think of anyone who might do this."
Chloe nods, taking the card. The cops all leave and Chloe and Aubrey head back inside to see Jesse sitting next to the still unresposive Beca. He's leaning forward, his face buried in his hands, shoulders shaking as he sobs.
"They're going to find her, guys." Aubrey assures the three of them. "They're going to find Sam."
Jesse and Chloe both barely nod, but Beca remains unresponsive. Chloe sits down beside Beca and puts her hands on Beca's shoulders. She starts shaking her roughly.
"Beca? Come on, baby. Beca? Please answer me!" Chloe pleads with the brunette, but she just stares forwards, like she doesn't even notice Chloe's there. She'd gotten Beca to wake up and take a drink, but that's the only sign Beca is even alive. "Please, Beca, I need you. I love you, Beca, please answer me." Chloe begs softly. "I can't lose you, too."
But Beca still doesn't answer.
Posters hung on building walls
Of missing faces.
Months go by without the calls.
No clues or traces.
(They're gonna find you, just believe) They're gonna find you, just believe
(You're not a person) You're not a person, you're a disease.
All these lives that you've been taking
Deep inside, my heart is breaking.
Broken homes from separation,
Don't you know it's violation?
It's so wrong, but you'll see,
Never gonna let you take my world from me.
The world outside these walls may know you're breathing
But you ain't coming in.
...
Chloe's eyes are dead as she tapes another poster of Sam up on the wall. She looks down the side of the building, not really sure why she hung the poster there, there are already ten of them on this wall. Oh well. One place is as good as another now. There's been no leads on Sam's whereabouts for months. The detective calls once a week, and even Beca comes out of her comatose state long enough to hear the good news, only to be told to not give up hope, because another lead is bound to turn up soon. Then Beca goes right back to only being alive enough to eat, drink, or go to the bathroom. Barely.
The only comfort Chloe has is at night, when Beca does, at least, still wrap her arms around her, and for a few hours, Chloe can pretend that everything's alright, and when she wakes up in the morning, it'll all have just been a horrible dream.
Chloe hangs the final poster up on a telephone pole with her staple gun. The same poster is stapled to the other side of the same telephone pole, and on both sides of every telephone pole on the block. Maybe even in the city. It's just a distraction. Something to occupy her days, so she doesn't fall into the same coma as Beca.
With that happy thought, Chloe puts the staple gun and duct tape back in her bag and heads home.
To her surprise, Beca is on the phone with the detective. Actually talking to him. Chloe stares in amazement, as though she'd never seen a Beca Mitchell before.
"Thank you." Beca says monotonously as she hangs up, and Chloe's even more shocked when Beca doesn't go comatose again immediately.
"B-B-Beca?" She stammers.
"The detective called." Beca says evenly. "You weren't here to answer."
"Yeah, I... I was hanging up posters."
"He's got another lead." Beca continues like Chloe hadn't said anything. "Said a police officer in Arizona saw a girl that kind of looked like Sam. A little bit thinner, but similar."
"Well that's... That's good." Chloe says, trying to sound hopeful, but in truth, she'd given up hope already.
"Yeah. Listen, um... I'm... I'm sorry."
"Beca?"
"Let me finish. I'm sorry I... I haven't been... you know... with you or anything... I'm... I'm sorry. I want you to know I love you." Beca says sadly.
Chloe walks over and wraps her arms tightly around Beca, and almost smiles when she feels Beca's arms wrap around her. And they cry into each other's shoulders.
Shed the light on all the ones who never thought they would become
A father, mother asking why this world can be so cold.
Doesn't come down when she calls
It's time for breakfast.
The memories begin to fall.
She asks, "When will I be free?"
All these lives that you've been taking
Deep inside, my heart is breaking.
Broken homes from separation,
Don't you know it's violation?
It's so wrong, but you'll see,
Never gonna let you take my world from me.
The world outside these walls may know you're breathing
But you ain't coming in.
...
"Well... here we are..." Chloe says as she holds Beca in her arms, both of them staring at Sam's room. They'd cleaned the room up, gotten rid of the broken glass, straightened up the mess inside.
"How did all this happen, Chlo?" Beca whispers. "Why did this happen to us? I mean, we've done well. We haven't really made anyone angry enough to do this to us. The only one who'd have any motive to do this is Jesse, but he spends more time here with us than he does back at his place, so he's not stashing her there. So it's not Jesse. Why did this happen to us? How could this happen to my baby?" Beca breaks down sobbing.
Chloe tightens her grip on Beca as they sob in each other's arms.
They cry together for what feels like hours, even though it's really only about ten minutes or so. Beca finally wipes her tears away as the phone downstairs rings.
"I... I'm gonna go get that." She whispers, and Chloe nods. Beca leaves Chloe in the doorway, staring into the room.
Despite the fact that it now looks like Sam might only be at school for the day, her room is clean and tidy, when Chloe looks in at the room, all she can see is that first image of the room that morning, when Sam hadn't come down for breakfast. Chloe had been the first one to see the room, the first to know that her daughter, Jesse's daughter, Beca's daughter was missing. And she is now the last one to see the room before closing and locking the door, knowing that, until Sam is found, alive or, God forbid, dead, the door would not be opened again.
But then, She hears Beca gasp, and whine from the other room, and she runs to see Beca on the ground sobbing into her hands, the phone on the ground next to her. Chloe's heart breaks again at the sight, knowing that the call had to be the worst thing possible. The lead had once again fallen through, and they were still no closer to finding Sam. Even finding her dead would be better than the not knowing. The not knowing where Sam is, or what kind of state she's in is far worse than finding her dead. At least then they'd know. At least then they'd all be able to start dealing with their grief. At least then they'd be able to start trying to move on.
[Three hours earlier, in Arizona...]
"Bumper Allen! Come out with your hands in the air!" Officer Lagle shouts into his megaphone as the small shack in the desert is surrounded by police officers with their weapons drawn. There's a sniper on four different hills a half mile away from the shack on each side. Bumper Allen had nowhere to run.
And Bumper knows this, which is why he steps out of the shack holding a small girl in front of his face, knowing that not even the snipers would try to shoot him when there was an innocent in the way, especially a little girl like this.
"All of you back off! And give me a clear path to one of your cruisers, or I shoot the girl!" Samantha Jane Mitchell sobs as she felt the barrel of the gun press to her temple. The police reluctantly backs away.
"Put down the gun and turn yourself in, Allen!" Officer Lagle shouts. "No one has to get hurt!"
"Shut up! And leave the keys in the ignition! I swear to God I'll kill her!"
Officer Lagle tries to sound nonchalant when he says, "Shoot her and you lose your only shield, Allen! You have no escape!"
"If I shoot her, you'll have her blood on your hands! You'll know in your mind that you could have done something to save her, but instead you tried to play my game with me, and you lost!"
Lagle curses. Bumper is right. So, he, along with all other police steps back and allows Bumper to get in his cruiser.
Then, he finds luck is on his side. He'd forgotten to refill his cruiser's gas tank, so the car wouldn't even start. Bumper screams in frustration and drags Sam out of the car again, holding the gun to her temple.
A gunshot rings out across the desert as Samantha falls to the ground, covered in blood. No one moves, hoping and praying that what they think just happened didn't actually happen. That it was just a mass halucination, imagining the worst possible outcome.
And luck, for the second time that day, comes to their aide as Sam gets to her feet and runs away from Bumper, who drops the gun and clutches at his chest as his own blood pours out of the bullet wound in his chest. He gasps and coughs up blood as he falls to the ground, dead. Officer Lagle picks up Samantha and holds her to comfort her.
He turns to his partner.
"Call Detective Rodriguez in Barden, Georgia. Tell him we've found the girl."
[Present, in the Mitchell house...]
Chloe is about to collapse in grief when she sees the look in Beca's eyes. It causes her stomach to leap up into her throat and her eyes to bulge, her breath catch. The look in Beca's eyes is one of joy.
"They found her, Chlo... They found our baby girl." She whispers. "She's alive."
And it's now Chloe's turn to faint, but hers is in relief.
[Two days later...]
A knock on the door, and Beca, Chloe, Aubrey and Jesse all jump off the couch and run for it, knowing exactly who it was. Beca gets to the door first, of course, and she throws open the door, picking her little girl up without even waiting for a "hello" from anyone. She just holds her little girl tightly and sobs in relief to finally be holding her again. The others all join in on the embrace, all of them crying, relieved to finally have their family complete again. And Detective Rodriguez lets his own tears fall in relief to finally have this stressful case closed, and to have reunited this family, making him feel better about his job, knowing that not all cases would have this kind of happy ending. But damn it, he's going to enjoy this success as long as he can.
Well, I hope you guys enjoyed this. The song doesn't actually end on a happy note like this, so the ending is my own making, because I hate sad or bitter endings, even though I've given you guys a few of them (for example: my stories "Somebody That I Used To Know" and "Maps").
So, the ending is my way of making it all up to you guys, so I hope you enjoyed this.