A/N: Lost this and then found it again, Thankfully. Chaubrey Angst: the Prequel
Aubrey's playlists had gotten rather depressing over the past few weeks. Her mood was directionally relational to her music unless it was for an audience and that is where she started to distance herself. Not really a noticeable trait unless you knew her. However, there was only one person who knew her and that person was currently preoccupied with their love interest.
Her best friend, her home, Chloe had started off the year in her usual manner. They had trained the new girls, they had hung out when school allowed, and they'd even had their share of fights. Somewhere in the middle of it all Aubrey had realized that she didn't just love Chloe, she was in love with Chloe. She could name all two hundred and sixty five reasons why and if her memory faltered she could just refer to the list that she had made in a doc on her laptop.
It was a terrible loss of control and she hated it but at the same time it made a lot of sense. She suspected that part of the reason she had realized what she truly felt was that Chloe had found Beca and though they still weren't technically together she knew that Chloe loved her. It was obvious. This had never happened before and the thought of losing the chance to tell her was crushing. Even though she knew it wouldn't make a difference. That had changed when Beca had screwed up. She had kissed someone else and of course Chloe had come to her for comfort. Things had kind of escalated to the point where she could no longer keep her peace. She had confessed the secret that mattered to her the most.
They had explored it through touch and taste. Their senses coming alive with the night of quiet ardor. She stared over at her bed. She hadn't bothered to make it, which was not like her. She chose to ignore her need for order in favor of the memory of last night. She looked back at the paper she was writing. She'd typed two paragraphs and had given up. She stared blankly at the screen. Her fingers rested over the keys and a sudden compulsion made them start moving. A few minutes later she stopped and looked at what she had written. It was a letter... to Chloe.
Dear Chloe,
We've been friends for years. I've loved you in one way or another every minute of those months, weeks, and days. You're impossible to deny from the first moment. I don't think you see how you affect every single person who comes into contact with you but I do. That's probably how I realized that I love you, not just as my very best friend but as the person I want to share all the unknowns with. Being around you makes me not have to answer every question. You make me crave mysteries when I usually have to solve everything to feel whole. No one has ever managed to make me un-plan my life and rearrange it around them. I know what it is to thirst for someone now, to need them like they are an essential element of life You know I'm good with stating facts so I don't think I can express it better than this passage.
"Extinguish my eyes, I'll go on seeing you.
Seal my ears, I'll go on hearing you.
And without feet I can make my way to you,
without a mouth I can swear your name.
Break off my arms, I'll take hold of you
with my heart as with a hand.
Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat.
And if you consume my brain with fire,
I'll feel you burn in every drop of my blood."
See, you make me turn to poets for ways to describe my love. Most people see the surface that I wear like armor. The uptight, unimaginative petty little rich girl but you know better. You know about the pain I've gone through and the depth to which I feel.
You're like looking at the sky. You consist of all these pinpricks of light that belong to a huge fabric of wondrous colors. I always know it's going to be there and I know that I can't pick out just one point to worship. Every single part of you is as beautiful as the the next. If I can love you like this, what else is there?
People don't know you and they think that they do. You have this forward nature that fools people into thinking that they see everything in one go. Really, what they see is your generous heart and your bold, boundary breaking spirit. They don't know that you're a little shy at the core and a little afraid. I love that dichotomy.
Kissing you is like tasting pure love. It could kill me if I took too much. It's addictive after only one drop. The first kiss made me wonder why I'd waited years. It took that long for us to get there and no matter what happens I will have that. I will have the memory of your skin burned into mine. I will always have you tucked in my mind right behind the rest of the possibilities. I can wait... and if time expires and I still don't get to be with you I will still have the treasure of a night spent worshiping. If you feel that call, if you can give me anything that I ask, I will be there. You will know where to find me because I will be right beside you as long as I possibly can be.
She knew she would never send it. A letter by its pure definition was meant to be sent but this was a letter with dual purpose. It was as much for the author as it was for the subject. Her fear that it would be discovered was insignificant so she copied and pasted it to a separate document and titled it; Letter to Chloe. Disorientation was her partner tonight and she could feel her axis tilting from what she had known to the absolute that she understood as her new truth.
Many people never knew what love was, they thought they had. They touched the surface of it, maybe dipped a toe in to test the water. However, the consuming finality that they could feel nothing else never came. She shut down her computer. Obviously, she wouldn't get anything else done on her assignment. School, once everything, had become an obligation in light of her feelings.
Early on she had wanted out of her home. If it could be called that. Her mother's death had changed everything. There was no longer a buffer between Aubrey and her father. Their relationship deteriorated as quickly as it took for a bullet to slice through Vivian Posen's brain matter. That was when her father's stern nature had turned to periodic violence. He had always yelled, been stiff, and never apologized but he had always stopped short of actually laying a hand on her.
That changed, she'd never been afraid to come home but now it came from any imagined provocation. It was as if he transferred all his anger at her death and his damage from his years seeing conflict in battle, to his daughter. They looked so much alike. He seemed to derive catharsis from taking out his violent verbal and occasionally physical fantasies of revenge on the living picture of his late wife.
Aubrey lived in abject terror at first. She blanched when her father so much as looked at her that first year. Later she learned to take it, as if it was meant for her own good. She bore the bruises of longed for perfection. In her mind her father was telling her to be better, to achieve more than just mere greatness. She was intended to never lose or fail. She could not or she would disappoint him and by extension sully the reputation of their family or insult the memory of her mother.
She had endured years of this, knowing it wasn't normal and being unable to express it to anyone. It was only when she had found Chloe that something had altered. When she touched Aubrey it wasn't out of brutal grief. It stemmed from affection for who she was, something that Aubrey had ordered as last in importance. Suddenly, there was someone who wanted to know what made up the sum of her parts and how she equated to life. Revelations come in many forms but Aubrey's came packaged as a bright, welcoming star, burning its red energy in spite of a tragic past.
Chloe would not take no for an answer. She would burst through the lines of societal norms and break into Aubrey's orbit like a second coming. She finally had the affection she craved without knowing it. She had someone who needed her and did so much more than tolerate her presence.
Once they had become more, passed the boundaries of acquaintance and friendship and moved into the territory of surrogate family she released little bits of information about her past. She feared the reaction and she didn't want Chloe to make a big deal out of something that was simply fact. It had happened. It was a true story but it wasn't who she was. She had reshaped herself after getting out of the environment that had made her into a good little soldier.
It had been hard and the traces were still there when she bore the hard brunt of her will onto an unwilling subject but she was better. She didn't hold back the tears that came at night and she even let herself be weak on occasion because Chloe was there to catch her when she let go.
Now, she wasn't sure how she was going to fit in. If she simply became the best friend would that be enough? There had always been an easiness between her and Chloe that a suitor might find threatening. It had never mattered before. Aubrey had always won out as more important in the end. The relationships were fleeting at best. This was different.
By the sheer importance of it they were forced to redefine their interactions with one another. The enormity of it moved into their lives shifting them into a paradigm of absolutes. The gray areas became dangerous to the existence of their relationships. For the first time in years her importance in Chloe's life was questioned at it's base. She might no longer be the first to be thought of, the first contacted, and the promises that were still intact began to transfer.
Everything changes and with that transition came her realization of love. It reached her through necessary displacements in their foundations. It was awakened by the specter of fear. Loss was something she'd experienced but it wasn't something she was used to when Chloe was the person in question.
Chloe's love for Beca could push Aubrey to tear loose from their mooring. She knew it would pain them both but if she found it was best, she would do so. There would be no toleration of anything but the best for Chloe. Even if by ensuring that she had to hurt her with a lesser evil in the process. She was something that could be lost but Chloe's true love was not.
It would help if she could shout down the selfish demons in her mind demanding that she take what she could while it was still offered. She knew that if she was not honorable that she could make a wreckage of it. In the process she would get something of what she craved but the larger picture would be lost to impulse and she was not one who shrank from pain in the short term. With no one else, could she imagine this feeling. There was usually a person in life that one could imagine loving more than yourself, Chloe was that for Aubrey. The one person that could make her a lighter albatross.