First of all, thank you all for your reviews, favorites, and your kudos. You're all wonderful, and getting these notifications are the best part of my day.

I have this headcanon that Beca's basically a musical genius, and Chloe probably gets her to play stuff for her all the time using a ridiculous amount of charm and those big blue eyes.

This one is also quite longer than the others, so read on, leave me a review, and enjoy!

Flowers

It's been two years since Beca stepped foot in their rehearsal area. It's been two years since she's so much as looked at it.

She's mended her relationship with her father; she's even built a relationship with her step-mother. But if she's being honest with herself, it's her baby brother's upcoming second birthday party that's the reason she's moving towards it after everyone has left for the day.

The boy – Kyle – came as quite the surprise for Dr. David Mitchell and his wife. The bigger surprise, however, came when Dr. Mitchell panicked after getting the news and ran for the hills, leaving his wife distraught and his clueless daughter royally pissed.

Flashback

The beer can to the back of the head took him by surprise.

Yet his face showed absolutely no emotion when he turned from his precarious perch on the edge of roof to face his irate daughter.

"I should have known you'd be here. After all, this is where I run to when I need a minute. What are you, five? Did you seriously throw a temper tantrum and leave your wife – who hasn't been feeling well lately – all alone at a random restaurant? What the hell, Dad?!"

David Mitchell simply turned back to the mixing hues of the sunrise ahead of him, the oranges and golden yellows captivating his mind in a way that blanked it completely – providing him with a moment of peace. But his peace was short-lived as another beer can smacked his shoulder.

"She's pregnant."

Beca barely choked down her surprise.

"So help me God, Dad, that better not be the reason you ran and the reason I spent the night hopping from bar to restaurant to hospital trying to find you instead of curling up in bed. Because if that's why you ran, I'm going to go get a six pack and bash your head in with it. Repeatedly."

David Mitchell rolled his eyes in a manner that left no question as to where Beca got her own eye-rolling talents from before dryly replying.

"Why, Rebeca, you sound like your mother more and more with every passing day."

The DJ rolled her eyes in return, biting back a tiny smirk as she said nothing more and approached him, taking a seat next to him and dangling her feet over the edge by his.

"I take it this wasn't planned."

"No."

"So you don't want the baby?"

Dr. Mitchell sighed.

"This is why you and Mom got a divorce. You're finally getting what you wanted."

"It isn't that simple, Beca. Your mother and I loved each other a lot. I'm sure you remember those times too, not just the bad."

She stayed silent.

"After Sheila and I met and got married, we talked about kids. We even tried a few times, but it didn't work. I took it as a sign that I wasn't meant to have any more kids than you. And Sheila was okay with this. But now…"

"Dad, what's the problem?"

David looked at her with teary eyes that startled her.

"I'm scared, Becs. I'm too old to have a newborn baby. And God knows how badly I messed up my first kid. I don't think I can do this."

"Well, running definitely doesn't help. But you're getting a second chance. You and I had a rocky relationship, at best, but we've gotten past that, things are better with us now. And don't forget that we were pretty close before the divorce too. I was a total Daddy's Girl. Still am, in some ways. With this kid, you get the chance to do it all over again and actually make it work from the first run. You are too old to be a new parent again, but it's not like you'll be alone. You've got your wife; you'll be together every step of the way. And me. You've got me, Dad."

David smiled at his daughter as he wrapped his arm around her and she laid her head on his shoulder.

"Are you volunteering for babysitting duty?"

"I'll even enlist all the Bellas to help. It takes a village."

That got a chuckle out of her father.

"How do you feel about this, Beca?"

"I-"

Shaking her head to clear it, the brunette smiled up at her father.

"I'll adjust and be okay with it soon enough. I am really happy for you though, Dad."

David's smile grew larger when Beca punctuated her sentence with an unexpected kiss to the cheek.

The DJ rolled her eyes.

"Don't get any ideas, Old Man. I'll deny it ever happened if you make too big of a deal out of it."

She got to her feet after a few minutes of comfortable silence and pulled him to his.

"Come on, you've got some groveling to do."

Flashback end

The memory fades just as Beca shakily sits down on the bench. She idly wonders why there is even a piano in the rehearsal space since they don't actually use it.

As her hand runs along the lid hiding the keys from her fingertips, she thinks about Kyle again. Her dad is always telling her how much the toddler's like Beca when it comes to music; most of the time, it's the only thing that soothes him. Beca's even seen the effect some notes or a couple of sung bars have on him when she babysits. That's why her dad owns a spinet piano at home. David Mitchell is not anywhere near as good as his ex-wife, and definitely not as brilliant as his daughter, but playing that piano for his son has saved him on many sleepless nights.

Or so he tells her.

In reality, she knows he's bought it on the off-chance she'll play again.

She tried to one night when it was just her and Kyle, but the moment she sat down on the bench, Kyle in her lap looking up at her in curiosity, a sadness filled her and the lump that formed in her throat almost suffocated her.

If it weren't for her brother being all alone, Beca would have spent the night locked in the bathroom, trying to drown herself in tears.

Now, as she lifts the lid and runs one finger delicately along the keys, not yet applying any kind of pressure that would elicit a sound, she thinks about how it's time to let go of the past and do this again. Her smile is soft when she imagines the look of wonder and delight that would surely bloom on Kyle's face if (when, she tells herself fiercely) she plays for him.

Taking a deep breath, her fingers align themselves without her having to put much thought into it. Because while she loves what she can do with music now, this will always be her first love, what got her started on the path that brought her here; for Beca, playing the piano is like riding a bike. She's never forgotten how.

So she closes her eyes and lets her memory drift as her fingers take over for the first time in about three years.

Beca's so caught up in what she's doing, her mind filled with images of when she was a little girl and spent all of her time playing complex classics with her mother, that she doesn't notice Chloe – who's only come back in because she's lost her phone and is hoping to find it here – slack-jawed and standing stiff as a board, watching her.

The last notes of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata are still hanging in the air when Chloe breathes out an awe-struck "wow," and effectively jolts Beca back to reality, the brunette's eyes popping open and widening at the redhead as she stumbles to get away from the piano as if it was poison.

This shocks Chloe, who then starts heading towards Beca at a rapid pace, her enthralled smile doing nothing to calm Beca who just wants to get out of the building.

Trapping her by the arm, Chloe gently inquires as to why Beca has never mentioned that she plays the piano before.

"How do you lead a musical group for two years without revealing that you can play a musical instrument?"

Rolling her eyes, Beca throws a smirk Chloe's way before replying.

"Because we sing songs without any instruments. It's all from our mouths."

The redhead faintly blushes because she walked right into that one. Never one to back down though, Chloe smirks back and throws her own comment in.

"I knew you could work magic with those fingers, I just never knew to what extent."

The ginger relishes the feeling she gets at the sight of Beca blushing. It doesn't take long before she herds Beca back behind the bench and pleads for her to play something else for her.

Beca swears those big blue eyes will be the death of her one day. Nevertheless, she settles down and plays Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 11, Chloe taking a seat next to her and watching her fingers work on the keys without effort, occasionally looking up at Beca with a delighted smile that has Beca already mentally planning what to play next.

When Beca's done, she is met with a round of applause and high-pitched squealing as Chloe gushes because "it was fate that brought her back in here at just the right moment" and that the ginger was "totes going to make you play for me and the Bellas more often" and how "Bree is so going to lose it when she hears about this," and Beca is suddenly overwhelmed with the sadness and can't bear to stay where she is.

As she stumbles away from the piano, leaving Chloe confused in her wake, tears blur her vision and a searing burning pain settles into her bones while her ribcage seems to fill a heavy weight that threatens to crush her heart.

While Beca falls ungracefully onto the floor, a shaking mess, Chloe's sits stiff again and worried beyond words. All it takes is Beca releasing a strangled sound for Chloe to fly off the bench and gather the younger woman into her arms.

The ginger sits there with her arms full and her lips pressed intimately against Beca as she whispers sweet nothings into the brunette's ear until she feels the shaking subside. It takes another five minutes or so, the redhead's soothing words never faltering or stopping before Beca's opening up on her own, her words unsteady and her tone utterly broken. Chloe knew that she was about to get her heart broken.

"Nana Mitchell was just about the only member of my dad's family that I could stand. It was my seventh birthday when my parents told me they were having another baby, and I was seven and a half when they miscarried for the first time. The next three years went much in the same manner, their fights getting more intense – the distance between them growing.

Eventually Dad couldn't deal with it all and they called it quits. For those last three years until their divorce was finalized, Nana was my rock. She lived right down the street, and whenever I saw Mom leave the bathroom with a pregnancy test in hand – a blank look on her face – I knew what was coming. I used to ride my bike down to her house and spend the night with her – sometimes the next few days, depending how bad my parents fought.

The first few times she had scolded me for leaving without telling my parents, but once she understood all that was going on, she would be standing at the door before I could even dismount from my bike. Then she would leave Dad a message, always telling him that there was no rush for him to come get me. I spent the entire summer after the divorce with her - refusing to go home.

She was my world, the most important person in my entire existence. Then, during the last few days of my junior year of high school, I went to visit her on the weekend like I always did and found Dad and Aunt Elliot with her in the living room having a conversation. Aunt Elliot was gripping Nana's hands and crying into her shoulder, Dad didn't look any better – so I stayed hidden in the kitchen to eavesdrop. Boy do I wish I hadn't.

I heard them talking about radiation and chemotherapy and begging Nana to consider those options as well as surgery – it doesn't take a genius to figure out what they were talking about. So I did what was expected of me – I ran. Straight into the tree house Dad had built for me in her backyard when I was little. Seeing as I haven't really grown much since I was twelve, the tree house was still a comfortable fit, gave me enough room to ball up and cry my eyes out – until Dad got there.

Apparently I had slammed the back door hard enough to attract attention to my presence. He squeezed in beside me and held me – nothing else; he just sat there and let me sob into his shirt, soaking it through. After a minute, I began to feel his tears in my hair which just left me bawling harder.

I needed someone to tell me that it wasn't true, that the only person that ever cared and loved me to the ends of the Earth wasn't dying of cancer.

But she was, and she was being stubborn about it all – refusing treatment, saying that she didn't want to prolong her death in such a heinous way.

Eventually she did get chemo after I joined my father and aunt in begging her. I moved in with her and I took care of her until the very end.

She fought so hard and so bravely – she was determined to see me graduate. And she did, she held on until my senior year and my graduation where she sat front row in her wheelchair – she even stood up to clap for me when they called me, cheering me on the loudest."

Chloe's surprised when she feels moisture on her face, and even more startled when Beca's hand wipes it away.

"She died that night, in her sleep. It was like she was on a mission to watch me graduate high school, and after she accomplished that she could let go.

I stayed at her grave all day and night until my cousin Henry came and literally carried me away kicking and screaming.

I locked myself in my room at her house. I didn't eat or sleep, I couldn't even mix – all I did was cry nonstop.

Until one day the following week of her burial, Dad came by. He tried coaxing me out, told me he had something to give me from Nana, but I wouldn't believe him – I thought it was just a trick to get me to leave my room. So he gave up, and I heard him shuffling away from the door, but not before he slipped something in from under the frame.

She had written me a letter at some point.

She told me to hang in there, that the world wouldn't end or stop on account of her death. She wrote me that she will always be with me wherever I went. Told me to never give up on my dreams and keep making my music – that it had brought her so much joy and that I should be sharing that joy with the rest of the world, to not be selfish and hide my gift all to myself. She had faith in me and my abilities and knew I'd go on to accomplish great things. I would one day find the perfect person that I would share all that with and then I'll look back and remember her with happiness and not the sadness she was sure was threatening to consume me at that time.

Her letter made me promise to honor her, and I did."

Chloe's not sure what Beca's trying to say, but she watches patiently as the brunette brings her attention to the floral tattoo on her shoulder.

"I took a shower and headed out to see Joshua and I got the flowers done – her favorite."

In that moment, Chloe feels more love than she's ever felt for anyone in her life, and all she wants to do is hold onto Beca until the pain trickles out of the brunette and she's smirking and teasing and being her usual surly self.

Wiping her face, Beca gets to her feet, pulling Chloe after her and heading back to the bench. Somehow, talking about it, specifically to Chloe, makes Beca feel lighter and helps with her plans to let go of the past. So she doesn't feel like she wants to hide under a blanket and cry her eyes out when she sits Chloe down and keeps talking.

"I want to share Nana's favorite piece with you. This was the very last thing I played for her three years ago before quitting altogether."

Chloe is too tongue-tied to say anything, so she just nods and settles her head on Beca's shoulder as the latter's fingers softly play Beethoven's Fur Elise, Chloe feeling the way Beca's breathing evens out and her shoulders relax as the song progresses further and further.

Chloe's almost afraid to disturb the peace after Beca's done, but her curiosity wins out and she's once again wondering about how it's possible that she didn't know Beca could play the piano.

"Why didn't you ever tell me you could play piano?"

"It never came up, Red."

"I would have made you play for me every day. I still might."

This provokes a surprised chuckle out of Beca, who retaliates with a bit of her usual snark back in her voice.

"Maybe that's exactly why I didn't tell you, Red. If you think this is impressive, you should see me with a violin."

Chloe's head snaps in the smirking captain's direction with wide eyes.

"You play violin too?!"

Beca's chuckling again because Chloe's reactions are priceless.

"I do. I play guitar, drums, and the bagpipes too, in case you were wondering. I'm thinking about learning to play the accordion, as well."

Beca's sure Chloe's eyes will pop out of their sockets if they widen any further.

Chloe, on the other hand, is internally freaking out because all of a sudden her best friend is insanely attractive to her, and the more she looks at Beca – who's now sporting an amused smirk – the more she wants to kiss her senseless, but that's not how best friends feels about each other, right?

Right.

The ginger is still sitting on the piano bench when Beca gets up and grabs her stuff, saying something that Chloe misses completely because she's more concerned with wondering how she can get her hands on a violin.