A/N: First real angst fic, let me know what you think. This is also weirdly personal so…please be gentle?

Disclaimer: I do not own the Pitch Perfect universe.

A heart has two functions.

One is to keep your blood pumping, to keep you alive.

The other is to feel.

Lately, for Beca, her heart is only performing one of those functions.

Lately, her heart is only there to keep her alive.

Barely.

Beca swallows, thickly, as the image of flaming colorful hair and twinkling cerulean eyes stare mockingly at her from the screen of her phone.

Chloe.

Without Chloe, Beca's heart doesn't know how to feel.

Beca quickly exits out of her photos and double swipes at the history so she doesn't accidentally look at the picture again when she clicks into another app on her iphone.

The first time that happened, she had stared and stared for such a long time, that it hadn't been until she couldn't make out the individual strands of her hair and the cheerful carelessness of her smile that she had realized that she was crying. She had then blinked and gasped and threw her phone across the room, flinching regretfully as soon as it had crashed and rebounded off the wall in the living room.

It had left a crack, right down the middle of her screen, even with the protective covering, and she had cried harder as she slumped down to the floor and clutched it to her chest and closed her eyes and tilted her head to the ceiling.

She had felt so hollow then, like she will never be complete, never be happy, ever again, as her heart pumps blood to the various corners of her body just to keep her alive.

There had been no feeling.

No sadness, no anger, no frustration, just plain… emptiness.

The only thought that had circulated over and over in her mind is the thought that the crack in her phone is a perfect representation, the perfect metaphor, to the crack and irreversible destruction to the organ in her chest.

She had missed her then, so much, and it had only increased in intensity with every day that passes by.

The yearning, the longing, the lost feeling that drowns over her body as the hole in her chest bleeds uncontrollably with each involuntary moment that she thinks of her, of her soft giggles and teasing comments and loving touch, is the only emotion she is able to feel in the two weeks that they have been apart.

God, apart. It had already been a miracle that they were together in the first place, and now that they are apart and done and over with and broken up, Beca has reason and incentive to believe that they, her, their relationship, had been all a dream.

A dream that involved lazy mornings and late nights and comforting cuddles and warm laughter and blazing sex…

Beca jerks, stands up, locks her phone, brushes an absent finger down the streak on its surface, and carefully places the device face down on the couch cushions next to the one she had just gotten up from.

She should eat something. It's late, the sun outside when she had sat down immemorable hours ago is now replaced with dark and gloomy clouds, the twilight blue in the sky innumerable shades darker than her eyes, but Beca just doesn't feel like it.

She just doesn't have an appetite.

Food makes her think of excited squeals of chinese food and pouty insistations of no onions, and Beca just doesn't want to feel and revert back to the memories of her ex - friend, best friend, girlfriend.

She doesn't, she couldn't.

But her heart is pumping blood to keep her alive, and one of its functions has already failed her, so she slowly makes her way to the kitchen and opens the refrigerator and reaches blindly for the milk and stands on her tip-toes to retrieve a box of cereal and hesitates over the cinnamon flakes that Chloe likes so much and Beca refuses to toss away before grabbing the plain corn flakes next to it. She lowers her eyes and nibbles on the inside of her cheek as she lowers to the soles of her feet and sets the items on the kitchen island, unseeing as she dumps her cereal into a bowl and joins it with a couple splashes of milk.

Chloe would have rolled her eyes affectionately and taken over and cutely protested that milk and calcium is healthy and good for the body and filled her bowl until the thing was on the brink of overflowing.

Beca lets herself revel in the image of it, of her spoon being held in the air expectantly over a cupped hand and fed into her mouth, Chloe giggling as milk dribbles down her chin before setting the utensil down back into the bowl to pull her closer and kiss it away.

She lets herself revel in the image of it, her heart hollowly pumping away, before she hastily blinks it away at the realization that her hand had tipped the container over once more and the cereal is floating significantly higher than the typical level that she would have allowed it to be. She curses, places the gallon down, recaps the top, and wipes up the lone drop on the counter with a napkin.

Fuck, she misses her.

She wants her back.

But does Chloe?

She did tell Chloe to stop and "go" and "not come back" after all.

If it was her, if she had been in Chloe's position, she wouldn't have wanted herself back. As a lover, girlfriend, best friend, friend; heck even as an acquaintance.

Like, who the hell would want to deal with someone who is so scared of the concept of love, of the idea that someone would love her and encourage her to love as well, before leaving her, as did most everyone else she loved and let loved in her life, that she would panic over a small detail, over a small insignificant text, over a small hint that the confession is not 100% genuine, that she would freak out and accuse the love of her life of being fake and pushy and - fucking god- manipulative, that she would shout over and interrupt over her partner's protests and explanations, and ignore both of their tears and shattering heartbreak and demand she leave before she leaves her, for real?

Who would want that?

Nobody. That's who.

Beca shoves the milk back into the refrigerator, closes the door with the small of her back, and takes three bites of the cereal before sliding off the stool and trudging back to the couch.

She picks up her phone, walks to her room, grimaces at the number of days left on her calendar of her excused month off of work - her boss had took one look at her the day after the breakup and told her to go home and come back a month later - sits on her bed, stares at the untouched left side of the bed, plugs in her phone, and strips, down to her underwear, before crawling onto the edge of the other side of the mattress and pulls on the pink shirt from the otherwise barren floor. The silky material practically licks down the length of her kneeled upper body and Beca closes her eyes briefly at the familiar feeling and sighs wistfully, the faint but still clingy floral perfume filling her nostrils and making her think of gentle hands wrapping around her waist and cupping her face and tangling through her hair.

Beca longs for that feeling of contentedness, of safety and peace, and she just wants to feel like she could feel again and not just a hollow and empty and numb shell of an existence going through the basic steps and necessities of survival.

Chloe presses her lips to the dip of her neck, and then to the crease of her forehead, "I love you."

Beca is still gasping and whimpering down from her high. Her legs are just then uncrossing from Chloe's waist, "What?"

Her blue eyes are skittery but sure as they flit across her face, "I love you, Becs. More than love and life itself. Be with me. Forever."

Beca's heart transitions from pounding with exertion and satisfaction to disbelief and surprise. Blood floods her brain, making it too foggy to think. "Really? Do you really mean that?"

Chloe's smile is watery, her lips trembling with so much emotion that she had to physically bite down on one of them to speak coherently, her hair covering one side of her beautiful face, "Yeah. I don't want anybody else for the rest of my life. I know that this is scary, and I know that this sounds suspiciously like a marriage proposal, and that you're scared and we've just barely started dating officially and that we've just had sex and that this is probably the worst timing ever, but it's true, Beca. I mean it. I want you to be with me forever."

Beca's breath comes out in a huff, catching painfully in the back of her throat before expelling into the limited space between them all at once, and she was just about to reply that yes, she's scared, and yes, it is way too early for marriage, but that yes; she loves her too and will try her best to be what Chloe deserves to have for the rest of her life, when Chloe's phone pings from her side of the nightstand. Beca had cut herself off at the first syllable and glanced over, and Chloe had groaned and buried her face in her hair, whispering for her to please check it for her, and Beca had detangled one of her legs from one of Chloe's and her sheets to scoot her body over, her arm reaching out to grapple at the text message disrupting their moment of seriousness of the discussion regarding their respective lives.

The text had been sent from Chicago, and that had been the only thing that registered in her already disoriented brain before she is pushing Chloe off of her and sitting up and scrambling up the bed, the spine of her back jabbing uncomfortably into the bars of their headboard and the skin of her breasts pebbling chillingly into goosebumps, and she had shoved the device into Chloe's curious but outstretched hand and glared heatedly into the space between her brows, her nose burning with the need to cry and her pulse skyrocketing with the wish to combust, and she had watched out of the bottoms of her eyes as Chloe scanned her message from her asshole of an ex boyfriend, watched as an amused snort sounded from the bridge of her nose.

The next few moments had been a blur then, and suddenly Beca is tugging on a shirt and swinging off the bed and pointing to the door, and suddenly Chloe is hysterical and wringing her hands and packing up a bag, both of them with tears streaming down their cheeks, and then suddenly they were at the doorstep of their shared apartment and exchanging their last words.

"Can we just start over, Beca?" Chloe hiccups, her hand scuffing against her nose, and Beca feels her heart clench with self-hatred, "Can we just forget about all of this and start over?"

Beca slams a fist into the wall, "No, Chloe, we can't. You don't love me and I don't love you, and you need to leave before I do something I'm gonna regret, before I do something that'll make you feel worse about yourself. You just said what you said to move us along, to push us forward, to make me stay with you, and I don't want that. I don't—" she couldn't meet her heartbroken gaze even if she tried, choking on her next words, "I don't want you."

Chloe gasps, clutching her stomach as if someone had wrenched a sharp blade into her gut and twisted it, "Oh my god."

Beca digs her nails into her palms, the pain the only feeling separate from the pulsing throb in her chest, and she questions, "Did your love even mean anything, Chloe?"

Chloe strangles a growl in her throat, her body slumping with exhaustion against the wood of the doorframe, "Of course it meant something, Beca! It meant everything! I love you, even now, when you're hurting and scared and trying to project all of your feelings and confusion onto me by being a complete and unreasonable jerkface!"

Beca can feel herself closing down, "You should go. And not come back."

Chloe had never let out a more bitter laugh, "Fine. I'll go. I'll fuck off, Beca, and you won't ever have to see me again. I'll arrange for my stuff to be moved out, and deal with all the logistics, and be out of your life, because that seems like it's something that you would want. And seeing as how I'm pushy and manipulative for what I want, which is to do what you want, I'll leave and not come back, so you'll be safe and happy. Okay?"

Beca could not breathe, so she just lets out a garbled sound resembling that of a dying frog, and then Chloe is out the door and out of her life and Beca is locking it behind her, her head dropping to the wood and her heart kicking into overdrive, acting as if one of its functions is sharper and heightened now that the other is dead, not unlike the way one's hearing heightens when one's eyes go blind.

She hadn't been able to feel, not after then.

Beca returns to her side of the bed and burrows under the sheets, Chloe's shirt skirting across her skin like the ghosted fingertips of a recently deceased lover, her own ones sliding down her stomach and between her legs, pushing past her underwear and momentarily taking care of her emptiness.

Physically.

I love you.

Her thumb presses against her nerves.

I'm sorry.

It rubs and teases.

I can't feel anything without you.

It reminds her of her.

I'm so messed up, but I want you back.

She - Chloe- pushes in. Swirls and curls and encourages her towards the edge.

I love you back, I do. I do want to be with you, Chloe.

She jumps, hurtles over the cliff, with the attentive and caring touch of Chloe, with the comforting and sweet smell of her body.

Forever.

Beca feels her eyes well up. Her vision blurs. The crack in her heart bleeds. Her mouth parts into a strained whisper.

"I am so, so sorry…"