A/N Nearing the home stretch. Hope you enjoy the ride as much as I have been.

Running Away

Chloe was pissed. And Chloe didn't often get pissed. So when she walked back in to the restaurant with a scowl on her face, the two men she'd left at the table knew something was wrong. Jesse gave Tom an apologetic look before escaping, leaving the redhead's boyfriend to face her alone.

"Baby, what happened? What's wrong?" Tom asked sweetly, reaching for her hand. For some reason the look on his face that she usually found adorable was pissing her off even more. She ran her hand through her hair avoiding his touch and closed her eyes.

"Nothing. Can we go please?"

"But you haven't finished your dinner. Can we just finish our date night? I feel like I haven't seen you in weeks."

She almost felt guilty. She tried to feel guilty. But she just couldn't make it happen. How dare Beca? Sometimes that girl made her so freaking…what? Angry? This was the first time she'd ever been angry at the short brunette. Uncomfortable? No. She's never been anything but comfortable with Beca. The problem is that she's always too comfortable. Frustrated? Maybe. But there are many different kinds of frustration, and she did NOT want to go there right now.

She slumped back in to her seat next to Tom and started shoveling food in her mouth, barely tasting it. Tom was talking about something, and she nodded her head in the appropriate places, even attempted to smile. But her thoughts were focused elsewhere.

She wasn't stupid. Chloe knew herself well enough to know that she had at least a mild, yet still wildly inappropriate, crush on her friend. And she was worried that it was even deeper than that.

Eventually the date ended with a chaste kiss on her cheek just before Tom left her at her door. She honestly couldn't remember much of anything after Beca had left the way she had, so she was mildly surprised to find herself home.

"How was the world's most awkward double date?" Aubrey asked her in a teasing tone as she walked out of the kitchen drying her hands on a dish towel. Seeing the look on Chloe's face, Aubrey rushed over and kneeled on the floor in front of Chloe where she had sat down on the couch. "Oh my god Chlo, what happened?"

"Beca's in love with me," Chloe muttered numbly.

"Wait, you didn't know?"

Chloe snapped her gaze to Aubrey's immediately, "Excuse me?"

Aubrey looked momentarily taken aback before replying. "It's the world's worst kept secret that the hobbit has feelings for you Chlo."

Chloe's eyes flashed angrily, "Don't call her that!"

Aubrey held up her hands in surrender, "My bad! Seriously though, that girl has a major toner for you. I noticed it at auditions. Once her eyes found you in that crowd, she didn't look at anyone else."

"Aubrey," Chloe looked at her best friend with pained eyes, "what do I do?"

"What do you mean? You're with Tom. Besides, it's not like you could ever possibly have feelings for the midget."

"But what if I do?" Chloe asked in a whisper, averting her gaze as a tear trailed down her face. Aubrey could do nothing but gape at her speechlessly until the moment to answer had passed.

When I got home after that fucking awkward dinner, there was, unsurprisingly, a sock on our doorknob. I was itching for a fight, and when I stormed in to our room and found Stacie going at it with a fucking frat boy douche bag Tom clone, I lost it.

"Again Stacie, seriously?" I screeched at her, "I live here too you know!"

Stacie sat up abruptly not bothering to cover her nakedness, which for some reason just pissed me off even more. The clueless frat boy leered at her before going in to kiss her neck. Stacie pushed his head away roughly and said, "You should go Greg."

"It's Brett," he said smugly, before going back in for a kiss.

"Whatever," she pushed him away again. "You need to leave."

"Come on babe, you can't leave me like this!"

"Dude, she said get the fuck out, so get the fuck out!" I yelled at him before grabbing his clothes and throwing them out in the hallway.

"Crazy bitch," he mumbled before pushing past me to retrieve his things. "Can I at least put my clothes back on?" I just shut the door in his face and leaned my forehead against it breathing deeply. I was visibly shaking as the anger and adrenaline wore off leaving nothing but weariness and despair in its wake. It wasn't long until my body was shuddering with sobs.

"Becs," Stacie said softly from behind me, "what's wrong?"

I tried to respond, I really did, but I was sobbing so loudly that I couldn't get the words past the hitching in my chest. Stacie thankfully had thrown on some clothes at some point because she wrapped an arm around me from behind and used her other to direct my head to her shoulder. She whispered repetitious soothing words into my hair as she rubbed my back, and eventually I calmed down enough to tell her about my night.

"…and now I don't know how I can stay here. I mean, how can I?" I said to Stacie when I told her about my night. "I love her Stace. That means I have to let her go. She was happy before I got here and all I'm doing is screwing that up for her."

"But Beca…"

"No! Don't you get it? Maybe this was the whole point, ya know? I've been so selfish up until now. She is the most important thing in the world to me, and I need her to be happy even if it's not with me. I just thought we were soulmates, that her and I were inevitable," I chuckled sadly and quickly swiped at the tears that were still falling.

"Whatever you decide, I'm here for you, okay?" Stacie said to me as she grabbed my hand and held it tightly with both of hers. "But just for the record, I think you're wrong. You two are inevitable. It's just taking her a little while to see it."

I tried to find comfort in her words, but all I really felt at this point was dread. Because tonight I'd seen just how happy Chloe was first hand. I hated myself for possibly being the one to ruin that for her.

I waited until Stacie fell asleep, then I quietly packed whatever I felt was important in my backpack, stuffed my keys, wallet, and phone in my purse and left after leaving a note on my desk for her. I hopped in my car and drove back to the only other home I'd had since I was a child.

Chloe should have thought the girl sitting across from her was batshit crazy. Chloe probably should have smiled politely, nodded her head appropriately, and excused herself as soon as possible to escape the situation. Chloe also should have taken the story being told to her from a patient at a mental hospital with a massive grain of salt. But when you are grieving, and a patient at a mental hospital yourself, rational thought is unsurprisingly in short supply. And when the theme of the crazy story she's being told is a massive dose of hope, something that had been missing in her life since Beca's tragic death, she couldn't help but to buy in.

"Beca's alive?" Chloe asked again.

Lily shifted uneasily in her chair and avoided meeting Chloe's hopeful and tear filled eyes. "Well, yes. And no."

Chloe just waved off her non-committal and rephrased her question, "I get it, okay? Beca died here. I get it. But Beca is alive there? Like, really alive?"

"You are taking this surprisingly well," Lily remarked dryly.

Chloe just chuckled in response. "I guess it just makes sense to me after what I've been through. It's kind of the reason I'm here too. I remember being in the passenger seat of the car Beca and I were in. I remember dying, Lily. When I woke up, I was in the hospital. They told me I was driving and that Beca had died. So what you just told me, that there are other worlds than this one, makes a weird kind of sense to me."

Lily was looking at her strangely now. "You remember dying?" Chloe nodded quizzically. "I wondered what it was about you that looked different to me. You have the same strange, I don't know what to call it, as the Beca that I know. Aura? Essence? Whatever. I don't know what it is, but something about the two of you screams 'I don't belong here' to me."

"Can I go there?" Chloe asked quietly.

"Chloe…" Lily said warningly.

"You don't understand, Lily. She is my life. Since the moment I woke up in that hospital room and found out she was dead, I have been less than half of a person. I'm a husk Lily. I have been for almost a year now. Today, talking to you, this is the first I've felt hope, the first time I've felt alive in a very long time. So if there is even a possibility of getting to her, I'll do whatever it takes." Chloe looked desperately to the girl in front of her, pleading with her eyes.

Lily sighed and looked away, deep in thought. A couple of minutes later she looked back at Chloe after having made a decision. "You will be leaving behind everything here forever Chloe. And it will be incredibly painful, you might not survive it. And I can't guarantee it will even work."

Chloe just smiled brightly at her, "Is that all? Well, then I'm definitely in."