AN: Sorry for the long wait (and regrettably) short chapter. I felt like this one speaks for itself in intensity and I wanted to respect that. I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy in these unsettling times. If anyone needs to reach out and talk, my inbox is always open. As always, please leave a comment with your feedback. I enjoy each and every response.

DISCLAIMER: I own nothing of the music or characters mentioned in this narrative.

TW: use of prescription drugs and mentions of gun violence in semi-descriptive detail.

Seconds are all it takes. A single tick of the thinnest arm can uproot the very ground upon which you stand. Of course, tragedy knows not time or place. Arbitrary concepts based on human fragility do not dictate the course of life. Tragedy is one of the fewest agents who does not discriminate. I suppose that is why it is so innately painful. Happiness is fleeting, subjective, a game of chance. Tragedy is inevitable. Tragedy is living.

Beca's room was dark, save for the moonlight streaming through the gap of the curtains. Silver tendrils created enough fine webbing to allow the DJ to look at Chloe, truly observe her, sitting in her bed. She sat adjacent to Beca, her left thigh a couple inches from Chloe's right. The redhead's breathing was relaxed and even, her sloped nose releasing any harboring tension. She still looked immaculate after the night's tribulations, unscathed. The smallest smudging of her eyeliner was the only indicator of how long this day had been. Her clothing was not wrinkled, and her auburn hair remained styled as gentle curls. Everything about this woman screamed elegance, but not refinement. She lost that title in the passion that flooded her every syllable.

"You're staring," Chloe muses quietly. Beca blinks, taking a moment to process, before shaking her attention from the increasingly captivating redhead. A light smile pulls at Chloe's lips, but thankfully she drops the subject. Beca fidgets with her fingers, twisting the ring around her thumb clockwise, counterclockwise, then clockwise again. Back and forth, right to left. The silence finally overwhelms Beca enough to pull her phone out to play music.

"Darlin', can't you see
I'm a broken man
With addictive tendencies
And I think I love you
But I don't ever think I can
Ever learn how to love just right."

"You like Matt Maeson?" Chloe asked, her eyes drifting into a memory before quickly returning. Beca nods her head, delicately placing her jewelry next to her phone upon her nightstand.

"Yeah, he's a good friend of mine. His music really resonates with me. You like him too, I'm guessing?" Chloe nodded, her breathe catching on a thought, but decided to remain silent. "You can talk," Beca reassures her. Her tired mind became candid under the intoxication and exhaustion of the day. "I like hearing you talk. Even if you never stop."

Chloe's head snaps to Beca's tired smirk, and although smug, nothing but genuine in her intention. Chloe smiles sadly before speaking. "My brother showed his music to me. He said something along the same lines as you."

"What, that he's a good friend of his?" Beca replies, drawing a small giggle from her companion. She smiles, liking the sound.

"No, smartass. That his music spoke to him. He related to it more than anything."

"What's his name?"

"His name is Tom." Beca nods her head, the name drawing their first encounter in the bathroom to the forefront of her mind.

"You talk about him in past tense, but you were just on the phone with him earlier." Beca is factual, no judgment, only curiosity about the observation. Chloe heaves a heavy sigh, her bright blue eyes dulling in weariness. Beca wanted to eat her words.

"It's just that," a pause, "the Tom I love is dead. The one I remember is gone. The Tom now is…vastly different. If that makes any sense at all." She blinks slowly and rolls the tension from her shoulders away. "Don't misunderstand me, I will always love my brother. I just hate who he has become." Chloe's narrative ended for the moment and Beca wanted to reassure her but felt incapable of doing so. So she didn't.

"Oh and I'm tryin' to cope
And burn just right, yeah
Oh and I don't ever think I can
Ever learn how to love you right."

The music passed between them as a third companion. The calm, familiar melodies of the song offered a bittersweet balm to the chaos of their lives. Still in her clothes from the night, she stood to change. She offered Chloe an old Ramone's t shirt that lived in her dresser. She took it, offered a polite 'thank you' and went down the hall to change.

Beca stood in front of the bathroom mirror. Her eyes were bloodshot and smothered under black. Shaky hands began the process of placing her helpless hair into a bun thrown onto her head. She wouldn't bother taking off her makeup, not when it represented how she felt. Her pale skin bothered her, sheet white and haunting her. Grey eyes stared until her body no longer felt present; the reflection was a stranger. Beca couldn't tell if it was the Xanax or her grasp on sanity slowly slipping away. Weak palms braced her body on the counter over the sink. Twisting the faucet, cold water poured into the basin. She stared at it, and stared, and stared, and stared. Breathing. Existing. She took her hands and cupped them under the fixture. Icy water hit her face. She blinked. She splashed more water. Another breath. Water puddled on the counter and beaded upon the mirror. She stared at that, instead.

"Beca?"

She turned around to see Chloe in her large, grey t shirt and no pants. Her makeup was still on and her hair was pulled back into a low ponytail. Crystal blue eyes rimmed in red. "Yeah?" Beca responds.

"You doing okay?" Beca nods and turns back to the sink. Chloe returns to the bed and moves the sheets to cover her legs. Turning the sink off, Beca moved into the closet to change into grey sweatpants and loose tank top. Though the fabric might not hug her chest, her lungs feel captured in invisible ties. Breathe. She returns to the bed.

"You're not stupid, and don't try and correct me that you are." Beca only looks Chloe in the eyes, noticing how the color is off, too much red surrounding them to be normal. "Why do you make the stupid choice to abuse?"

"It's not a stupid choice." Beca says flatly, offering nothing else to the distraught redhead.

"How can you defend abuse? At any minute your stupidity could cost you your life." Chloe's heart was aching, and she knew that any explanation given by the brunette would only further the pain in empathy.

"If given the choice between waking up tomorrow or having my heart stop, in this moment, I would gladly choose a one-way ticket."

"How could you say that? Life is a gift. You have so much talent and time left to share with the world!" Chloe was in disbelief; someone so beautiful, so gifted, and still so troubled. Fame can fix a lot, but not everything, apparently.

"There's very little hope for me to cling to anymore. I don't have friends, I don't have family, I have next to nothing to live for." A hollow, flat laugh. Her throat was raw. Blue eyes unfocused and wet. Chloe didn't know if it was from pain or anger. Is there truly a difference?

"So why do you keep going? If life is so awful and pointless, why bother letting people watch your…slow suicide?" Her only response was a shrug of the shoulders. Chloe shook her head and felt her frustration mounting. It was bubbling inside her chest and she fought to keep it from bursting in an exclamation of disagreement. Or worse: passion. The dim room became overwhelmingly quiet. Chloe breathed in deeply, smelling the barest traces of pine and smoke, sighed, then attempted to cap her emotion into a bearable burden before engaging in the living dead before her. "There must be a reason…something to keep you here. Otherwise you would have left much sooner than now." Beca's eyes snapped to her. Her brow was uncharacteristically relaxed, and her full lips were pressed into a thin line. The way her body sat, devoid of movement, looked as serene as diving underneath the ocean. The air was suddenly sucked into a vacuum of intense attention.

"I was supposed to leave sooner. I was supposed to be dead. But I'm not. And I live each day in agony because of it." A beat of calm silence. "Do you know what it's like, not being able to close your eyes without seeing blood covering your palms, without hearing the methodic raining of bullets rip into a crowd? Because I do. I haven't had a moment's peace in years. That luxury was killed the day my friends were murdered. The second that my best friend jumped in front of a gunman to save my life was the exact moment my life ended. But my body stayed." Beca turned away from Chloe. "It's not stupid. Using. It's necessary. If I don't…" Beca blinked, "my reason for keeping me here leaves with the last high."

Chloe was crying, tears streaking down her cheeks to fall into her lap, but she was silent. Beca was laying down, her body still in the darkness. Chloe gently fell back and held her. She felt impossibly small in her arms.

Breathe.

"You're safe now."

A beat.

"I know."

Song used is "Tribulation-Stripped" by Matt Maeson. Highly recommend his music, he is incredibly talented.