"Good morning," Chloe greeted brightly, entering the room, two cups of coffee in her hands. She glanced at the still-sleeping blonde on her bed, shrugged, and offered the extra cup to Stacie. "Two sugars?"

Why Chloe was acting like Aubrey slept on her bed all the time, Stacie had no idea, but she was grateful for the coffee and the dose of caffeine she felt she needed at the moment. Stacie took the cup, but she kept her gaze on Aubrey. "Why…"

Chloe didn't even need to hear the rest of the question. "I don't know, either. But she showed up the same time Fat Amy was coming home, and I was up anyway, so I let her stay here."

"I'm sorry you slept on the couch."

Chloe waved the apology off dismissively. "I didn't sleep on the couch."

Stacie frowned at her.

"It's not the first time me and Aubrey have shared a bed, you have to know that," Chloe pointed out.

Stacie did know that, but that still didn't mean she was happy with it. She pouted and looked away petulantly. "Why couldn't she stay on my bed?"

"Well, it's…" Chloe let her voice drift off, making Stacie look up to glance inquiringly at her roommate.

"What?"

Chloe bit her lip, torn between her concern for Aubrey and what she obviously found amusing, until her amusement won out. "You kind of kept kicking her out."

Stacie looked affronted, and Chloe shook her head. "Don't even. We tried to wake you and everything. You wouldn't even let her sit, and kept insisting that you had a girlfriend."

Stacie's frown deepened, and turned back to studying said girlfriend. "Why is she here?"

"According to Amy, when she asked Aubrey just said she needed to see you." Chloe shrugged. "I tried asking, but she just keeps saying she did something stupid."

Stacie's eyes widened, and she looked at Chloe with alarm, but Chloe shook her head quickly in reassurance.

"It sounds bad, but I don't think she would've tried crawling into bed with you if it was about you."

Stacie conceded that point. She paused, realizing something, and frowned at Chloe, who only attended the least possible number of classes and fixed her schedule to ensure her classes started late in the morning or the afternoon. "You're up early."

"I have a meeting." Chloe shrugged. When she didn't offer more information, Stacie gave her a more expectant look, making the redhead admit, "My professor wants to discuss my options."

Realizing Chloe wasn't going to offer more information, Stacie nodded. "Will you be back soon?"

Chloe briefly glanced at Aubrey before turning back to Stacie. "Probably not. I have to check our arrangements for New York. You're staying with us at the hotel?"

"Yeah, we should probably all stick together before the ICCAs." Stacie nodded, not mentioning the fact that she had checked the distance between Aubrey's apartment and the Lincoln Center before deciding that it would just be too inconvenient to be apart from the rest of the Bellas while they had to follow a schedule for rehearsals and meet-and-greets as the reigning champions.

Chloe had to laugh, and admit, "I figured since we know what Aubrey's like before competition you'd choose something more relaxed."

That, Stacie had to admit, had been a contributing factor, but she only smiled at Chloe to confirm as much.

Chloe nodded briefly. "Okay, I gotta go. Call me if you need anything."

"I will."

Chloe pointed at Aubrey. "And tell her that next time you kick her out of bed, she's taking the couch."

Stacie nodded, but didn't agree, since there was something about Chloe's statement that didn't quite sit right with her, and she didn't want to say anything that might highlight the very thing she wasn't sure bothered her so much.

Once Chloe had closed the door behind her, Stacie pursed her lips, a part of her wanting to wake up Aubrey and get answers right away, but knowing that if Aubrey had shown up in the middle of the night, it meant Aubrey had to be tired and needed the sleep. And considering Aubrey was in Atlanta so soon after her company retreat, Stacie couldn't really blame her for maximizing her sleeping time. With a sigh, Stacie checked the nearest clock to estimate how much time she could give Aubrey before she had to leave for her class.

Aubrey didn't stir even as Stacie took a shower, which was the clearest indication Stacie had that the older girl wasn't faking, which only served to increase her concern over why Aubrey was there.

It also made her worry that whatever it was that had brought Aubrey to the Barden Bellas' front step in the middle of the night, it might be the very same thing that would make Aubrey leave just as suddenly.

So if she asked the Bellas to stick close to Aubrey if she ever left the house, and Lilly to follow the blonde if none of the other Bellas could keep Aubrey company, Stacie thought her concerns were perfectly valid.

Except Aubrey knew the Barden campus better than Stacie or Lilly or any of the other Bellas did, and Stacie was dismayed to get a text message from Lilly simply saying she'd lost her mark.

But before Lilly lost Aubrey, Aubrey woke up in Chloe and Stacie's room, momentarily confused why her pillow smelled like Chloe's fruity shampoo and why she was on a single bed. When it all came crashing back to her, Aubrey jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom, because reflex or no, old habits died hard.

A quick shower and a brief raid of Chloe and Stacie's shared closet got her items of clothing that she was pretty sure belonged to her, items stolen or claimed over time by both roommate and girlfriend, and Aubrey considered what her plans for the day should be.

Consulting her phone for the time, Aubrey sighed at the number of messages and emails also waiting for her attention, but other than the one from Stacie asking her to send a message when she woke up, none of the other messages looked to be important or urgent. Aubrey typed out a response to Stacie, and made her way down to the main floor of the Barden Bellas' house, accepting the mildly confused yet warm welcome from the Bellas.

Claiming to need coffee, Aubrey broke free from the Bellas' close watch, the Bellas' overly-familiar and cheery interaction clearly Chloe or Stacie's doing, and managing to lose the trailing Lilly by ducking into a building that only official Barden University personnel were allowed to enter; the security guard was the same woman who used to be assigned to Aubrey's department building when she had been a student, and recognizing her, had allowed her inside when Aubrey requested use of the vending machine.

She was being unfair, she knew, after all she was the one who had chosen to show up in Barden and interrupt her friends' existence, but Aubrey hadn't felt inclined to return to her grandparents' house or deal with her mother, and since New York was partly a source of her current situation, Aubrey didn't want to head back north just yet.

Using the building's connecting passage to the adjacent building and using that as an exit, Aubrey made her way to a part of campus she knew the Bellas didn't frequent, if they even knew about it.

She needed to think.

The thing was, everyone at the retreat had known they were going through the immersive for a reason, and popular opinion had been that they were all slated for some kind of promotion or change of responsibilities, and the reason for the putting them through such an intense team-building exercise had been to establish who would be their support system with the changes. Aubrey had known when the group she'd been assigned to had voted her as their leader with such witty rejoinder of getting used to the role that her suspicion of an impending promotion had made its rounds through the corporate hierarchy as a rumor.

She hadn't been the only member of Oversight at Nashville, but the other member had only recently been promoted, and the other members of their team had been local or regional, and Aubrey had been present, at one point even acting as the point of contact, for every step of the negotiations.

So she knew the possibilities. She'd known what to expect.

She had miscalculated.

Ironically, when she'd first realized the clusterfuck at Nashville would ultimately lead to a change in the nature of her job, she'd thought it would work in her favor: because she and her coworkers all knew it was unlikely she would be allowed to work so closely in client board rooms in the near future, that she would be relegated back to staying in the head office.

So when the retreat ended and her immediate superior called for her presence in their Florida office, Aubrey hadn't hesitated.

After all, being in one place for an extended period of time would be a welcome change, especially since Stacie would be graduating next year and it would be nice if they could see each other on a far more regular basis than their current haphazard schedule.

She really should learn to be more careful about what she wished for.

Aubrey sipped from her cup of coffee, closing her eyes at the familiar taste that hearkened back to a far more simpler time in her life, and smiled wistfully as she listened to the familiar cacophony of music students setting up their instruments in the room below her.

And while she would never be happy about the fact that Chloe insisted on staying in college for far longer than necessary, it heartened her to know that some things didn't change: when she'd shown up in the middle of the night and Stacie refused to wake up and make room on her bed, Chloe hadn't hesitated to share her own.

Sharing a bed with Chloe wasn't a new experience, but there was an additional layer of grief in the simple gesture, since in the past, Chloe usually held her to sleep after particularly bad conversations Aubrey had with her dad, and that morning had been a harsh reminder that Chloe hadn't been there – Aubrey hadn't allowed herself to want or need Chloe to be there – when he'd died.

Simpler times.

College had been a simpler time.

Like moving from Chicago to New York had been simple. There hadn't been a lot of things keeping her in Chicago, and New York had promised a lot of things. She and her mom had still been on their uneasy truce at the time, the both discovering who they were without the man who had formed their lives so much, and Aubrey hadn't hesitated to take advantage of the opportunity to reinvent Aubrey Posen, going from earnest fresh graduate to hardworking management trainee to ambitious junior executive for Oversight.

She heard the door to the rooftop open, but she didn't turn, knowing any number of students knew about the hangout and could have gone there for the same reason she was.

To think. To be alone.

She was surprised, but not unpleasantly so, when she was joined at the edge of the balcony.

"You have class for another hour."

"Library time for a research paper."

Aubrey gave the girl beside her a sidelong glance, and Stacie returned it with a smug grin. "My girlfriend finds my academic side pretty hot."

"Very hot."

"Back off, blondie, just because she just slept with her best friend doesn't mean you get to flirt with me just now."

Aubrey had to smile, shaking her head as she turned her attention back to the view. "You kicked me out of your bed."

"Girl, I don't just let anyone creep into my bed while I'm sleeping." Stacie returned.

Aubrey glanced at her, nodded briefly, but didn't say anything. And for a little while, they stood together in comfortable silence, knowing what came next would be important.

"I figured you'd be here." Stacie said softly as a preamble, glancing at the blonde briefly before redirecting her gaze to their view of the Barden University campus. "How'd you duck Lilly?"

"A good magician never gives away their tricks." Aubrey quipped, but didn't expound on the answer.

Stacie glanced at her. "Weren't you still at the retreat?"

"That was the other day." Aubrey reported. "I had to go to Florida."

"What's in Florida?"

"My boss."

Stacie quirked an eyebrow, but didn't say anything, wary of what would have required Aubrey to see her boss so soon, when they usually only met when they were both in New York at the Oversight offices. "And?"

"I was right."

"Promotion?"

"Promotion." Aubrey confirmed.

But for someone getting promoted, Aubrey's tone was unusually dull. "Aubrey?"

"It'll be more up your alley, managing the workforce and ensuring the offices are working efficiently. It's mostly administrative, and you'll probably be delegating a lot of stuff down the line."

Her boss's words, when breaking the news to her.

"You'll have a team, of course, they'll report to you and you can just communicate to me and the manager what you think is necessary to help you get your job done."

It had all been such nice words, almost similar to the same spiel she'd once also given to Aubrey, when she'd been offering her a job opportunity in New York, to uproot from Chicago.

Not that there had been roots, in Chicago.

Intellectually, she understood the reasoning. She was the youngest member of Oversight, she didn't have roots, and she didn't have a lot to consider in terms of logistics. Ideally, she could still continue doing the job she was doing now, but she'd been part of a series of major deals, and the smart thing to do was give her a promotion, but there wasn't a lot of room for that in Oversight, and she knew from experience that local offices probably wouldn't take well to an upstart young blond executive who a lot of people considered was barely out of college, without the backing of her immediate superior.

And they were right: the job was up her alley. It was mostly managing numbers, managing people working on the various projects the office was handling. It was what she'd been trained to do, what she was good at.

"Aubrey?"

"Aubrey?" Stacie repeated, concerned, when Aubrey didn't say anything.

"Think it over. It's a big opportunity."

The thing was, while she understood everything intellectually, and the situation was similar, the move from Chicago to New York had been vastly different.

She had only been in Chicago for a few months before the move to New York. There had been nothing making her stay in Chicago; she'd had no attachments whatsoever. Everyone in their management training group had all known their time in Chicago was limited, they had signed up for the training for the inevitable assignments to other offices across the country.

Heck, the fact that she and Kathryn had both ended up working for the same area, much less the same region, had been a major coincidence.

She had concentrated on her job, when she first got to Chicago. Money management had demanded a lot of time and effort, and she'd been busy proving herself, since Barden wasn't exactly a top school for business. And then she'd been in a relationship, but the job had taken precedence.

The job had always taken precedence.

When she'd left Georgia, leaving behind her best friend and a girl who had been everything she could want or ask for; when her family had been splintering in the wake of her father's stroke: she'd had her job.

When her personal life had been a sham, her social life a parade of strangers to keep her preoccupied, she'd had her job, the easy way out of any personal confrontation, because the job took precedence.

New York had been a little better. The acquaintance tree had shaken her roommate loose, and though they weren't close, at least they were friendly.

Her coworkers at Oversight were ambitious and cutthroat, but at least they weren't competing with each other, and she didn't have to worry about any inevitable backstabbing.

She'd had a social life, too, and maybe they weren't the Bellas and could never compare to them, but she hadn't lacked for company.

And then Dan had quit, and she'd exiled herself to Philadelphia.

Aubrey turned to look at Stacie, at the girl who had been so unfiltered and so blatant one morning in an elevator in Philadelphia, and had been a refreshing breath of fresh air; so much so that until Stacie had reentered her life, Aubrey hadn't realized that a part of her had been drowning.

She'd rebuilt, then. Been more discerning about the people in her life. Making arrangements to see Stacie made her travel more often near North Carolina, so she had made the effort to see her grandparents and her mother more often. She'd reconnected with Dave, with Kathryn, with Kevin.

She'd reconnected with the Bellas.

Maybe she and Chloe weren't in the same place they once had been, and a part of her worried but reluctantly accepted that there was a possibility they would never recover the relationship they'd once had, but at least they were back in each other's life.

And she had Stacie.

"They want me to take England."

Stacie froze, because they both knew what England meant, not just in terms of Aubrey's career but to their relationship, and there was a reason why the prospect had been regarded with such trepidation. She swallowed, and forced to choke out, looking away, "That's…" Stacie wanted to say that it was good, to congratulate Aubrey for getting a post with so much responsibility and esteem, but the words wouldn't get out.

Aubrey looked at her, watching the most minute of expressions, how Stacie wanted to be happy for her, how they both knew what it meant for her career and how much weight the posting carried; but more than all of that, was Stacie's obvious feelings on what the job in England would mean to their relationship.

And cut to the chase.

"I said no."

Stacie turned back to stare at her, eyes snapping to meet Aubrey's, because they both knew what that meant.

And Aubrey confirmed it, saying the very thing that made months of therapy and behavior training moot and made old habits resurface.

Oddly, she didn't feel that same panic, the anxiety that had led her to the Barden campus in the middle of the night. Looking at Stacie, despite the obvious repercussions of her decision, a part of her knew she wouldn't regret it.

"I think I just quit."