Prompt from a guest, Steca. Peace out! *flies away*

38. All that

"You know what happens if you tell anyone about this, don't you" Dr Mitchell stood in front of his daughter, who made herself as small as she could. She cowered away from her father, not wanting to provoke more violence from him, she knew better than to make the man angry.

"yes father"

"good. You can leave now" he turned "remember; you are not strong enough to withstand the storm" walked back to his desk, not sparing his daughter another glance. She leaves his office and quickly makes her way over to the auditorium, she's late again and knowing Aubrey she'll be a bitch about it. She quietly sits down and it seems that she got off the hook, she does not.

"Beca why are you late" Aubrey's pissed "you know what, I don't even care. Go run 10 laps" Beca groans but gets up anyway, slowly starting to run while the other girls practise their vocals. She can't really go faster without hurting herself to the point of fainting, her father sure was feeling it today. And yesterday. Maybe the day before that too. Yeah, he had been feeling it for years, ever since her mother died. Her mother killed herself, Beca has been playing with the thought of following her for a while now. There had to more to life than this, right? Eat, sleep, get beaten up, repeat. And tell no one, because then they would feel the pain too. Beca didn't want that, she wants her friends to be safe, their lives mean more to her than her own. Honestly, she could die today and she'd rest peacefully but she's not planning to kill herself. Somehow she still has hope, hope for a better life than this. That and she wants her revenge, she wants to make sure her father is put away for life. But for now she does nothing, she undergoes it. She knows her father, she knows how to keep him happy, she knows what to say and what to do so she doesn't make him angry. What she doesn't know is if being exactly what he wants her to be is helping or if being a bitch to him will result in the same way, she tries though. She tries to keep herself from getting too many injuries so she won't collapse while doing Aubrey's cardio or while receiving one of Chloe's hugs, she has to keep up this façade. Beca, the girl who came off as emotionless, uncaring, a bitch. Beca, the girl who cares too much, who has a thousand secrets, who put up endless walls. Beca, the girl who turns out to be kind, caring, loving, if only someone would take the time to get to know her. If only they'd look past the sarcasm and harsh words and see the broken person that desperately needs someone to care. They all consider themselves her friends, the Bella's know nothing of her.

After running the last of her laps, Beca all but falls down on her chair, taking slow and deep breaths to keep from hurting. The other girls are still busy doing some weird exercise Chloe thought of, a pair of concerned eyes is on Beca. They're following her as she stiffly gets up and makes her way over to the group, winching every time she puts a foot down. Knowing Beca doesn't like being the centre of attention the observer decides to wait until after practise to ask if she's okay. She approaches as she sees Beca grab her bag.

"hey Beca"

"hi Stacie, what's up"

"well, I haven't talked to you in a while and I feel like we should catch up, with coffee, so how about you join me and I'll show you this place I found where you can get like the best coffee I have ever tasted." She sees Beca hesitate and nudges her, playful grin on her face "come one, you know you can't deny all that is me" she winks and cheers on the inside when she sees a smile adorning Beca's face. The smaller girl nods and they walk out of there together.

Beca moans as she tastes the coffee and Stacie smirks, she wasn't lying when she said this place had good coffee

"Stacie, you are a lifesaver" she takes another sip "I needed this"

"so, what have you been up to"

The two friends make light conversation for hours, getting to know each other better. They get on the topics of tattoos, knowing they both have them.

"I have like 7" Beca tells Stacie "I love them all but the one on my upper back is my favourite, it says I never knew how strong I was until being strong was the only choice I had" she takes a deep breath "but just because I'm strong and I can handle pain doesn't mean I deserve it"

Stacie thinks about it, what it could mean. What is Beca not telling her? Obviously this has her thinking about bad this because she just got like ten levels down on happiness.

"tell me about the other ones" Stacie says to get to another subject, Beca smiles gratefully at her

"well, I got a chicken wing on just above my knee. That was from a bet that I lost but I still love it" they fall back into their easy conversation. Stacie is majoring in medicine and with that she has a psychology class in which the professor explains various mental illnesses, forms of abuse and effects it has, the things abuse can do to a person. Stacie finds this class highly interesting and she is now on the subject of victims of physical abuse, something she could never imagine happening to a person. She notices Beca shows some of the signs that all the cases they discussed showed. Beca is anxious, always. She doesn't like it when people touch her. She's unsure of herself to the point where it appears as if she thinks of herself as a waste of space. And she can't seem to concentrate on something for a long time. Of course this could all mean nothing and that's why Stacie brushes it off and figures that she must be imagining things. If only she knew.

At the next practise a few days later Beca shows up on time, but she looks like shit. She has a cut on her eyebrow, a big bruise on her cheekbone and her lip is swollen, she gets bombarded with questions but says nothing more than that she got into a fight while trying to protect a friend. Which is not entirely a lie, but also not the whole truth. Usually her father didn't touch her face as it would be visible at all times and look very suspicious, neither of them wanted to answer the questions that would be asked but this week is a bad week. This is the week her mother died, 7 years ago. Monday was normal, Tuesday Beca found her mother in the bathtub, she was dead. Wednesday her father spend the day crying, Thursday was spend drinking, Friday he first smacked Beca on the head. Saturday was the funeral, Sunday all hell broke loose.

During practise Beca gets a call, it's from her father. She answers, ignoring Aubrey's death glare, and hears the sound of breaking glass, it seems that dr. Mitchell has started drinking.

"you just had to look like her, you worthless bitch, you are the reason I lost my wife!" he's talking loudly and Beca visibly cringes, she walks out the door to get away from her fellow Bella's.

"yes father" she says, as she makes her way to his office, knowing what the next order would be.

"get over here right now" he hangs up, Beca shoots a quick text to the Bella's, saying she has a family emergency and she can't come back, she hopes it'll be enough. This worries Stacie, she takes Beca's stuff and texts her that she can drop by later to get it.

About an hour later she gets a call from Beca, she picks up "hey Becs"

"hey Stacie, you're a med student right?" the girl sounds like she's in pain

"yeah why?"

"I was cleaning up some broken bottles and cut myself, it looks quite big and I thought maybe you could take a look at it" that sounds like a load of bullshit

"yeah of course, come over and I'll see what I can do" not two seconds later there is a knock on the door, behind it is a nervous looking Beca "well that was fast, come in" Stacie sees that one of the girl's hands is wrapped in a shirt, it looks bloody. She sits her down and grabs her first aid kit, slowly unwrapping the injured hand. She gasps as she sees it, Beca's whole hand is covered in cuts, still in a circle as if a broken bottle was stabbed into it.

"oh my god Beca what happened" she inspects the cuts, some seem deeper than others, she grabs some stuff and starts cleaning it with alcohol "we should really go to the hospital"

"I'd rather not" Beca hisses from the pain "like I said, it was an accident" Stacie doesn't accept the answer but focusses on her work. She stitches Beca's hand up and wraps it in bandages, only when she's done she speaks up, holding Beca in place so she can't leave.

"this doesn't look like an accident Beca, who hurt you" she demanded an answer, when she didn't get one she went further "you think I haven't noticed the bruising? Or how you cower away from any physical contact. Please tell me Beca, I can help"

Beca looks up from Stacie's hand on her leg, "you can't help, I'm just trying to protect you by not telling you. But thank you for caring" and with that she leaves, Stacie lets her. Beca basically just admitted that someone was hurting her on a regular basis, so she got enough for now. Stacie texts Aubrey and Chloe, maybe together they could help Beca, she is a Bella after all. The captains quickly make their way over to Stacie's dorm when they get the emergency text, Stacie tells them all that she thinks, all that she found out and what just happened. They seem shocked, at one point Stacie starts crying, she really can't imagine what more Beca has gone through if she was unfazed about earlier today. Together they make a plan to get some proof and to find out who is hurting their friend, a plan that includes putting a bug in Beca's bag so they can spy on her and record all the conversations the tiny brunette has. Behind the brunettes back they gathered information, at some point pulling the rest of the Bella's in the complot and they find a lot of things. It's her father, that's one thing. From their conversations the Bella's found out that dr. Mitchell beat her almost every day and they were devastated. It affected Stacie the most as she was Beca's best friend and she secretly loved her friend a little more than she should. One day Beca was sitting in her dorm and she was alone, she started talking

"My name is Beca Mitchell and for the past 7 years I have been physically abused by my father, dr. Andrew Mitchell. It started when I was 11, my mother died. I can tell you that I look a lot like my mother, she took her own life and my father couldn't bare being reminded of her every day, by just looking at me. He was so angry with her, that she'd left him with me, that she'd taken her own life. He was angry and she was gone. He took his anger out on me. I had no friends because I was too anxious to make a normal conversation, I had panic attacks at certain triggers. First my father would punch or slap me and that was it but over the years it got worse, he used knives and glass to hurt me. Just a few days ago he tried to stab me with a broken bottle, had I not put up my hand to block it, I might've been dead now. Hurting me seemed to be his way of dealing with the loss of my mother, I let him do it. I survive because the fire inside me is hotter than the fire around me but I am scared of him, if he finds out any of you know this whole thing, he will find a way to hurt us all. That's just how twisted and sick he is, so please, whatever you use this information for, think wisely" Beca found the camera in her bag days ago, she left it there, maybe this was her way out. She might as well help them a little.

The Bella's had everything they needed, so they went to the police. Reporting Andrew Mitchell for the abuse of his daughter, the police moved out full force. Beca was in his office at that moment, the moment the police arrived. dr. Mitchell seemed to realise it was over as he grabbed a gun from his drawer and pointed it at his daughter, who didn't even react to it. She looked empty, no energy, no spark in her eyes, no more will to live. He shot, just before he got shot himself. Only, Beca got shot in her shoulder and her father in his leg. Neither were dead, both were disappointed.

Beca looked at her dad and thought about what he always said to her, you are not strong enough to withstand the storm. Today she got her revenge "I am the storm" she said.

The worst things about all this was that Beca had experienced worse pain than this and was still sitting relatively calm in her chair, taking deep breaths. At one point she realised what happened and she looked at her father being dragged out the room in shock, was this it? Was she finally free? She got up and walked out the room, completely ignoring all the officers telling her to stay put until the ambulance was here. She needed to find Stacie. She saw the tall brunette standing at the end of the hall, she looked more beautiful than ever. Beca slowly made her way over, every step a bit slower than the next, her shirt turning red from her wound. She needed to do this, she fell to her knees about half way there and couldn't get up again. The Bella's had finally spotted her and started screaming bloody murder at seeing her, a pair of arms closed themselves around her and Beca leaned into who she knew could be no one else than Stacie. "thank you" she whispered "thank you for being there"

"always Becs, I love you"

Beca used the last of her energy to look up at Stacie, so she could see her beautiful face. Tears of happiness threatened to spill "I love you too"

"I'm taking you on a date when you get out the hospital, alright?" Stacie placed a soft kiss on Beca's hair.

"how could I say no to all that" Beca chuckled