Disclaimer: I don't own Pitch Perfect or Anna Kendrick's Cups.

Nearly three weeks had passed since the Bellas had last seen Beca, any of them, though no one brought it up. And after yesterday's fiasco of a rehearsal that ended with vomit and harsh accusations, they were sure that they'd get a text from Aubrey saying that Beca was back in. However, a day passed and nothing. Deciding that their captain had been confronted enough, all of the girls decided to let her muddle through it on her own. However, they soon all began to notice the distinctive lack of Beca in all of their lives.

Cynthia Rose was worried. The biggest test of the English semester had passed and she hadn't heard a damn peep out of Beca. While to anyone else that wasn't unusual, it was to Cynthia Rose. Both girls had Dr. Garber for English and Composition, Cynthia Rose's class meeting on Thursday and Beca's on Friday. Before Beca's class met to take a big, important test, Cynthia Rose would get a frantic text from Beca begging for help.

The two Bellas would up camped out in the library with Red Bull and an ungodly amount of flashcards. And Cynthia Rose could honestly tell you that she enjoyed their late night study sessions. Sometime around three hours into cramming about authors and plots and characters, Beca would get slap happy. She'd start humming along to any song that popped into her brain and Cynthia Rose would try and guess what it was.

However, the biggest test of the semester, counting for at least 15% of their grade, had come and gone. Not a peep out of Beca. No library. No Red Bull. And no humming. Beca actually had a fairly good grasp on English and all its intricate nuances, but she adamantly refused to read any of the required books, which caused more than a few complications. Therefore, there was no way in hell Beca had read seven three hundred page books and prepared for a test in the past week.

So what the hell happened?

Fat Amy was fabulous. Fat Amy was confident beyond all get out. Fat Amy was so bored she was soon going to start belting out show tunes. Full on Hairspray up in this lecture hall bitch.

Somewhere a good forty rows of uncomfortable college lecture hall seats in front was an uptight, pencil skirt wearing stick in the sand professor that made Aubrey look like she was headed to Woodstock. While having an uptight professor was bad at the best of times, add in the fact she was teaching Integral Calculus with a monotone, she had half the class asleep and the other half contemplating psychotic rage. Fat Amy was firmly in the psychotic rage half. She was planning on releasing the kraken. Everyone back home in Tasmania had family krakens; she could probably just borrow someone's.

For the past ten minutes, however, Amy's attention was drawn away from what was probably borderline homicide. Instead, she opted on focusing on the empty chair beside her. While normally Fat Amy wasn't bothered by an empty seat, some people just couldn't handle all her sexiness, it was more along the lines of who should have been there.

It'd been three weeks since that tattooed twig bitch Mitchell had shown up. At first, Amy had just assumed that Beca was just bailing on the math class. Lord knows the girl had complained nonstop about being forced into it by her father. But after a week of not showing, her longest hooky record having been three days before she dragged her flat ass back into the hall, Fat Amy started thinking it was something else. It probably had something to do with avoiding the hell out of Fat Amy.

After the semi's, Fat Amy hadn't seen Beca. Not in the cafeteria, not in the coffee shop, not in the Calculus class, not even under her favorite tree. Three weeks was a very long time to skip class and avoid a friend. At least Amy thought she was Beca's friend. Sure, she hadn't exactly been supportive at the semis, but she'd certainly not condemned her like Aubrey had. That had to count for something, right?

Fat Amy was brought out of her musings by the teacher's droning's shifting into a higher pitch about non-differentiable functions. Huh. Apparently THAT was what got the old bat excited. Who knew?

Denise Martin loved her Intro to Philosophy class. She loved the way the questions made her think of everything in a different way and the challenge it gave to her. The fact that one of her fellow Bellas was also in the class was a delightful bonus. She and Ashley had quickly become thick as thieves, between having three classes together, the near-nonstop Bellas rehearsals and the fact that they were in the same dorm building; they really didn't have an option otherwise.

For the first several weeks of Philosophy 101, the professor merely stood in front of the class, lecturing nonstop. Denise's hand had cramped up painfully trying to keep up with all the definitions. And finally after three weeks, they got to the good questions. The soul searching questions. The questions that made them all think and pause. And Denise loved every second of it. What shocked her most came during the second month of the class.

Flashback

She and Ashley walked into the class buzzing in excitement after their recent induction into the Barden Bellas. Talking animatedly, they walked over to their standard seats, smack dab in the middle of the lecture hall. As they were about to sit down, they found out that someone had beaten them to it. Slumped over one of the desks on the right side of the hall was a somewhat disheveled looking brunette. She was wearing a grey sweatshirt and jeans but Denise couldn't see anything else about her.

"Uh… excuse me?" Denise asked politely. She'd never seen this girl in her class before and she was interested as to what she was doing. Maybe she was a transfer student… or maybe she was just lazy. The brunette girl didn't lift her head or give any other indication that she'd even heard a word out of Denise's mouth. "Hello? Heeeeellllllooooo?" A slight snore and shift and that was it.

Denise and Ashley exchanged a look and a shrug and situated themselves in the seats a few over from the sleeping girl. Soon more and students filtered in, all taking seats leaving an island of empty seats around the girl who blissfully slept on. At eight o'clock sharp, their professor walked in and slammed her book down on her desk. All the people who had been napping lightly in their seats as they waited for her to show up jumped up, awake and startled. Out of the corner of her eye, Denise saw the brunette still out cold. She had to admit, that was impressive.

The lesson went on and on the teacher asking a question about what the universe meant to everyone. The question had the whole class stunned into silence. What could the universe possible mean and how on earth were they supposed to know? As the whole class was silent as they pondered the discussion, there came a slight snore and all eyes in the room snapped to where the brunette girl was sleeping, blissfully unaware of all the attention now trained on her.

"Ms. Martin," their professor said coolly. "If you would be so kind to please wake up Ms. Mitchell." Mitchell. Huh? Where had Denise heard that name recently? Denise pondered that question as she reached over to give her classmate a firm shake on the shoulder. The girl didn't react. Denise frowned and pushed a little harder. Still nothing. With her eyes narrowed, Denise gave the girl's arm a quick pinch. Expecting her to snap awake and scream at her, Denise was entirely unprepared for the girl to lift her head up, give her a nod, and fall back to her folded arms.

"Hey!" Denise exclaimed and gave the girl another, longer and harder, pinch on the arm in an attempt to wake the girl up for good this time. This time the girl lifted her head up and propped it on her open faced palm which was resting on her desk.

She blinked twice, yawned widely, and drawled groggily, "Sup?"

"So nice of you to join us this morning Ms. Mitchell," the professor said drily.

"My pleasure," the girl said through a yawn. Denise was shocked that she recognized the girl. She was a part of the Bellas! She was that girl that sort of stood on the fringes and sort of seemed to be just observing the other girls. What was her name? Bella? No… Brianna? Nope… Oh, Beca! That was it, Beca Mitchell. Beca yawed widely yet again and looked sleepily at the professor, an eyebrow cocked haughtily.

"What can you tell us about your beliefs on the universe?"

"Well which universe?" Beca asked sleepily, rubbing lazily at an eye. The professor seemed taken aback and it showed visibly on her face. Beca, noticing the teacher's confusion continued, "Yeah, there's the multiple universe theory. There is an infinite number of us's in an infinite number of universes. So maybe what's true in one universe isn't necessarily true in another universe."

The professor looked mildly intrigued and she asked, "Well what's your theory on this universe?" Beca seemed to deliberate and for a moment Denise was afraid that she'd fallen back asleep. That theory was shot to hell when Beca's voice cut through the lecture hall.

"I kind of like the egg theory."

"The what?" the professor's eyebrows drew together in bafflement.

Beca shifted slightly, seemingly oblivious to the rapt attention the entire hall was paying her as she explained, "The egg theory is sort of convoluted to explain without reading the whole thing. Basically there is only one person and that one person is everybody. Everyone who has ever lived and died and anyone who will ever live and die. Each time one life or reincarnation ends, they are reborn into their next stream of consciousness until they've lived every life there is to live and learned all there is to learn. Because right now everyone, or the one person who is everyone, is still a fetus, still growing, you know? And when we're done, we'll have grown enough to be born. So this entire universe is nothing more than an egg for us to mature in."

The entire lecture hall was dead silent and Beca nodded once before resting her head back on the desk, once again oblivious to the shock she'd brought to the whole classroom.

End Flashback

Denise smiled at Ashley as she threw her bag on the ground in front of a desk. She looked down the row where Beca had a habit of collapsing into the desk and sleeping nonstop interrupted only by the occasional interlude of surprising insight. It was still empty. It had been three weeks.

Denise didn't know if she should be concerned that somebody had killed Beca and/or was holding her hostage in their basement. However, Denise felt like that probably, PROBABLY would have shown up on the news, at least a little. Ah well. It had taken the girl nearly a month and a half to actually show up to class on time. Consistency and punctuality didn't seem to be Beca's strong suit. Denise was sure nothing was wrong, and Ashley agreed, so all was good. Probably.

Jessica Roland walked down the second floor hallway of Seton Hallway, her backpack slung over her shoulder, her slightly dirty Bellas' scarf still knotted around the handle. She couldn't bear to untie it, even to wash it. She liked the constant reminder of one of the first groups of girls to ever feel like family. She paused outside of room 227 and felt like groaning and slamming her head on the doorway, for tied to the door handle was a sock.

Jessica took a quick glance down at her watch and felt like screaming in frustration. It was only 2:30 for Pete's sake. Who on earth was getting it on at 2:30 on a Tuesday? Mother fucker. With a dramatic sigh, Jessica readjusted her backpack on her shoulders and turned around to walk back the way she came.

She plodded down the stairs, smiling tightly at her RA as she passed her, and strode out to the quad. When the weather was nice, and Barden was in Georgia so the weather was usually pretty damn nice, she'd sit out underneath a tree and work on whatever homework she could while she waited for her rather… active roommate to be finished with her own version of extracurricular activities. As Jessica put the finished touches on a Chemistry write up, she looked around the quad. Off to the side was the Running in Circles Club and just beyond that, the Quiddich team was running around on their broomsticks. All in all, nothing out of the ordinary.

What was odd was the tree opposite Jessica's. Usually, there was a somewhat dark woman underneath it, all plaid and dark eyeliner, with bulky headphones shutting her off from the rest of the world. Beca and Jessica weren't friends per se, they were more of just two girls who happened to be in the same a cappella group and who sat under neighboring trees.

Although, now that Jessica thought about it, it had been a while since she'd seen Beca out in the quad. And Jessica had been outside nearly every day thanks to her roommate. The girl made Stacie look like a nun. Jessica shot one more look at Beca's empty spot and decided to head over to the campus coffee store. Maybe that would get the nagging in her mind to shut up.

Stacie Conrad was very comfortable in her body, a fact that half of the sophomore and three-fourths of the junior class at Barden University could attest to. And while Stacie was incredibly confident in her own body, she positively loved messing with her friends that weren't. She didn't do it in a mean way, just more as a teasing than malicious one. And lately her favorite target was Beca Mitchell. There was just something about making the usually stoic and well put together alt-girl blush right down to the tips of her ears that Stacie just couldn't get enough of.

However, Beca wasn't an easy nut to crack. Usually all it took was a well-placed innuendo or a dramatic wink to have her target turn cherry red and sputter. But Beca didn't take Stacie's flirting hands down. She could usually respond with a smirk and some snark of her own.

It had started two weeks after Aca-Initiation, Stacie had been enjoying a healthy breakfast in the Dining Hall after a rousing bout of cardio. Hey, you don't get an ass this perfect without a little bit of effort every now and then. As Stacie had stalked through the rows of tables with her yogurt and fruit cup, she'd passed by a table where a lone figure sat hunched over what appeared to be a bowl of fruit and a plate of bacon. With an almost innocent grin (innocent for a jungle cat at least) Stacie made her way over to the figure. Completely bypassing the three empty chairs on either side of the girl and the row opposite her, Stacie plopped down in the figure's lap. The girl, who hadn't seen or heard Stacie approach on account of the thick set of headphones wrapped around her head, started. However, Stacie was disappointed. Aside from a slight jump, the only reaction she got was an incredulous glare from the dark-clad girl.

"Can I help you?" Beca asked snarkily.

"Babe, you can help me with a lot," Stacie said with an over-exaggerated wink.

"Sorry babe," Beca responded with an eye roll and a smirk. "I like my toys to come with manageable airbags." Stacie gave a slight gasp and placed a somewhat delicate hand on aforementioned airbags.

"That was just hurtful munchkin." Beca glared slightly and tried to shift. Fortunately Stacie took the hint and slid into the seat next to Beca. They spent the next half an hour before Bellas' practice talking about classes and music. Stacie was surprised that Beca's head was pretty much all music from all genres. Everything from Duke Ellington to LMFAO.

But presently, it had been three weeks since Stacie had last seen her favorite punchkin (a coin termed by both Amy and Stacie). The first week, Stacie had eaten at the North Side Dining Hall as an excuse to avoid Beca. However, after that she had all but forgiven the girl. So she switched the set list? It's not like it was the end of the world. Beca had taken a risk, yeah, but it sounded awesome. So Stacie was done. It's not like she was good at holding a grudge that didn't involve doing the nasty anyway. But Beca hadn't shown up. Stacie assumed that Beca had done the same thing she had for more or less the same reasons so she wasn't worried.

But time had started passing and Stacie had to admit, she was starting to get annoyed. Worried too, but mostly just annoyed. Stacie threw her tray out and stalked off towards the English building for her next class. Later on today when she actually had free time, she was going to drag that little shrimp out of wherever in her dorm room she had undoubtedly holed herself up in and make her party until the sun came up.

Lily knew that she was quiet. She also knew that if she so desired, she could speak up louder. She just didn't want to, so that was that. Lily also knew that Beca lived down the hall of Baker Hall. She didn't think that Beca knew that it was to the silent Asian girl's room that Beca's own roommate, Kimmy Jin, often disappeared to. She didn't think Beca particularly cared.

Lily liked Beca; though she was fairly sure the alt-girl had no idea of that. Beca seemed to be the only one in the Bellas, hell in Barden, who could actually hear nearly everything that Lily said. And true, she looked slightly disturbed and often backed away, at least she made an effort to hear the soft-spoken Asian.

Lily also knew that Beca hadn't been in her dorm for the past three weeks. She could've told someone, but she felt that wasn't really her place. It's not like anyone would hear her anyway.

Chloe heaved a sigh and nervously started nibbling on her bottom lip. She had been standing uncertainly in front of Beca's dorm room for the past twenty minutes and she still had yet to pluck up enough courage to actually knock on the door.

It had been three weeks since Chloe had seen or heard from the tiny brunette and Chloe was ready to admit that it was killing her. She missed Beca's dry and sarcastic wit. She missed seeing the freshman slumped over her computer underneath what nearly everyone who knew Beca as her tree. She missed running into Beca at the all night coffee shop and picking her brain for whatever mix just wasn't sitting right for the younger woman. She missed Beca, plain and simple.

However, she knew that Beca probably wasn't too keen on seeing anyone from the Bellas. Heaven knows she'd made her opinion well known at Semis. That was a night Chloe was going to regret for a very long time, at least in her mind. She should have said something, anything, to combat Aubrey's wrath when all Beca had done was try and help them. She'd been gathering her courage to say something back to Aubrey when she was looking down and she could still see the look of betrayal on Beca's face. Haunting was probably the only description that seemed close, and even that fell short of describing it.

So here Chloe was, staring nervously at a door with peeling paint. Right when Chloe was about to give up completely and head back to the recently very tense apartment she shared with Aubrey, she heard a voice behind her ask curiously, "Chloe?" Chloe spun around expectantly, both hoping and dreading that the voice belonged to the girl she'd been looking for. Her heart fell, however, when she saw a tall girl with short blond hair waving at her enthusiastically from down the hall.

"Hey Sam," Chloe greeted the girl half-heartedly as the sophomore in the Biology class she was a TA for came running up.

"What are you doing in a freshman dorm?" Sam asked with her head cocked to the side and a grin on her face.

Chloe smiled back, not her usual sun-matching smile but a smile nonetheless, and she replied, "Oh, one of our Bellas is in this room and we're trying to get ahold of her."

"This room?" Sam gestured to the door in question, Room 325.

"Yup," Chloe nodded, a little confused as to why Sam was so shocked.

"Huh," the blond girl said with a shrug. "Never would've guessed that Kimmy-Jin was a singer."

Now it was Chloe's turn to be confused. "Huh? No, the other girl, Beca Mitchell."

"Oh," Sam's eyes flew open wide in understanding and then they were furrowed yet again. "But she's not here anymore." Chloe felt like her heart had stopped beating and there was a sudden drop in her stomach.

"What?" she breathed, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Yeah," Sam said slowly, concerned at the senior girl's reaction. "She's been gone for like three weeks. No one really knows where she went. One day all her shit was just gone and that was that. Twerp didn't even give notice or anything."

"You have no idea where she went?" Chloe asked fearfully.

Sam shook her head and said sympathetically, "No one does. Sorry."

"It's not your fault," Chloe said, her voice cracking. "Thanks Sam."

"Sure Chloe," Sam said, her gaze probing as she stared at Chloe. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Chloe's voice sounded small and far away, even to her. "I'm fine. I've got to go." Without another word, she brushed past Sam and all but flew out of Baker Hall, her phone already whipped out and in her hand. They were in trouble.

Aubrey Posen. Even the name sounded imposing and slightly terrifying. Aubrey Posen didn't apologize because Aubrey Posen wasn't wrong. Ever. It just wasn't an option. It never had been. Now, now though, now Aubrey was staring desolately at her hands clasped together in her lap.

She'd been sitting on the edge of her bed, mulling over what she knew she had to do and what she was loathing to do at the same time, for the past hour and a half. She had to apologize to Beca. Swallow her pride, and her vomit, and admit that she was wrong. About damn near everything. About Beca. About the set list. About Beca being a Bella. Hell, if she was forced to, she'd admit to being wrong about the damn ear monstrosities.

Aubrey pulled out her phone and scrolled through her contacts. The name was right there. RIGHT there. Why couldn't she do this? Aubrey stared at her phone for a good five minutes before finally clenching her jaw and pressing the damn button to dial Beca's number. With her jaw still painfully clenched, she lifted the phone to her ear and waited with baited breath. Honestly at this point, she couldn't tell you which would be worse. Beca accepting her call and having to talk to her, or have Beca ignore her and know that she had to grovel at the freshman's feet. What Aubrey didn't know was that there was a third option.

"We're sorry. The number you are trying to contact has been disconnected. Please redial and try again." Before Aubrey could even truly comprehend what was going on, her phone buzzed again. It was a text from Chloe.

Emergency Meeting. Auditorium. NOW.

The serious and demanding tone conveyed through text had Aubrey immediately on edge. She was the hard-headed, grammatically correct half of the pair. Chloe's texts were usually riddled with LOL's and OMG's along with an emotocon or twelve. With Beca's disconnected phone number being pushed to the back of her mind, Aubrey strode out of the apartment she shared with her co-captain and headed towards the old auditorium on campus. Something was very, very wrong.

The Bellas were all gathered nervously in the auditorium. While they may not know their redheaded co-captain as well as her best friend, even they could tell something was wrong from the text she sent all of them. It lacked, in Beca's words, Chloe's "never fucking ending optimism". Speaking of Beca, that's who they were waiting on, wasn't it? It had to be. They hoped it was. As the door swung open, the entire group turned as a whole to stare hopefully at whoever was entering. However, all of their hopes were dashed effectively when they saw that it was only Aubrey stalking across the floor.

"What's wrong?" she asked, close to demanded actually, her eyes never leaving Chloe's face.

"Beca's gone," the other senior said bluntly. That simple sentence, those two little words, had the entire group freeze.

"What?" it was Fat Amy that recovered first. "Nah, the little ankle-biter isn't gone; she's just becoming a hermit in her room or whatever."

But Chloe shook her head and said, "I just went to her dorm, you know to apologize and beg to have her back. Apparently her room is empty. Her RA said she left three weeks ago."

"Three weeks?" one of the girls, Jessica maybe, asked in shock.

"I could have told you that," Lily whispered, but as usual she was ignored.

"How could she have been gone for three weeks?" Stacie asked loudly and incredulously. "I mean she wouldn't just up and leave in the middle of a semester would she?" No one in the group felt the need to dignify that with a response. Everyone here knew that Beca had absolutely no desire to be at Barden. While she never shared her dream of LA with any of the girls, it didn't take a genius to know that she would kill to get out of Georgia.

"Well…" Cynthia Rose drew her words out and choose them carefully. "Has anyone actually seen Beca since the semifinals because I know I haven't." All the girls looked around, desperately hoping for someone to step and say they saw her at her favorite coffee shop, or the library, or under her tree. No one did. And in one entirely eloquent statement, Aubrey Posen successfully summed up the entire mental state of the Barden Bellas.

"Fuck."

When I'm gone
When I'm gone
You're gonna miss me when I'm gone
You're gonna miss me by my hair
You're gonna miss me everywhere, oh
You're gonna miss me when I'm gone

Taa daa! Not quite sure I like this one or how it turned out, but hey. I updated, and with my longest chapter to date. Bonus!

I've got the entire next chapter planned. Not written, but planned, so look forward to that. Right now it looks like my one update a week is still going to keep going strong, but if it ever gets too much, I might bump updates to every two weeks or something like that. So, as always, drop me a review with a yay or nay so far and what you want to see happen and I'll see if I can work it in.

Bye yas!