Andiclauds: And now it's time ever to figure out what life is like without her for now.
96itadakimasu96: This chapter will tell you how she's so good.
SunDanceQT: The hardest part is definitely being cut off from everybody and everything.
Wanderer: I'd appreciate if you stopped reviewing and just kept your thoughts to yourself.
FromTumblr: You're all good. It's just hard not to take notice when the regulars don't say anything.
RJRMovieFan: Thank you.
Serenity45: Providing a list of people makes their deaths a bit more realistic.
G: Thank you.
Guest: Consider yourself spoiled.
Pixie1913: Aubrey will eventually figure out it was Julia.
Pitchisbliss: Thank you.
Mwallace: I am one-thousand percent personally vicimizing you.
22-Ti: Thank you.
MaliXx: Thank you.
Guest: Thank you.
Ash: Thank you.
A/N: Thank you all for your support and encouragement. I love this story and writing this version of Aubrey so much, and it's always helpful to remember this story has gained far more positivity than negativity, and that there are people out there who enjoy and connect with this Aubrey.
Dysrhythmia
Hit me like a ton of bricks,
Like a crashing wave.
Everywhere I turn,
There's tricks,
Up your sleeve again.
- Ruelle
Aubrey expects to fall asleep the moment she hits the bed, only, she just lays there despite feeling drained again, having slept too much already. Her eyelids feel heavy, but the things she sees when she closes them are better left unthought about. So she counts the ceiling tiles again, and again, and again, like the number will change the thirty-second time around. The news said he had been talking to someone…
Who?
Someone Aubrey knows?
Is that why no one wants to tell her?
She shifts, trying to take the weight off her shoulder, but moving just hurts more.
"What did it feel like?" Beca breaks the silence.
Aubrey turns her head in Beca's direction, confused.
"Being shot," Beca elaborates.
"Beca," Julia scolds her from her chair.
And they all stop talking again.
Aubrey counts the ceiling tiles one more time before she answers. "I didn't feel anything."
"Really?" Beca asks, not sounding like she believes Aubrey's words in the slightest.
But they're true. Aubrey nods. "And then it burned." Like she had been lit on fire, when, in reality, it was everyone else who was lit up in flames. "And then I passed out." Next to Chloe.
"That's it?" Beca asks.
"What do you mean that's it?" Aubrey asks. She had a bullet lodged in her shoulder.
"You make it sound really…unimpressive," Beca replies.
How did it feel to watch your fiancé shoot me? Aubrey wants to ask. "If it's so unimpressive…" She stops herself from suggesting Beca try it, and sinks beneath a crumpled corner of the blanket so she can't see Julia's face.
"What?" Beca urges her to continue.
"Then…why did you ask about it?" Aubrey saves herself.
"I've never known anyone who has been shot before," Beca answers, but judging by the amused look on her face, she knows that wasn't what Aubrey was going to say.
"Dad has a gunshot scar," Julia says.
Aubrey pulls tell blanket down a few inches.
"He got mixed up in a street fight," Julia explains, "That big oaf wrestled the gun away from the guy, then somehow shot himself in the leg."
"I didn't realize Florida was so high in street crime," Beca says.
"It was in Chicago," Julia says, "Before I met him."
"How did you meet?" Aubrey asks.
"He had just moved to Florida with his family, and he was at the same bar where I was celebrating my 21st birthday. He bought me a drink, and he was very cute, so I invited him to come back to my apartment. He said I was beautiful, and asked if he could take me out on a date sometime instead. And then six months later, we were engaged."
Aubrey remembers the wedding pictures she has seen on their living room wall. They're beautiful. She would never want a beach wedding, simply because of the sand, but their wedding photos make it look worth the gritty discomfort.
"Why did you decide to adopt?" Beca asks.
"Because the only part of conceiving a child that sounds even remotely pleasant is the sex," Julia answers bluntly.
"Mom."
"Sorry," Julia apologizes, "I forgot that the only times you've had sex with my daughter have been strictly in effort to create a baby. How is that going for you? Any luck?"
Beca laughs. "Oh my god."
"That…was not the point." Aubrey uses the blanket as a shield again, sure her cheeks can't flush any redder. It's no wonder why Chloe has no filter regarding these things.
"What was the point?" Julia asks curiously.
Aubrey can finally recognize that tone in her voice now – the one she uses when she's messing around. She chooses not to dignify that question with an answer, because this is not a topic that she wants to pursue. That is the point.
"My husband wanted kids, but he has an irrational fear of babies," Julia goes back to the real topic, "So, it all fell into place. The only thing he asked when I called and told him I was bringing two kids home with me was how old they were."
"You just called him and told him you were bringing home kids?" Beca asks.
Julia shrugs and moves to sit crisscross in her chair. "It was only supposed to be for the weekend," she says, "But then the next morning, Chloe was having the time of her life trying to walk around the kitchen in a pair of his boots, and he told me he would never be able to forgive me if I had brought home two kids who weren't up for adoption. Their biological mother already claimed she didn't want them back. She signed over her parental rights right to me without a second thought, and then we had kids."
"How do you just bring home children?" Aubrey asks.
"Why? Is procreation not going well?" Julia inquires, earning another laugh from Beca.
Aubrey gives her a look.
"You earn Doctoral degrees in social work and pediatric psychology, get your foster care license, then, just once, disregard the rules about bringing home clients, and, voila, you're a mom."
Oh. "I didn't know you work with children."
Julia furrows her brows, looking puzzled and somewhat amused. "I work for Child Protective Services, Honey."
Aubrey knew she had a degree of some kind in Psychology. She could have guessed that from one conversation with her. It's...the other pieces that she was uniformed about, but that also make a lot of sense.
"So, I should call you Dr. Beale?" Beca asks.
"You should call me Julia."
Not Mom.
"Or Ma'am," Aubrey states, trying to joke back with her. Fear settles in the pit of her stomach directly afterward – quickly followed by disgust with herself for trying to joke in a time like this. Chloe is unconscious, and Aubrey is making jokes.
Julia looks at her with surprise. "Oh, you're funny."
Beca doesn't realize all of their friends were burned beyond identifying, Aubrey realizes completely out of nowhere. That's why the lack of names, the lack of body count had her so confused… They have to turn the TV back on.
Suddenly, the room is silent.
Because they're both expecting Aubrey to say something back.
And Aubrey starts to internally panic, unsure of what it is she's supposed to say. She loses track of where they were in the conversation. There is so much they don't actually know that the news could tell them. They don't have all the answers. Aubrey needs the answers. Maybe Beca was lying, and she does know more than she's letting on…
Her fingers touch her chin.
She fine.
She just wants to see if it'll work.
She hasn't exhausted herself talking like everything is normal.
She just wants to see if Chloe's mom really will notice.
"I am so tired," Julia says, and rubs her face, "And tomorrow is going to be a long day for everybody. I think we should turn in for the night."
Aubrey knew she would respond, but it still takes her by surprise.
"I feel like this day has lasted for a year," Beca comments.
Aubrey feels like it has lasted for maybe three hours. She doesn't want it to last any longer though.
Julia stands up and walks over to Beca, then picks up the blanket from her cot.
Beca leans away from her, looking at her like she's insane. "I can tuck myself in."
"It's a habit." Julia drops the blanket back down over Beca's head rather than putting it down nicely. She wrinkles her nose at Aubrey, then walks away.
"Just like how my parents used to do it," Beca deadpans, then falls over right like that.
Did Beca even tell anyone about her dad? She had to have told them about her dad. Aubrey needs to talk to her alone, and start getting things sorted out. They need to speak before they talk to Aubrey's boss tomorrow.
But the moment Julia walks past the bed and to the door, Aubrey's insides seize up.
Julia turns out the light with the switch by the door, then walks back to the bed. "I want to show you something," she whispers, "Can I sit?"
Aubrey nods and scoots over.
Julia lies back next to her and starts looking through the pictures on her phone. "This is the first picture we have." She shows Aubrey her phone.
The photo is a little blurry. It's clear that Chloe's mom used her phone to take a picture of a physical photograph of Chloe – and Aubrey wishes she could see the real thing, but she's content with this too. It must be from Chloe's first day with them, because she can't be any older than four and she's wearing her father's fishing boots. The laces are tangled around her hands, and it looks like she's trying to tie both shoes together – and, judging by the 'this is totally how I meant to tie them' expression on her face, it's not going well.
"And this is my favorite." Julia fishes through her pictures again until she finds one of Chloe around probably eight years old, trying to attach cat ears made from construction paper to the dog. "That dog had even more patience than me."
There is another one of Chloe and her brother. He's laying on the floor, playing with a toy car, and Chloe is sitting on his back, pretending to drive him like he is a car.
And another of Chloe straining to push him on the swings.
One of him helping her balance on a bike with two wheels.
Aubrey has no such pictures with her brothers. One time, JJ unscrewed the handle bars from her bike, so when she turned them, her bike kept traveling straight, and she crashed into the shed. In return, she removed the chain from his and hid it, and that idiot spent nearly an hour trying to figure out why his bike wouldn't move when he tried to pedal. Eventually, their father went outside to see what he was doing, and yelled, 'Where the hell is the chain, Boy?!' ...and then he figured it out. It led to a summer long war of dismantling each other's bikes in various ways. Her favorite was when she removed the much smaller wheels from Liam's bike, and attached them to JJ's bike, and he fell off actually trying to ride it like that around the driveway.
Julia finds another one of Aubrey and Chloe in Bryant Park, looking intently at a subway map – both of them appearing to be thoroughly confused. "Why did you take a picture of that?"
"Because it was cute." She hands Aubrey her phone. "You can keep looking."
Aubrey dims the screen, the light burning her eyes. There is an entire folder dedicated to pictures of just Aubrey and Chloe. Some that Chloe's parents took. Others that Aubrey and Chloe took and texted to Chloe's mom. She scrolls through all of them, and it makes it easier to block out her current reality. There are pictures of them at Barden, at Chloe's parents house, in New York… There is the picture that was Aubrey's phone background before her phone was smashed to pieces. She stops scrolling.
Beside her, Chloe's mom is trying to keep herself awake. "That's a cute one," she murmurs after she rubs her eyes.
"You should sleep," Aubrey tells her, and lowers the phone down onto her chest.
Julia is quiet for a moment before she nods. "Do you want me to stay or go?" she asks, and adjusts the blanket over Aubrey.
Aubrey offers her some of the blanket in a wordless answer.
"Goodness. Why do hospital have to be so cold?" Julia fixes the blanket over both of them, "Are you warm enough?"
Aubrey nods. She's starting to warm up a little. She's not as cold as she was running around outside in the rain at least.
"I'm going to have to invest in a heated blanket to survive winter in New York. I don't know why you two wanted to live in somewhere that has arctic winters. I am not looking forward to snow. Or ice." Julia exaggerates a shiver and wraps Aubrey in a hug, nuzzling the side of her head.
It's barely even Fall. It starts to sink in that Chloe's parents plan to stay with them for awhile. Aubrey lulls her head to the side in relief.
"Are you sure you're warm enough?"
"Mhm."
"And you'll wake me up if you need anything?"
Aubrey nods again.
"And you know that Chloe and you are the best girls I could ever ask for?"
"Mom." Aubrey is pretty sure she's just procrastinating on sleep like Aubrey does now.
"Okay. I just want you both to be okay." Julia kisses her head. "Goodnight, Honey-Bunny. I love you."
"Goodnight," Aubrey whispers, and she tries to sleep.
xxxxx
There is too much noise outside in the hallway. The sound of footsteps. Stretchers rolling by. At some point, somebody drops something and it clatters loudly on the floor. As Aubrey tries to relax, the world keeps throwing her reminders that it's moving on without her.
"Beca," Aubrey whispers.
Silence.
"Beca."
Julia shifts, and Aubrey freezes. She turns over so her back is to Aubrey and wakes up enough to fix the blanket, then immediately falls back to sleep.
It must feel nice to be able to roll over. Aubrey's cast is in the way of any and all comfortable sleeping positions. She's stuck on her back with her arm weighing heavily down on her already aching ribs. She can't even remember what it's like not to be in pain anymore.
At least she has something to do.
Aubrey begins looking at pictures of herself and Chloe again on Julia's phone. For roughly ten seconds before she realizes what she is holding. Her phone. Aubrey has access to a phone, while everyone else is asleep. She stops scrolling through pictures and exits out of the gallery to locate the icon for Chrome. She might not be able to watch the news, but she can read it – in an incognito tab, on CNN's website.
It isn't difficult to find articles – most of them labeled with a warning about graphic pictures.
Aubrey scrolls through them, and tries not to see anything other than the words.
She keeps searching and searching until she finds what she's looking for – who Jesse was communicating with: an anonymous source.
No.
Aubrey continues looking. She clicks links to other news sites. She starts looking at every article she can find. They all say the same thing. Some person, whose name is not being released for the sake of their privacy, was contacted by Jesse on a Dungeons and Dragons forum. That's it. The articles don't say what they talked about or how the person knows it was for sure him. They don't say anything useful. None of these articles tell her anything other than that Jesse confided in some D&D nerd, and that Aubrey's friends were burned beyond recognition.
Why burn them?
To destroy evidence before he knew Aubrey would get out alive and he wouldn't be able to frame her?
She keeps clicking.
People suspect survivors are being held in a Seattle hospital.
Families are coming forward – giving names of their loved ones who were attending the wedding.
There is a picture of a man in a suit, standing next to a yacht whose daughter Patricia was there. It takes Aubrey a second to remember their Bellas confessional. It's Fat Amy's dad. Aubrey never realized she came from money. A lot of it, by the looks of it. Maybe he'll invest some of it into finding Jesse somehow.
Jessica and Ashley's parents have come forward. Benji's parents. Bumper's mom. And…Aubrey's father.
Aubrey exits out of the tab, then places the phone on the table. How the hell did he know where she was? Her stomach does a flip, and she wraps her good arm around it, subconsciously slouching to the side against Chloe's mom. How did he know? Why does he care? He made it clear enough she's dead to him already. She thought she would either die or she would get some fucking answers, but she's alive and all she has is more questions - and, now, more fear.
But Aubrey knows somebody who might have a little more insight than anyone else she knows – and (hopefully) won't be as reluctant to share it with her.
She slowly picks the phone back up and locates Brian in Julia's contacts, making sure to double check the area code so she has the correct Brian.
Aubrey: What are you doing? - Aubrey
Brian: Sleeping? - Brian
Aubrey: I have questions.
Brian: Who says I have answers? - Brian
Aubrey grits her teeth. This is important. This involves her family now.
Aubrey: If you don't, you can help me look for them. Stop ending your texts with your name.
Brian: You mean you want me to risk my job by putting my nose where it doesn't belong?
Brian: Fuck yeah. I was a detective in a past life.
Brian: Be there soon. - Brian
