Chapter Text
Prologue
Four year old Beca knew what pain and suffering was.
She found out about pain when her mother’s world started bleeding in orange: blacks and whites, and just orange. Then her father left them, and Brand, her older brother, told her that when daddy left, he had taken mummy’s colors with him too.
At first, Beca didn’t get it. Her world had always been painted in nothing but blacks, whites, and blues since she was born. What was so bad if her mother had oranges instead of blues?
When neither her daddy nor her mummy’s colors came back, Beca started to understand what her brother meant, and she started wearing gloves after that. The four year old Beca knew that gloves were only worn by people whose soulmates were dead. But Beca had decided she didn’t care about that or her soulmate either.
What was the point of giving color to someone when you’re just going to take it away?
The concept of suffering was understood for the following six years of Beca’s life. This time, she wasn’t sure where she understood it from. Maybe she got it from watching her brother—Brand used to be jovial and free spirited, careless and free. Beca felt like her daddy took Brand away too, and then her with a different brother, instead. Beca loved Brand all the same.
Maybe it was from her mother, who not only had to pick up the pieces of herself for her children, but also because she was told that a terminal illness only left her with a few years to live.
Whichever it was, ten year old Beca was well aware that the tight feeling in her chest she gets whenever she thought of her sick mom was called pain. And ten year old Beca knew that the moment her mommy’s grip on either of Beca’s or Brand’s hand slackened, Beca would feel suffering for a long while.
Her mother took a deep shaky breath. “I’m so proud of the two of you,” her voice was weak. Her eyes flickered between Brand and Beca. She tried for a smile. “Promise me something, okay? Give mommy a gift before she goes?”
Beca didn’t know why her eager nodding brought a tear sliding down her mommy’s cheeks. “I want you two to live good, alright? Finish school, go to college and follow your dreams, loves. And never forget to have each other’s backs, okay?”
(8 years later)
Stupid.
All around campus, parents were dropping off their kids, who in turn were trying to shake hands with practically every person they meet. And the whole sight of it looked stupid to Beca. Seriously, it never ceases to amaze her how desperate people are to find their soulmate.
Beca sure as hell wasn’t. In fact, the universe would be doing her a favor if she could just breeze through this college thing without a single drop of soulmate drama. She found it ridiculous that she has to wait for some stranger’s hand to graze on some part of her skin to see the world in full color. And said stranger would make her life complete. Right.
Beca has lived her entire life seeing only blue—and she’s completely convinced that she doesn’t need to see the world in any other color. So, nope, no soulmate drama for her.
Unfortunately, the universe didn’t seem to agree.
It didn’t even take an hour for some goofy kid in a car to start serenading her with “Wayward.” It was accompanied by a one-handed attempt at air guitar, and one outstretched hand begging to be shaken. The goofy kid had boyish good looks, Beca gave him that. Still, she just smirked at him, showing her perfectly gloved hands, before turning her attention back to the Barden Greeters.
“…and your official BU rape whistle. Don’t blow it unless it’s actually happening! Nobody likes that.”
Rape whistle? Jesus, Barden was weird. Beca accepted said whistle, placing it carefully on her lips with a coy grin. She kept her eyes on the greeter, walking away backwards without a word of thanks.
Beca may or may not take pleasure in antagonizing people.
“Oh my god, you little hogmonkey! I can’t believe it’s been 15 fucks since I last saw you!”
Now, that was one of the very few people who could away with antagonizing her. And yeah, Stacie Conrad had a habit of using her number of fucks as a time reference. Why “15 fucks” comes more naturally than “a month or so” to her, Beca would never understand. Had never understood in all the five years Beca knew her. But hey, her best friend has always been special that way.
Beca could swear that having Stacie as a roommate was the only upside of this situation. She eyed the leggy brunette’s side of the room, and saw that Stacie’s things had been unpacked and neatly placed.
“Dude, when did you get here?”
Stacie rolled her eyes, and tried to restrain from make a quip about Beca never checking her phone. “Yesterday—like you should have been. Brand’s been worried sick; you’re still not mad at him, are you?”
Stacie was also her older brother’s soulmate.
Beca just shook her head, systematically setting up all her music equipment on her side of the room. Beca understood where her brother was coming from. It was their mother’s dying wish. But Beca was pretty sure that when her mom said ‘live good,’ it didn’t mean that everything else that followed after that was the perfect formula for it.
Also, it was exasperating that Brand felt a need to hold up all her inheritance money to ensure she didn’t just run away to LA on her own. Real mature.
“…hide your wine coolers!”
And then, there was her dad.
Dr. Mitchell invited himself in the room as he said, “I’m kidding. It’s just your ol’ man trying to make a funny.” Stacie smiled at him politely, kissing him on the cheek, “Hey, Warren.”
“Chris Rock, everybody.”
“So when did you get here? How did you get here?”
Beca finally turned, and gave her dad her full attention. “Took a cab. Didn’t want to inconvenience you and Sheila. How is the stemponster?”
“She’s great! She’s—”
Beca snorted, “Don’t really care, dad. Just wanted to say ‘stepmonster.’” She could feel Stacie trying not to giggle. Beca figured she should save herself from anymore bullshit than this. She looked her father in the eye, and folded her arms.
“Look, dad, I don’t know what you’re trying to do right now, but let’s just make it clear one more time,” Beca said in a bored tone. “I’m going to college, because Mom and Brand want me to. I’m here, because you offered to help me move to LA as long as I went to Barden for just two years. And since Brand has made it perfectly clear that I won’t be getting my money till four years, yours was the better offer. And said offer doesn’t really require me to interact with you in anyway, so I won’t—praise Jesus, halleluiah.”
It took an awkward beat of silence before Stacie announced, “I’m going to the Activities Fair.”
Beca gave her a thankful smirk, before changing it to one filled with sarcasm, as she turned to her father. “Well, then so am I. Show yourself out, dad. You’re good at that, aren’t you?”
“Basically, what we do is we join arms in a large ring and we run clockwise and sometimes we’ll do variations on that.”
Beca doesn’t even want to get started how Stacie had managed to get them roped into the Running in a Circle Booth. She’s tired from her flight, and she just really wanted to make a quick round in the activities fair, before going back to her (hopefully) empty room. She had no intentions of joining anything at all.
Another club representative picked up on their conversation. “It’s really about movement and, health, circulation—mimicking the earth’s orbit around the sun.”
Stacie frowned. “But the earth’s orbit is elliptical.”
Everyone in the booth stopped whatever they were doing, and snapped their heads towards Stacie. All their eyes widened, and someone shouted, “Sacrilege!!”
Beca quickly grabbed Stacie’s hands, tugging her out of there. “Yeah,” she said. “We’re, uh, just going to go now and look around.”
She tugged Stacie out of there fast. But she could hear one of the representatives shouting from the distance, “Around! You could do so well here!”
By the time Beca slowed down, they were already on the other side of the fair. Stacie and Beca shared a look, before bursting out in laughter.
They continued roaming around the fair. Beca didn’t really care for it, so she was playing a game of “how many numbers can Stacie get from hot guys today?” So far, the leggy brunette was at phone number twelve. They were on their way to the Swimming Club’s booth when someone interrupted them.
“Hi! Any interest in auditioning for our a capella group?”
Beca was not a fan of strangers suddenly approaching her, so by the time she was turning to face the owner of the voice, a snarky reply was already on her lips…except it died.
And the cause of death was staring at her with clear blue eyes that stood out against every single thing in her vision. Don’t be weird, Beca, she chided, and quickly averted her gaze to the flyer being handed to her.
“A capella. Oh right, this is a thing now,” she said. Nice one, Mitchell. Smooth. Now, all she had to do is look at the other girl instead of that very dangerous pretty blue eyes.
Useless. Said other girl was just as distracting as Blue Eyes…for completely different reasons. Beca backtracked. Okay, in all fairness, the other girl was hot too, with hair nicely kept in big curls. And yeah, drop-dead gorgeous. But what actually ticked Beca off was the other girl’s eyes on her, as if she was being dissected alive, her soul being judged. Beca hated it.
“Totes. We sing covers of songs but do it without any instruments—it all comes from our mouths!”
This seemed to pick up Stacie’s interests. “Interesting. What else can you do with your mouths?” The sexual undertone was evident, and Beca tried not to bark out a ‘Stacie, heel!’ There was no heeling Stacie Conrad.
Thankfully enough, Blue Eyes took it in stride, laughing before going on about the other a capella groups in Barden.
Beca took the time observing the two…Bellas (?). She noticed that the two of them were wearing identical soulmate bands through a necklace. Huh. Figures that pretty Blue Eyes was the soulmate of drop dead gorgeous Other Girl.
(Beca tried to ignore the weird and unfounded feeling that saunters up to her stomach at the revelation.)
She wondered if there was a story as to why they didn’t wear the rings on their fingers instead. Soulmate bands were really symbolic, after all. Take Stacie and Brand’s for example. Their bands were matching earrings, for some cheesy reasons Beca didn’t wish to recall.
“So, are you interested?”
Blue Eyes directed the question at her, so she took a glance at her best friend. Stacie seemed to be hooked, since she was already signing her name in a sheet. Beca shrugged. “I don’t know. Seems pretty lame.”
“Aca-scuse me? Synchronized lady dancing to a “Mariah Carey”-chart topper is not lame.”
The venom in Other Girl’s voice was evident, to Beca’s amusement.
“We sing all over the world and compete in national championships—”
“On purpose?”
“We played the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center, you bitch!”
Beca felt a satisfied smirk creep up at her face, when Other Girl snapped. But she was distracted by Blue Eyes who quickly tried to make peace, “What Aubrey means to say is that we’re a close-knit, talented group of ladies whose dream is to return to the national finals at Lincoln Center this year.” Blue Eyes said, her voice was dripping with honey. “Help us turn our dreams into a reality?”
Stacie handed Beca the signup sheet expectantly. She could feel Stacie’s amusement and curiosity on what Beca was going to do next.
“Sorry, I don’t even sing, so…it was nice meeting you.” She tried for an apologetic smile, but failed when she saw how wound up Other Girl—Aubrey looked. Her smile ended up as more of the satisfied smirk she had worn before.
“See you at auditions!” Stacie laughed as she was dragged away by the little lying brunette.