Classified
Title: Classified
Pairing: Beca Mitchell/Chloe Beale, Beca Mitchell/Jesse Swanson
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Spoilers: Nothing of note; references to Pitch Perfect and Fringe.
Summary: A birthday fill for Kay. Fringe AU: The scene where the Becas meet, and discover one is dating Jesse, and the other is dating Chloe.
She’s never quite realized how…smirky her face is before this moment.
God, no wonder Aubrey can’t stand me. Tipping her head, she surveys the Other Her, taking in the cut of her eyebrows (could stand a little shaping), the keen wariness in her eyes (do I always look like I expect a serial killer to backhand me with a shiv?), the flyaway brown hair (red streaks; huh. Why didn’t I think of that?). There are worse mirrors in the world, she guesses. Other Me is actually kinda….
No, nope, not going there. This is significantly weird as it is, weirder than anything she’s ever been through. The last thing she needs is to start entertaining bizzaro fantasies about her own damn face.
It’s a good face, though. As faces go. Chloe thinks so.
“So…” The Other Her is looking her carefully up and down, weighing her with a gaze that falls just a hair shy of Book It In The Other Direction. It’s easy enough to recognize: the very same look she once granted her now-girlfriend, the night she stormed through a shower curtain and forced a sing-along right there between the Pantene Pro-V and the Johnson & Johnson's. Except this time, Other Beca is very much clothed, very much dry, and very much…
“Is this not the weirdest thing you have ever…evered?” the Other Beca asks, her mouth crooked uncomfortably into something like her smile, but not quite hitting the mark. Everything about this girl feels that way: like she could be Beca-this Beca, the real Beca (except, Jesus, she looks pretty real to me)-with a little practice and some hair dye.
And less leather. That is a lot of leather.
It’s a look she maybe should give a shot someday, if her credit card ever finds its way through Barden’s shoddy-ass mailroom system. This Beca certainly rocks the 80s rocker chick look well, in a pair of tight black pants (ass. I’ve got an ass. Who knew?), a dingy black tank, and a leather jacket that seems tailor-made for arms and shoulders that, hey, might have actually seen the interior of a gym recently. The whole picture is enough to make Beca feel almost childish in her plaid shirt and ratty jeans.
Or maybe that’s the-hell-o, Rambo-Glock holstered to Other Beca’s studded belt.
“Gun,” she points out weakly, one finger unfurling from her fist and shivering in the direction of the weapon. Other Beca glances down as if she’d forgotten until this very moment that she is, in fact, packing.
“Ah,” she replies, sounding almost sheepish. “Right. Sorry. Your world outlaw guns or something?”
“No.” Why does she feel sort of indignant about that idea? Is it because Other Beca is giving her the kind of steady, somewhat-pitying look her teachers used to slide her way after her parents’ very messy, rather public divorce?
Probably. And, dude, stop that.
“I just, uh. Don’t have much cause to dress mine up and take her anywhere nice. Y’know how it is.”
Does she sound stupid? She feels stupid. And from the dim amusement in Other Beca’s blue eyes-the same blue eyes that blink blearily back at her each morning as she struggles to fingercomb her mop into something resembling a human hairstyle-it’s not unwarranted. She’s facing down her leather-clad, firearm-toting doppelganger, for Christ’s sake. And she is…what?
A Barden Bella, motherfucker. Don’t wear that shit out.
“I guess I’m still not totally clear on what’s…happening here,” she admits, raking trembling fingers through her hair. Though I think I'm taking this pretty well, all things considered.
Other Beca mirrors the action seemingly without realizing she’s doing it, her brow tightening thoughtfully.
“Crossover,” she says at last in a clipped voice. “Fabric between the universes has been getting a little…thin lately. My boss wanted me to take a look.”
“Boss?” Her Farscapian double doesn’t look any older than her own nineteen years, but maybe in her world, there isn’t such a thing as university, or a capella, or…
Chloe.
“Director Posen,” the girl affirms, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Beca gags.
“Oh, god, we work for Aubrey?”
“Not exactly delighted,” Other Beca informs her dryly. She snorts.
“So, you’re, what? A CIA operative?”
“Special Agent,” her double corrects. “FBI, Bella division.”
Naturally. “And the Bella division, that’s…”
The Other Her’s pale face instantly closes off, solemn and cloudy. “Classified,” she says briskly. Beca sighs.
“I’m just trying to work out what I’m dealing with here. My girlfriend says-“
It’s sort of funny, watching her own face blanch that way. “Your what now?”
“Girlfriend.” Hell, don’t tell me Doppelgangland’s a wacked-out government homophobe. “Chloe. Chloe’s my girlfriend.”
“Agent Beale is your…” Other Beca seems to choke on the word before it can fully form on her tongue, her eyes bulging uncomfortably. She reaches up with one hand, rubbing the back of her neck; the other closes around her holster, as if wondering if she can ward off the threat of dyke-i-tude with a few well-placed rounds.
“Chloe Beale,” Beca amends for her. “Who is not an agent of anything, far as I know. She’s a grad student, going for her master’s in advanced vocal training.”
Her double’s fingers fall away from the gun. “Right. I forgot.”
Forgot not everybody here is from crazy war land? “I take it you’re not…a vagetarian?”
The very idea seems to spin Other Beca’s head in a full three-sixty. She shakes it off, all eyeliner and clenched jaw. That much, at least, is incredibly familiar.
“No,” she sputters. “No, I’ve never-I mean, that was one time, and…and I was very drunk. We. Were very drunk.”
“You and…” Please don’t say Aubrey. Or Cynthia. Or Aubrey.
She watches her own face flood with vibrant color as the leather-clad Her leans her head back and blows out a breath. She waves her hands, doing her best to diffuse the situation.
“Never mind. Just cuz it’s my face don’t make it my business.”
“Agreed,” Other Beca says stiffly. “Anyway, that’s over with now. Jesse and I are working out a living situation, and I’m-“
Beca senses the word without her saying it. Happy. Which is great for her Other Self, totally. Although the Jesse part is a little bit…
I don’t want to say gross, but blegh. I’m getting an other-dimensionly apartment with Jesse?
“So.” She flicks a hand back and forth between her own chest and the Other Her, pasting on a grin that feels more tremulous than honest. “Gay. Not gay. Plaid. Leather. Woefully unarmed. Scary military type. Now that we’ve got that worked out-back to the thinning veil between the worlds thing?”
The leather jacket creaks as Other Beca folds her arms over her chest, her mouth twitching. “Thinning is a nice term for it. What’s actually happening is a bleed-through-your world coming through where it doesn’t belong in these, uh, patches.”
“Not good?” Beca guesses, sinking down on one of the not-totally-comfortable seats provided in this small, strange bridge room. She still isn’t entirely sure how she got here, truth be told. All she knows is, a very pretty, very cautious-faced blonde woman had side-tracked her on the way to an 8 AM chem lab, and it seemed like a good enough idea at the time, comparatively speaking. Meeting your other-worldly twin; who wouldn’t take it? Hell of a story to tell the kids someday.
Or cat. Or fish. If I can ever keep one swimming for more than a week.
So, yeah, stellar idea-except now she’s here, and her other-worldly twin is apparently rocking a serious toner for some other-worldly Jesse Swanson (he’d never let me live that shit down, if he knew), and the gun thing is sincerely distracting, and…
“Not good,” her Other Self agrees, catching hold of the other folding chair and swinging herself over it backwards. The leather pants really do a lot to accentuate the leg situation, Beca notes. May that credit card come soon.
“What do we do about it?” Something tells her Super-Glue isn’t going to do the trick. Maybe if I sing at this veil thingy hard enough?
It’s the sort of thing Chloe would laugh at like it had been uttered by Queen Ellen herself. She gets the impression Agent Mitchell might lack that particular funny bone.
“Well,” her doppelganger says reasonably, “that’s what we’re here to find out.”
“And you need me because…?”
“We don't." Ouch. "My superiors just thought it would be…helpful, if I took on the problem from a personal perspective.” Clearly, Agent Mitchell does not approve of this logic. Beca can’t blame her. The odds of her face offering some wonderful insight to a collapsing skin between their worlds is idiotic, at best.
So, totally something Aubrey Posen would come up with, then.
“I’m sorry,” she blurts, clinging to the one thing about this her brain can actually compute, “but you’re seriously with Jesse?”
Agent Mitchell scowls. “What happened to none of my business?”
“It’s not. I know. But-it’s Jesse. Movie-lover, puppy-face, pain-in-my-ass Jesse. And I’m-you’re-sleeping with that?”
“Lieutenant Swanson is a good man,” her Other Self says, in a brusque tone of voice that suggests she isn’t above resorting to fisticuffs over this topic. “A good man and an excellent soldier. Besides, you’re dating a walking Care Bear.”
“Care Bears don’t walk?” She can’t help grinning. It’s just so strange, having an argument with her own face-albeit a face that seems to lack all sense of humor and good taste in make-out partners. Still, it feels an awful lot like stopping in front of her dorm room mirror and baiting it with tiny sarcasms. It’s just fucked up.
“I just think it’s goofy,” she tells her blustery Other Self with a shrug. “Jesse, I mean. Does he look different? Is he a blond or something here? Like, seriously, how does all of this work, anyway?”
“We don’t know.” Agent Mitchell sounds heavily aggrieved to be discussing something so trivial as boyfriends while a schism between the worlds grows larger by the second. She digs in the inside pocket of her jacket and comes up with a rumpled photograph, which she thrusts with mild violence in Beca’s direction. “Here.”
It takes her only a few seconds to realize the people in the photo are…wrong, somehow. They look right together, all bunched up in a jumble of arms and heads and torsos, but to her eyes, every single one of them is off.
The boy she calls Jesse doesn’t even look like a Jesse here. His hair is shorn, his face more solid and rugged than she’s used to, his chest broad and strong. He does not appear to wear his smile with any kind of ease, possibly thanks to the long scar running from the edge of one cheekbone to the corner of his lip. She wonders if he's ever geeked out over a movie in his life, her chest clenching at the realization that, no-probably not.
Likewise, the girl she's spent so many hours ridiculing as (former) captain of the Barden Bellas does have Aubrey’s face-but it’s longer, and thinner, hollowed out around the edges. Her eyes are heavy and cold, though her mouth is smiling. She looks like her father’s daughter, the way Beca’s Aubrey has never quite managed. The thought makes her sad.
The others are wrong, too. Amy isn’t so much Fat as Muscled here, big boned and hearty the way a wrestler might be-though, thankfully, her smile is as huge and breathless as Beca remembers it. Cynthia Rose’s hair is longer and sleeker, and her hand rests possessively around Stacie’s waist. (At least, Beca presumes the girl is Stacie. Her hair is a dark honey color, her smile sharp as the blade of a knife. It’s the smile of a woman who has been through some serious shit, the likes of which Beca’s friend has never seen. She hopes, frowning down at that smile, she never will.)
And Chloe…
She doesn’t recognize her for a heartbeat. The hair is the same wavy ginger mess Beca is so used to running her fingers through, and the eyes are the same playful blue, and the skin has the same healthy glow. The hips are as curvy as they’ve always been, and the fingers are long, and the smile is elegant and mischievous and beautiful. It is, in all ways physical, her Chloe.
And yet-it’s wrong. Maybe it’s the way her collared shirt is buttoned all the way to her throat, or the tight black bracelet wound around her left wrist. Maybe it’s the slight variations in her make-up choices-too much lipstick, too little blush-or the way her hands remain flat against her thighs despite the people all around her.
Yes, she decides, running a thumbnail lightly across the still-framed face of the woman who is not her girlfriend. That’s it, the thing that makes it so indecently incorrect. Chloe-her Chloe, the Chloe who laughs at her when she burns rice for dinner, the Chloe who won’t watch television without her head in Beca’s lap, the Chloe who can’t sleep until she has climbed into the bed and nestled against her back-would never be able to stand that still amidst so many friends. Her Chloe would be all over the others: an arm around Aubrey’s waist, a head on Jesse’s shoulder, a kiss immortalized against Beca’s cheek. Her Chloe is made of moments like those, of little touches and blistering smiles, of hugs and pokes and laughter. The Chloe in the picture, this Agent Beale, looks…
An awful lot like I did, before the Bellas took me on.
She hates that more than she can say. Is still hating it, as she pushes the photo back into Agent Mitchell’s hands, good humor gone. That woman isn’t the one she’s in love with, she knows, but the mere fact that there is a Chloe out there who doesn’t nuzzle and giggle and intrude upon people’s warily-constructed walls is painful.
“They seem…nice.” What else is there to say? My girlfriend looks like the most miserable version of herself possible? Your boyfriend, my best friend, looks like a veteran from Iraq? “Did you want…?”
She’s got her phone halfway out of her pocket before Agent Mitchell frowns and shakes her head. “No. Keep it. It isn’t about-I’m not looking for that.”
I don’t care, Beca translates silently, tucking the phone away again. Or maybe, I can’t care. If what she says is true, about the skin of the world shrinking in on itself somehow, maybe that’s for the best. Maybe it’s hard enough caring about the denizens of one world. Maybe two would just be too much.
Or maybe Other Me is kind of a bitch. Does it matter?
She has questions-What put that strained smile on Agent Beale’s face? How did Other Jesse get that wicked scar? How did Aubrey Posen come to lead so many people in such a dangerous gig? Do you not have a Lilly?-but her double is plucking at her holster again, almost absently. No time for questions. Maybe no time for anything at all. That pretty blonde woman had looked awfully anxious, leading her here.
I should have skipped this tour, she thinks, suddenly feeling very tired and very nervous. I should have gone to that stupid lab, and swung around Chloe’s place after, and kissed her until the sun went down. Who needs this kind of supernatural bullshit, anyway?
“How can I help?” She asks because she’s supposed to, but as the words surge forth, she knows there’s nothing. She isn’t a physics major, or skilled with a pistol. She’s good at music, at mixing, at singing, and dancing, and making Chloe laugh. She’s good at ruffling Jesse’s hair, and throwing barbs at Aubrey’s Facebook page, and sneaking away when Amy comes up with some crazy new scheme to steal cupcakes from the vendor near CVS. She’s good at a lot of things-even things she thought she’d never be good at again, like pasting on a smile when her father starts waxing romantic about Sheila-but this?
“It’s a little out of my league,” she adds uneasily when Agent Mitchell purses her lips in thought. “I mean, I could make you a great mix-tape for world-saving. If you’re into that sort of thing.”
“Mix-tape,” the woman with her face muses. “What’s a-“
“Never mind.” A world without mix-tapes. What did Agent Pretty-Face, with her big green eyes and her help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi mouth, drag her into?
“Listen,” Agent Mitchell says, hands firm against the back of her own chair. “You’re a civilian. I know that. When Agent Dunham mentioned bringing you in for…perspective’s sake, I wasn’t big on the idea. Still can’t say I am, though you at least seem to have a brain under all that…hair.”
Oh, was that dig necessary? Putting it all in a ponytail does not equal proper management or maintenance, sweetheart.
“The best I can ask of you is to keep your eyes open. Keep a lookout for anything strange. Can you do that?”
She frowns. “Um, you’re gonna maybe have to be specific about the strange part. Because, last week, Lilly brought home an armadillo from god only knows where, and I caught her and Stacie plotting to make it a little fez and perform showtunes with it.”
Her double stares openly, jaw momentarily unhinged. It’s an extremely entertaining expression for such a stoic FBI agent.
“Ah. Well. I more meant, y’know, a bus appearing in the middle of a grocery store without driving through a wall. Or a man with two faces. Things like…things like that.”
“Oh.” Beca shrugs, considering this. “Yeah, I can watch out for that sort of thing, sure. No problem.”
“Terrific.” Agent Mitchell roots around in her jacket pocket for a second, producing a thin rectangle with professional-grade inking etched into its cardstock. “Call this number if you do happen to come across anything more unusual than, uh, Lilly.”
Is it Beca’s imagination, or does her face twist into something like unresolvable damage at that name? I don’t want to know, she decides, her heart clutching suddenly. Anything else about any of them, of her people. I don’t want to know what she’s been through.
“Is this your cell?” she asks instead, turning the card between her fingers. It makes a soft scritching sound when her rings dash against it, pleasant and a little anxiety-inducing at the same time. Agent Mitchell makes the sort of peevish face a babysitter might give her paint-splattered, half-naked charge.
“Separate universes,” she points out, deadpan. “Kind of brings a whole new meaning to ‘long-distance’, don’t you think?”
And there’s that overwhelming rush of stupid again. She pushes the card deep into her back pocket, letting her fingers hook into the denim and hold there. “So that’s it? That’s all your…boss wants from me?”
“Is there anything else you can offer?” It probably isn’t meant to sound half as insulting as it does. Beca winces.
“Hey, I didn’t go looking for you.”
Other Her sighs, running a thumb across her nose and looking almost apologetic. “Sorry. I’m sorry. It’s been a really rough week, is all. That number patches through to Agent Dunham-ah, your Agent Dunham, that is. Anything strange crops up, you give her a call. She’ll take it from there.”
Agent Dunham. Agent Beale. Agent Mitchell. Too much agency in my life all of a sudden.
She wants to ask more-who this Agent Dunham really is, how she found Beca in the first place, why me, anyway?-but before she can formulate another sentence, there’s a rap at the very solid-looking door. A young man pokes his head through without waiting for an answer.
“Posen’s looking for you.”
Beca meets his eyes, suddenly breathless. Nothin’ knocks the wind out of you like seeing your best friend all…badass.
“Woah,” he goes on, sounding considerably less thrown than she feels. “Double trouble.”
“Don’t,” Agent Mitchell replies, but there’s a smile in her voice Beca hasn’t heard before. The same smile, she knows, that creeps into her own tone whenever Chloe gets going on one of her bizarre musical rambles.
“I didn’t say a thing,” Lieutenant Swanson says carelessly, his mouth twitching. It isn’t Jesse’s smile. Well, it is, but there’s that scar, and a certain hardness around his eyes, and something twisted about the whole thing that makes Beca’s lungs steal at the air without much success. He looks broken. She can’t imagine her Jesse looking like that, not for all the sad movie scores in the world.
“I know you,” her twin points out, leaning back out of her chair and swinging her booted feet to the floor with a faint clack. “I know where your brain’s at, and we totally do not have the time.”
“Pity,” he says, looking Beca up and down. She rushes up from her own chair, stumbling awkwardly backward, and pushes the hair from her eyes.
“O-kay. Well, this has been delightful, but I, uh-“
“Missed chem lab,” Agent Mitchell drawls. Beca bites her tongue.
“Yeah. Which I was supposed to meet Chloe after, so I’ll just be…”
“I’ll walk you out,” her double insists, flicking a hand at Not Jesse. “Tell Posen I’ll be there within the hour with a report.”
“You have things to report?” he asks, shoving his hands into the pockets of crisp black uniform pants. She grins, sudden and lovely and, Beca thinks, almost girlish. It fits crookedly on her face after all this world-splitting talk.
“Nope. But she won’t want to hear that.”
She catches hold of Beca’s arm, leading her away from his amused head shake, and for one blinding moment, Beca is sure this is all a cosmic prank. A paradox in her own mind, one that will be shattered at the pressure of one Beca’s hand on the other’s body. Because the same thing can’t occupy the same space in two forms, right? Not at the same time. Everything would collapse. Everything would-
The world isn’t collapsing, though; the room still stands sturdy, the press of her sneaker soles into the floor as steady and complacent as ever. Agent Mitchell tips her a faint smile, much more like the solemn, hard woman she seems to be than the woman in love Beca caught a glimpse of a second ago.
“Thank you again. You’ve been very helpful.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Beca protests. Her double shrugs.
“True. But you did tell me something I really needed to know.” Her eyes are sparkling, almost optimistic. Helpless, Beca frowns.
“Was it the part where Aubrey’s super annoying in all universes, because I think you already knew that, deep down-“
“You haven’t noticed anything.” Her double breathes the words like a prayer, like it’s the salvation she’s been looking for all month. “No buses. No crumbling buildings. No…anything. Have you?”
“Just a blonde chick, dragging me in to chat with a mirror,” Beca confirms. Agent Mitchell squeezes her arm, guiding her down a long hall toward the exit.
“Then there’s hope,” she says simply, and doesn’t expand beyond that much. Which, honestly, Beca is pretty glad about, because this whole morning has been too messy and convoluted for her tastes. She just wants to settle in with some tunes and a pretty girl, and maybe forget there’s another version of herself running around with a Glock out there in the nethersphere.
A hand that looks exactly like her own-but isn’t-turns the handle of a thick slab of a door, wrenching it open. A head that could be her own-but isn’t-nods at the sunlight beyond. Beca bites her lip.
“Does anyone else know? That there’s a bridge to another universe set up behind the local Starbucks?”
That laugh, too, could be her own, if it were just a hair less scornful. It’s a fact that terrifies her.
“Word of casual advice,” her double says, staring out the door like part of her wants nothing more than to sprint through and never look back. “Don’t tell anyone about this. Not your Jesse. Not your Agen-Chloe. No one.”
Beca snorts. “Like they’d believe me anyway.”
“Even if they did.” The Other Her has a hand back on her holster, her mouth pulling down in that tense, smirky expression she probably wears too often. “Trust me, it’s better this way. Keeping it to yourself.”
“Check. Lips, sealed,” Beca promises. “Can I go? You’re not gonna, like, shoot me in the back when I turn around, are you? ‘Cuz Jesse’s put me through some really awful mafia movies, and-“
Agent Mitchell removes the hand from her gun, raising both into the air on either side of her head. “Go.”
Beca does. Hand braced against her back pocket, feeling the sensible weight of a wholly-bizarre card with the tips of her fingers, she walks, fast, away from the little room with the strange woman and the stranger bridge. It won’t be there, she’s suddenly certain, if she looks back over her shoulder. It will have popped away into a void, a sudden hole in space and time, like this Agent Dunham had never brought her in at all.
It will be gone-but she doesn’t glance back to check. Maybe she doesn’t want to know. Maybe the sunlight is enough to banish the weirdness.
Chloe is waiting outside the Starbucks when Beca makes her way around its corner. Her hair is brilliant flame in the sunshine, the lip of a coffee cup braced against her mouth. When she spots Beca coming, she smiles the way Chloe always has, always should, always must: huge, and gleaming, and totally in love with everything the world has to offer.
A flash of photograph echoes behind Beca’s eyes: black bracelet, wrong make-up, hands flat against slim thighs. She swallows.
“I love you.”
It comes out in a rush, a blurt, a carelessly-spat jumble of syllables that sound less like English and more like sleep. Chloe raises her eyebrows, teeth flashing, and pushes a white cardboard cup into Beca’s hands.
“You do chemistry in alleys now?”
“Y-yes.” She sips at the cider, wincing when scalding liquid strikes her tongue. “Many fine experiments to be done in alleys. It’s a very…progressive class.”
Her girlfriend kisses her once, thoughtlessly quick, and Beca catches her around the waist with her free arm. Finds her mouth again, slow this time, her forehead pressed firmly to Chloe’s. Tastes the coffee on her tongue, the sweet cream behind the bitter, the laughter snaking up from the pit of Chloe’s belly where it waits to be summoned at the drop of a hat. She loves her, she knows, more now than when she walked into that room an hour ago.
Word of casual advice. Don’t tell anyone about this.
She won’t. She’ll never find the words to bring it up, how brittle Not Jesse’s smile had been, how the crimson streaks had flowed through hair so much like her own, the inherent wrongness of the people in that picture. She never could, and therefore, she never will.
But when they pass a solemn-faced blonde woman with cool green eyes and her hands linked in her lap, her heart bounds into her throat.
And, a month later, when she catches sight of that blog post on Benji’s computer-the one about the woman found dead in a city only a few miles away, a second face fused to her body-she finds herself clutching at the card in her pocket.
Just a stupid blog post, she tells herself, though her stomach feels ready to jettison from her body entirely. Just a stupid, silly sci-fi blog. It’s Benji.
There’s hope, her double had said. There’s hope.
"Mmph. Who're you calling?" Chloe rolls toward her without opening her eyes, one hand stretching for the hem of her sleep shirt. Beca hefts her phone in one hand, the card in the other, chewing her lip.
"No one. Go back to sleep."
She wonders how late this Agent Dunham tends to stay up. Hopefully a night owl. Because if I try to wait until morning, I'll never do it. I'll never be able to work up the guts again.
Her fingers trip across the keypad, a smirking duplicate of her own face gleaming in her mind's eye.
Pairing: Beca Mitchell/Chloe Beale, Beca Mitchell/Jesse Swanson
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Nothing owned, no profit gained.
Spoilers: Nothing of note; references to Pitch Perfect and Fringe.
Summary: A birthday fill for Kay. Fringe AU: The scene where the Becas meet, and discover one is dating Jesse, and the other is dating Chloe.
She’s never quite realized how…smirky her face is before this moment.
God, no wonder Aubrey can’t stand me. Tipping her head, she surveys the Other Her, taking in the cut of her eyebrows (could stand a little shaping), the keen wariness in her eyes (do I always look like I expect a serial killer to backhand me with a shiv?), the flyaway brown hair (red streaks; huh. Why didn’t I think of that?). There are worse mirrors in the world, she guesses. Other Me is actually kinda….
No, nope, not going there. This is significantly weird as it is, weirder than anything she’s ever been through. The last thing she needs is to start entertaining bizzaro fantasies about her own damn face.
It’s a good face, though. As faces go. Chloe thinks so.
“So…” The Other Her is looking her carefully up and down, weighing her with a gaze that falls just a hair shy of Book It In The Other Direction. It’s easy enough to recognize: the very same look she once granted her now-girlfriend, the night she stormed through a shower curtain and forced a sing-along right there between the Pantene Pro-V and the Johnson & Johnson's. Except this time, Other Beca is very much clothed, very much dry, and very much…
“Is this not the weirdest thing you have ever…evered?” the Other Beca asks, her mouth crooked uncomfortably into something like her smile, but not quite hitting the mark. Everything about this girl feels that way: like she could be Beca-this Beca, the real Beca (except, Jesus, she looks pretty real to me)-with a little practice and some hair dye.
And less leather. That is a lot of leather.
It’s a look she maybe should give a shot someday, if her credit card ever finds its way through Barden’s shoddy-ass mailroom system. This Beca certainly rocks the 80s rocker chick look well, in a pair of tight black pants (ass. I’ve got an ass. Who knew?), a dingy black tank, and a leather jacket that seems tailor-made for arms and shoulders that, hey, might have actually seen the interior of a gym recently. The whole picture is enough to make Beca feel almost childish in her plaid shirt and ratty jeans.
Or maybe that’s the-hell-o, Rambo-Glock holstered to Other Beca’s studded belt.
“Gun,” she points out weakly, one finger unfurling from her fist and shivering in the direction of the weapon. Other Beca glances down as if she’d forgotten until this very moment that she is, in fact, packing.
“Ah,” she replies, sounding almost sheepish. “Right. Sorry. Your world outlaw guns or something?”
“No.” Why does she feel sort of indignant about that idea? Is it because Other Beca is giving her the kind of steady, somewhat-pitying look her teachers used to slide her way after her parents’ very messy, rather public divorce?
Probably. And, dude, stop that.
“I just, uh. Don’t have much cause to dress mine up and take her anywhere nice. Y’know how it is.”
Does she sound stupid? She feels stupid. And from the dim amusement in Other Beca’s blue eyes-the same blue eyes that blink blearily back at her each morning as she struggles to fingercomb her mop into something resembling a human hairstyle-it’s not unwarranted. She’s facing down her leather-clad, firearm-toting doppelganger, for Christ’s sake. And she is…what?
A Barden Bella, motherfucker. Don’t wear that shit out.
“I guess I’m still not totally clear on what’s…happening here,” she admits, raking trembling fingers through her hair. Though I think I'm taking this pretty well, all things considered.
Other Beca mirrors the action seemingly without realizing she’s doing it, her brow tightening thoughtfully.
“Crossover,” she says at last in a clipped voice. “Fabric between the universes has been getting a little…thin lately. My boss wanted me to take a look.”
“Boss?” Her Farscapian double doesn’t look any older than her own nineteen years, but maybe in her world, there isn’t such a thing as university, or a capella, or…
Chloe.
“Director Posen,” the girl affirms, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Beca gags.
“Oh, god, we work for Aubrey?”
“Not exactly delighted,” Other Beca informs her dryly. She snorts.
“So, you’re, what? A CIA operative?”
“Special Agent,” her double corrects. “FBI, Bella division.”
Naturally. “And the Bella division, that’s…”
The Other Her’s pale face instantly closes off, solemn and cloudy. “Classified,” she says briskly. Beca sighs.
“I’m just trying to work out what I’m dealing with here. My girlfriend says-“
It’s sort of funny, watching her own face blanch that way. “Your what now?”
“Girlfriend.” Hell, don’t tell me Doppelgangland’s a wacked-out government homophobe. “Chloe. Chloe’s my girlfriend.”
“Agent Beale is your…” Other Beca seems to choke on the word before it can fully form on her tongue, her eyes bulging uncomfortably. She reaches up with one hand, rubbing the back of her neck; the other closes around her holster, as if wondering if she can ward off the threat of dyke-i-tude with a few well-placed rounds.
“Chloe Beale,” Beca amends for her. “Who is not an agent of anything, far as I know. She’s a grad student, going for her master’s in advanced vocal training.”
Her double’s fingers fall away from the gun. “Right. I forgot.”
Forgot not everybody here is from crazy war land? “I take it you’re not…a vagetarian?”
The very idea seems to spin Other Beca’s head in a full three-sixty. She shakes it off, all eyeliner and clenched jaw. That much, at least, is incredibly familiar.
“No,” she sputters. “No, I’ve never-I mean, that was one time, and…and I was very drunk. We. Were very drunk.”
“You and…” Please don’t say Aubrey. Or Cynthia. Or Aubrey.
She watches her own face flood with vibrant color as the leather-clad Her leans her head back and blows out a breath. She waves her hands, doing her best to diffuse the situation.
“Never mind. Just cuz it’s my face don’t make it my business.”
“Agreed,” Other Beca says stiffly. “Anyway, that’s over with now. Jesse and I are working out a living situation, and I’m-“
Beca senses the word without her saying it. Happy. Which is great for her Other Self, totally. Although the Jesse part is a little bit…
I don’t want to say gross, but blegh. I’m getting an other-dimensionly apartment with Jesse?
“So.” She flicks a hand back and forth between her own chest and the Other Her, pasting on a grin that feels more tremulous than honest. “Gay. Not gay. Plaid. Leather. Woefully unarmed. Scary military type. Now that we’ve got that worked out-back to the thinning veil between the worlds thing?”
The leather jacket creaks as Other Beca folds her arms over her chest, her mouth twitching. “Thinning is a nice term for it. What’s actually happening is a bleed-through-your world coming through where it doesn’t belong in these, uh, patches.”
“Not good?” Beca guesses, sinking down on one of the not-totally-comfortable seats provided in this small, strange bridge room. She still isn’t entirely sure how she got here, truth be told. All she knows is, a very pretty, very cautious-faced blonde woman had side-tracked her on the way to an 8 AM chem lab, and it seemed like a good enough idea at the time, comparatively speaking. Meeting your other-worldly twin; who wouldn’t take it? Hell of a story to tell the kids someday.
Or cat. Or fish. If I can ever keep one swimming for more than a week.
So, yeah, stellar idea-except now she’s here, and her other-worldly twin is apparently rocking a serious toner for some other-worldly Jesse Swanson (he’d never let me live that shit down, if he knew), and the gun thing is sincerely distracting, and…
“Not good,” her Other Self agrees, catching hold of the other folding chair and swinging herself over it backwards. The leather pants really do a lot to accentuate the leg situation, Beca notes. May that credit card come soon.
“What do we do about it?” Something tells her Super-Glue isn’t going to do the trick. Maybe if I sing at this veil thingy hard enough?
It’s the sort of thing Chloe would laugh at like it had been uttered by Queen Ellen herself. She gets the impression Agent Mitchell might lack that particular funny bone.
“Well,” her doppelganger says reasonably, “that’s what we’re here to find out.”
“And you need me because…?”
“We don't." Ouch. "My superiors just thought it would be…helpful, if I took on the problem from a personal perspective.” Clearly, Agent Mitchell does not approve of this logic. Beca can’t blame her. The odds of her face offering some wonderful insight to a collapsing skin between their worlds is idiotic, at best.
So, totally something Aubrey Posen would come up with, then.
“I’m sorry,” she blurts, clinging to the one thing about this her brain can actually compute, “but you’re seriously with Jesse?”
Agent Mitchell scowls. “What happened to none of my business?”
“It’s not. I know. But-it’s Jesse. Movie-lover, puppy-face, pain-in-my-ass Jesse. And I’m-you’re-sleeping with that?”
“Lieutenant Swanson is a good man,” her Other Self says, in a brusque tone of voice that suggests she isn’t above resorting to fisticuffs over this topic. “A good man and an excellent soldier. Besides, you’re dating a walking Care Bear.”
“Care Bears don’t walk?” She can’t help grinning. It’s just so strange, having an argument with her own face-albeit a face that seems to lack all sense of humor and good taste in make-out partners. Still, it feels an awful lot like stopping in front of her dorm room mirror and baiting it with tiny sarcasms. It’s just fucked up.
“I just think it’s goofy,” she tells her blustery Other Self with a shrug. “Jesse, I mean. Does he look different? Is he a blond or something here? Like, seriously, how does all of this work, anyway?”
“We don’t know.” Agent Mitchell sounds heavily aggrieved to be discussing something so trivial as boyfriends while a schism between the worlds grows larger by the second. She digs in the inside pocket of her jacket and comes up with a rumpled photograph, which she thrusts with mild violence in Beca’s direction. “Here.”
It takes her only a few seconds to realize the people in the photo are…wrong, somehow. They look right together, all bunched up in a jumble of arms and heads and torsos, but to her eyes, every single one of them is off.
The boy she calls Jesse doesn’t even look like a Jesse here. His hair is shorn, his face more solid and rugged than she’s used to, his chest broad and strong. He does not appear to wear his smile with any kind of ease, possibly thanks to the long scar running from the edge of one cheekbone to the corner of his lip. She wonders if he's ever geeked out over a movie in his life, her chest clenching at the realization that, no-probably not.
Likewise, the girl she's spent so many hours ridiculing as (former) captain of the Barden Bellas does have Aubrey’s face-but it’s longer, and thinner, hollowed out around the edges. Her eyes are heavy and cold, though her mouth is smiling. She looks like her father’s daughter, the way Beca’s Aubrey has never quite managed. The thought makes her sad.
The others are wrong, too. Amy isn’t so much Fat as Muscled here, big boned and hearty the way a wrestler might be-though, thankfully, her smile is as huge and breathless as Beca remembers it. Cynthia Rose’s hair is longer and sleeker, and her hand rests possessively around Stacie’s waist. (At least, Beca presumes the girl is Stacie. Her hair is a dark honey color, her smile sharp as the blade of a knife. It’s the smile of a woman who has been through some serious shit, the likes of which Beca’s friend has never seen. She hopes, frowning down at that smile, she never will.)
And Chloe…
She doesn’t recognize her for a heartbeat. The hair is the same wavy ginger mess Beca is so used to running her fingers through, and the eyes are the same playful blue, and the skin has the same healthy glow. The hips are as curvy as they’ve always been, and the fingers are long, and the smile is elegant and mischievous and beautiful. It is, in all ways physical, her Chloe.
And yet-it’s wrong. Maybe it’s the way her collared shirt is buttoned all the way to her throat, or the tight black bracelet wound around her left wrist. Maybe it’s the slight variations in her make-up choices-too much lipstick, too little blush-or the way her hands remain flat against her thighs despite the people all around her.
Yes, she decides, running a thumbnail lightly across the still-framed face of the woman who is not her girlfriend. That’s it, the thing that makes it so indecently incorrect. Chloe-her Chloe, the Chloe who laughs at her when she burns rice for dinner, the Chloe who won’t watch television without her head in Beca’s lap, the Chloe who can’t sleep until she has climbed into the bed and nestled against her back-would never be able to stand that still amidst so many friends. Her Chloe would be all over the others: an arm around Aubrey’s waist, a head on Jesse’s shoulder, a kiss immortalized against Beca’s cheek. Her Chloe is made of moments like those, of little touches and blistering smiles, of hugs and pokes and laughter. The Chloe in the picture, this Agent Beale, looks…
An awful lot like I did, before the Bellas took me on.
She hates that more than she can say. Is still hating it, as she pushes the photo back into Agent Mitchell’s hands, good humor gone. That woman isn’t the one she’s in love with, she knows, but the mere fact that there is a Chloe out there who doesn’t nuzzle and giggle and intrude upon people’s warily-constructed walls is painful.
“They seem…nice.” What else is there to say? My girlfriend looks like the most miserable version of herself possible? Your boyfriend, my best friend, looks like a veteran from Iraq? “Did you want…?”
She’s got her phone halfway out of her pocket before Agent Mitchell frowns and shakes her head. “No. Keep it. It isn’t about-I’m not looking for that.”
I don’t care, Beca translates silently, tucking the phone away again. Or maybe, I can’t care. If what she says is true, about the skin of the world shrinking in on itself somehow, maybe that’s for the best. Maybe it’s hard enough caring about the denizens of one world. Maybe two would just be too much.
Or maybe Other Me is kind of a bitch. Does it matter?
She has questions-What put that strained smile on Agent Beale’s face? How did Other Jesse get that wicked scar? How did Aubrey Posen come to lead so many people in such a dangerous gig? Do you not have a Lilly?-but her double is plucking at her holster again, almost absently. No time for questions. Maybe no time for anything at all. That pretty blonde woman had looked awfully anxious, leading her here.
I should have skipped this tour, she thinks, suddenly feeling very tired and very nervous. I should have gone to that stupid lab, and swung around Chloe’s place after, and kissed her until the sun went down. Who needs this kind of supernatural bullshit, anyway?
“How can I help?” She asks because she’s supposed to, but as the words surge forth, she knows there’s nothing. She isn’t a physics major, or skilled with a pistol. She’s good at music, at mixing, at singing, and dancing, and making Chloe laugh. She’s good at ruffling Jesse’s hair, and throwing barbs at Aubrey’s Facebook page, and sneaking away when Amy comes up with some crazy new scheme to steal cupcakes from the vendor near CVS. She’s good at a lot of things-even things she thought she’d never be good at again, like pasting on a smile when her father starts waxing romantic about Sheila-but this?
“It’s a little out of my league,” she adds uneasily when Agent Mitchell purses her lips in thought. “I mean, I could make you a great mix-tape for world-saving. If you’re into that sort of thing.”
“Mix-tape,” the woman with her face muses. “What’s a-“
“Never mind.” A world without mix-tapes. What did Agent Pretty-Face, with her big green eyes and her help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi mouth, drag her into?
“Listen,” Agent Mitchell says, hands firm against the back of her own chair. “You’re a civilian. I know that. When Agent Dunham mentioned bringing you in for…perspective’s sake, I wasn’t big on the idea. Still can’t say I am, though you at least seem to have a brain under all that…hair.”
Oh, was that dig necessary? Putting it all in a ponytail does not equal proper management or maintenance, sweetheart.
“The best I can ask of you is to keep your eyes open. Keep a lookout for anything strange. Can you do that?”
She frowns. “Um, you’re gonna maybe have to be specific about the strange part. Because, last week, Lilly brought home an armadillo from god only knows where, and I caught her and Stacie plotting to make it a little fez and perform showtunes with it.”
Her double stares openly, jaw momentarily unhinged. It’s an extremely entertaining expression for such a stoic FBI agent.
“Ah. Well. I more meant, y’know, a bus appearing in the middle of a grocery store without driving through a wall. Or a man with two faces. Things like…things like that.”
“Oh.” Beca shrugs, considering this. “Yeah, I can watch out for that sort of thing, sure. No problem.”
“Terrific.” Agent Mitchell roots around in her jacket pocket for a second, producing a thin rectangle with professional-grade inking etched into its cardstock. “Call this number if you do happen to come across anything more unusual than, uh, Lilly.”
Is it Beca’s imagination, or does her face twist into something like unresolvable damage at that name? I don’t want to know, she decides, her heart clutching suddenly. Anything else about any of them, of her people. I don’t want to know what she’s been through.
“Is this your cell?” she asks instead, turning the card between her fingers. It makes a soft scritching sound when her rings dash against it, pleasant and a little anxiety-inducing at the same time. Agent Mitchell makes the sort of peevish face a babysitter might give her paint-splattered, half-naked charge.
“Separate universes,” she points out, deadpan. “Kind of brings a whole new meaning to ‘long-distance’, don’t you think?”
And there’s that overwhelming rush of stupid again. She pushes the card deep into her back pocket, letting her fingers hook into the denim and hold there. “So that’s it? That’s all your…boss wants from me?”
“Is there anything else you can offer?” It probably isn’t meant to sound half as insulting as it does. Beca winces.
“Hey, I didn’t go looking for you.”
Other Her sighs, running a thumb across her nose and looking almost apologetic. “Sorry. I’m sorry. It’s been a really rough week, is all. That number patches through to Agent Dunham-ah, your Agent Dunham, that is. Anything strange crops up, you give her a call. She’ll take it from there.”
Agent Dunham. Agent Beale. Agent Mitchell. Too much agency in my life all of a sudden.
She wants to ask more-who this Agent Dunham really is, how she found Beca in the first place, why me, anyway?-but before she can formulate another sentence, there’s a rap at the very solid-looking door. A young man pokes his head through without waiting for an answer.
“Posen’s looking for you.”
Beca meets his eyes, suddenly breathless. Nothin’ knocks the wind out of you like seeing your best friend all…badass.
“Woah,” he goes on, sounding considerably less thrown than she feels. “Double trouble.”
“Don’t,” Agent Mitchell replies, but there’s a smile in her voice Beca hasn’t heard before. The same smile, she knows, that creeps into her own tone whenever Chloe gets going on one of her bizarre musical rambles.
“I didn’t say a thing,” Lieutenant Swanson says carelessly, his mouth twitching. It isn’t Jesse’s smile. Well, it is, but there’s that scar, and a certain hardness around his eyes, and something twisted about the whole thing that makes Beca’s lungs steal at the air without much success. He looks broken. She can’t imagine her Jesse looking like that, not for all the sad movie scores in the world.
“I know you,” her twin points out, leaning back out of her chair and swinging her booted feet to the floor with a faint clack. “I know where your brain’s at, and we totally do not have the time.”
“Pity,” he says, looking Beca up and down. She rushes up from her own chair, stumbling awkwardly backward, and pushes the hair from her eyes.
“O-kay. Well, this has been delightful, but I, uh-“
“Missed chem lab,” Agent Mitchell drawls. Beca bites her tongue.
“Yeah. Which I was supposed to meet Chloe after, so I’ll just be…”
“I’ll walk you out,” her double insists, flicking a hand at Not Jesse. “Tell Posen I’ll be there within the hour with a report.”
“You have things to report?” he asks, shoving his hands into the pockets of crisp black uniform pants. She grins, sudden and lovely and, Beca thinks, almost girlish. It fits crookedly on her face after all this world-splitting talk.
“Nope. But she won’t want to hear that.”
She catches hold of Beca’s arm, leading her away from his amused head shake, and for one blinding moment, Beca is sure this is all a cosmic prank. A paradox in her own mind, one that will be shattered at the pressure of one Beca’s hand on the other’s body. Because the same thing can’t occupy the same space in two forms, right? Not at the same time. Everything would collapse. Everything would-
The world isn’t collapsing, though; the room still stands sturdy, the press of her sneaker soles into the floor as steady and complacent as ever. Agent Mitchell tips her a faint smile, much more like the solemn, hard woman she seems to be than the woman in love Beca caught a glimpse of a second ago.
“Thank you again. You’ve been very helpful.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Beca protests. Her double shrugs.
“True. But you did tell me something I really needed to know.” Her eyes are sparkling, almost optimistic. Helpless, Beca frowns.
“Was it the part where Aubrey’s super annoying in all universes, because I think you already knew that, deep down-“
“You haven’t noticed anything.” Her double breathes the words like a prayer, like it’s the salvation she’s been looking for all month. “No buses. No crumbling buildings. No…anything. Have you?”
“Just a blonde chick, dragging me in to chat with a mirror,” Beca confirms. Agent Mitchell squeezes her arm, guiding her down a long hall toward the exit.
“Then there’s hope,” she says simply, and doesn’t expand beyond that much. Which, honestly, Beca is pretty glad about, because this whole morning has been too messy and convoluted for her tastes. She just wants to settle in with some tunes and a pretty girl, and maybe forget there’s another version of herself running around with a Glock out there in the nethersphere.
A hand that looks exactly like her own-but isn’t-turns the handle of a thick slab of a door, wrenching it open. A head that could be her own-but isn’t-nods at the sunlight beyond. Beca bites her lip.
“Does anyone else know? That there’s a bridge to another universe set up behind the local Starbucks?”
That laugh, too, could be her own, if it were just a hair less scornful. It’s a fact that terrifies her.
“Word of casual advice,” her double says, staring out the door like part of her wants nothing more than to sprint through and never look back. “Don’t tell anyone about this. Not your Jesse. Not your Agen-Chloe. No one.”
Beca snorts. “Like they’d believe me anyway.”
“Even if they did.” The Other Her has a hand back on her holster, her mouth pulling down in that tense, smirky expression she probably wears too often. “Trust me, it’s better this way. Keeping it to yourself.”
“Check. Lips, sealed,” Beca promises. “Can I go? You’re not gonna, like, shoot me in the back when I turn around, are you? ‘Cuz Jesse’s put me through some really awful mafia movies, and-“
Agent Mitchell removes the hand from her gun, raising both into the air on either side of her head. “Go.”
Beca does. Hand braced against her back pocket, feeling the sensible weight of a wholly-bizarre card with the tips of her fingers, she walks, fast, away from the little room with the strange woman and the stranger bridge. It won’t be there, she’s suddenly certain, if she looks back over her shoulder. It will have popped away into a void, a sudden hole in space and time, like this Agent Dunham had never brought her in at all.
It will be gone-but she doesn’t glance back to check. Maybe she doesn’t want to know. Maybe the sunlight is enough to banish the weirdness.
Chloe is waiting outside the Starbucks when Beca makes her way around its corner. Her hair is brilliant flame in the sunshine, the lip of a coffee cup braced against her mouth. When she spots Beca coming, she smiles the way Chloe always has, always should, always must: huge, and gleaming, and totally in love with everything the world has to offer.
A flash of photograph echoes behind Beca’s eyes: black bracelet, wrong make-up, hands flat against slim thighs. She swallows.
“I love you.”
It comes out in a rush, a blurt, a carelessly-spat jumble of syllables that sound less like English and more like sleep. Chloe raises her eyebrows, teeth flashing, and pushes a white cardboard cup into Beca’s hands.
“You do chemistry in alleys now?”
“Y-yes.” She sips at the cider, wincing when scalding liquid strikes her tongue. “Many fine experiments to be done in alleys. It’s a very…progressive class.”
Her girlfriend kisses her once, thoughtlessly quick, and Beca catches her around the waist with her free arm. Finds her mouth again, slow this time, her forehead pressed firmly to Chloe’s. Tastes the coffee on her tongue, the sweet cream behind the bitter, the laughter snaking up from the pit of Chloe’s belly where it waits to be summoned at the drop of a hat. She loves her, she knows, more now than when she walked into that room an hour ago.
Word of casual advice. Don’t tell anyone about this.
She won’t. She’ll never find the words to bring it up, how brittle Not Jesse’s smile had been, how the crimson streaks had flowed through hair so much like her own, the inherent wrongness of the people in that picture. She never could, and therefore, she never will.
But when they pass a solemn-faced blonde woman with cool green eyes and her hands linked in her lap, her heart bounds into her throat.
And, a month later, when she catches sight of that blog post on Benji’s computer-the one about the woman found dead in a city only a few miles away, a second face fused to her body-she finds herself clutching at the card in her pocket.
Just a stupid blog post, she tells herself, though her stomach feels ready to jettison from her body entirely. Just a stupid, silly sci-fi blog. It’s Benji.
There’s hope, her double had said. There’s hope.
"Mmph. Who're you calling?" Chloe rolls toward her without opening her eyes, one hand stretching for the hem of her sleep shirt. Beca hefts her phone in one hand, the card in the other, chewing her lip.
"No one. Go back to sleep."
She wonders how late this Agent Dunham tends to stay up. Hopefully a night owl. Because if I try to wait until morning, I'll never do it. I'll never be able to work up the guts again.
Her fingers trip across the keypad, a smirking duplicate of her own face gleaming in her mind's eye.