Chapter Text
October 2013
A painful screech cuts through the morning air as Annie Edison blindly paws at her bedside table, searching for her alarm clock's snooze button. The blessed silence that follows offers little relief. She takes a deep breath, already exhausted despite eight hours of sleep. The weight of perpetual fatigue has become her constant companion, a stark contrast to who she used to be.
Not so long ago – though it feels like another lifetime – she would spring out of bed the moment her eyes opened, eager to tackle colour-coded schedules and carefully planned goals. Those memories mock her now as she stares up at the ceiling, willing herself to find the energy to face another day at her soul-destroying job. After what seems like no time at all, her second alarm pierces the quiet, and she silences it with a resigned sigh, slowly forcing her body through the mechanical motions of leaving her bed.
Shuffling sleepily out of her room in Apartment 303, Annie is greeted by what has become a familiar sight of decay. Bowls of half-eaten buttered noodles and soggy, rainbow-stained cereal bowls litter every surface, multiplying day by day like some twisted science experiment. The mess seems to grow exponentially, much like her resentment. Troy and Abed are sprawled across the sofa, dead to the world, while the harsh glow of a questionable streaming website burns into the LED TV screen – a perfect metaphor, Annie thinks, for how they're burning away their potential.
She wants to scream. She actually does, silently, her face contorting with the effort of containing her frustration. It's not as if they have jobs to rush to, deadlines to meet, or responsibilities to shoulder. They could at least clean up after themselves, especially now that she's increasingly covering their share of the rent. Instead, Abed has descended into what she can only describe as a television-induced fugue state. After exhausting every episode of Inspector Spacetime, he's embarked on an obsessive mission to watch all several thousand episodes of Coronation Street – a British soap opera that's been running since 1960 – from some dubious streaming site. He's becoming more detached with each passing episode, and Annie can't remember the last time he left the apartment. She's genuinely worried he might develop rickets. Troy, despite his obvious struggle with the thick northern English accents and complete disinterest in the show, maintains his vigil beside Abed, as if afraid to break their increasingly dysfunctional routine.
When Abed stirs, Annie automatically plasters on a bright smile – the same one she's now perfected for dealing with clients. "Morning, Abed," she chirps, hating how false her voice sounds.
"Hi," he responds flatly, blinking against the morning light as he elbows Troy awake.
"Hey, I was thinking," Annie ventures, clinging to a desperate hope she knows will be disappointed, "do you guys want to go to the cinema tonight? There's a new movie out called Captain Phillips. It's a true story about a ship captain who gets captured and held hostage by pirates."
Troy flinches at the premise, his expression briefly uneasy before he sinks back into the couch. "Sounds terrifying," he mutters, a hint of fear in his voice.
"No thanks, Annie. We're up to 1963. Can't afford to take a night off. We're hoping to be finished by 2016," Abed responds, his voice completely devoid of enthusiasm.
"Come on, Abed," she pleads, unable to keep the desperation from her voice. "When was the last time you even went outside? Don't you always say that 'watching a movie in a theatre is like stepping into another dimension, where the audience becomes part of a shared dream'?" She quotes his words back to him, hoping to spark something – anything – of the friend she used to know. "You can't get that in here, Abed. I haven't had a night out since my graduation. Please come with me?" She hates herself for the flutter of her eyelashes, for this regression to old manipulation tactics.
"No, thank you. But you have fun," Abed replies, already turning back to the screen.
"Fine," Annie snaps, the word sharp with frustration. Once the source of adventure and whimsy in her life, Troy and Abed were quickly becoming the worst roommates in the greater Greendale area. Was it really so much of a sacrifice to ask them to give her some small semblance of a social life.
She storms to the bathroom, going through her morning routine with aggressive efficiency, muttering curses under her breath as she cleans her teeth and applies her mascara. The rest of the study group – though they can hardly be called that anymore – isn't any better. Shirley pours all her time into her new Shirley's Sandwiches location on the main road, convinced it's "God's plan," though that plan doesn’t seem to include keeping in touch. Annie's offers to babysit, even for free, just to have some company beyond her soulless colleagues and increasingly catatonic roommates, have been brushed aside with the excuse that Shirley and Andre barely go out these days. Britta wasn’t any better. She had rarely provided intelligent conversation when sober, but now she seems to exist in a perpetual haze of marijuana smoke and always seemed to be working at whichever bar was unfortunate enough to employ her that week whenever Annie tried to make plans. Even Pierce, who had finally seemed to find his place in their strange family, had continued his drift away to spend more time with his half-brother Gilbert.
And Jeff? Annie's hand trembles slightly as she applies her lipstick. Jeff had made appearances at Greendale after his early graduation, but those visits had grown increasingly sporadic as he devoted himself to his burgeoning law practice. (It must be going well – she’d seen his photo in the local paper a couple of months ago, his confident smirk replaced by something close to genuine pride as he posed next to a relieved client no longer facing eviction.) He'd attended their graduation ceremony, but Annie had only seen him twice since then. His last communication had been a perfunctory congratulations in the group chat when she landed her job in August. He obviously thought he was too good for them now he had returned to his old life.
The memory of her desperate attempt to keep the group together during their first year hits her with painful clarity. She had been nineteen then, sabotaging their Spanish teacher to force them to retake the class, terrified of losing the first real connections she'd made after rehab. Everyone had been so angry with her, but hadn't she been right? Without the structure of classes and study sessions, they had scattered like leaves in the wind, their promises of eternal friendship proving as substantial as morning mist. Losing her real family had been painful enough, but losing the one she had created for herself seemed to hurt even more.
Tears begin to well in her eyes, threatening to ruin her carefully applied makeup. Annie digs her nails into her forearm, focusing on the sharp sting to hold back the flood of emotion. The pain is grounding, familiar – a coping mechanism she thought she'd left behind with her Adderall addiction and teenage insecurities. She takes a deep, shuddering breath, straightening her spine and smoothing her expression into professional neutrality.
She storms out of the bathroom, grabbing her heavy handbag as she strides through the apartment. The slam of the front door behind her is satisfying, but empty – like everything else in her post-Greendale life, it's just noise signifying nothing, heard by no one who truly cares to listen.