Flatline ✷ Mark Sloan

𝘅𝘅. do you know who you are?

Beth's nose wrinkled and her shoulders slumped too. Why did she feel like she was breaking the younger doctors heart?

  "Lexie..."

  "That's a yes, right?" Lexie said and when Beth didn't correct her, her eyes widened,    "Why? I thought everything was going well."

Well?

Well.

Huh.

That was not the word Beth would have chosen.

She wasn't exactly sure whether she'd call it all a  trainwreck just begging to happen, going well, but Lexie said it with such conviction, her eyes round and wary.

In that moment, Beth knew that Lexie genuinely thought that the world was full of magic and rainbows and that Elizabeth Montgomery and Mark Sloan could co-exist peacefully.

Damn, Beth thought to herself, Maybe I should've become an actress.

   "I, um," It wasn't often that Beth was speechless, but she heaved an uneasy, breathy laugh, "I just... I don't think I'd... exactly agree with you––"

   "Really?" The youngest Grey looked dumbfounded, a dent appearing in between her eyebrows. She placed what looked like a lunchbox down onto the table. "The therapy you were doing with your patient... it was... it was working so well––"

   "Oh, that was working really well."

Beth wasn't lying, it had. It had been doing better than she'd hoped, all after his medication mysteriously had been switched off of the Clonidine. At that thought, she shook her head.

   "Doctor Sloan, however?" How it made her skin crawl to so casually say his name, "Not as much."

Lexie just stared at her.

   "I thought you were friends?"

Friends.

Her and Mark?

Friends.

Oh Jesus Fucking Christ.

  "Friends?"

  "He said that you were friends––?"

  "Oh," Beth said, eyebrows raising as she spoke with a heavy sarcasm, "Well if he said we were friends then I guess we must be..." (Lexie didn't catch her tone. In fact, Lexie believed her every word.) "Let's just say we don't really see eye-to-eye––"

(Wasn't that an understatement.)

Lexie just blinked at her, so Beth, very hesitantly added:

  "Call it artistic differences."

(Yeah, Mark saw himself alive and she saw him dead.)

The intern seemed to accept that, just for a few moments.

She let out a long breath, her shoulders visibly slumping as Beth returned her gaze to the wedding invitation in her hand.

The psychiatrist pressed her lips into a thin line, trying to concentrate on the now, on the moment–– instead of the rush of New York air that threatened to burst her ear drums.

   "That's a shame," If Beth had strained hard enough, she would've heard Lexie's slight pout, "I was really enjoying working with you."

That made her pause and look over at Lexie, eyebrows raised. Immediately, the intern's cheeks flushed pink. Beth blinked once and then twice, and then words came tumbling out of Lexie's mouth almost erratically––