Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟲𝟵 she had a marvellous time ruining everything

𝙇𝙓𝙄𝙓.
SHE HAD A MARVELLOUS TIME
RUINING EVERYTHING

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tw,

discussion around m*scarriage andsuicide/self harm in this chapterplease take care.

particularly intense parts will be marked.please do not feel pressuredto read despite your triggers.things will make sensewith or without the content.

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OW. OW. OW. 

Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.

Beth had one hell of a punch, Derek had to give her that.

Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow--

God, he hadn't had a sucker punch like that since Mark had attempted to flatten his nose. 

Now, that had been rough, he'd felt that for days. 

Mark had a good punch too and the throb of Derek's nose made him wonder whether, once upon a time, Mark had coached Beth on how to really make it hurt. Derek didn't get punched often but when he did, it seemed to really catch him off-guard.

(It hurt, it hurt a lot.)

He shouldn't have been surprised, that's what Addison had said when it'd been just the two of them. She'd been sat in the corner, eyes flushed with tears and jaw clenched in a way that told him she was trying very hard not to let those tears fall-- he looked over at his ex-wife and the family resemblance immediately struck him. 

Her face twisted and she repeated those words with a bitter glare, still dressed in her scrubs from her surgery:

You deserved that.

His shirt was speckled with blood, enough to startle himself in the mirror when he'd eventually made it into the restroom. He'd stared at himself, seeing something out of a stage production of Carrie. 

He'd had to change to clothes after realising that walking around his own hospital covered in his own blood, after the past couple of months, was definitely not the best idea. 

He'd resurfaced with a shaky sigh and walked back into his office (Addison was long gone) and called his allocated lackey to go and grab him a new shirt.

He couldn't contain his displeasure when his office door opened and his wife appeared, holding a shirt aloft and staring at him with raised eyebrows. He swore under his breath, grimacing as she closed the door behind her, dumping the clothing on the back of an arm chair and placing her hands on her hips. 

With a long sigh, Derek turned around, stalking back behind his desk, using it as the crutch it'd started to become.

"Where's Kepner?" He asked, looking down at the same piece of paper that had been on his desk for the past hour. 

Across the room, Meredith let out an indignant noise, the sort that made his skin bristle. (In all honesty, he'd never imagined himself to be disappointed to see Meredith instead of the intense, go-lucky redhead, but he supposed that there was a first time for everything.) 

"I asked her to get me a shirt--"

"I know," She replied, watching as he undid his tie, "She asked me for the keys but I was happy to go grab it." He nodded haplessly, "She's doing her job."

A beat passed.

"Was it Mark?"

Her question would've made him laugh if it wasn't for the fact that any expression or movement made his whole lower face burn. 

Instead, he just went for a light grimace, the closest thing he could manage to a displeased smile. He couldn't make the sound either; all that escaped him was a faint groan; he shook his head and drew in a long, strained breath.

"Beth."

Meredith didn't appear very surprised. 

Slowly, she nodded, walking forwards until they were just a desk apart. 

He felt her eyes on her, heavy and scrutinising. Meredith didn't speak until he looked at her, his gaze slowly dragging upwards (to her, he appeared like a kid who knew they were about to reprimanded. It made her frown to herself and wait for whatever grand story this was going to turn out to be--)

"Beth?"

She repeated as if to prompt him to expand on what he meant. 

(Silently, Meredith was doubting that Beth was the type of person to walk into a room and throw a fist without a reason behind it.) 

She averted her eyes down to the table and pressed her lips into a thin line, trying her best not to chuckle-- it didn't feel right with the very clear mood. But, Derek seemed to sense it. His brow, very slowly, furrowed.

"What?"

Meredith just shook her head, "I was wondering how long it'd take her before she spoke her mind."

Listlessly, Derek stared across his desk, slowly undoing his tie. 

She held his gaze and he didn't like the way that Meredith seemed to smile slightly to herself, as if she wasn't as alarmed at the amount of blood that was covering him as he was. (He'd been startled at it. He'd been put off by the throbbing in his nose and the way that his head was dizzy. It was as if Beth had been strong and abrupt enough to quite literally knock something into him. (Meredith would have vehemently argued against sense) 

Swiftly, Derek changed his shirt, glancing down at his pager just to check.

Mark wasn't responding to his page or his text messages. Odd.

"Speak her mind?" He said as he checked his cell phone. Again, nothing. His wife just watched him, leaning against his desk as he tossed his old shirt aside, planning to dump it in the nearest biohazard bin when he had the chance. "Does that really include physical assault?"

Meredith shrugged, "Have you met Beth?" 

He frowned at her. 

Meredith just raised an eyebrow back at him. 

"Have you forgotten what you said when she came to Seattle?" Another question that Derek didn't really know how to respond to. "You said that it was only a matter of time before she broke something--"

Derek paused. He had said that.

 Although, at the time he'd meant Mark's nose and not his (well, he'd know if it was broken for sure if Mark would answer his stupid pager.) He could remember Meredith lingering in the bedroom door of their house, arms crossed over his chest and brow furrowed.

 ("Why has no one ever mentioned Beth before?") Derek, with a sigh, had had to play it off, as if the thought of how New York ended with Beth, hadn't filled him with an insurmountable amount of guilt. ("She's Addison's sister, not mine. I didn't want to lead with information about my ex-wife's family. That's not a great pickup line.")

"I meant Mark," Derek said lightly, trying to ignore the fact that Meredith didn't look very convinced. She tilted her head to the side slightly, her stare adding weight after weight onto his shoulders. "I meant... I meant another show like she used to do back in New York. Throw a plate or something--"

"You must've just got in the way." 

She spoke so nonchalantly that he almost scoffed. 

His mouth got dry at the thought of it. 

Come to think of it, this office was beginning to feel like a permanent hot seat, one that Derek didn't particularly like anymore. 

He buttoned up his shirt almost violently, his fingers working in precise and swift movements that were characteristic of a man who spent his whole professional career sewing brains back together. By the time he was replacing his tie with a spare from his desk, Meredith had progressed to sitting in the exact seat that Beth had left.

"She found out that I was the reason she got her surgical license confiscated."

Saying those words out loud felt almost unreal. 

They fell out in a long sigh, as if they'd been compressed inside of him for so long that they were fighting for their way out. He hadn't ever admitted that to someone before, well, other than a rather stricken Mark who had appeared, baffled and angry on Beth's behalf, on his doorstep after it had happened. 

But he'd never said those specific words. He'd never made such a direct admission of guilt before.

"Well," Meredith said softly, "Explains the nose."

Derek didn't speak. 

He just ground his molars together and exhaled sharply, in a way of clear frustration-- his head was still spinning, just as it had been for the past couple of hours. He couldn't focus on his tie and he was beginning to get agitated. He swore under his breath, his hands suddenly shaky and unsteady. 

There was an unrest inside of him, one that had been jostled from the moment he'd opened Beth's medical file nearly two weeks ago. He didn't look up as Meredith gently stood and walked towards him; he froze as she took the tie from his hands, tying it for him.

He didn't meet her eye.

"Do I need to be worried?"

What a question. 

Did Meredith need to be worried? 

She said it so casually but he couldn't help but wonder about the last time Meredith had been worried; truthfully, getting shot in front of your wife by a patient's husband really had scrambled things for him. 

Now, when Meredith asked if she should be worried, he couldn't help but spiral into the familiar pattern of how quickly things could just go wrong. 

Derek watched her hands expertly work the fabric into a knot-- as he did so, he was so strongly reminded of the night he'd proposed to Addison.

(His hands had shaken so violently from nerves that she'd tied his tie while they waited for the taxi to the restaurant.)

(He'd been hiding in the bedroom and Beth had found him; she'd swanned in with an easy smile, a knowing sparkle in her eye and cracked jokes until he'd been able to still the tremor in his fingers.)

(Then, once his tie was tight and his nerves were swallowed to the back of his throat, she'd pulled him by the sleeve and told him, in confidence, that she was excited for him to join the family: "Archie's alright... but he always says the same anecdotes over and over... it'll be nice for some different conversation topics at Thanksgiving.")

Derek, very slowly, shook his head. 

Whatever it was that was going on, he could handle it.

Right?

"You sure?" Meredith prompted, eyebrows raising slightly as he finally met her eye. Her mouth twitched in either contempt or amusement, Derek couldn't tell which. "Last time you and Beth fell out she ended up on my couch for two weeks."

That made Derek pause. Yet another thing he didn't like to think about. Admittedly, he couldn't exactly remember what he'd said to Beth back in that forest, but, he could remember the whiplashed look on her face. 

Those wide eyes, the pallid bloodless look in her cheeks, the way she'd stared at the outstretched bottle as if it was going to attack her. 

God, it was the same look she'd had as he told her that he knew she'd been pregnant when she'd left.

Fuck.

"It's fine," Derek said very tenderly, his bloody nose completely contradicting everything he'd just said. 

(Beth had been right. She'd stood up during that interview and told Addison that she was allying with truly the last person on earth that she should feel any loyalty towards. Wasn't that the same for Derek?) 

"I've got it sorted," He added, after a beat.

Meredith stared at him for a few moments. 

He wondered, very idly, what was going through his brain-- could she tell what a blatant lie that was? 

Derek had no idea what he was doing, he had absolutely nothing sorted. 

He was convinced that he was just running off of pure fear, the same terrifying impulse that had risen in him from the moment that Gary Clark had raised a gun at him. (He'd deserved that too.) His fight or flight had kicked in and he'd chosen fight. Fight so fiercely and so adamantly.

But when did he stop fighting?

"You should get Mark to look at that," Meredith said gently, stepping backwards as Derek sighed to himself. 

He appeared more sad than angry. His frustration had dissipated into clouds that clogged the back of his throat, causing it hard for him to swallow without feeling like his whole body was going to collapse into itself. 

 "Page him," Meredith encouraged, almost tiredly, "The Chief of Surgery can't go into board meetings with a broken nose."

Absently, Derek's eyes found the stack of papers on his desk again. 

The cursed bane of his existence at this exact moment. Papers headed with Elizabeth Montgomery and confirmed by Addison Forbes-Montgomery, OBGYN, to be medical proof that she'd been pregnant when she'd left Manhattan. 

They were just sitting there, neatly stacked and pretty, just waiting for things to get heated again. Just beside those papers sat his phone, silent and abandoned from his last message. He rubbed at his forehead, wincing as his grimace jostled his nose.

"What did you just say?" Derek asked quietly.

Meredith looked back over her shoulder towards him, "I said, 'you should get Mark to look at that.'"

He stared at the medical record: oh, the irony.

His fight and flight response, apparently, was still in full effect. 

He was fighting everything, everyone and now he was fighting Beth, the only person in the world who understood what they'd all been through. (She'd been right. They were the same. They thought the same and felt the same. Maybe Beth just had a better way of hiding it than he did.) 

They'd always been so similar. Those papers on his desk, not only were set to screw Mark over, but also incriminate Beth legally-- he hadn't expected white-collar crime from her, but it was sure a nice surprise.

Mark didn't know. In all honesty, Derek wished that he didn't know either. 

They were, indeed, all liars, and Derek was beginning to realise that it was for a very good reason.

"I fell out with Beth back in '97," Derek cleared his throat, averting his eyes down to his desk. He trailed his fingers across the surface, following a wood grain as if it were a vein. He stabbed his fingernail into it, imagining the blood that would pool under his fingertip. "She found out that I sent Amelia to a rehab centre in the Hamptons... She said that I wasn't treating my sister like a human because I had to dupe her into getting there. 'I wasn't acting rationally'..."

He pressed his lips into a thin line.

"...But what she didn't know was that Amy nearly overdosed two weeks before I had her committed," He didn't look up, just stared into the wood grain on the desk until his eyes were unfocused and the whole world was blurry. "I had to trick her, sure. It was a pretty hard place, but the help Amy got... it kept her sober long enough for her to avoid dying, so I considered it a win. I was an asshole about it... but it helped... it worked."

(In that scenario, making the hard decision had saved a life. It was so different to where he was now, just two months after a decision he'd made had directly resulted in the death of his staff, of people that trusted him as a leader. (Derek dragged a hand over his face, his jaw locked tight.) Amy had survived New York, and he was pretty sure that he was the only reason.)

"I had to be the asshole," Derek continued, still not looking up. "I had to be the bad cop because... in Amy's eyes the pills were the good cop, the alcohol-- and it's the same with Beth," He shook his head lightly. "It was the exact same with Beth, but with her... with her I had to be that because Mark loved her far too much at the beginning to be the bad guy."

It was true. He could remember that conversation that they'd had like the back of his hand. Mark had paced thin lines in the carpet, completely lost on what to do. 

What to do? What to do? He barely even knew what to do in a normal relationship; Mark had been startled from the moment that he'd fallen into that relationship, always second-guessing, always seconds away from cold feet. 

Derek, on the other hand, was very familiar with this situation. While Mark was floundering as if he was in a completely foreign, unfamiliar territory (which, undoubtedly, he was), Derek had been focused.

He'd assessed the situation. He'd made the hard decision. He'd acted.

"Amy took an extended leave from her work when she was at her worst," He was saying all of this out loud-- why? He couldn't tell whether he was trying to convince the universe that he'd made the right decision or the fact that he just didn't want his wife to be angry at him too. "But Beth didn't. She wouldn't. She kept working until she almost killed herself-- she was going to kill someone too. She was going to ruin her own career and go up against the board for negligence."

Fuck.

He hadn't thought about this in years. 

He supposed, like the rest of them, he'd tried to forget it too. He could remember how Mark had just completely refused to even think about her. 

Derek had spoken about her, he'd mentioned her in passing to just see that muscle in Mark's forehead twitch. She'd always been passed off as the one that Mark fucked over, equated to everyone as Addison's estranged sister or Mark's scorned ex-- but in reality, he was beginning to realise that she was simply just the person they'd all failed.

A long, drawn out breath.

(That was the problem with Derek Shepherd's fight or flight. As aforementioned, it hadn't turned off. His body was still reeling from the adrenalin, from the fear and the confusion and that switch at the back of your head that made your mouth go dry. It was still there. His veins were still dilated, his heart beat still elevated and his mind still moving too fast. (His whole life was too fast, hence why he'd taken to creeping over the speed limit on his drive home.))

Amelia may have (barely) survived New York, but they'd let the corpse of Beth Montgomery get on that flight in a bid to resuscitate herself. A pregnant corpse.

"It was the right call," Derek breathed out, feeling his heartbeat in his fingertips. "It was the right call and I won't apologise for it."

Saying those things made him feel like a toddler that was refusing to apologise for something menial. 

He wouldn't apologise for breaking his sisters toy. He wouldn't apologise for throwing away Beth's surgical career. He hadn't meant to ruin it, he had suggested an extended period of leave, but the hospital's foundation had already been tense on the thought of a negligence suit. 

Instead of granting her leave, they'd suspended her and wiped her surgical license out with it in the progress--

Derek still didn't know how he felt about it.

What he did know, however, was that Meredith was staring at him intently. Her arms were crossed over her chest and she was watching his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. With a lump in his throat, he very tiredly asked her What? 

This time, he sounded like a slightly scorned teen. His head lowered and he pushed Beth's medical file across the desk with two fingers. The sound of it sliding against the wood caused goosebumps to rise on the backs of his arms.

"Why don't you tell this to Beth?" Meredith asked patiently. 

(Her calm, even tone appeared like the voice of reason, causing Derek to shrink slightly from the realisation that he, very notably, was not reasonable in this situation at all. He'd gotten mad. He'd gotten loud. He'd deserved it.) His wife leant against his desk, a dent appearing between her eyebrows. 

"Or Mark... Or even Addison?" She asked, "Anyone that's actually involved in this?"

"Beth's angry," Derek said, wiping dry blood from under his nose, "She won't listen."

Slowly, Meredith's brow furrowed, "I think she'd want to hear this"

"You don't know her like I do," He shook his head, "When she's angry or hurt she doesn't listen. She won't care that I do everything I do out of best interest--"

"How do you know that for sure?"

"Because she's like me," was all that Derek could respond with, feeling slightly breathless. "She's stubborn... she thinks she's completely untouchable and she thinks that things happen in the world without consequence. She's fighting as much as I am. She doesn't want to be honest about anything and she's a really, really good liar. She's better than any of us." He paused, feeling his shoulders fall. "She's better than any of us and because of me she nearly died."

(He'd found Mark's guilt funny. How was it that Mark could have so much guilt over causing Beth to flatline in that boardroom when the whole nightmare had been Derek's causing? It was because of him that Beth had been shot, just as it was his fault that eighteen people had lost their lives.)

Admittedly, that revelation had almost unhinged him. 

It'd unlocked some sort of mania that Derek couldn't exactly understand. 

He'd spent his whole career, alongside his personal life during this past decade, fighting to keep people alive and yet it'd taken one DNR patient and a failed lawsuit from a grieving husband for him to completely change his tune.

(What use was it?)

All of that time he'd spent with Addison trying to keep Beth afloat? 

They'd gotten good at it, constantly refilling the air in Amy and Beth's life jackets to keep them both above water. 

Dare he say, he'd gotten better at handling Beth, mostly because he liked her considerably more than the dark nature of Amy, even though the two women brought their own manic and senseless definition to 'Twisted Sisters'. 

She'd not only become his sister but one of his best friends.

He could tell, from the silence that Meredith didn't know what to say. 

She was standing a few steps behind, as he turned his back and stared out over the hospital, back over towards the suspended catwalk. If he squinted long enough, he could picture what a sight he must've been, slowly bleeding out on that very floor. 

He had to close his eyes for a moment. He had to hold the back of his chair. 

He felt her step closer to him, sensing that this was one of those moments that he just needed her a few inches closer.

"D'you know, that when I woke up from surgery, April Kepner apologised for getting me shot..."

 He felt the need to laugh at the memory. He'd slowly come to, finding the surgical lackey sat at his bedside, pale and still shaken from watching him get shot. She'd apologised for wandering into his office that day, covered head-to-toe in blood, he'd felt the need to laugh in the actual moment. 

"But it wasn't her fault," Derek said with a sigh, "It was mine. I put all of my staff in danger and it's because of me that all of those people died. It was because of me that Beth ended up--"

He paused, his voice catching at the back of his throat.

Meredith's hand was weighing down on his shoulder. He knew it was supposed to be a sign of comfort, but it made his stomach twist and knot. 

With a long sigh, he shook his head, rubbing at his chin. Slowly, he shrugged off Meredith's hand and turned further away, clearing off half of his desk. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his cell phone light up with a response from Mark; he'd taken his time, that was for sure. 

Behind him, Meredith seemed to just watch, lost for things to say but still very present. Derek couldn't decide whether he appreciated that or not.

"She's your person," Meredith said softly. 

His face contorted, causing him to wince at the harsh movement of his nose. He could almost feel her reach out towards his arm, fingers almost brushing against his upper arm. 

When he murmured a very confused, soft 'What?', Meredith just sighed. "Like Cristina's mine, Beth's yours."

Derek's brow furrowed.

"She's not my person--"

"She is," She insisted very quietly, "I know it's not the same as me and Cristina... or even you and Mark... but you are so similar and I know that you care for her like a sister..." A pause. "She's your person even if you aren't hers right now--"

Meredith was cut off by the sound of the office door opening.

It was so loud, so sudden, as if thrown back by an explosion. 

The word opening didn't do it justice. Their heads both snapped over towards the doorway, alarmed and startled by the loud crash of the door hitting the wall-- their reactions were so deeply buried in their shared PTSD that, for a moment, Derek felt his heart stop again in his chest. 

But then, he found it within himself to process what was in front of them:

A very pissed looking Archer Montgomery.

Oh.

Fuck.

"Do you want to get your ass handed to you?"

He all but yelled it. 

A vein pulsing in his neck as he fixed his eyes on the man he'd grown to really, really dislike. 

He'd left the door open too, allowing people to glance through the door and see their Chief of Surgery looking deeply flustered. Archer, however, seemed to savour the expression on his face, no matter how hard Derek tried to regain his composure. 

On the other side of the altercation came the vehement realisation that Derek had never seen Archer quite as angry as this.

The family resemblance was almost uncanny.

"Archer," Derek began, attempting to assert something in this situation, although his voice wavered regrettably. 

(Why did this feel like part two of begging for his life? He was almost tempted to raise his hands up in front of him exactly as he'd addressed Gary Clark.) 

"That's not--"

"I don't like you," was Archer's curt, venomous response. His nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed. He pointed at his ex-brother-in-law and grinned almost manically, the light swirling around his eyes. "You can call me Doctor Montgomery if you're going to keep screwing over my family."

Ah. 

Something told Derek that Archer had either spoken to Addison or Beth, or maybe even both, that would have been fun.

He could imagine the conversation that they'd had about him. He could imagine the little muscle that would twitch in Archer's forehead as they all collectively came to the realisation that he, Derek Shepherd, was still the same asshole he'd been five years ago as his marriage to Addison fell apart.

Oh, how hating him was probably going to bring the family closer together.

(He was only tastefully spiteful about it.)

"I really, really don't like you--"

"Careful," Derek drawled, far be it to let his ego crash and burn at the hands of a man who he'd hired personally. He saw Meredith tilt her head to the side, just out of the corner of his eye. "Don't forget that I'm your boss."

"You wouldn't fire me," Archer said, with all of the Beth-inspired-conviction that he could muster. "Don't forget that I flew out here to save your ass when all of your staff decided to jump ship to Seattle Pres because they didn't feel like working in a shooting range-- I saved your ass to repay a favour because you saved mine. You're desperate for a good surgeon like me."

Derek didn't reply; mostly because, Archer was, as Archer tended to be, completely correct. There was a noticeable shortage of good, reliable neurosurgeons in Seattle and with Derek working as Chief, they were one neurosurgeon down already. 

Archer held his gaze, as if challenging him to correct him-- Derek just lowered his gaze and pressed his lips into a very thin.

"Just as I thought," Archer exhaled, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt. In the process, he paused, "And for the record, you're a shit boss."

(In the period of time since walking out of that OR and narrowly missing witnessing Beth backhand their sister over the face, Archer had had a coffee and got changed ready for his post-op checks. In fact, he'd had a lovely half hour just to himself, happy at the universe and very satisfied by the way he'd torn Mark Sloan apart outside of that OR. Things, however, had changed far more than just his clothes.)

"Archer if you--"

"Doctor Montgomery," He corrected again, his jaw set. His eye twitched slightly and it struck Derek that, much like Beth, he hadn't quite ever seen Archer this furious before. "We're not friends or  family, Shepherd."

"Doctor Montgomery," Derek repeated, his voice straining as he fought to keep his head straight. "This is something that is between me and Beth and I understand that you're angry with me--"

"Angry?" Archer echoed, his eyebrows raising, "Angry doesn't even begin to describe--"

"--And I thought that you said Beth was perfectly capable of fighting her own battles-"

"Oh, this isn't for Beth," Archer interjected, looking amused at his words. "This is purely for me. I'm having a day of self-care and apparently, that involves tearing the shit out of the men who like to make my sisters miserable."

At that thought, Derek's nose throbbed.

(Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.)

"I'm not here to argue," Archer said very tightly and Derek couldn't help but deeply dispute his every word. The dramatic entrance and the angry tone implied that that was exactly what he'd come here for. "I'm just here to make one thing very clear: until you get your act together, stay the fuck away from my family. I don't care if you need to throw yourself down a corridor to get out of my line of sight or out a fucking window, but if you even breathe in Beth's direction I will make both of those pretty blue eyes match that nose, am I clear?"

It was a very interesting set of instructions. 

Archer asking Derek to remove himself from Beth's life, what a funny situation-- hadn't Archer actively removed himself from New York and left Derek to deal with Beth at her worst? Hadn't Derek adopted the role that Archer was now so violently filling? 

(Didn't come here to argue my ass. If Derek was fighting, so was Archer.)

Meredith had taken to just standing in the corner of the room, watching with her wary eyes as Archer waited for her husband to respond. 

He would have been waiting for a very long time as Derek didn't have an answer to give him. He couldn't tell whether it was ego or just the fact that he was still deeply convinced that he had Beth's best interests at heart, but Derek had absolutely no intention of doing anything that Archer said.

"I asked you to take care of Beth," Archer continued as if he hadn't run out of steam. Meanwhile, Derek felt like a hot air balloon that was being very gradually deflated; there was too much fabric, too much air and too little heat. "When I left Seattle, I asked you to keep an eye on her. Keep her safe. And what do I get? A phone call telling me that she might die."

A pause.

"I don't know what you're doing Shepherd," He shook his head, hands placed on his hips, "But whatever it is, do fucking better."

Derek didn't exactly know what to say. 

What did he say to that sort of speech? Short and sweet. Enough to leave Derek feeling sore and blistered. 

He had to give it those Montgomery kids, they sure all knew how to make you ache-- they were all so precisely cutting with their words, all so well-spoken and expressive. It left him wary of what exactly was going to happen next.

He supposed that Archer would've probably left; he had a knack for dramatic exits that were as equally monumental as his entrances. 

(A little voice at the back of Derek's head questioned whether Archer practised stuff like that-- did he spend his whole life just bursting in and out of rooms and timing things to perfection?) 

He saw the breath that Archer let out, the satisfied sink of his shoulders as if he'd achieved exactly what he'd wanted to do. The neurosurgeon held Derek's gaze and then, with a shake of his head, went to leave.

And that's when Mark appeared.

He paused in the doorway, eyes finding Archer first and foremost. 

No one missed the tense in Mark's body as the eldest Montgomery turned his head towards him. Derek wondered whether, finally, the heat was going to get taken off of him a little bit-- but then his eyes sunk back to the file on his desk and realised that maybe that wasn't ever going to happen. 

Even Derek knew that bringing up Beth's pregnancy like that was a dick move (Which was good, because he would have been delusional to think otherwise and would have probably ended up on the other end of a Psych consultation) but, as he'd said earlier, he'd always carried the role of bad cop with grace.

Mark and Archer stared at each other for a few moments. Then, as if Archer had nothing particularly useful to say, (which he didn't, especially following the conversation he'd had with the Plastic Surgeon earlier) he just sighed, rubbing at his chin.

"You know what," He said, appearing suddenly exhausted, "My blood pressure would be so much lower if my sisters standards was just that little bit higher.."

And, In all honesty, Derek didn't doubt him. 

He watched Archer leave, with a little less drama than he'd appeared, and leave a stiff silence behind him. 

He passed Mark in the doorway, abruptly and without warning, making him quickly step aside-- he moved the same way that someone would dive away from an oncoming car, with a noticeable alarm. 

In Archer's absence, all Mark could do was stare at the floor for a few moments, his brain struggling to catch up with everything.

After a few moments, Mark cleared his throat.

"You paged?"

He said that question as if he didn't know what Derek wanted from him; how interesting that was. 

It was in that moment that Derek realised his nose had started bleeding again too, adding to the truly fuck you nature of his day; it was alarmed by Meredith quickly thrusting some tissue in his direction and the way that Mark's eyes glazed over very slightly. 

Before Derek knew it, he was tilting his head back and Mark was stood before him, looking at his war wound with intent professionalism. Derek flinched as Mark expertly moved his head side to side.

"You said you had something to show me?" Mark murmured lightly, his brow furrowed as he turned Derek's head towards the light and scrutinised the damage. 

He seemed to miss the way that Derek's hand crept behind him, his thumb catching the corner of Beth's medical file. There it was. Just inches away. 

When Derek didn't speak, Mark continued, as if to remind him. "You said you had something you wanted me to see?"

He did. 

He had something he didn't necessarily want Mark to see, but he believed that he should. To put it simply, knowing how feverishly Mark Sloan loved when the miracle happened to occur, he knew how much it would've meant to him and how much it would've crushed him.

(It was with a throat full of blood and throbbing pain in the centre of his face that Derek Shepherd made a split moment decision.) 

(It was much like the epiphany that Addison had had just outside of that bridal shop in downtown Seattle. It was a thought that struck him so suddenly, with the vigour and urgency of a fist to the face. It made him very slowly press his fingers into the medical file and very slowly push it across the desk.)

(He didn't exhale until he heard the fall of paper into the wastepaper basket.)

"Just a cracked septum, probably," Derek exhaled heavily as Mark produced a nasal speculum from his pocket. 

Nothing else. Just a broken nose. 

He winced as Mark grabbed his jaw a little too tightly, forcing his head back so he could clear a glance. The Plastic Surgeon's jaw was clenched, and, on second glance, he appeared a lot less personable than Derek had first realised. 

"It hurts like a bitch--"

"She got you good, huh?" Mark mused, his coldness causing a shiver to run across Derek's skin. When he didn't respond, Mark's lip twitched. " 'Atta girl."

Meredith was lingering over Mark's shoulder, arms crossed over her chest.

 She stared at Mark as he stepped backwards, slipping into a pair of gloves and revealing the medical supplies he'd grabbed on the way. Derek watched him too, his slightly cloudy eyes staring straight into the depths of his best friend's soul. 

As Mark tended to a broken nose like he had done so many times in his life, Derek couldn't help but wonder whether this was all worth it.

(Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.)

Maybe it was the fact that Mark was silent and clearly not happy with him at all, (which, being Mark Sloan, the silence was never a good sign) but Derek got the intense impression that he'd made a bad call. 

He also got the second impression that there was a lot that Mark wasn't saying, particularly about the woman who seemed to be the only topic of conversation these days.

How easy it would just be to say it, but what would happen next? Where would that leave them? What would Mark do? What would Beth say-- was he just dragging up the past for no reason? Or did Mark deserve to know?

Derek sighed to himself.

He was on his own with this one.

***

From the moment Beth saw the text message, she knew she was screwed.

(Derek fucking Shepherd, I'm going to murder you with my bare fucking hands you fucking son of a b--)

She'd never scaled the floors of the hospital so quickly, not even when she'd been in a life or death situation. 

Her footfalls were fast and determined as she flew from the elevator in the direction of the boardroom, cell phone still clutched in her hand-- it was, unceremoniously, a terrible idea. Her lungs still burned from surgery, her bones still ached and she was immediately filled with the overwhelming impulse to vomit into a potted plant as she passed it. 

But, she was a woman on a mission and she was refusing to back down.

She burst into the room, chest heaving. 

The door was thrown open so abruptly that the man inside looked up with raised eyebrows. Between the, otherwise empty room, and the ajar window, Beth had to take a moment to collect herself before all of the words came tumbling out--

"I can explain!"

He just stared at her.

She could explain it but she had absolutely no idea how. 

There were so many things that were involved in this and she didn't particularly feel like revisiting the last five years of her life in such an intimate and probing way. All she knew was that he was staring at her so deeply as if to stare straight into her soul. 

She hated it when he did that. It made her feel transparent and predictable and completely exposed.

How did she explain this? Her brain felt full of holes, like a block of swiss cheese. 

She could barely hold onto a train of thought, talk about try to plead a case like this-- God, he was going to get angry wasn't he? 

She could imagine him getting angry. 

How wasn't he already angry? She'd failed him.

"I don't know what Derek has told you..." 

She fought to catch her breath, hands on her hips as her whole body moved with her every inhale. There was a rattle in her body that hadn't quite gone away, and it was in moments like these that Beth remembered how frighteningly fragile they all were. 

"But whatever it was... he's full of crap."

"Beth--"

"No," She interjected, raising a hand as if to bat his words away. 

(God, her whole body felt as if it was on fire.) 

"I can explain," She insisted, "I know it makes me sound like an awful person and I promise that I wasn't going to hide this from you for forever-- I was going to mention it some time in the distant future... I'm not avoiding it... if i was avoiding it I would have done a much better job at hiding it--"

"Beth," He repeated, appearing frustrated. "I don't know what you're thinking--"

She clutched at her chest, feeling her heart beat erratically against her hand and her words clog and jumble on the way out of her body.

"I would have made sure that no one ever found out," Beth continued, completely drowning out his interjection.  "A-And that's not to say that I was hiding it from you, because I wasn't-- I wasn't specifically trying to not let you find out about it... I'm just not feeling very good about that decision now and I know that it's going to ruin everything. You knowing things hasn't been working out very well for me at the moment and you're going to ruin things with Charlie before you even know it. He's going to get mad and then I'm gonna get upset and it's not going to be pretty or very fun at my wedding--"

His brow furrowed as he looked at her, "Wait, have you been crying?"

In all honesty, Beth was surprised that she still had breath left to spare on speaking. 

There were so many panicked, desperate words leaving her body in such a small span of time. She could see him getting unsettled, completely disgruntled by the fact she wasn't letting him speak. 

Let the poor man speak, Beth. But she couldn't. 

She couldn't afford to let him speak. Not now. Not until he understood exactly why she had done what she had.

Her tactic was to keep talking and talking until something clicked. Something had to click, right? Something had to fit? Something had to justify it.

"I need you to understand that I had to do it," Her breathing was shallow as she said it, eyes round with desperation for him to understand. 

He had to understand. He had to. She needed him to listen. (You need to listen. Someone needs to listen to a damn word I say today.) She'd gathered the impression that no one was listening to her today.

 "It was the right decision," She said, "it was deserved and if you're going to punish me for it, it's not right--"

"Deserved?-"

"Derek deserved it, okay?" Beth said loudly, leaning against the table and nearly knocking over a stack of pamphlets. "He's being an asshole and I was fully justified in punching him-- I know that you're going to chew me out for it because it's not very healed and shiny of me-- but he deserved it, so did Addie and I just refuse to apologise for it. It's not technically legally classed as assault but--"

"Wait," He held up a hand, cutting her short, "You assaulted the Chief of Surgery?"

"What?" It caught her off guard. Her chest was still heaving and her heartbeat pounded in her ears.

Andrew Perkins stared at her.

"You punched Derek Shepherd?"

Beth stared back.

Oh fuck. He looked surprised. 

Why was he surprised? 

Her brother-in-law-to-be was scrunching his brow in that perplexed, alarmed way that was so familiar to Charlie's face. 

It made Beth's cheeks flush and her eyes widen. 

Oh fuck. He looked really surprised. There he stood, in his little makeshift office surrounded by all of his pamphlets and his psychiatry notes, staring at her as if she'd just confessed to murder. 

Oh fuck. She practically had in therapy terms. 

Beth stared back.

Her blood ran cold.

"You..."

 She was suddenly a lot more breathless than she'd been a few moments ago. (This is it, Beth thought to herself, this is how I die.) 

She paused, trying to gather something meaningful out of the screaming in her head. "I thought you knew-- y-you said you wanted to talk about something-- you... you didn't know?"

Haplessly, Andrew just looked between her and the piece of paper on the table. He seemed to be a bit late on wrapping his head around everything, so he just pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling loudly.

"You attacked Doctor Shepherd," He repeated and, in response, Beth just grimaced to herself, letting out a long groan. 

(Fuck, fuck, fuck, she'd fucked it all up). Something about the way Andrew murmured to himself and picked up his pen told her that she was going to be here for a lot longer than she'd anticipated. Begrudgingly, she pulled out a chair, wincing as she unceremoniously threw herself down. 

"You assaulted the Chief of--"

"Technically, but--"

"He deserved it," Andrew finished for her, looking over at her with a long sigh. Beth, who had sunk very low in her chair, just meekly nodded, seconds away from just burying her head in her hands. "So I gathered--"

"He did deserve it," Beth said as if it hadn't already been well established. Absently, she found herself watching Andrew as he wrote on a pad. Wow, her session notes were going to be interesting today. "He really, really deserved it."

"Really?"

"Really."

Andrew's lip twitched as he glanced up, spying the look of despair on Beth's face. 

She wondered whether he knew what was mad about; spoiler alert, it wasn't the fact that Derek could take her to the hospital board or press charges for battery. 

No, it was because she'd spent the past two months trying to convince the man across from her that she was mentally stable enough to get back to work.

Nothing said mentally stable like aggravated assault.

"Doctor Shepherd seems nice," Andrew said smoothly, seeming to completely digest the fact that his patient had decked the man who was signing his paychecks. 

The noise that Beth let out was flat: a scoff that was hidden behind the fingers that played with her bottom lip. He looked over at her, seeing the grazes on her knuckle. With a displeased sigh, he tapped his pen against his finger.

 "He seems like he's a good guy--"

"Yeah," Beth pulled a face, her tone bitter, "He seems like a real nice guy when he's trying to blackmail you into ruining your own life."

Her counsellor didn't speak, he just stared at her. 

Was he trying to read her mind? Good luck with that. 

Beth hadn't had a thought that she, herself, could understand since the moment Gary Clark had pulled out that gun. Her fingers trembled slightly and she squeezed them tightly together, hiding them under the table.

She could tell Andrew wanted to ask, but the problem was, Beth didn't particularly feel like talking anymore.

"You said you wanted to talk to me about something?" She exhaled almost tiredly, seeming to age drastically in the span of a few moments. She was shrinking, right before his eyes. (That made Andrew's attention pique. He hadn't yet sat down, and instead just lingered.) "I've had a really shit day so far and it's only midday--"

"Clearly," Andrew mused, inclining his head at the mess of her hand, "You've been busy."

"What is it?" Beth said, "What do you want to talk about?"

(He paused. That was unfamiliar.)

(Usually it was Beth who was volleying at him, leaving him to try and keep things on track. She was usually full of snide remarks, sarcastic comments and clever one liners. But now, she just stared at him with pleading in her eyes as if to beg him to just get on with it. She wanted to get all of this over with.)

(She didn't have time for niceties. How strange. How completely uncharacteristic of her. Thoughtfully, he dropped his eyes to his set of notes, eyeing the piece of paper that was freshly printed.)

He mustered a smile and eventually sat down in his chair, "How have you been?"

Beth's eye twitched as she stared over at him. Really? 

She'd gathered the impression, from his message, that what he needed to say to her was urgent, or at least extremely important. Had she really run all this way for him to just throw an impromptu therapy session at her? 

How nice of him. 

With a mouthful of very choice responses to that question, Beth kissed her teeth and leant back in her chair, gripping the armrests tightly.

"Is this going to be a waste of my time?" She didn't feel like pretending, not today. 

Not when she'd already stripped herself dry in front of a room of people she didn't particularly like anymore. (Her hands still stung from the delicacy of Mark's touch and she really didn't like glassy sheen in Addison's eyes.) When Andrew didn't respond, she scoffed, shaking her head; she stooped downwards, inhaling sharply when her chest throbbed. 

Her hand found her purse and she dragged out the same wedding magazine she'd forgotten about during Addison's surgery. 

"I might as well make myself busy then," Beth sighed.

She knew how this was going to go. 

She knew from past experience that leaving Andrew Perkin's sessions just made things worse. She'd left her first session, practically thrown herself out of the door-- so she figured that she was in for the long haul.

"Beth," Andrew said slowly, leaning forwards in his chair, "I'm not trying to waste your time."

"People are today," was her response, punctuated by the rustle of pages as she tore open the magazine. She set it on the edge of the table, rifling through the articles and staring through at all of the pictures. "Whether they mean to it or not... today is turning out to be a big waste of time."

"I just wanted to see how you're doing," He continued, barely fazed by her words.

 (He could tell that something had jostled her. Maybe her deafening blow had not only affected Derek, but Beth too. Maybe something had reverbed back into her; had the shudder of it rattled her bones? Or maybe it wasn't the punch at all. Maybe it was what had been said.) 

"I just wanted to have a final talk with you before--"

"God, the women in these magazines... Some of them are actually brides, you know?"

Beth didn't look up from her magazine as she spoke. 

She spoke to the glossy pictures on the glossy pages that glossed in the light like the gloss tears in her sister's glossy eyes. She trailed a finger over a blonde, beaming woman who looked as though she'd found her whole life's meaning in a single pair of pumps. 

Once the twist her stomach got too much, she flipped the page and moved onto the next: Latina, warmly smiling with nothing but endless joy in her eyes--

"They're not all models. All smiling. It's like the only thing in the world that matters is that they find the perfect shoe to match that dress," Her continuation came at the price of a deep, shuddering breath as she kept flipping and flipping, "God, you know, I knew these girls. I went... I went to school with them. It's funny. I used to feel sorry for them. They're simple girls."

Andrew didn't speak. 

(He was watching her, watching how her face seemed to twitch as she stared down at the images and tried to immerse herself into a universe that seemed so foreign to her.)

"I went to this wedding of a girl that I was friends with in school... she was a nice girl. We hadn't spoken in years. Laurie. She married some German rich guy and I hear they have kids now. Two boys and a girl." Absent thoughts that wrung a little too true of the inner workings of her mind. "It was a nice wedding. I got really drunk at the reception. Nice hotel. It was simple. People like Laurie... Life's so simple. They just want to find the guy and get married, you know... and live. But I don't know. I think you're simple or you're born me." 

A pause. 

"I want to be the person who gets happy over finding the perfect dress. I want to be simple."

"Why?" He asked softly when Beth paused for longer. Her shoulders hitched at the question. Why? Why? "Why do you want to be simple?"

Because no one shoots a simple girl, Beth thought to herself. 

Because no one blackmails a simple girl with her medical record. 

Because no one constantly uses a simple girl's past against her or treats her as if she could never do anything right because of one thing she did at her lowest point-- 

Because no one loves and leaves a simple girl lonely and completely incapable of loving fearlessly. 

Because no one decides the simple girl's sister is best.

"For Charlie," Beth said tenderly instead, her eyes flickering off the page to meet his across the table. The psychiatrist just watched. "Because I'm a sinking ship and he's the captain who is dumb enough to sing my swan song."

(Inwardly, Andrew sighed.)

"Cold feet?"

Beth chuckled humorlessly, "Frost bite."

Slowly, he nodded.

"It's understandable, it's a lot to cope with--"

"No," Beth exhaled, shaking her head, "Having a really bad day and losing your wallet or something... that's a lot to cope with. Having your car break down and your toilet clog or miss the bus... that's a lot to cope with. Getting shot, dying, having open heart surgery and then having Derek Shepherd try to burn you at the stake with your medical records... that's just a fucking joke."

(Andrew didn't really know what to say.) 

(He found that she often rendered him speechless.)

(There was something about her, about her brashness and her simplicity in her responses-- she was just so matter-of-fact about everything. Andrew had to shift in his chair and really put effort into thinking her every word over and over.)

"Am I a bad person?" 

Bluntly, Beth threw the question at him. It was almost blinding. It caused Andrew to reel slightly, his eyebrows raising. There was a pause, one just long enough to let it really sink in deep. When he went to speak, (She doubted that he'd respond. He was probably just going to throw some bullshit out about how the world wasn't split into the strictly good and bad. At least, that's what she would have done) Beth didn't hesitate to interject. 

"I've asked someone that question before..." She said intently, "But I have the feeling that his answer might have changed. In your expert opinion... as a guy who has seen more bad things than I have... what do you think?"

He had seen more bad things than she had. 

He had almost double the length of career that she did. He'd seen his fair share of situations exactly like that in Seattle; Beth could count the number of mass shootings he'd consulted on over years, but she'd need far more than her single pair of hands. 

He'd seen the worst of humanity and he'd seen countless people on the verge of falling apart-- Beth looked him in those same eyes and hoped that he'd give her an answer.

Today, Beth felt like a bad person.

"I don't think simple people are bad," She said, mostly to fill the silence that Andrew left as he digested the weight on top of such a heavy question. "Charlie's simple... I mean that in a good way. He's simple and he's kind and he's a good person. He bought a suit and he was excited about it. He seems excited about our future and I just... I just am constantly terrified of things going wrong." 

She seemed to wince at her own words. 

"But I'm not simple," Beth resigned, "I'm a fucking bitch and I'm a liar and I think I'm a really bad person." A pause. "Am I right?"

The look he gave her made her wonder whether Andrew had any thoughts at all. He was an intelligent man, she knew that first hand, but the absent expression on his face implied a sense of emptiness in his head. 

He stared at her wordlessly, his tongue bunching his mouth and a vein straining in his forehead. 

After a few moments, she saw something stirring in his eyes. He cleared his throat and looked down, back towards the piece of paper on the table. He gently slid it off the table and into his outstretched hand.

Silently, Beth watched him get to his feet, round the table and bring it to her. He placed it just out of her reach and turned away just as she stretched out to read it. 

She read the title and then, as the letters strung into a comprehensible word, then a sentence, then a topic, she frowned.

"What is this?"

Andrew spoke with his back turned, "Something to make your day a bit brighter."

"But this is..." 

No, it couldn't be.

"What I wanted to talk to you about," He said as Beth devoured the words on the page. She jumped from line to line, hungry for this to be real, for it to mean what she thought it did. She felt her heart jump in her chest. "I wasn't intending on having a session with you today but it seems as though you need someone to listen--"

Her head snapped up to just stare at him listlessly.

"This is..."

"Your official letter of release," Andrew confirmed with a nod, turning back to give her a tight-lipped smile. Beth was too shocked to smile. It was. It said it right there on the top of the paper. It was in black and white text. It was right here in her hands. "Congratulations Doctor Montgomery, you're clear for work."

Clear.

"Really?"

Andrew nodded again, "Really."

Holy shit.

She was clear. 

The paper in her hands told her that she was perfectly fine to return to her job. It was the thing that she'd been working towards, striving to convince Andrew to change his mind. It was the one thing that had kept her stressed and restless, well, other than the traces of PTSD and insomnia. She stared at it in disbelief, feverishly blinking as it would disappear at any moment-- she really hoped it wouldn't disappear.

"You're gonna clear me even though I assaulted the Chief of Surgery?" Beth asked skeptically.

Come to think of it, actually, she'd fought Andrew every step of the way. Why the hell had he cleared her? Had Charlie finally managed to convince him to change his mind?

"Well, in my defence I signed and cleared it before I knew that you were getting violent with staff members," He said, folding his arms across his chest and watching as she rolled her eyes. "But, I gave it some serious consideration and... following our sessions over the past few weeks and the fact that you've been somewhat following my advice..." He was stood at the other end of the table again, looking over at Beth with a vague smile. "...if you think I've made the wrong decision--"

"No," She said quickly, "No, you made the right call." A pause. "But did you just miss everything I said?"

He chuckled to himself, eyes wandering down to trail over his workspace. 

She watched as he seemed to oversee the room he'd transformed into his own over the past few weeks. He'd definitely made an impact, that was for sure; he had his brother's inclination for disorder when he was stressed and Beth could barely make sense of his filing system. 

He had a jacket strewn over the back of a chair, a handful of pens balancing tediously on the edge of the table-- it was moments like these when Beth had to remind herself that they were all human, no matter how much some people liked to pretend otherwise.

"For the record," Andrew leant against his chair and stared straight at her. Staring back felt like staring straight into an exposed light bulb. It burned almost. "In my professional opinion... I don't think you're a bad person at all."

He'd make a good brother-in-law, Beth figured, better than her last. 

He was nice and she didn't get the impression that he'd throw her aside for his own personal gain. She couldn't imagine Andrew standing there with her medical record, eager to blackmail her with whatever he could pull out of his ass. 

Despite whatever issues that were going on between her fiancé and his brother, Beth liked her old boss far more than she liked Derek at the moment.

"I don't think a bad person would care if they were a bad person," He continued, watching his sister-in-law-to-be with a small smile. "I also don't let bad people work for me. I only hire good people, but if a bad person sneaks in somewhere, I fire them... did I fire you?"

Slowly, Beth shook her head.

"You're not simple," Andrew cleared his throat, "And that's okay. I think we've established that you have had past relationships that have made it very hard for you to trust and be excited over the mundane things. You're a workaholic, but you're aware of it and you're self aware of all of your troubling behaviours-- I have no doubt that you're ready to go back to work."

"But what changed?" Beth said quietly, "I haven't had a breakthrough or a... or a moment of clarity. Nothing has changed."

Nothing had changed. 

She felt the same as she'd been the first time she'd sat down in a therapy session with him, only, possibly, more exhausted. She felt older and heavier, as if the last few months had added so many weights on top of her. It was harder to hold herself upright and sometimes when she was just thinking, it got harder to breathe. Nothing had changed at all. 

How was she ready?

Suddenly, Beth didn't feel ready at all.

Andrew paused.

"Let's just say, I had a change of heart," He confirmed, bobbing his head up and down in a soft nod. (Charlie's face and his insistence to keep Beth away from work flashed across his mind.) "It's taken some time, but you're ready."

Those words flooded Beth's head as she left the Psychiatry boardroom. 

They sunk into every corner of her brain like waves filling a shore or a pool. As she walked through her own department, she couldn't help but get lost in the sensation of it-- she was clear. She was ready. Andrew Perkins had faith in her. 

She clasped that sheet of paper so tightly in her hand that her knuckles turned white.

The secretary on the front desk smiled at her warmly as she handed it over; "Welcome back, Doctor Montgomery."

***

Welcome back? It didn't feel very welcome. 

If Beth closed her eyes and listened hard enough, she could hear the whole building screaming at her; she felt as though she was in a very shitty rendition of the Silence of the Lambs? (Has the hospital stopped screaming, Clarice?). 

With a sigh, Beth waited for her letter to be processed as she stared out of the window, over the staff parking lot and back over towards her apartment building.

Was she ready? She'd thought that she was very ready. Something about the last hour of her life had completely convinced her otherwise--

"You look as though you've had a bad morning," Meredith seemed to materialise out of thin air, startling Beth very slightly. 

The psychiatrist, newly reinstated and completely oblivious to the world outside of her mind, looked over just in time to see the small smile that Meredith gave her. She couldn't find the energy to return it; instead, Beth just held her wedding magazine tightly and grimaced to herself, not exactly sure how to define how her morning had been. 

Meredith looked down at the magazine. "Did you hear Cristina's getting married too?"

"I didn't," Beth said, trailing her thumb across the model on the cover, "She must be excited--"

"Sure," Meredith exhaled out in a long breath and, it was in that moment, that Beth knew exactly why she was here. Oh god, please can I just have a few moments to myself-- "I saw Derek."

Great.

She stared at Meredith, watching as the woman who had been nothing but kind to her searched for a sign of regret in Beth's face. (There wasn't any.) 

"He looks as though he's been in a bar fight," The surgical resident continued in one long breath, as if she was worried that Beth would interject. Beth, for the record, had no intention of interjecting at all. "Unfortunately, Mark doesn't think he needs surgery."

"Did I knock any sense into him?" It was far more serious of a question than Meredith seemed to take it as. She chuckled but Beth's expression was completely nonchalant, she was very serious. "Is he still acting like an asshole or did I do all that yelling for no reason?"

"He told me that he was the reason you lost your surgical license..."

There it was. The breath that Beth let out deflated her whole body. 

She didn't like the way Meredith said it, there was that trailing off that indicated that Meredith was about to say something Beth wouldn't like. (Please don't. Please don't make me argue with you.) 

"I remember you talking about it when you first came to Seattle. I remember how much you missed--"

 Across from them, the secretary was still processing the letter, the sound of the photocopier droning out from inside the administration office. 

"Look," Beth breathed out, attempting to be polite as possible."If you're going to try and be your husband's cheerleader I wouldn't even bother--"

"It's Derek," Meredith interrupted, "So, he's definitely still an asshole. "

Oh. Her eyebrows raised and she looked over at the woman beside her. That was a nice surprise.

Meredith was looking at her with those bright eyes and same knowingness that immediately reminded Beth of their conversation in her kitchen at Derek's party. Just as Beth had been with her question, Meredith appeared to be deadly serious. 

Well, that was until a beat passed and Beth's look of disbelief made a smile twitch in the corner of her mouth; it stretched into a wry grin, the sort of expression that Beth recognised so much for her own sister-- It was the look of a woman who was more than aware she was married to a man like Derek Shepherd. 

Meredith, somehow, seemed more strained.

"The biggest asshole," Beth agreed after a beat, "Huge."

Meredith didn't show any signs of disagreement.

"He deserved it, didn't he?" Her question made Beth laugh. 

Oh, if Meredith only knew. The psychiatrist nodded wordlessly, massaging circles into the back of her hand at the thought of it. 

"I don't blame you," Derek's wife shook her head softly, "I've been tempted to do it myself."

"Sounds like marriage is going really well for you both," was Beth's response as her fingers found the ring on her finger. It seemed to be a nervous tick for her now; her finger traced the diamond as her brow furrowed. ("How could you tell?") Beth smiled. "Derek deserved more than a punch..."

A pause.

"I'm sorry," Meredith said, "I know you really wanted that internship."

Beth heaved a breath as the secretary caught her attention, handing her something to sign. 

She kissed her teeth, shrugging as she waved a pen around a dotted line, "Yeah, well. I moved onto bigger things, right?"

"Still," Meredith's eyes flickered in between Beth's strained smile and the yellow paper peeking out from the bottom of the papers in her hand. "I'm going to apologise for Derek's actions because we both know he won't... and it wasn't a nice thing for him to do--"

"Oh it was the worst fucking thing that anyone's ever done to me," Beth said nonchalantly, not looking up from the papers. When Meredith frowned, Beth just chuckled to herself, "I know right? I don't know whether anyone's ever mentioned it to you... but my boyfriend kinda left me for my sister and I got shot point blank a few weeks ago... I don't know if you were aware or anything..." (Meredith rolled her eyes) "But yes, Derek getting me fired and getting my surgical license thrown to wind ranks up there."

"It's awful," Meredith said evenly, tilting her head to the side, "But good things came out of that, right?"

"Oh yeah," Beth chuckled, "I now know that hell looks like a really nice hotel in Miami."

"I meant Mark," was Meredith's interjection, her eyes flashing, again, like they had in her kitchen all that time ago. The psychiatrist beside her paused, pen lingering over an unchecked box. "If that hadn't happened... you wouldn't have found Charlie."

"Mm," Beth hummed, a dent appearing between her eyebrows, "Yeah, I wouldn't have found the love of my life... that sounds more poetic, doesn't it? That's the Lifetime movie right there."

"Sure," Meredith chuckled, "I can't stand Lifetime movies."

"Me neither," The two of them grimaced and then, realising their mutual dislike, chuckled. Beth inclined her head over at the surgeon, scrunching her nose. "Yeah, I take it back, as should you... being all gooey over romance doesn't suit you." Meredith grinned, not exactly correcting her. "God, look at the state of us... I'm getting married and you're two seconds away from beating up your husband..."

"Modern women," Meredith joked with a wide smile. Beth would have agreed, if it wasn't for the secretary interjecting, handing over the yellow letter with a parting, farewell gesture. ("Thank you, Louise, good to see you!") As Beth turned around, she couldn't help but catch the way that Meredith stared at the slip of paper, as if completely hypnotised by it. She let out a deeply annoyed sound. "You got cleared?"

"Ah," Beth inhaled through her teeth, sensing that Meredith was still having trouble getting cleared for work, " 'Ole Andy's one hell of a cock block, right?"

"Doctor Perkins seems to think it's funny to make me beg," She said every word with pure distaste, each syllable making Beth's lips twitch. "He's clearing everyone. He cleared Alex... He cleared Derek and he cleared April. He even cleared Lexie."

"Lexie Grey's allowed near an OR?" Beth snorted, unzipping her purse, "Lord help us all."

"Please tell me you have a cheat code to this," It seemed as though the begging was transferable, Beth half expected Meredith to get on her knees and truly grovel. "You know this process better than anyone... what do I need to do to convince him I'm ready to get back to work?"

"I don't think there's--"

"Everyone's saying that I need to trust the process," That sounded familiar. Beth chuckled and nodded slowly. "But I'm beginning to think that the process is a load of crap--"

"Oh," Beth murmured, "So you didn't think it was crap to begin with?"

Meredith made a face.

"I didn't get hurt," was all that the surgical resident could say. 

She said it slowly, as if that in itself was a perfectly good reason for her to be cleared. Beth let out a breath, her chest throbbing as Meredith slapped a hand onto the worktop. 

"I didn't suffer from anything--" (Beth noticed how Meredith's breathing seemed to hitch, as if she was tensing subconsciously. She looked over. She was sensing a lie.) "I even tried turning on the tears and that did absolutely nothing--"

"Look," Beth turned towards her, holding up a hand to interject in Meredith's erratic rambling. "If you're trying to get me to clear you, I'm sorry, I don't work for Andrew anymore. If I did, I would've tried to clear myself a long time ago--" Meredith went to speak, "And before you go hunting down my fiancé, Charlie doesn't either anymore, and he's overworked as it is. Please leave him be."

The doctor fell silent, a very dissatisfied expression on her face as Beth waited for the slow nod in response. 

It came a few moments behind Beth's words and the psychiatrist donned her best, most almost-heartfelt smile. (Inwardly, Beth was wondering whether this was what she'd looked like. If so, why the hell had Andrew cleared her? Meredith was very clearly holding onto something. 

She'd suffered somewhere along the way. Beth had hid her fair share too and yet Andrew had still given her this yellow sip-- how could anyone trust the process when it was so unpredictable?)

"Andrew has his reasons," Beth said, catching the way that Meredith seemed to frown to herself and silently try to figure out what the hell she was going to do. (Andrew did have his reasons, Beth just didn't understand them half the time.) "If he's holding you back there must be something that he's planning on discussing... maybe he thinks you're not talking about something important?"

Meredith didn't speak.

Beth got the impression she was right. Slowly, she nodded, "As the CEO of hiding things and lying, which if you need clarity on that title, I'm sure your husband would love to give his own two cents-- If there's something you're not saying, Andrew knows. It's our job to know."

Again, how the hell had Beth gotten away with it?

(She hadn't been honest.)

(She hadn't told Andrew how much she really didn't feel like herself. There was a plug that had fallen short of it's socket somewhere at the back of her brain, something that wasn't particularly clicked into place.)

(She'd been avoiding going to her physical check up with Teddy for weeks and she hadn't had a full nights sleep in a long time. Beth didn't particularly feel like herself and she had no idea how Andrew hadn't picked up on that-- Or maybe he had and Charlie had just convinced him to overlook it?)

(The second option felt more likely.)

Meredith stared at her, eying her suspiciously. 

She seemed to have the same thought. What was it that gave it away? 

Was it the fact that Beth had assaulted two people today or the fact that her concealer and mascara was beginning to crack and flake away, revealing the sleepless nights that were buried underneath? 

Either way, Beth felt as though she was currently living in a very low budget, shitty telenovella.

"You have a threesome with both of them or something?" The question made Beth cackle; what an interesting thought that was.

Beth laughed loudly, eyebrows raising before she deadpanned, "No, Charlie wasn't into it for some reason." Then she paused, "But I might've asked him to put in a good word for me..."

"I knew it!"

"Consider it a wedding present," Beth said offhandedly, shrugging despite the thunderous expression on Meredith's face. 

She looked far from happy and Beth could only imagine the sort of screaming that was going on inside that head of hers. (Did they match? Beth's internal discourse had blown a vocal chord.) 

Her jaw clenched and she shot a glance down at her pager.

"If it's any consolation," Beth shrugged, "I think I'd rather be in your position than mine--"

"Unemployed?" Meredith asked with a furrowed brow.

"Refraining from throwing punches," She corrected with a long sigh, "What do you think's going to get me fired first? Medical fraud or aggravated assaul--"

"Doctor Montgomery!"

Oh crap. 

A new face appeared, one that Beth very faintly recognised between the click of heels and the fresh, new lab coat. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Meredith shoot her a look; Beth frowned slightly but turned in the direction of the voice calling her name-- the sight that met her was somewhat even more familiar. 

A hand was outstretched and a gleaming smile caused Meredith to look between the two women sceptically.

"Doctor Ballard, right?" Beth said slowly, remembering how Derek had introduced them. 

Oh, what an interesting introduction that had been, Beth so vividly remembered the expression on Mark's face. 

Her new boss seemed to be in an extremely good mood, smiling brightly as Meredith seemed to linger awkwardly.

"I would say just call me Beth but I think that would get confusing," Katherine's replacement joked, but Beth didn't find it particularly funny. 

She flashed a polite smile, one that was so well perfected from the years of brown-nosing and fundraising. (If Beth tried hard enough, she could imagine herself back in a Manhattan brownstone nursing a glass of wine and standing in heels that were so painful her toes wore down to a chilling numbness.) 

"I heard that you're officially fit to work," She beamed, "We'll be glad to have you back on the team."

Her eye twitched a little bit at Ballard's enthusiasm. 

It didn't quite fit how the morning was panning out to be like and Beth could even see Meredith bristle at the brightness of her tone. 

She had the same peppiness that they'd become so accustomed from Arizona, but definitely not from the Psychiatry department-- there was a copper taste in Beth's mouth as she nodded, her cheeks aching.

Very subtly, Meredith and Beth exchanged a look.

There was something about Bethenny Ballard that Beth couldn't quite put her finger on.

She squinted over at her new boss, watching how Ballard's ponytail bounced with all of the pep that could possibly fit into such a slight frame. Even the light seemed to sparkle in her eyes like some sort of animated Disney character; she looked as though she was about to burst into song and sing with a handful of birds. 

She was also dressed very professionally, in a way that hit the back of Beth's brain like an annoying itch-- what was it?

"I'm looking forward to it," She replied, her tongue numb.

She was sure that Bethenny Ballard was a lovely girl, but she really wanted to scratch that itch; why did she get the feeling that she'd met Doctor Ballard before? She really needed to know what it was.

"Great," Ballard grinned, her eyes eventually moving onto the surgeon stood beside Beth; she extended a second hand. "I think we've met. Was it Doctor Shepherd?"

"Doctor Grey," Meredith corrected, Her tone made Beth raise an eyebrow, very briefly looking back over towards her. 

She had a wide, very plastic smile on her face, one that Beth recognised as not far from her own. Beth bit down on her bottom lip, sucking on it hard so she could feel something other than the pulsing reverb in her chest. 

"I don't think so..." The dirty blonde paused, head tilting to the side, "Aren't you the new...?"

"Interim Head of Psych," Ballard finished warmly as Meredith trailed off. 

She very slowly nodded, eyes repeatedly flickering between the two women. A dent appeared between Beth's eyebrows at that gesture, what was she doing? She kept looking between the two psychiatrists as if there was something noteworthy-- Beth didn't have the energy to really think too much into it. 

"Right, okay," Ballard nodded between them, "well, Doctor Montgomery, I'm looking forwards to having you in the department meeting next week--"

"Nice to see you," was all Beth could manage as Ballard gave them a parting smile, turning on her heel and disappearing in the direction of what had once been Katherine Wyatt's office. 

The two remaining doctors stared after her, listening to her heels as she clicked her way into the jungle of corridors and out of sight. 

As soon as she was gone, Beth turned her head towards Meredith, her brow furrowed. 

"What?"

She didn't like the expression on Meredith's face. 

Her eyebrows were raised so high up her forehead that they almost merged and became one with her hairline. When she eventually looked over at Beth, her lips were caught in a very genuine and very tight smile, as if she was trying really hard not to laugh. 

Her eyes gleamed with amusement and she paused long and hard, as if to think through her words.

"Oh," Meredith said finally, shrugging nonchalantly, "It's nothing--"

"It's not nothing," Beth dismissed, her eyes narrowing slightly, "What is it?"

The woman in front of her hummed lightly, looking down at the yellow letter that was peeking out from the depths of Beth's purse.

"It's just... just weird," As if to stare through the walls after her, Meredith looked away and down the hallway. A small chuckle fell past her lips and she shook her head. "That's Bethenny Ballard?"

Beth just blinked at her.

"She's...." Meredith paused, "She's shiny."

"Like a new bicycle," Beth commented dryly, looking down at her cell phone as it buzzed in her pocket. 

She opened it to see a very short and curt text message from her older brother. It was sentimental, containing only two words: u ok? 

She let out a light breath as she decided that maybe her response wasn't suited to just a text message. "Charlie's optimistic about her hire, he thinks that she's going to do some good so--"

"Better keep her away from Mark," the chuckle that fell past Meredith's lips made Beth raise an eyebrow in questioning. (Of course, that was common practice with practically any woman that entered Mark's airspace, but there seemed to be more meaning behind the off-handed comment.) The general surgeon caught the expression on Beth's face and smiled to herself, "She's exactly his type."

Oh.

Beth cleared her throat, "I think you're too late with that."

"Oh," Meredith's eyebrows seemed to rise even higher if that was even possible. A beat passed and her lips twitched in amusement, "I rest my case."

Beth was left deliciously bewildered.

***

Dominic Fox flew in the next morning.

"Ah!"

He declared it as he opened the door of his taxi, spying Beth as she precariously gazed at him from under the brim of an umbrella. 

Despite the rain, his eyes glimmered from behind a pair of sunglasses, causing her head to tilt to the side just a fraction. He inhaled deeply, looking over the hospital with pure energy sizzling across his skin. 

He grinned, "It's a wonderful morning to ruin lives, don't you think?"

She just sighed to herself.

He arrived with a bundle of letters from Boston and a cherry picked smile that glowed from a recent teeth-whitening appointment. 

He smelt of cologne and corporate tears and, when he saw Beth standing in the rain outside the hospital, he seemed to bloom in spite of the dreary atmosphere. There were only so many times that Beth could fake a smile, but she managed a somewhat genuine one as she watched him slide out, his suit barely crumpled from his long-haul flight. 

She waited patiently as he tipped the cab driver, adjusted his tie in the wing mirror and picked up his briefcase-- by the time he eventually joined her underneath the umbrella, he looked fresh off of the cover of GQ.

Calum, apparently, wasn't available, so, just as always, Dom was sent to clean up her mess. 

Last she'd heard, he'd been chasing a case down in California and he'd already bounced across several different states over the past week-- he was here, in Seattle, by special delivery of her ex-fiancé.

What a treat.

"Huh," Dom mused as he caught sight of the bruises on the hand that clutched the umbrella. "Something tells me I missed the main event."

She could feel the chuckle in his chest as he reached out to push the door open for her. She shook out the umbrella and grimaced as his lips twitched. 

"Something tells me that the main event is coming right up," Beth murmured, watching as Dom closed the door behind them. Together, they crossed the reception, all too familiar with where they needed to go. "Losing my job over this is going to be one hell of a party trick--"

"That's why I'm here, doll," It was said in a sing-song way that made the hairs rise on the back of her neck. She caught their reflections in a window as they passed. What a pair they looked. Dom hummed to himself as they reached the elevators. "Think positive thoughts."

How could she think when all she could do was concentrate on the blood pounding in her ears?

 The mirror self-reflected back to her on those metal elevator doors looked pale and terrified; she looked like a little kid who didn't belong in such professional clothes. 

Like Dom, she'd made an effort this morning; gone were the cracked cosmetics and the stress-frazzled hair. She looked somewhat refined-- 

Charlie had raised an eyebrow at it this morning: Going somewhere? 

Beth had just given him a strained smile. 

Yeah, hell, probably.

In all honesty, she thought she was dressed for a funeral. (Who's funeral? Her professional career, probably.) 

She'd tried to look nice, but now she felt as though she was about to lift and carry a coffin. She'd gone for red lipstick, but now she felt like it was too much-- her head was scrambled and she was second-guessing every decision she'd ever made. 

Suddenly, Beth really wished she'd told Charlie what was happening.

She wanted him here. She needed someone to hold her hand.

Inside the elevator, Beth found herself wringing those same hands, nervously playing with the ring on her finger. God, why was this elevator so slow? 

Beside her, Dom just tapped away on his cell phone, doing whatever lawyerly things a lawyer of his calibre was supposed to do-- after a prolonged pause, one filled with an exhausting amount of filler, background music, she could practically feel his eye twitch.

"Let me guess?" He said, not looking up from his SMS. My foot was beginning to spring up and down with a very subconscious, restless impulse. For every tap I made, I could feel Dom's mood dwindle. "This is your first legal serve?"

Beth glanced over at him, already chewing on the inside of her cheek.

"It's that obvious?"

"It gets easier," was all that Dom replied with, throwing in a nonchalant shrug for good measure, "I remember my first... I sunk a billion-dollar business and made half of Wall Street burst into tears... all in one day."

She blinked at him, "Yeah, sounds nice."

He seemed to sense her hesitation and sighed. 

The cell phone was slipped into his pocket and he turned to face her, his dark eyes drilling deep and deep into hers-- she almost jumped as he set his brief case down. 

The sound of it made her bristle. But then grabbed her shoulders, pulling her down into what felt an awful lot like some sort of pre-game pep talk. She was the star quarterback, seconds away from tripping on the line and he was the coach, trying his damndest to talk some sense into her.

"Keep your head up," He said, curt and very to the point. 

It really did feel like it was some sort of covert operation as if they were very much in this together. Maybe they were? Beth had a habit of dragging people down with her. 

"Look him in the eye," Dom instructed, "Really make him sweat it. It works best when you look like you don't care at all. Remember why I'm here... Remember why you've got those bruises on your hand-- I'm sure you'll get into it when you see the expression on his face."

She met his eyes behind those sunglasses. 

He was nodding slowly, almost encouragingly. 

Was this what Dom looked like when he was actually working? 

She'd never ever had such an uplifting conversation with him before. 

He clapped her on the back and when she looked down at her hands, she found herself staring at those bruises-- she felt something release deep within her chest.

"You got it?" He asked as they went back to standing metres apart. 

Beth let out a long breath, rolling out her shoulders. She caught him glancing over at her, a slight wariness in his expression that made that familiar fire strike up inside her. 

She paused, recognising exactly what it was.

Slowly, Beth nodded.

(It, in particular, felt so much like the person she used to be. It felt like the sort of rage she'd felt when she'd first come to Seattle. It was anger so deep-rooted in unapologetic pain that it almost made her eyes water.)

"There we go," In her peripheral, she saw Dom smile. "You've got it."

She felt so lacklustre compared to how hyped he was. 

He'd clearly had his morning coffee. It was a whole different kind of energy; she recognised it from Calum. It was specific energy, the energy of a lawyer who knew that they had someone right where they wanted them-- there was blood in the water and Dom was the predator going in for the kill. 

He almost bounced as the elevator doors opened on their floor. Between the metallic taste in Beth's mouth and the flash of Dom's perfectly bleached teeth, she felt as if she'd fallen into Shark Week.

Being a shark was fun. She enjoyed the look on people's faces as she followed Dom through the department, closing in on their target. 

Somewhere between the elevator and the secretaries desk, Dom whipped off his sunglasses and shook hands with someone he recognised: ("Hey, how was Prague? Good to hear. We should catch up sometime. I really enjoyed that dinner in Munich.") She just stared at him, completely caught off-guard with how quickly the world seemed to move around him-- with Dom, it seemed as though he was speedwalking and the ground was straining itself to keep up.

"Dominic Fox," He said to the secretary at the desk, "I have an appointment for 11 am."

They had an appointment? In all honesty, she'd just planned on bursting into that office and taking him completely off-guard. 

Beth blinked at the back of Dom's head, once again, completely taken aback. The secretary seemed to breeze through the booking, finding his name scrawled on whatever list there was for the day. 

They were invited to sit down but Beth found herself unable to stand still; she struck up the familiar pace, pacing a thin line up and down the corridor. Dom, on the other hand, just stood, rock-still in the corner, furiously tapping away on his cell phone.

She let out a long breath.

"How did you get an appointment?"

Dom didn't seem to even hear her.

"Do you have a camera?" He asked instead.

"What?"

"A camera," He repeated, brow furrowed in concentration as his phone buzzed in his palm. 

He said it so nonchalantly and plainly as if he couldn't understand why she was completely bewildered. She blinked at him, silently willing him to explain himself. When she didn't answer, he glanced over at her, appearing exasperated. 

He raised his eyebrows expectantly. She sighed, "Why the hell would I need a camera?"

Dom just grinned. "You're gonna want to take a picture of his face when he sees me walk through that door."

"How did you get an appointment?" Beth tried again, completely ignoring the fact that he had an ego that was far bigger than the size of this hospital. 

She placed her hands on her hips, attempting to stoke the blaze that was beginning to smoulder at the bottom of her stomach. The lawyer scoffed, only causing her to frown at him. 

"No, c'mon..." Beth sighed, "I phoned Calum yesterday--"

"You realise I'm the executive lawyer for the Harper Avery Foundation, right?" 

His words were so blunt that even Beth could feel the weight of his credentials. His lips twitched and his eyes shone almost mischievously. (There truly was so much blood in the water. Half of it was her own.) 

"I'm not just some public defender or Craigslist lowlife," Dom drawled, rolling his eyes, "When I call, you answer... and you sure as hell move around your schedule to fit me in."

She blinked at him.

Holy shit and she thought Mark Sloan had been egotistical. 

Why did she always happen to sleep with the most arrogant assholes in the universe? Did she attract them? 

Was it some sort of gravitational pull that happened to just swing them into her orbit? 

The way he smirked at her made her think so much of the Mark she'd first met in New York. People changed so much over the years, but the glimmer in his eyes almost made her nostalgic-- she bit down on her tongue and rubbed at her jaw.

"You don't have to be here, you know?" Dom said, finally seeming to grow wary of her pacing and moving. 

To put it simply, Beth couldn't help it. She had to keep moving, otherwise, she'd second-guess this all and she'd chicken out. She felt heavy as she looked over at him, arms crossed tight against her chest. 

He heaved a long breath. "You could go home... you could go have some soup with your boyfriend or go watch a movie. Go sit with Charlie on the sidelines--"

"No," Beth shook her head, exhaling heavily. "This is my problem. This is my shit to deal with. It's already bad enough that you're here... Mr Big Shot Lawyer From The Harper Avery Foundation." Dom tilted his head to the side. "I'm sure you're looking forwards to the big payday you're getting out of this."

He seemed to pause at that. 

The hand holding his cell phone sunk a little bit and he looked over towards the office that they'd plotted to pillage. 

A beat passed.

"I happen to be here on my day off," Dom admitted quietly. Beth stared at him, not quite sure what he meant by that. She really hoped that her suspicion wasn't right. "So... I'm here out of more of a personal... personal... charter."

Her eyebrows raised, "I thought you didn't take pro-bono cases?"

"What can I say, doll?" He said after another prolonged pause, "I'm a good Christian that believes in Charity work." 

(She didn't quite believe him, nor did she like the crooked grin that played on his lips as he looked back down at his cell phone-- eventually, his eyes swung back around to hers.) 

At that moment, the secretary called out across the desk, catching their attention. He was ready. 

Damn right he was, they were perfectly on time and, if Beth had learnt anything today, it was that people hauled ass for Dominic Fox-- she looked over at her lawyer as he picked up his briefcase and nodded in her direction.

"You ready?"

There it was again: Ready. 

What a fucking joke of a word. 

Beth was pretty sure she'd never been ready for anything in her life. 

If there was anything the last two months of her life had taught her, it was that it was basically impossible to be ready for anything. The world was constantly shifting, all ground was unstable and the air was never still. 

There was no way to acclimatise to things or be comfortable with the way things turned out to be. She wasn't ready, but at this point, Beth was realising she would quite possibly never be.

"Charlie doesn't know." She'd said those words to him before, but this time it was less make or break. 

Before, she'd been talking about their kind-of-affair, the reason why, when Dom looked at her, she felt a little more or edge than she did with just any other lawyer. He seemed to recognise it. It was a familiar passing phrase between them. 

Beth paused for a second and then continued: "He doesn't know about this... he doesn't even know that you're here."

"Your hand?"

"I told him I fell."

Dom's lip twitched, "Original."

"What else was I supposed to say?" Beth asked with a light sigh, "I don't want him to worry..."

"So you lied?" He asked back, looking completely confused by the logic behind that decision.

 (She didn't blame him, it wasn't exactly a well thought out choice.) 

He lingered for a second, just seeming to think about that for a few moments. She wasn't sure what was going through his head, but whatever it was, it made him laugh. 

Her bewilderment was met with the gleam in Dom's eyes as he looked back over at her. He ignored her frown and jerked his head in the direction of the door. 

"Let's go."

(Dom was musing over the fact that maybe Beth and Charlie were more suited to each other than he'd first thought. They, clearly, had a common interest: dishonesty. Maybe they deserved each other after all.)

"I'm starting to think I'm just one big secret," Dom mused further, letting his mouth voice some of his inner thoughts. She just rolled her eyes, for the hundredth time since he'd gotten out of the back of that taxi. "What am I? An international man of mystery?"

"Try a sell-out," Beth cut back.

It elicited an amused smirk from the man of the hour; she didn't even waste the glance back as she put one foot in front of the other. To her, and his surprise, she almost left him in the dust-- when she realised he wasn't following, Beth placed her hands on her hips, letting out a long, frustrated breath.

(It was now or never. It needed to happen now or she was going to talk herself out of it.)

"You sure about this?"

Dom's question was quiet. 

For such a loud man, such a quiet and soft tone felt oddly intimate and it made Beth feel inherently uncomfortable. Her face contorted and she really, really wanted to say no.

She wasn't sure at all. But Dom had flown all the way out here and her hand was so fucking bruised-- she looked down at her fingers and tried to find that fire within her once again.

It was there. It'd never left.

A swift nod.

"Yeah," Beth inhaled sharply, raising her shoulders, "Like you said, it's perfect weather to make a grown man cry."

***

It began like this: Nice to see you again, Chief Shepherd. I'm sure you're familiar with my client.

Dom was right. She would've paid to take a photo of that expression on Derek Shepherd's face. There was something about the way that his eyes bugged out of his face, clashing with the very nice bruise that she'd left stretched across his face-- it was pleasing to the eye. 

There were enough colours on his face to make a painter swoon; if she squinted enough, it looked like a Monet.

Apparently, there was something innately terrifying about being served papers by Dominic Fox (who, if you didn't know, was the executive lawyer of the Harper Avery Foundation (apparently, some people still needed reminding)). 

They made a very satisfying sound on the table. It was quick a hefty stack and it made Beth wonder how much Dom had spent on printer ink. 

She stared at them as Derek, very calmly, leant over and went to phone the corporate lawyer.

"Oh, no need for that right now," Dom interjected with a wide smile that flashed his canines, "They're not for the hospital, they're just for you."

That's how it began, but this is how it went: Merry fucking birthday, Derek Shepherd, you've been served.

This time Beth did not yell. It was a wonder how loud a lawyer and a nice bit of blackmail could be. She did not need to yell. 

They'd made sure that Derek would listen to her every word. There it was, printing on a document that was far more legal than Derek seemed to think-- he looked at everything skeptically, looking over repeatedly at his ex-sister-in-law with a faintly heartbroken look in his eye, as if, this time yesterday, he hadn't tried to do the exact same thing to her. 

In fact, Dom did most of the talking; he was a very persuasive speaker, speaking with his hands and with that same, stellar bleached smile that was almost patronising.

It, being one of the longest ten minutes of Beth's life ended like this:

"You're threatening to sue?"

He spoke directly to her, a dent appearing between her eyebrows as she nodded. Did the massive fucking stack of papers in front of him not make it clear enough? 

To put it simply, they had each other in a legal stalemate: Derek had broken hospital confidentiality agreements by sharing her medical records with Addison, he'd also just been a general douchebag about it. While Derek had the upper hand of whatever evidence he'd found of them falsifying Beth's medical records, they were pretty certain those charges wouldn't stick, not when the falsifying was done so well. 

But there was one thing that he could still do that would have been, somehow, worse than an arrest warrant--

"That's not your style," Derek commented as if he knew what that even meant. (Beth approached that comment with scepticism. 

How could it be her style or not? She was pretty sure that she'd tried to be so many different people over the years that not even she knew what her style truly was.) She met his eye, tilting her head to the side. A questioning eyebrow bounced on her brow. 

"This is not your style--"

"Really?" 

She'd almost forgotten what her voice sounded like. It scraped at the back of her throat, raw from the mass amount of yelling she'd done from the day before. She met his eye and, in her peripheral, she saw how Dom seemed to glance over in her direction. 

"What's my style?"

She was very interested in his answer.

"Not this," Derek said tightly. Oh, thanks for the clarity. "This isn't what you do--"

"Maybe you just don't know me as well as you think you do."

Fuck, even she could feel the weight of that. 

They stared at each other. It was more than two pairs of eyes meeting and, in that moment, Beth understood it. She could taste the blood on her tongue, she could feel it's metallic bite in her throat. 

When she looked at Derek, she could see the cogs catch at the back of his brain, she could see how thoughts seemed to trip and collide into one another. It was left like that for a while: Beth fell silent as Dom closed, speaking matter-of-factly as he ran through exactly what would happen if Derek was to speak out of turn--

If you tell Mark Sloan exactly what's on that medical record, your blood isn't the only thing that's going to be in the water.

(At least bodies had the tendency to float.)

When Beth stood, she felt the rush of adrenalin that Dom had harnessed throughout this whole affair-- she was sure that man hadn't slept in days, but he bounced through every single syllable and every single cordial smile. 

She could feel it. 

He was radiating energy and she could feel it; no longer was she nervous~

She was bloodthirsty.

When they got up to leave, Derek was staring at them as if they'd just hit him with a semi. 

His dark eyes followed Beth as she left the same armchair she'd crumpled in just twenty four hours ago. What a nice change this was, now Derek looked deeply conflicted, leaning back in his chair and staring and staring and staring-- Dom extended his hand over the desk for a handshake. 

Derek didn't take it.

"I mean what I said," Derek said instead, his attention fixed on the psychiatrist who looked so tall in her heels now. 

She felt tall. She felt like a fucking skyscraper. She was going to survive this. She wasn't going to let Derek or Addie tear her down this time. When she looked over at him, she didn't feel her gut wrench anymore. 

"This isn't your style," He repeated.

Beth just scoffed lightly. Is this what Addie had felt? Signing those divorce papers and getting out of Derek's life-- at this moment, Beth was fairly tempted to never see Derek Shepherd again. 

She was perfectly happy to walk out of that door and out of this hospital and leave behind a man who had once been her person. She was going to give it a go: with a smile in Dom's direction that said, we're done here, she turned towards the door--

"It's not you," Derek repeated, "It's Petunia's style. It's not yours--"

There it was again.

(It made her pause.)

There was something about Petunia Vanderbilt (or Greenman, or whatever evolution the stilted socialite was stuck on) that unlocked something so explicit at the back of Beth's mind. (Derek seemed to know that too. 

His body shifted as he watched her halt completely, back turned from his.) Dom glanced between the two of them, not familiar with the woman, nor the way that Beth's jaw clenched. He adjusted his suit jacket and stared at Beth's profile as she wavered; there were so many thoughts in her head, so many things that felt like they needed to be said---

Beth cleared her throat.

Make this count.

"You're wrong," Beth breathed out, the words tumbling through her lungs. She heard Derek lean forwards in his chair with a loud, desperate creak. Her eyes briefly squeezed closed before she faced him. "You're so wrong about that--"

"Am I?"

"Yeah," She looked him right in the eye.

 (God, how had they got here?) 

"Are you really forgetting the people that came before women like Petunia Vanderbilt and your ex-wife?" Beth almost scoffed, "Are you going to just dismiss the socialite that they moulded themselves after? The original blueprint of the scorned woman? The mad fucking woman that invented this sort of feeling that's inside you right now?--"

Derek didn't speak.

Were his words trapped inside of him? She hoped they were. 

Did he feel it too? She'd spent so many years that way-- it was nice to be heard. Her lips twitched into a smile and she walked towards him, eyes sparkling in a way that felt like an inheritance of some otherworldly rage.

"You don't know?" 

Her question was light. The answer was so simple. It was obvious. She found his hesitation to be the funniest joke since her whole life had just decided to start imploding in on her. 

The answer was just there on the tip of her tongue: "Bizzy fucking Forbes."

(Her mother had taught her well. She hadn't taught with care, but she'd made the lessons stick.)

***

Mark saw them leave.

They came out one after the other. 

When he saw Dom Fox, his brow crumpled like a discarded piece of paper. His blue eyes were sharp as he watched the way the lawyer seemed to walk away from the Chief's office with the same cadence as a man walking away from a burning building. 

There was this air about him, one that made Mark pause completely and just watch.

And then came Beth.

The two of them stood in the hallway for a while. 

There was a dizzy smile on her face as if she'd just spun around in orbit; they made conversation and, halfway through, Dom received a phone call on his cell phone. He smiled in an apologetic way and, with a curt nod, he turned and edged in the direction of a quiet space. 

Mark walked forwards just as Beth watched Dom go.

He should've been on his way to a consultation, specifically, to check on Derek's nose, but his detour was completely devoid of a conscious decision. 

All he knew was that he saw Beth and suddenly his schedule was rewriting itself-- it was like that day in outpatients. All he knew was that his face was numb and Beth was turning her head to look over at him, alarmed by the sound of oncoming footsteps.

He didn't miss the way that she seemed to tense at the sight of him.

"Hey."

"Hi," She sounded so quiet.

Briefly, Mark glanced over her shoulder, back towards Derek's office; jeez, why did he get the impression that she'd just committed manslaughter or just plain and simple, old fashioned murder? 

He knew enough about Dom Fox to know that seeing him and Beth walking out of the Chief's office was one hell of a red flag. Had they just wiped him off the map? Was there a lot more than just a nose to fix--?

"Should I ask?" 

He was so hesitant. 

Why did he feel like everything was incriminating? Here she was, wearing red lipstick like some sort of femme fatale and looking as if she'd just waltzed straight out of a funeral. There was a brief pause and Beth's lips twitched; she followed his gaze, her eyes catching the closed door. 

When she looked back at him, he let out a slightly uneasy laugh: "I'm scared to ask."

"I kept my word," Beth said simply with a slight smile.

(Okay, so there was definitely a dead body in that room. Great.)

He found himself staring at her for a while.

 He committed her to memory as he had done a million times before. He stared at her as she looked downwards, shuffling her heeled feet across the glazed, glossy floor. 

With her head bowed, she looked as though she was mourning, a very delicate and bruised member of a funeral party-- with her hair slicked back and smudge of red lipstick on her teeth from where she'd chewed on her bottom lip a little too hard. Mark averted his gaze.

His apology from yesterday had left this space between them. 

He could feel it as Beth let out a short breath. Things felt awkward. 

Things felt unfinished. 

They'd felt unfinished for the past half a decade, but now it was almost suffocating. 

Suddenly, Mark was wishing he just knew how to stop the talking. 

He shouldn't have apologised. He shouldn't have said so many things while Beth was already so overwhelmed--

"I've gotta go," She said and Mark knew that she could sense it too. (

Her whole body itched and her eyes avoided his. She felt just as she had before the fire had started; she moved with unsettled energy, swinging from foot to foot as an unbridled tremor ran from head to toe.) 

Turning away was such a cheap escape, Mark could tell. 

He didn't want her to go. 

There were so many things that he wanted to say, so many things he wanted to confirm or deny or just make explicitly clear. Silently, he willed her to stop, to turn around and come back just like she had in New York without him knowing--

(Beth had had enough of the past two days. She was tired. Her bones felt brittle and her heart felt heavy and her brain dragged with every step she took. There was a voice at the back of her head that relayed every single word Mark had said to her at such a painful speed. It raised the goosebumps on the back of her arms and made her hairs stand on end, sending a sickly sweet feeling through her body-- )

(Maybe that's why she hesitated?)

To his surprise, that's exactly what she did.

"I accept it."

Her voice caught him off-guard. 

Not only that but the suddenness of it. One moment, Beth was walking away and the next, she was looking over at him as if she'd never thought of leaving. Her eyes missed his by a few metres, caught on the space by his feet. 

She stared a hole into his shoes and, for a split second, Mark could feel them start to catch fire.

"What?"

"Your apology," She said breathlessly, her face contorting slightly as she spoke. (Mark felt his stomach twist into knots. It was such a moving, deep feeling that he could feel throughout his whole body.) "I accept it."

Oh.

Oh, so they were going to talk about it. 

The thing about New York, the one thing that Mark had held onto with such spite for all of these years, was that Beth had been as bad at communication as he had been. 

He knew her, he knew that she told him that he never wanted to talk about the things that needed to be addressed, and she knew him, she knew that he told her that she lied through her teeth to avoid exactly what they both needed to say. 

He hadn't expected either of them to ever talk about it--

And yet, here they were.

"I appreciated it," Beth began, and he could see the way the muscles in her body clenched.

 There was a tightness in her, one that was so deeply wound that it was part of her core, part of her soul. 

"You were right..." She trailed off. "I should have let you apologise."

He didn't speak.

"I..." 

He'd never seen her so unsure of herself. Her brow creased and she pressed her lips in a very thin line. Mark held his breath, watching as her head raced at a hurtling speed and her thumb rubbed the diamond on her finger with something that looked a lot like desperation. 

Her eyes searched empty space, "I get frustrated because... I just want to fix things... and I can't."

Mark felt the blood rush to his ears.

"It's my job," She continued with little regard for the way he almost wilted under the weight of those words. "I fix things. I fix people, just like you do-- but I fix them as people, I help them piece their minds together and... and half the time I feel like the butt of someone's joke. A psychiatrist that can't keep their own life together... that can't even follow their own advice I just--"

(If Mark hadn't known better, he would've thought that she was bleeding.) 

(There were so many words, all leaving her body all at once, so much like the blood had seeped through her packing as she died so quietly in his arms.)

(Somehow, this felt more hopeless than that had-- here she was, bleeding feelings and Mark couldn't suction or transfuse like he could in an OR. He had to watch her bleed herself dry. It was the only option left for her.)

"I want to stop being so hateful," Beth said softly and he almost saw the glassy, flash of tears in her eyes. "That's what I want to fix. I want to fix me. I want to fix the fact that sometimes I just feel so fucking angry about things that I can't change. I want to stop looking back at things and not being able to move on... because of things are completely unsaid and apologies that you deserved too--"

(Did it feel cathartic? Or was it just cold?)

"I know I'm a better person than I was in New York," Her words felt raw and deeply sourced. They weren't coming from her heart, they were coming from her toes and the tips of her fingers. They were from the tip of her nose and the ends of each split-end. "And I don't think I'm a bad person... but I don't think I'm best. I still make mistakes... and I'm not being fair. Even after all of these years of thinking I had my shit handled when it came to you and... and my anger and my hurt-- There are still so many things that I should have done differently."

A pause.

"I'm sorry too," Beth let out a breath that sounded as though it had been with her for half a century. "It shouldn't be that hard to apologise for things... but I was at fault too. A part of me will always hate you for what you did but... but at the same time, the other parts of me know that you didn't just choose to be a bastard." A weak smile and Mark couldn't find it within himself to chuckle at her joke. "I need to take my own advice and... and I need to apologise too."

(If a Mark apology had been rare, an honest, bloody Beth apology had been unheard of.)

"I'm sorry for making you feel like you weren't important," Those words made his head spin. He felt them travel through him. They reverbed through his chest like an echo in an empty cavern. He felt them in his toes, in his fingers, in his nose and at the back of his aching chest. "Because you were... for a long time... you were the most important person in my life. It feels dumb, looking back at it-- but the reason you have hurt so much with everything you've done... Addison, the women, the... the other shit--it's because... it's because you meant everything to me."

He felt his throat constrict with the threat of emotion.

"It feels dumb saying that now... after nine months of being here and... and so much time... but I realised yesterday when you said that about Derek and me needing him more than I needed you when I got fired... " 

She looked over his shoulder as if to stare directly into the past. 

"But I realise that it got lost in translation," She said, "I didn't make you feel important. I didn't make you feel loved. I wasn't fair.... And I'm apologising for that. You deserved better, just like I did. You felt second-rate to a job and a bottle of pills..." She seemed to sigh to herself, shaking her head, "I've been a hypocrite to just frame you as the one reason things ended like it did."

Mark just stared at her.

"I will never forgive you for Addison," Beth met his eye, with a sense of finality that chilled his skin. 

(It did feel cold. It felt lonely, too, despite how close she was. They were metres apart and yet the distance had never felt so far.) 

She cleared her throat, inhaling sharply as if she was trying not to emote-- Mark's jaw clenched painfully. 

"I won't," Beth said, "and I won't lie about that. I still can't get over that humiliation and that pain... and I don't think you expect me to either..." 

She tilted her head to the side, as if expecting him to speak, but again, Mark couldn't exactly find the right words to say. 

"I will be angry," She said. I will be ruthless. I will be a bitch about it for the rest of time, but that's because I cared and it hurt... I just--" She heaved a breath, face twitching as if she couldn't find the right words either. What a delicate position this was, every syllable felt make or break: "I just hate you for it." 

That felt strong. Hate was such a powerful word in a world of a just tolerating. 

That felt like a lot and he could see it in the way Beth folded slightly at that revelation. 

She'd spoken before thinking. 

"I still get angry. You made me forget my worth and forget the power of my love..." She chewed on her bottom lip, her blood-red lipstick moving with her heavy breath.  Her gaze, for a moment, turned sad. "You didn't know what you were doing, and I know I deserved better... and I don't think you understood any of it until you met Lexie... I thought I could teach you how to love without... without...."

She hung her head. She pressed a hand to her forehead, suddenly appearing very uncomfortable.

"Fuck I don't know," There was a sense of hopelessness, discomfort in the way that she moved. "I don't know what I think anymore..." 

Slowly, Beth glanced over her shoulder and back towards Derek's office. He stared at the back of her head, wishing that he could just open it and stare at the inner folds of her brain. (Would he know what she thought? Would he understand her thoughts better than she did?) 

That was the clarity: they'd both cared when they'd thought the other didn't. Maybe that's what their unanimous pursuits of each other in New York had confirmed? 

Mark still didn't understand any of this. Maybe he was just too scrambled for this-- he'd a hitch in his filing system. 

The files for Sloan, for Lexie, for work and for Beth, were all disorganised and stacked in ways that the office-workers in his mind couldn't understand. 

(He was haplessly searching for some sort of pre-programmed response, a way to feel about this, but there was nothing.) 

So, he just stared. He was silent. He stared.

Speechless. The Great Mark Sloan, Keeper of a Heartless Set of Keys, he was silent.

"So, um," Like he was the day before, she felt pressured to fill the silence. He could tell from the way that her whole being strained. She placed her hands into her pockets and let her shoulders fall. There was a release, an escape of the unspoken. "I think this is as far as it goes. I can't spend any more time feeling like I owe you anything. I'm so fucking tired..."

A pause.

(He could tell.)

"I'm tired of being this person," She said, with all of the weight she carried on her shoulders. "I'm tired of being Addison's sister, of being your ex-girlfriend, of being the one that cracked and went crazy and now the one that just... that just keeps getting everything thrown at her. I can't do it--- I won't do it." She shook her head insistently, "I think this is called a breaking point and I'm pretty sure it's breaking me in half, so, uh..."

(He could tell that, too. He'd always been good at reading her, at reading her body language, and there was a slight tremor in her hand that wouldn't go away.)

She paused. 

She paused for so long that he felt it in his bones.

And then she spoke again:

"I just need to let it go."

Oh.

 In a way, that sentence felt like a goodbye. Was it adieu to the memory of him? Mark couldn't tell-- all he knew for sure, is that his body was bleeding too and he didn't know where. 

" I see New York in everything, I feel it in every fucking room, and I can't... I won't do it anymore," A break. She cleared her threat. "I can't keep having my life governed by my past. I'm bettering myself and I've said so many times... I've said over and over that I'm free of it, but I'm not. I'm still here in Seattle even though I should have left months ago. I should have never even stayed... I wanted to fit in and I wanted you to hurt too--"

(Mark didn't particularly know what this feeling was, but if he had to have described it, he would have said that Beth had worn black for a good reason.)

"I haven't agreed with Lexie on many things..." It was a wry deadpan, one that made Mark's skin crawl. "But she was right when she said that I shouldn't be here." 

There was a brief flash of tears. 

"I don't belong here.," Beth said, "This is your city, as is New York. I just turn up in these places and expect them to be mine too..." A pause and Beth shook her head; she chuckled to herself. "and we were never good at sharing."

(He still couldn't find his voice. Maybe if he had, he would have told her that he didn't agree. Lexie Grey was, as she had been many times on Elizabeth Montgomery, wrong.)

(He really wished he could speak.)

(If he could speak, he would've told her to stop.)

"I can't come clean about everything," She continued and, for a moment, Mark couldn't remember what a world was like where she wasn't speaking. There were so many words, so many things. He couldn't keep up. "There's too many... too many things that not even I can understand.... but I can... i can be clean of you and Manhattan and whatever... whatever else."

At those words, she trailed an eye around the hospital. Beth mused over the interior with that glassy thoughtfulness in her eye; did she even speak to him directly anymore, or was these just words that were escaping her like air from a balloon? 

Were they subconscious? Did she feel every word like he did? He felt his skin throb and his body bleed and his lungs shrivel until they were dry and small. Did she even feel at all?

What a fitting place for their past to die. 

Just moments away from where Derek Shepherd had been shot. He'd bled onto that stretch of floor just beyond that door, not once, but twice-- the first time, by Mark's hand. 

In fact, this whole building seemed to crawl with it. 

There was so much blood on these floors, in these walls. It felt right for something so broken to fade away in a hospital.

 They'd spent their lives gravitating around each other in hospital corridors-- why not finish where they'd begun?

Just as Beth had, it died slowly and quietly, leaving a heaviness in Mark's chest that he couldn't comprehend.

Was this a punishment? Mark couldn't tell. 

Was this revenge for what he'd said yesterday, or was this repentance? He'd never been particularly religious, but whatever it was it stung. 

Or, alternatively, was this just Beth leaving all of them behind-- she'd slapped Addie, served Derek and now she was washing herself clean.

The only thing left, in true Beth Montgomery fashion, was to leave.

When Beth looked at him, he felt as though she was staring right through him. 

She didn't seem to have anything to say. A beat of silence played out between them-- why did this feel different? It was, somehow, worse than his had been yesterday. 

Mark figured he knew why; there was a sense of loss that hung in the air, this was different to that night on the deck and it was different from every moment they'd had in between. 

There was no sweet ending, no hopeful note of a friendship between them--

There was just Beth leaving him where he'd been the whole time, deep in her past: dead, at the bottom of whatever stagnant water that had collected at her feet, alongside the Old Beth he'd tried to love.

He felt like he'd just lost a friend.

Slowly, when Beth figured that he had nothing to say, she nodded. 

It was a final nod, a nod that worked like the bookend on a bookcase-- it was a final full stop at the end of a sentence, the last quotation mark in the dialogue that had passed between them. It unwound him very slight and, when she went to turn around and leave, for what felt like the final time he'd ever see her in some erratic and slightly panicked train of thought, he found his voice.

"Your surgery."

It halted her. 

(Two words had never been so violent.) 

She stopped dead in her tracks, one foot lifted, the other moulded to the ground. It caught him off-guard, but then he remembered that it was what had triggered it all. 

If Beth Montgomery was going to leave Seattle tonight, this was why. 

So, he continued talking, just in case she never listened to him ever again.

"Yesterday, Derek told me that the reason you're mad at him is that he read your medical file..." 

His voice was scratchy and he'd almost forgotten what it sounded like. Why did it sound so alien to him? (Everyone always said that he loved the sound of how his own voice, Beth included. Why didn't he recognise himself?) 

"He said that you had a big surgery," Mark said softly, "A major one. He said that you left New York knowing that you weren't well."

A pause.

Mark swallowed, his brow creasing.

"Were you ill?"

Beth's head turned to the side and, as if she couldn't bring herself to look at him, she stared at the wall to her side. 

From this angle, he could see how her face flushed as if all of the blood had drained right out of her-- she was bleeding out somewhere, just as they all had been this whole time. There was a burst vein or a little knick somewhere in an organ. 

They were all just bleeding themselves dry over and over for their own entertainment.

His brow furrowed softly.

"Did I miss something, I..."

She didn't speak, only making a sound that sounded suspiciously like a wince. 

(Of course, he'd missed everything, he'd been in bed with her sister.)

"If...." His voice caught at the back of his throat and he found it very, very hard to form each sound, "If you were ever... If you ever hurt yourself because of me--"

"No," She breathed it out, shaking her head. She sounded so horrified and pained that it almost made Mark squirm, "No, I was fine."

He felt his shoulders sink in relief.

"It was nothing," Beth said quickly and quietly and, for a second, Mark swore that he saw a tear fall. She rubbed at her face and, after a few moments, she let out a breath that shuddered through her body. He could imagine it tearing its way through her. 

"Uh, Derek's just... he's just being Derek. Over-reacting over... " A pause. "Over something small."

Those words were followed by an immense silence. 

She stood there, back still turned to him and arms moving restlessly as if she couldn't standstill. He allowed himself to breathe for a few moments, felt his chest unlock and his arms move and head stop spinning. He trailed his eyes across her extended neck and her profile, caught the way how she seemed to wait for something.

(She was waiting for him to speak. She was waiting for him to say something, watching him out of the corner of her eye.)

(Mark stayed silent.)

(What could he say after something like that? Was he supposed to concede? Was he supposed to congratulate, he'd never done anything like this before-- if he wanted to be honest, he would've said that he felt an immense pain that was almost otherworldly. )

(He didn't understand why or how, but it washed over him and left his bones bruised and his blood curdled. He was too focused on that to ever even begin saying something that would convince Beth to stay.)

"Okay," She breathed out, so lightly that he barely even caught it. All he saw was the raise of her hand and how her diamond ring caught in the light as she pushed back her hair. It sparkled vindictively. "Great."

And then she walked away from him, for what felt oddly, and painfully, like the last time.

***

Meredith watched Beth leave that conversation.

She watched the psychiatrist walked towards the elevator and stand beside her. She watched with tired eyes and a heavy soul from the past hour she'd spent in Andrew Perkins' office, still tirelessly fighting for a way back into an OR. 

Just Beth had been decimated from her conversation with Mark, Meredith felt barely half alive-- when the doors opened and the two women stepped inside to the empty container, there were no comments, no exchanged smiles, just two exhausted women stood side by side.

(Beth looked as though she oddly relaxed as if a weight had been pulled from her shoulders. She let out a long, even breath and stared at the floor counter as it descended.)

(She found, for what was the first time since that conversation on the deck, comfort in the silence. She adjusted her skirt, rolled her shoulders and listened as Meredith cleared her throat beside her.)

Meanwhile, Meredith was not relaxed at all. Her whole body was bunched, collapsed in on itself. She hugged her elbows tightly to her, eyes stuck on a poster by the door. She was here physically, but mentally, she was stuck in that office, staring at Andrew Perkins as he told over that there was something she wasn't saying.

A pause.

(He wasn't wrong.)

Why was it so hard to say it?

TW / /

"I miscarried," Meredith said it so nonchalantly, so matter-of-factly that Beth, for a second, thought she'd made an offhanded comment about the weather. 

Despite her withered composure, she looked over at the psychiatrist with impassivity, her tone monotonous. Slowly, Beth met her eye. She felt the pressure to keep talking. 

"The stress..." Meredith specified in a strained voice, "from the shooting and the surgery...." 

A pause. 

"But... uh, the problem is" She said, "that, uh, Derek doesn't know."

TW //

The two of them looked at each other. 

Beth didn't particularly react, she was, as Mark had been, oddly disengaged. 

When she looked at Meredith, she did not judge, she did not berate Meredith for not telling her husband or even show any signs of condolences (which Meredith was sensitive towards and she really didn't need right now.) 

What she needed, specifically, was the particular way that Beth Montgomery nodded slowly, as it in understanding.

"I was pregnant when I left New York."

It felt right to say. It was an exchange between two women who were so tired of the happy, frightened, childish men that ruled the world. It was the first time she'd it out loud. 

She looked over, devoid of anything but exhaustion. 

"The problem is... that Derek does know."

(With a blank stare, Beth watched the realisation dawn in Meredith's eyes.) 

(It was the realisation that this whole thing between the two of them ran far deeper than Meredith realised. It wasn't just the internship. It was such a weird realisation to watch dawn on someone. It started in Meredith's eyes and wormed itself deeper into her being.)

A pause and the surgeon saw a flicker of emotion behind Beth's eyes.

"Mark can't know." 

It was said so quietly, so breathlessly that Meredith's chest was suddenly painfully tight. Beth's eyes held onto herself so desperately, as if she was begging Meredith to understand her-- unlike Meredith she needed someone to just reach out and...

It'd devastate him, was what Beth didn't say out loud.

Meredith reached over and squeezed her hand. 

It was tender and tethering and the touch seemed to trigger something deep within Beth. She let out a shuddering breath, her grap tightening on Meredith's fingers-- for a moment, Meredith thought that she was going to cry. 

There seemed to be something trapped within Beth's chest, she wasn't sure whether it was a sob or a cry but it was something.

Beth's voice faded slightly: "He can't know."

Slowly, Meredith nodded. 

It was in the same way that Beth had nodded at her. It was an understanding, a mutual shared awareness. They were on the same page, whether it was through their mutual dislike and hardship or the fact that they were both caught up in the lives of men who seemed to unable to keep themselves together. 

Meredith held on tightly, recognising how desperately they both needed this moment.

Just a moment. Just one.

When she looked back over at Beth, the psychiatrist had inhaled so deeply that she seemed to rise in her heels. 

She'd inflated herself back up, pieced herself back together. She squeezed Meredith's fingers tight in hers.

"Modern fucking women," She said with a very weak smile but a slight glitter in her eyes. 

They were rimmed with red, not tears but an exhaustion that, at this point, had become part of her. It was integral to her design.

Meredith smiled back. "Look at us go."