Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟳𝟱 these violent delights have violent ends

𝙇𝙓𝙓𝙑.
THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS HAVE VIOLENT ENDS

──────

 "HOW DO YOU FEEL?"

It was a standard question, the sort that Teddy Altman had said the moment Beth had stepped into the room. It was the subconscious question, one that came as easily as exhaling. 

The dirty blonde snapped on a pair of gloves, watching as the psychiatrist took off her shirt, allowing the cardiothoracic surgeon to look over the same chest she'd cracked only two and a half months ago in an OR across the city. 

Goosebumps raised across her skin as naked skin met air, Beth adjusted her bra and her pants as she scooted back on an examination bed.

"Good," She breathed out with a bright smile. 

It was as if she'd changed all of the light bulbs in that facial expression. It beamed wide and genuine and unwavering as Teddy began to gently examine the post-surgical site. (The cardiothoracic surgeon didn't miss how Beth seemed to wince slightly as her gentle palms pressed into skin that was still chaste.) 

Teddy raised an eyebrow.

"I mean it. I've been really good."

"Good," Teddy said lightly, flashing a gentle smile as she encouraged Beth to lean back. She gently pressed her hands across Beth's abdomen, testing the muscles in her chest. "That's good to hear."

It was good to hear. (In all honesty, Beth was feeling the best she had in a long time. When Teddy asked her to relax her tendons, she felt as though she truly could-- it was Saturday, her last full day at work before she handed in her resignation, skipped to the courthouse and got onto the next plane out of Seattle.) 

(She was good. No, she was better than good.)

(Maybe, that's why she'd finally decided to actually go to her checkup for once?)

Teddy was gentle, all too aware of the fact that this was the first time she'd actually seen Beth since she'd been discharged from Seattle Pres. 

She'd been unable to come to her three-week check-up and hadn't made it to her rescheduled appointment in week six. She'd cancelled last minute for the eight week too, but now she sat there, shoulders jutted backwards and chin tilted back towards the ceiling as Teddy checked her over.

"How's Charlie?"

Beth smiled at the mention of her fiancé, something that made Teddy smile back at, her head swirling with the shared sentiment that they had for the two Perkins brothers. 

The brunette seemed to flush very slightly at his name, her head bopping very slightly along with her response.

"He's great..." 

Her voice was so light, only contorting very slightly as Teddy applied pressure to her chest cavity, testing Beth's response. Her face seemed to twist very slightly in discomfort as Teddy instructed her to lift her arms over her head. Even so, Beth attempted to keep the light, chastising smile on her lips, no matter how much her brow seemed to pinch in pain. 

"How's Andrew?"

The surgeon caught her eye, a knowingness passing between the two of them; Teddy was caught off-guard slightly, unaware that anyone really knew much about the little love affair she'd been having with the psychiatrist ever since he'd arrived in Seattle, much less Beth. 

It made her wonder whether Andrew had spoken about them, particularly about her to Charlie. That was how information worked, right? It was easy to assume that if Beth knew it was probably through her fiancé telling her. 

Did that mean Andrew had said something? 

Was he talking about them? 

As in together? 

As in a couple?

Teddy halted for a few moments and then, very slowly chuckled under her breath.

"He's great too," was her tentative response. Beth, very quietly told Teddy that she was glad to hear it. "Have you been feeling any discomfort at all?"

The air in the examination room was cold, rife with a chill that seemed to bite every surface. Between the feeling of cold rubber gloves against her skin and the slight hesitation in Beth's answer, there seemed to be a shiver that constantly hung over them. 

Teddy tilted her head expectantly, gazing down at the incision that was still pink and raised. It was the traditional sternotomy scar, a red line that traced from just in between Beth's breasts and halfway down her chest. 

To the eye, it was healing nicely, but Teddy paused inquisitively as Beth seemed to sigh to herself.

"Sometimes," She responded, "Not too often but sometimes if I just move in a certain way. It's not great but I guess that it's kinda like leftover bruising, right?" She paused and then, after a moment, recalled the sharp pain that would fill her whenever her muscles twinged in a certain way or her chest seized, "Do I need to be worried?"

"Beth," Teddy interjected, her smile appearing amused but stern. 

The psychiatrist halted immediately, goosebumps raised on her shoulders and cheeks flushed from the persistent cold. 

"Nine weeks ago I had to do a thoracotomy procedure to inflate your lungs," was all the surgeon said, "I had to operate avoiding hard anathesistics and while you were already recovering from a broken rib. Not to mention you have spent your whole recovery on nothing but ibuprofen. You look so much better than you did when I last saw you."

Teddy watched Beth's eyes slide away from hers, almost shamefully as she shifted underneath her hands. 

The session had been met with a lot of apprehensions, Teddy still not too sure exactly why Beth had been avoiding every check-up that had been scheduled. They'd had to move her back to Seattle Grace and Teddy was completely oblivious to the fact that just last week, Beth had threatened to discharge herself against medical advice. 

Instead, Teddy had entered the room with half of her completely convinced that Beth was going to be a no-show-- but then, she'd spied the psychiatrist already waiting, face made up into a shy, soft smile.

Not only that, but Teddy had also meant it when she said that Beth looked better. 

As she moved to prep an ultrasound, she found herself lingering on memories that she would've rather forgotten. They'd all had a hard day, some had had it worse than others-- Teddy blinked and saw a flash of that ambulance ride, of Beth, strapped to a bed and a Plastic Surgeon who seemed to fade into someone so unlike himself--

"I've got a patient upstairs whose ten weeks post-op from the same surgery that you had," Teddy continued, missing the way that Beth buried her teeth into her bottom lip as if to stop herself from speaking. "This might be a bit cold, by the way," The psychiatrist nodded and winced only minimally as Teddy spread gel across her chest. "But my patient had an advanced thoracotomy procedure and has been on heavy medication ever since, and he's only just been discharged today."

It was an understatement to say that Teddy was surprised to see Beth so energized. She'd been fully expected to be faced with a patient that was on the verge of crumbling; from Teddy's experience, surgeries like that took a lot of time and patience, things it appeared that Beth did not possess. 

Physically, Beth's body was still barely patched together. Teddy's gloved hands gently glossed over the raised incision that was still healing, noticing how Beth seemed to wince silently at the contact-- the ultrasound of her lungs told the same story, but she was healing, she was getting there.

"I guess I'm just harder to keep down," Beth exhaled as Teddy passed her a wipe to clean herself. The cardio specialist didn't speak, her brow dipping very slightly as she turned away. She was sure whether feeling within her was just suspicion or just intuition that something wasn't quite right. "I think it's like a Montgomery thing. You should've seen my Mom post-surgery on her last facelift. She bounced back like that."

The dirty blonde raised her eyebrows, laughing almost awkwardly as Beth shifted into a seated position.

"Your chest is fine, there's no fluid in your cavity and it seems as though everything is healing well," Beth nodded along to her words, appearing relieved at that assessment. It made Teddy idly wonder whether the anxiety of the unknown was what had been keeping her from attending her appointments (or was it something more?). "You're doing really well. Everything looks like it's good. I'm really impressed with your progress."

Beth cracked a small smile, "Thank you."

"But even saying that," Teddy said, picking up her chart and a pen, almost tempted to place her hands on her hips. "You need to take it easy. An open chest surgery like that isn't a facelift. Not by a long shot."

Her smile remained, "You're telling me," A sigh and she chuckled, "I think this whole thing has given me a lifetime's worth of wrinkles."

Teddy reciprocated the laugh, head-bopping knowingly as she wrote out her examination notes. Meanwhile, Beth just held onto the wipe in her hand, staring down at it as her brow furrowed very slightly. 

Between the quiet scratch of Teddy's pen against paper and the lingering chill, the room was silent. It was like an amounting pressure against their eardrums; the reality of a closed-door that seemed to isolate them in a hospital that had so much noise.

(Beth really didn't want to think about the last time she'd heard the hospital this quiet.)

"Okay," Teddy cleared her throat and gave Beth a wide smile, "I just have some routine questions just to check that you're coping well with the lack of medication--"

As if a signal from the high heavens, the surgeon was cut short by the sound of a knuckle against the door of the room. 

In unison, heads turned and Teddy had to chip out a very surprised "Occupied!" across the cold floor. 

But then the door very hesitantly opened and a familiar head appeared around the side. Archer smiled at the two of them dubiously, his eyes immediately fixing on his sister.

"Oh thank fuck."

He seemed to exhale loudly in relief, his shoulders almost slumping at the sight of Beth shrugging her t-shirt back on. 

The two women stared at him, watching as he stepped around the door and almost clutched at his chest. He sounded breathless as if he'd run from another part of the hospital; he held up a hand as he struggled to catch his breath. 

As Archer hunched slightly, he held up a hand, as if to ask them to give him a moment to compose himself. Teddy's brow furrowed in confusion and vague alarm. He barely managed to chip out his next words:

"Eli owes me twenty bucks."

"We're currently doing a private examination here," was Teddy's confusion but assertive response to his appearance. She was fully prepared to bark orders as if she was back in the military. To her, she'd just had a random surgical attending burst into her room, inappropriately interrupting a patient examination. "Why are you--"

"It's okay."

Beth's interjection came with a roll of her eyes, her head turning to look over at the man that was still struggling to lower his heart rate. 

Two fingers were stuck to the side of his neck, checking his heartbeat and his chest heaved as he placed his other hand on his waist. His face was very slightly red, as if hi sprint down from his department had been a marathon in itself-- 

Beth looked between Teddy's bewildered expression and long desperate gasps leaving Archer's heaving frame--

"Teddy, this is Archer..." 

The introduction was done with a dismissive shake of the hand and the strained greeting smile that tumbled across Archer's face. Beth shook her head slightly, seemingly exasperated with his appearance. 

"My brother," She explained, "My dumbass brother who seems to have no idea of privacy––"

"I knocked," He wheezed out as Teddy's eyebrows rose.

"Archer, this is Doctor Altman," Beth's hand swung back to gesture to the blonde. The cardiothoracic surgeon just smiled hesitantly, her hand raised in a half-wave. "Y'know, the woman who saved my life that you're now rudely interrupting--"

"I knocked."

"Did you really bet on me turning up at my appointment with Eli?" 

Beth shot back instead, completely blindsiding the way he attempted to disagree with her. 

Her face was contorted in the exact way it had been when Teddy had applied pressure to her skin, but now she appeared completely miffed rather than in discomfort. Her dark eyes watched Archer's head bop up and down in silent confirmation. 

"Really?"

"It was supposed to be thirty," Archer forced out, holding his side as if he'd gotten a stitch. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, gritting out a 'Oh god, this is why I don't do cardio' as he wiped his brow. He eventually finished his sentence: "But Eli went to Starbucks for breakfast."

"Fuck my life," Beth mumbled to herself but then turned to Teddy, her face suddenly exploding into a wide, blinding smile, "Ignore him, let's do the questions--"

"Are you sure--?"

"Yep," Beth said, shooting Archer a look from out of the corner of her eye, "Ignore the old man that really shouldn't be doing cardio at his age--"

"Oh fuck off," Archer snorted.

"No, you fuck off," She volleyed back, "You have asthma, you idiot. Die quietly."

Teddy's eyes bounced between the two siblings, silently wondering whether there were any other Montgomery's just lurking out there in the world. 

In this hospital, it seemed as though the drama between them, especially between Addison and Beth, at least, was infamous. Everyone was all too aware of what had happened on that OR floor when Beth's hand had gotten very well acquainted with her sisters cheek. 

Teddy gave Archer a wary, hesitant smile, continuing to wonder how it was possible for one family to have so much drama within it.

"Okay," She said and turned her attention back to her assessment sheet, "I wanted to just see how you're coping with the medication regime, what have you been taking?"

"Ibuprofen" Beth recited, glancing over at her brother as he dragged his sorry ass across the room, unceremoniously collapsing into a chair. "If I'm having a really shit day maybe an aspirin too. I'm really anal about moderation when it comes to pills. I try to take it only if I really need it."

"Sure," Teddy hummed lightly, checking a box, "So you haven't been taking any narcotic medications?"

An amused smile twitched on Beth's lip, "No, I've been careful..." 

But then she paused, groping at her wrist clearly enough that it diverted Teddy's attention down towards it. The cardiothoracic surgeon paused as Beth scratched at the skin, her nails running over skin that was already vaguely irritated and read from itching. 

"And besides," She shrugged, "Pain meds were never my sorta thing."

The joke didn't really fit the atmosphere in the room. 

Slowly, Teddy nodded and made a small note on the foot of her sheet. Beth watched, her lips pressing into an awkward smile. 

(Admittedly, Beth had never gotten used to the whole 'being a patient thing', having notes taken on her was a very strenuous experience. The last time she'd had to answer questions like this, she'd been detoxing and being screened for extensive drug abuse.)

(Oh how time flies when you're having fun.)

"Really?" echoed Archer, appearing bewildered as he leant heavily back in the chair. "I thought that's what you took?" 

An exasperated Beth looked over at him, her eyebrows raised as he just stared at her. 

"Was it not opioids--?"

"I would ask what rock you've been living under," Beth interjected, looking halfway between miffed and bewildered. "But you'll probably end up telling me about the secretary in Connecticut that you lived under for the nine months you were at Dad's practice--"

"Her name was Hilary," Archer said, causing her to roll her eyes. He was still trying to catch his breath slightly, clearly not having remembered his inhaler. "And she was very nice."

"Oh my god," Beth murmured as soon as she'd left enough space for Archer to regain his composure. Her nose wrinkled in disgust and she shook her head, seemingly completely despaired by the thought of it. "You're as bad as Mark."

"You take that back right now--"

"Okay," Teddy interrupted, causing Beth to shoot her a very thankful smile. Archer, meanwhile, just looked annoyed, his shoulders slumped as he mumbled to himself about how it was completely rude to even compare him to the guy. "Have you been smoking lately?"

"No," was her response, "Not with these lungs, they're barely holding on as it is."

"I don't think I need to make you aware that you're at a real high risk for relapse."

Relapse. 

That was the word that she'd sketched at the bottom of the page and ringed twice. It was also the exact same word that made Beth stiffen, her breath catching in her chest as she nodded hesitantly. 

Her eyes dropped to her hands, again, making Teddy stare at the irritated, red skin that was tracked with trails left by her nails. She attempted a chuckle and it was semi-successful; but still, it made Teddy's chest tighten a little bit and feel as though there was something not quite right.

"Like I said," Beth swallowed tightly and tried to shrug off the sudden dip in the mood. Her eyes raised to meet the surgeons and her smile seemed strained. "I'm being very careful."

After a beat, Teddy nodded.

"And have you been taking my advice when it comes to physical activity?" 

Moving on, she phrased the question tenderly, her eyes flickering back to Archer in the background. 

Beth tilted her head to the side but caught onto what she was referring to, chuckling slightly. It was the hesitation in the psychiatrist's response that made Teddy sigh. 

"I'll take that as a no."

As if on cue, Archer's nose wrinkled, just as Beth's had moments before, "Gross."

(Beth felt the need to laugh, amused by the fact that apparently him bringing up his sex life was perfectly fine. But that's when it hit her, in those fleeting seconds-- out of all three of her siblings, within twenty-four hours, she was going to be the married one. Between Archer and Addie, whose lives she'd always been so desperate to emulate and follow, Beth was going to be the one who'd gotten something right.)

"Look," The psychiatrist began frankly, despite the mischief that danced in her eyes. Her head turned to look at Teddy, a glimmer of joy in her eyes as she smiled. "I'm getting married tomorrow so I think I should have a little bit of leeway--"

"Tomorrow?"

That caught Teddy completely off-guard. 

It was said so nonchalantly too as if it was public and very common knowledge that Charlie and Beth's wedding had been rescheduled to something so soon. Knowledge that, apparently, was very new news to Teddy and, more likely, Andrew too. 

It made her look between the siblings, completely lost-- Beth looked over at her, her brow furrowing very slightly when she realised that Teddy was completely bewildered. A beat passed and Beth seemed to pause.

"I thought Charlie told Andy?"

"I could be wrong..." 

Teddy said, although she was fairly sure he hadn't. She'd done her fair share of making relationships difficult unnecessary (Owen and Cristina being the prime example), so she bit her tongue. As far as Andrew was aware, the wedding was far on the horizon. Their pillow-talk, lately, had been extensive and it would've come up. Her heart clenched a little as she forced out the next words. 

"I guess you rescheduled because he's leaving, right?"

"Hm?"

"Andrew," Her tired response was indicative of the sleeplessness nights she'd had over this fact. "He's moving onto his next job. He's leaving tomorrow."

It seemed as though Teddy wasn't the only person who was out-of-touch with the latest news-- Archer and Beth exchanged a look, one that boasted complete confusion. 

A dent was dug so deep in between Beth's eyebrows that it was almost mistaken for a deep-sea trench. She chewed on the inside of her cheek, leaning to toss the wipe into a trash can.

"Tomorrow?" The bride-to-be echoed as if she was hoping Teddy would correct her.

"Yeah, in the morning," Teddy said instead, "Apparently there was an explosion in a factory in some docklands--"

(But Beth wasn't paying attention. She was thinking, her brain trying to wrap itself around what was being presented to her.)

(They'd moved their wedding to tomorrow, the exact same day that Andrew was apparently leaving Seattle. They'd moved the wedding. They'd moved it to the afternoon, the exact time that Andrew was going to be gone--)

"I'm sure it's just a misunderstanding," Beth shrugged, (despite the way her mind hastened to remind her how she'd sensed something was off between the two of them for a while.) "I'll talk to Charlie about it."

(It was because of that that Beth hesitated on mentioning their plans tonight.) 

(She'd assumed that Charlie would've made sure that Andrew was kept fully up to date with everything. They'd booked a table at their regular restaurant as some sort of last dinner to make up for the lack of wedding or reception.)

(Again, Beth had assumed that Charlie had extended an invitation. She'd made the assumption that Andrew knew exactly what was going on. But, she had the feeling that that particular assumption was wrong. Very wrong.) 

(She also had a feeling that Charlie had a purpose behind not telling his brother certain things, so she held her tongue and decided against mentioning the dinner.)

Teddy, meanwhile, was oblivious to Beth's inner sanctum of thoughts. 

She was far more focused on the nagging thought that maybe Andrew did know about all of this and they just weren't at that point in their relationship where they could exchange information quite like that. 

Relationship? Well, Teddy supposed there wasn't much there as he'd be gone for the other side of the country within twenty-four hours.

That's how the appointment ended ten minutes later: unceremoniously and with Teddy waving Beth out the door. It was only when she was standing alone in that room that she found herself staring down at notes again, down at word she'd circled twice. 

Between Beth's wedding and the tension that had turned the psychiatrist's spine rigid, Teddy hoped that her suspicion was just that, the little, wanton feeling that something was a bit off.

***

"Did you actually have a point in racing all the way down here?"

Archer looked over at his sister as she pushed her arms into her doctor's coat, adjusting her hair as the two of them walked through the hospital. 

They walked through the clinic and up into the reception, the two siblings seeming to know exactly where they were going without even discussing it between them. 

Beth looked vaguely amused, her eyebrows raising as Archer shrugged.

"I had to see whether you'd actually turn up," But then he chuckled to himself, "Also, Mark's back on our case treating Nick's daughter and her burns."

Beth (who was still distracted by the revelation surrounding Charlie and Andrew's relationship) frowned slightly at that, "Our? You still need me?" 

He nodded as she pressed down on a button for the elevators at the back of the reception; she chuckled and shook her head. 

"You need a psychiatrist on a diagnostic case?" Beth echoed with a scrunched nose, "You're already wasting the surgical resources--"

"My little sister is getting married tomorrow," Archer cut her short as the doors opened, allowing both of them to step inside. He gestured with his arm for her to go first and she snorted, rolling her eyes. "My little sister is getting married and then she's hopping on a plane to leave for what's probably going to be for forever--"

"Oh, don't be so dramatic."

"--and I want to spend time with her," His lack of professionalism made Beth scoff, but a light smile lingered on her face as she continued to fix her hair in the blurry reflection of the metal doors. He caught the way her eyes glimmered as she tried to appear stern. Despite how hard she clearly tried, her smile wouldn't waver. "You should feel flattered that I'm hanging around, I can't believe you're leaving this shithole before I am. I'm only in Seattle for you."

Beth chuckled soundlessly, adjusting her skirt and tucking it into the waistband of her skirt. 

He took a moment to look her over, momentarily caught off-guard on how similar she looked to Addison; they might have been wildly different in personality, but when she was dressed for business, Beth looked so alike their sister that sometimes Archer felt as though he was seeing double. She even shot him the flat unimpressed look that was so familiar to Addison's face. 

It had the same flattened brow, the same slightly dubious glimmer in her eye-- Archer snickered to himself and shook his head.

"And yet I don't see you running to hand in your resignation letter," was her response. 

Her smile still prevailed dimly, as if no matter how much she tried to appear sceptical, she still deeply appreciated the sentiment of his words. 

Beth let out a breath and rolled her eyes. "I'm surprised Addison's still here. People give me crap about running from things but I learnt it from somewhere."

Archer just chuckled to himself, "I thought you'd have found a way to drive her out of Seattle by now."

He still wasn't exactly sure what had transpired between the four people that had crowded into Derek Shepherd's office a few days ago. 

He didn't know what had happened behind that door but he knew what had resulted from it: the handprint on Addison's cheek, the uneasy shift at the bottom of Beth's smile, Derek's bloody nose and the way that Mark seemed the most reversed and introspective that Archer had ever seen him. 

Every single part of him wanted to ask Beth what had happened but (much like how Mark had refrained), Archer knew that if Beth wanted him to know, she'd tell him. 

Besides, he'd never had the energy to insert himself into other people's businesses, anyway; trying to ease tensions between his sisters by bringing Addison to Seattle had very clearly just made things worse.

Archer was, for all intents and purposes, happy to sit and watch, and not get involved.

(Well, unless it was good revenge, of course.)

"I'll give it my best shot," Beth mumbled, her head dropping so she could root through her purse for something. 

Her smile turned slightly wicked and Archer sensed the scheming smirk that hid within it. It was his turn to shoot the designated Addison expression towards her and she blinked back at him. 

"What?" She said, "You ask... I'll deliver--"

"What are you taking each of them out strategically, or something?"

By them, he meant exactly who she thought. Derek, Mark, Addison. 

The three horsemen of what was beginning to feel like the longest apocalypse known to man. He'd seen each of them in succession over the past few days and watched the light dwindle in their eyes. 

The only time he'd enquired about what exactly was happening had been over breakfast at the hotel with Addison, and she'd hesitantly skirted around the subject with a slight twitch in her eye. Derek had reverted to heeding Archer's threat and staying out of their way, and Mark just seemed to regard everything with intense exhaustion.

"I'm having some fun with it," She mused lightly, but Archer noticed how her smile seemed to smoulder slightly at the edges.

 It was no longer a look of amusement, but a look of foreboding, almost like the signature at the end of a long letter declaring war. 

"Not everyone can just drag over experienced surgeons into cases that could easily be covered by a resident surgeon, just so they can torture them slowly," Beth shrugged, Archer just rolled his eyes, "Talking of Mark, did you really have to drag him back on the case?"

"Surprisingly, he responded to the page," The neurosurgeon responded, following his sister out of the elevator, into the surgical department, and in the direction of their current shared case. (His chin was tilted downwards to catch a message on his cell phone, so he missed the way that Beth grimaced and murmured 'Of course he did' under her breath.) "Apparently he said some shit like 'wanting to see it through to the end'."

"So he's institutionalized?" She questioned with a chuckle.

"Maybe he wants to spend more time with us too," Archer said, although his tone was completely mocking as if he couldn't think of anything Mark would want to do least. "I'm sure he loves everything I've said to him so far--"

"What did you say to him?" Beth's attention seemed to pique very slightly at that, her body turning so she could look over at her brother. It was the same question she'd asked him when they'd stood side by side in radiology. He'd refused her an answer then. "I'm kinda scared to ask."

What had Archer said to him? 

Well, where could Archer start? He'd said a lot and they were all things that he'd stood by; between calling Mark out for all of his ass behaviour and making it explicitly clear that he was not liked, Archer considered it all a very good days work. 

He'd spent too many years watching his sister cry over that man to be filled with anything but contempt every time he saw that stupid smirk on his stupid face--

"Just what he needed to hear," was the response that Archer chose, instead of listing all of his achievements. But then he glanced over at Beth, recalling the expression that he'd seen on the Plastic Surgeon's face over the past few days. "I think the real question is 'what did you say to him?'"

Beth laughed, thinking that it was some outlandish attempt at a joke, but then she seemed to realise that he wasn't joking. She faltered and then sighed, rolling her eyes.

He'd sensed that something had shifted this week. 

So much had happened over the past few days that Archer felt as though he was going to get whiplash. They'd gone from Addison's arrival in Seattle to Beth's departure. They'd gone from Archer just trying to inspire peace to what had felt a lot like a nuclear detonation. He wasn't sure what had changed, but something definitely had.

Archer just hoped that he didn't have anything to do with the expression on Teddy Altman's face as she discussed narcotic relapse with her patient.

"I just..." She trailed off and then shook her head. "I apologised."

His brow furrowed, "You apologised?"

"Look, Arch," Beth's eye twitched as she tried to change the subject, "It's nothing, okay? I just told Mark that I can't keep talking about New York over and over, otherwise I'm just going to go insane." Archer bit down on his tongue and nodded, trying to swallow his surprise at an apology. "If you want to talk about something, let's talk about how you were dumb enough to sprint half the hospital without your inhaler--"

She didn't want to talk about Mark. Okay, message received.

"Did you get this message from Addison?"

 Archer decided that it would be the best call of action to bring up her second favourite topic. He waved his cell phone, referring to the text message he'd been sent while she was speaking.

"Nope," (For the record, Beth hadn't received a message from Addison in a hot minute. She'd stopped remembering to check.) She didn't even look over as Archer peered down at his phone, appearing completely disinterested in whatever Addison was saying. "What does it say?"

"She's asking me 'Why is Doctor Robbins saying you're getting married tomorrow?"

He recited the text message and (this time) caught the look of intense displeasure that flickered across his sister's face. Archer just sighed to himself, not sure whether he was fully prepared to ask the next questions. 

"Did you tell Addison you moved the wedding?"

Beth's silence answered his question.

"Beth."

He didn't sound disappointed. 

He sounded vaguely sad, as if this was a sign of how their sisterly bond had crumbled so massively. 

He was walking a couple of steps ahead, his attention completely caught up on the message; so distracted that he missed how Beth hesitated in her step, eventually coming to a complete halt. 

He didn't notice it until the silence became prolonged and he realised that he was alone in his aimless amble along the corridor-- Archer's brow furrowed and he turned, looking back to see the impassive expression on Beth's face.

At first, he thought her sudden halt had been a reaction to Addison's message, to the realisation that they'd gotten broken beyond repair. 

He thought that Beth had dropped away for some very silent reflection. He hoped, for the tiniest moment, that maybe that was the case and that it'd provoke a sense of hope in dragging his family back together... but then he realised where they were.

She was staring at the door of the boardroom, her jaw slackened.

Gingerly, Archer approached her, his eyes stuck on the way that she seemed to gaze through the slatted windows, but not really see anything. 

She was completely disconnected from reality, only hooked onto the world by the feeling of the ground under her feet and the vague sting of a body that was still deeply bruised. 

Her fists were balled, fingernails leaving crescents on sore skin-- Archer followed her gaze and just stood, amongst a busy corridor, shoulder-to-shoulder, letting her have her time to just stare and think.

(It was the first time she'd been back since the event.) 

(When she tried to swallow, her throat was dry. Suffocatingly dry. It took her two attempts. Three. Her nose was submerged with the same smell, with the same smell of bleach. It was familiar. It felt as if nothing had changed.)

Archer didn't share that same sentiment. 

He couldn't follow the jagged descent her thoughts took. He found himself just staring at a room he'd sat in maybe a total of two times; the first, being when he'd first come to Seattle and had to discuss his contract (completely oblivious to the fact that the floor he stood on was still partially stained with his sister's blood.) 

His brow furrowed slightly but he didn't speak. He didn't breathe a single word--

Beth didn't speak either.

Well, until she did.

"I'll talk to Addison."

"Hm?"

Her voice felt sudden when she'd been so suddenly silent. 

It was another cut in the air. Sudden silence, sudden sound. Archer's head turned towards her, his lips pressing into the line when he realised how flushed she looked, how her cheeks carried no blood and her eyes looked so haunted. 

But then she blinked; her eyelashes descended and her pupils moved to lock onto his perplexed face. The hitch in time was fixed, patched over with a hurried smile that seemed to grasp Beth like a predator sinking its claws into its prey. The expression seemed to shake her bones.

"I'll talk to her," Beth said again, "I'll sort it out."

Archer hesitated. Beth still didn't move. She wasn't looking at the door anymore, but she was looking at him. Uncomfortably so, as if she couldn't afford to look anywhere else but him. 

His head tilted to the side and he felt the strongest impulse to hold her shoulder. Her dark eyes held onto his face so tightly and left a very dry feeling in his throat. 

It was the return of that sudden vulnerability that had gripped her when they'd been in that examination room, the same flash of momentary pain that had flickered through her when Teddy had discussed a relapse.

Archer wasn't sure why it had popped into his head, but it had. It was like a very unwelcome ex-girlfriend appearing back into his life, bringing with it grim reality and a shot of nostalgia that he would've rather poured down the drain. 

Perhaps it was the sudden vulnerability that had risen in her, leaving a bad, familiar aftertaste in his mouth that he knew would take a lot of mouthwash to rinse out?

He nodded slowly, "Okay, what about dinner?"

"What about dinner?"

"Are you going to invite her to your farewell meal tonight?"

"Fuck no."

"Are you going to invite her to your wedding?"

Beth's head turned away again and she stared back at the boardroom with glassy eyes. 

He was overcome with a feeling that had hit Teddy Altman just moments before; the feeling that something wasn't right. Beth wasn't as fine as people had perceived her to be. (Just as Mark had said to Charlie, she wasn't ready.) 

She was impatient, she was messy and she was too willing to forfeit things for her professional career-- Beth let out a breath and shook her head, breaking whatever spell they'd both been caught in.

"No," Beth chipped out, just when he thought the worst waters had been weathered, "She can rot in hell."

***

Rumours of Beth's impending marriage seemed to be staggered as if rolling out in waves amongst the information that she was back, working at the hospital.

Every person who had suffered during the shooting returned to the hospital as a hotspot for gossip and speculation.

 April Kepner, the self-appointed intern to the Chief, had laboured over the fact that she'd been mistaken for Reed Adamson (someone who was very much infamous and very much dead) and Alex had been all too aware that everyone stared at him as if they were all too aware that he'd died. Eyes had the tendency to follow people, hounding Derek as if they'd all personally been there when he'd been shot. 

Gossip swelled, conversation stilled and the newest topic seemed to be how Beth Montgomery was planning on resigning.

"So, I was talking to Charlie about it and I was thinking that maybe we should go for something like a food processor or something..."

Mark, on the other hand, had not been listening to gossip much.

 He hadn't been avoiding it but he hadn't exactly been embracing it, either. When he approached Callie and Arizona, he was completely lost as to what exactly they were talking about. They were idling at a nurses station, the blonde surgeon talking enthusiastically with a lot of hand gestures and excitement pitching in her voice. 

Callie, meanwhile, seemed to just nod along absently, half invested in the conversation but half attached to the notes she was signing. The latter glanced up at Mark as he appeared, Callie giving him a strained smile.

"...and I don't know what time we should arrive tonight..." 

Arizona continued talking brightly, barely even acknowledging Mark's arrival. He could almost taste her excitement at whatever it was she was talking about, watching the blonde bounce about as she furrowed her brow in thought. 

"Beth said eight but I was thinking we could go a bit earlier just to see what the restaurant is like--"

"What's happening?" Mark asked, his brow furrowing as he looked between the two doctors. 

He spoke exactly as Arizona's pager exploded into noise. She turned on her heel, even before she could give Mark an answer, and took off down the hallway, claiming that she had an emergency in the NICU; the Plastic Surgeon looked over at Callie, catching the way she sighed.

"We got invited out," was Callie's response, perfectly balanced and nonchalant as Mark very gradually put two and two together.

"Another double date with Beth and Charlie?"

They'd been doing that a lot lately, the two couples going to restaurants and inviting each other over into their apartments. 

It'd almost become difficult for Mark to get a whole of either of them, with Callie's free evenings being dominated by whatever little social Arizona had dragged her into with their neighbours. Last he'd heard, Arizona had really taken to Charlie, attracted to his nice-guy smile and his tendency to listen to her passionate rambles unconditionally. 

A few times, Callie had turned to him, a little troubled over the fact that her lesbian girlfriend appeared to be completely enamoured by Beth's beau. 

Apparently, Arizona had unabashedly declared that Charlie was her 'favourite straight cis white man' and they'd become very good friends because of it, with Arizona attaching herself to him at all of their social functions.

Huh. Favourite? 

It seemed as though Beth and Arizona had that in common.

("What?" Mark had joked to the strained smile on Callie's face, "I get a consolidation prize or something?")

"It's actually something for their wedding," The Orthopaedic surgeon was looking down at the chart in front of her, completely missing the way that Mark seemed to pause very slightly. "But Arizona's completely stuck on what to get them as a gift for it... it's getting a little bit last minute now and she really wants it to be perfect. I think she's going to drive herself insane over it--"

"Wedding?"

Mark was a little bit behind. 

He was lagging in that sentence, his brain struggling to quite keep up with what Callie was saying. 

When she looked up eventually, she caught the way that Mark's eyes bored into hers, his brain flipping those words over and over-- that took her unaware, her eyebrows raising slightly as she recognised the look on his face.

"Yeah," She said, her eyes studying his facial expression. "They're hosting a meal tonight and then they're going to the courthouse tomorrow and just getting it over with, apparently."

Her words were slow and casual as if this was something that was perfectly common knowledge-- only it wasn't. 

Mark hadn't exactly had the same sort of direct subscription into Beth's personal life, just like Callie did. He didn't go to little game evenings in their apartment and exchange little stories and jokes over glasses of alcohol-free miscellaneous beverages. 

So far, it felt as though everything he heard about Beth's life was only by accident; Arizona had accidentally let it slip that Beth was engaged, he'd overheard Beth mention Charlie in the first place. 

It seemed as though, as always, Mark was only involved in things through coincidence and word of mouth.

Eloping? 

Eloping.

Hm, yeah. 

Mark wasn't quite sure how he felt about that quite yet.

"Let me guess," He said after a pause, "They're leaving Seattle."

A brief look of surprise flickered over her Callie's face and he knew that he was correct. Of course, he was. 

He knew Beth better than either of them liked to admit. It was classic, blue-print Beth: after everything that had happened over the past two weeks, of course, she was going to leave, hadn't he called it? 

She'd fast-tracked her wedding and now she was leaving the city, just as he'd expected. By the time he'd wrapped his head around the whole thing, he was able to process exactly how much Seattle would change without her.

Callie eyed him weirdly, more than likely wanting to ask questions. 

There was a very chaste silence, one that was set in place mostly for her to formulate a response. Her eyes bounced between Mark and her chart, glancing at him warily as if she wasn't exactly sure what direction to take this conversation. Mark, meanwhile, just nodded to himself, somewhat at peace with the fact he'd seen this coming since Beth had practically erased him from her history and future--

Well, Mark thought to himself, at least she said goodbye this time.

"It's a bit weird," Callie said once she'd fully overseen his reaction. He tilted his head inquisitively. "I mean this whole time she's been saying that they're going to have this big wedding and invite all of Charlie's family. I know she had Addison helping her pick out flower arrangements a few days ago," That made Mark snort in disbelief, "It just feels sudden?"

"Maybe she just doesn't like it here anymore?" He suggested, despite the fact that he was very aware that it was more the people that were driving her away rather than the city itself. "Maybe they're just moving on?"

(Moving on. That was a buzzword if Mark had ever heard it.)

"You should've seen Arizona's face when she found out," Callie snorted slightly, presumably figuring that Mark must've been correct. "Heartbreak. Pure heartbreak. She doesn't want either of them to leave." (Mark chuckled but his chest felt oddly tight. Imagine that.) "But I think tonight should be okay. God forbid she cries over a straight man tonight."

A pause.

Mark was distracted. 

Callie noticed, her eyes following the way his head dipped slightly and a dent appeared between his eyebrows. He was lost in thought, a familiar flicker of a memory dipping through him. It was the mention of how sudden Beth's departure was that did it-- it made him wonder why exactly it was that things seemed to be moving so quickly. 

And that brought him back to an extremely familiar question that he'd been grappling with for the past few days~~

What exactly did Addison and Derek know? What had they found out for her to be so deeply distressed?

"Hey," Callie said as they went to part, giving him a long grin. 

There was a certain look in her eye, the sort that made his chest a little bit tighter. It felt as though someone had their foot on his sternum, gradually pressing weight until his lungs were shrivelled and dry. 

"Who knows?" She said, "Maybe you'll get a last-minute invite."

This time, he laughed for real.

"I think I'll pass."

As much as he wanted a front-row pass to the final showing of the Beth experience, he'd had enough dinner parties for, what was beginning to feel like, a lifetime.

***

It took Cristina exactly five seconds to speak.

In that time, her eyes seemed to bounce across the table as if she was overseeing a very intense tennis match in the middle of the cafeteria. She wavered in the air, standing there in front of the two women with her hands clutching a coffee and half a sandwich. 

A very slow groove slid in between her eyebrows as she hovered with an air of complete confusion-- just the sight of such an unfamiliar expression on the cardio surgeons face made the other two doctors pause.

The thing that caught her off-guard, notably, was the presence of someone new at the table. Usually, Cristina Yang's lunch breaks were dedicated to her long-standing friendship with Meredith. 

They'd talk about things, about how McDreamy was dreamy and McSteamy was a little too steamy and about how the world seemed to be spinning too quickly too often. 

Lately, Cristina had resolved to just listening, with her head stuck in a magazine-- but today, today there was someone new.

Beth gave her a faint smile, "Good morning."

The psychiatrist watched as Cristina hesitantly sat down. 

She seemed completely off-guard as she shot a very quick look in Meredith's direction. The general surgeon wasn't particularly paying attention, head lowered as she picked through a salad and flipped through a medical journal. There was a prolonged pause, as if Cristina didn't particularly know what to respond with. 

Beth didn't take it personally, she just nodded to herself and returned to her pasta salad.

"What is she doing here?"

The question was asked to Meredith, who, forever seeming to be one of the pillars of peace in this hospital, barely even fluttered an eyelash. 

She raised her head and glanced over in Beth's direction; the youngest Montgomery just continued to chew on a mouthful of chorizo, her eyes flickering over a message on her phone. 

Then, she looked over towards her best friend, watching as the cardiothoracic surgeon blinked blankly at the prospect of another stowaway on their table.

"We're bonding over trauma," Meredith said with a slight shrug, as if there was no better explanation. 

In the corner, Beth chuckled to herself (they were, for the record, having a swell time bonding over their Derek-involved-trauma) and mirrored Meredith's shrug when Cristina turned an accusing eye towards her. 

"It's Beth's last day and she needed to sit somewhere so I thought why not?" Meredith shrugged.

The answer did not satisfy Cristina, Beth could tell from the look on her face. 

A muscle jumped in Cristina's jaw but she stayed seated, eventually giving in. It made Beth's lip flicker in amusement; she knew that Cristina had never particularly taken to her, it was all part of the curse of being related to the ex-wife of her best-friends' new husband. 

She'd never taken it to heart, but she imagined that Cristina was a very fun friend to have.

Usually, Beth would have gravitated back to her office for lunch breaks or sat in the Psychiatry department, but she had felt like broadening her horizons. There was something about being stuck inside alone for such a long time that gave her a little push to go and seek as much social interaction as humanly possible.

"Anything fun happen yet?" Cristina asked as part of their daily routine. 

She looked over at Meredith and raised her eyes as if to propose a more pressing question (Have you told him?). It felt like a coded message, one which Beth very vaguely was able to decode.

"No," Meredith said intently and then, in a moment of deflection jerked her head in the direction of the brunette. "But Beth has a patient who keeps hitting on her."

The woman in question just sighed when eyes flickered over towards her. It wasn't exactly Beth's favourite topic in the world: yes, she'd spent the morning getting hit on by a patient while standing in between her ex-boyfriend, his ex-girlfriend and her brother. 

It'd felt like some sort of bad comedy sketch where, every time someone mentioned her ass, half of the room died a little more inside. Said patient was currently halfway through a full body scan as Archer attempted to figure out what exactly was causing his symptoms.

"Frontal lobe disinhibition," The psychiatrist said, looking back down at her cell phone. 

(Cristina hadn't noticed it before but there was a soundtrack to their lunchtime break. It sounded like generic filler music. Beth must've been on hold, scrolling through messages as music faintly spilt out of the speakers on her phone.) 

"He's biologically unable to lie so it's been a very interesting morning--"

"Disinhibition?" Cristina echoed, her brow folding as she looked at someone who definitely didn't look like they worked in diagnostics. Her tone was pitched as if she was completely lost why Beth was even on the case in the first place. (Join the club, Bet thought to herself grimly.) "Why are you--"

"My brother is meddling," Beth cut her short, sighing as she shifted in her seat. Across from her, Meredith was looking between the two of them, noticing how exhausted Beth seemed to suddenly appear. She pushed her hair behind her ear and rolled her eyes in exasperation. "He's put me on a case to torture my ex-boyfriend... you know the one who saved my life and told that I want nothing to do with anymore."

A pregnant pause echoed across the lunch table. 

It made Beth think of that night at Meredith's: the night where she'd stood in the kitchen and spoken so candidly of her engagement and Mark to an apprehensive Meredith and beyond drunk Cristina. 

It was the same night that she'd sat down on that back deck and completely dismissed Mark's attempt to apologise, finding it easier to just push it away than accept it. It was the same night that Meredith had looked at her with those eyes, blinked and then said with bewilderment that Beth couldn't place, that she hadn't even mentioned Mark while questioning her happiness.

How bizarre.

"Oh?" Meredith seemed to pause at that, realising she'd witnessed the consequences of that exchange. 

Her eyes, very briefly, flickered back over towards her best friend. Cristina, on the other hand, did not look interested in the slightest. (The deviation away from surgery had caused her to get completely engrossed in a wedding magazine.) 

"You said that to Mark?"

Beth shrugged, "Something along those lines."

"Good for you," Meredith said, but she seemed to say the words almost hesitantly as if she wasn't sure whether it was a definitive moment of character development for the exhausted psychiatrist. "How did he take it?"

Somehow, Beth found that to be a very confusing question; what did Meredith mean how did Mark take it? It was Mark. It was Beth. She deeply hoped that he took it for face value. 

She'd said a lot of things that she'd meant to say a long time ago and now, she felt as though she could walk a little bit taller-- if Mark hadn't realised that Beth was truly finished with living in the past, she didn't exactly know what more she was supposed to do for him.

(Meredith, on the other hand, was thinking about that week Mark had spent sleeping in Derek's hospital room.) 

(The bewildered expression on Beth's face made her lip twitch slightly. She unscrewed the lid of her water bottle and watched as Beth seemed to eye her oddly.)

(Privately, after the state of mourning that she'd seen the Sloan in, Meredith figured that Mark would never take anything well when it came to Beth.)

(She'd also seen him over the past few days, completely caught up in the storm that had tumbled across Seattle, with all this tension coming ahead.)

(Had Beth not seen how Mark had fought for her?)

"Well," Beth said, clearing her throat. She looked down but the dent between her eyebrows still lingered. Her words were punctuated by a violent assault on a cold piece of Penne. "I hope he got the message."

"So he can't lie?" Cristina said, redirecting the conversation back to case, almost making Beth relieved. 

She didn't particularly want to talk about the Plastic Surgeon anymore; he was an exhausting topic and she was exhausted just thinking about him. She turned back just in time to see Cristina shoot Meredith a dubious look. 

"Imagine that, imagine actually telling the truth--"

"Imagine actually confronting your PTSD instead of distracting yourself with wedding planning," was Meredith's taut response. 

It was sharper than Beth had anticipated and the psychiatrist almost winced; it made Cristina's head raise and her dark eyes stared at her best friend, unblinking. A moment passed, filled with the sound of shifting magazine pages. 

Meredith heaved a breath, sinking in her chair. "I'm not telling Derek."

Cristina seemed to want to say more but her eyes flickered warily in Beth's direction. 

It was an amalgamation of all the times she'd been unsure of Addison's little sister, paired with the strain of keeping a secret that was so personal to Meredith. The dirty blonde between them just sighed again.

"Beth knows."

"She knows?"

"She knows," Meredith said in response to the raised eyebrows. She met Cristina's aghast expression and shrugged. "I needed to tell someone."

"Yeah, your husband," the cardiothoracic surgeon replied. (Oh, Beth realised. They were talking about that.) 

The topic made her want to, frankly, tear off her own ears and retreat into a little hole; it was one of the reasons she was so happy to avoid Mark for the rest of time. 

"Mer," Cristina sighed, "We've been through this--"

"We have," Meredith agreed, nodding her head and tepidly meeting Cristina's gaze. "And I told you that Derek's got enough to deal with. I'm not lying because he didn't know in the first place--"

"He'd want to know--"

"He's busy and stressed--"

"Sometimes you can't help it," Beth interjected their exchange, her cheeks flushing as their heads both turned to stare at her. She was in the middle of checking her phone again, a nervous reflex to see whether she was still on hold. (She was. Apparently, the DEA was very popular today.) "Sometimes, you can't tell people things because it's easier to keep them secret."

Cristina frowned.

"That's still lying," She said, seeming unimpressed with the psychiatrist's ethos. In unison, Beth and Meredith exchanged a look between them. "Oh, am I not part of this inner sanctum of lying?"

"Like I said," Meredith said under her breath, "We realised that we can bond over things."

"Was this before or after Beth threatened to sue the Chief?"

Cristina's question came out of nowhere and made Beth's eyebrows raise. 

She said it so nonchalantly too, flipping through her wedding magazine in a way that reminded Beth so much of her last session with Andrew. 

In the corner of her eye, she noticed how Meredith seemed to pause; the two doctors just stared at Cristina until she noticed the gap in the conversation. 

It took longer than Beth had expected. She made an indifferent noise, brow furrowing as she met their gaze.

"What?"

Suddenly, Beth was very aware of how Meredith seemed completely blindsided by the knowledge. 

The woman beside her seemed to sigh to herself, shaking her head slowly as Cristina's gaze swung around the table. Eventually, she settled on Beth.

"I know the Harper Avery foundation inside out," was Cristina's response to the taken aback glint in Beth's eye. She shrugged, as if everyone knew. "I know what the associate lawyer to the foundation looks like, especially when he's doing out of Derek's office with a big briefcase."

Beth didn't speak. 

She supposed that it was inevitable that people were going to hear about the mess that had been made over the past week. It truly was inevitable after the show she'd pulled in the OR floor. (God, Addie wasn't wrong, she was incapable of handling things maturely.) 

Was she hospital gossip now? Did she have a reputation as the woman who backhanded her sister in front of a crowd and dealt out threats behind closed doors? Beth dreaded to think about the consequences of this all and how, as always, she was bound to come off worse than everyone else.

"I'm not getting involved," Meredith said quietly, opting to drink her water again instead of giving a more extensive response. She caught Beth's eye and the mutual understanding passed between them. A pause and then the eldest Grey sister chuckled into the lip of her bottle. "He probably deserved it."

"So McDreamy's being a McAss," Cristina observed, her eyes flickering between the two of them as she slouched against the table. "But how does McMessy get Dominic Fox as her lawyer?"

She shot an almost accusing look in Beth's direction, but the psychiatrist was far too distracted by the suddenness of the label that was tossed in her direction. 

She almost choked on a roasted vegetable, her cheeks flushing as she struggled to process exactly what Cristina had just said. 

By the time she'd recovered, paired with the gentle slap of Meredith's palm against her back to clear her airways, Beth's face was tainted red.

"McMessy?"

Oh yeah. There was the reputation. She was messy.

She could see from the way that Cristina, shrugged so casually that she'd joined the famous ranks of nicknamed staff members. 

Where Mark was steamy and Derek was dream-- that was Beth's defining trait. She was messy and, apparently, that was now a very defining trait. The worst thing was Beth didn't exactly disagree with them. 

Her life was in such a state at all times that she'd started to forget exactly where her life began and the drama ended.

"A hot mess," Meredith said, in almost consolidation. 

She gave Beth a wry smile that was far from reassuring; it gave Beth the impression that she'd had the nickname for a very long time now without her knowing.

"Yeah, we tried McSister-of-Satan at first," Cristina chimed in, looking back down at her wedding magazine nonchalantly. She flipped through a spread dedicated to rose arrangements as Beth shot an exasperated glance at her cell phone. "But it didn't really roll off the tongue."

Great. She was officially messy. 

Beth didn't exactly know whether to laugh or cry. 

She supposed that she could have had worse. Something about the slight glimmer in Meredith's eye told her that Addison had a pretty terrible draw when it came to these little names; did McControl-Freak-Bitch roll off of the tongue? 

She exchanged a look with the general surgeon, eyebrows pitched in a silent question as if to ask exactly what Addison had been left with. 

Meredith just smiled in a mischievous way and declined to answer.

"McMessy it is then," Beth lifted her half-drunk coffee in a faux toast, inclining it over at the cardiothoracic surgeon. Cristina didn't appear amused.

"How do I get Dominic Fox as a professional contact?" She asked instead, seeming intent on getting as much information out of this exchange as possible. 

There was a slight pause in which Beth grimaced; how exactly could she put her friendship with Dom into context? 

"Anyone from the foundation I try to link with on LinkedIn keeps declining my requests," Cristina added, "You can't tell me that you just happen to be friends with a guy like that!"

Beth just opted for a dismissive shrug, "We're just friends."

That answer, very clearly, did not satisfy her. 

She tilted her head to the side, very clearly questioning how someone like Beth was friends with a guy like Dom Fox. 

(In all honesty, Beth was skeptical that they were friends. She'd always felt more like a burden, like a kid that he'd been forced into babysitting just through association to her ex-fiancé. And now, to make matters worse, she'd found her way to Charlie too. She was pretty sure he didn't even like her-- which, again, she didn't blame him for at all.)

Cristina made a small noise, leaning back in her chair.

"McSexy," She said eventually, looking back down towards the magazine. Her nonchalance, again, didn't meet the expression on the other two's faces. Beth sought out Meredith, their eyes meeting again as the two of them blinked. "McSexy the lawyer needs to accept my friend request on LinkedIn."

The psychiatrist snorted. She got McMessy while Dom got McSexy? It almost felt unfair. 

The lawyer had barely even been in Seattle for five minutes before he'd built himself a reputation. 

Why couldn't she be the hot one? Was she really that messy that it eclipsed everything else?

"Cristina, you're getting married," Meredith stated, her eyebrows still raised as Cristina hummed to herself. 

It was very clear to the two of them that Cristina was having a very pleasant time thinking about the lawyer. She continued to muse quietly to herself, eventually scoffing at the reminder.

"So's she," Cristina retorted, inclining her head in Beth's direction. 

The woman in question just frowned very slightly, skeptical and slightly alarmed at what direction this was going in 

"C'mon Mer, even you can admit he's hot!" 

Meredith just rolled her eyes, "Married."

"Yeah," Cristina scoffed, "Not for much longer if you don't fess up to your husband."

"I need a better time."

"You need to be honest--"

"I'm not lying about Dom," Beth interjected, hoping to save Meredith from what was increasingly feeling a lot like an ambush. 

Cristina looked over at her, letting out a scoff as she shook her head.

"Just friends? Sounds like BS to me."

"Oh really?"

"That man is an adonis," Cristina continued, barely fazed by the challenge that came from the other brunette. "He's six feet of educated Harper Avery brilliance. He gives Sloan a run for his money. I love Owen but if that man ever wanted me, I'd climb him like a tree." A pause. Beth, for the second time in the last five minutes, almost choked to death on a piece of roasted zucchini. "Don't act like you haven't--"

"I haven't even thought about it," Beth said firmly.

Well, that wasn't technically a lie. 

It hadn't crossed Sober Beth's mind. Not even once.

Cristina's eyes narrowed over at her, as if she had a sixth sense inclination to label it as a lie. 

It caught Beth off-guard; she'd probably had a grand total of three unprofessional conversations with Doctor Yang since arriving in Seattle and during two of those, Cristina had been completely intoxicated. 

It was needless to say that they hadn't bonded by any means-- but now Cristina seemed to stare straight through her, as if they'd known each other for their whole lives. 

It was in that moment, with the throb of a guilty heart pounding in her ears, that Beth realised how much she missed Amelia Shepherd.

"In all fairness," Meredith said tepidly, seeming to toe the line of peacekeeper and anarchist. Maybe she just sensed how it was a blatant fucking lie? She addressed Beth with a strained and teasing smile. "He is your type."

Not this again. It made Beth think back to Amy all over again-- they'd had this conversation hadn't they? 

Over the phone in the early hours of the morning. It'd been when Amy had spoken her complete bewilderment at how Beth was happily engaged to a man who seemed so out of character for her. She'd told her that she had a type. Her type? Beth didn't exactly know what she'd meant.

"My type?" 

Her brow was furrowed in complete confusion, exasperated by the way that Cristina's face lit up in realisation, agreeing immediately as if Beth's love life was some sort of DaVinci Code that could be pieced together.

"Steamy," Meredith suggested, her lips twitching as she called back to Mark's nickname. It made Beth sigh and roll her eyes. "I don't know this Dom guy but from what I've heard he's important, smooth-talking and he's successful--"

"Oh," Beth caught on, nodding her head sarcastically. "Dark and dangerous, right? Hot and steamy, and a complete asshole? The sort of jackass that won't pay for dinner?"

What she really wanted to point out was that all of those categories were the complete opposite of her fiancé. 

Charlie wasn't dark nor was he dangerous, and he definitely wasn't a complete asshole. (Hot and steamy? Okay, that she actually understood.) She didn't have a type, or whatever type she had had was completely reformed. 

She had exactly what she needed, not what she'd thought she'd needed-- if Charlie Perkins was a type, then they were completely insane to think she'd settle for anything else.

"I don't think Mark's dangerous," Meredith commented off-handedly into her morning coffee, "I've seen him get scared by a wasp."

Cristina pulled a face, "And I'm pretty sure an Avery would pay for dinner."

The sigh that left Beth was immense.

"Dom didn't come to Seattle because we're sleeping together," She felt like it was important to outline. God forbid she get a reputation like Mark's when she was due at the altar within twenty-four hours. Beth said it so firmly as if it wasn't up for discussion. Across the table, Cristina didn't look convinced. "My actual lawyer is his best friend, it was a professional obligation--"

"You haven't slept with him?" Cristina enquired, looking somewhere between incredulous and crestfallen. When Beth didn't answer, she looked over at Meredith, eyes wide. "You'd have to be an idiot not to--"

There was a pause.

Beth didn't say anything in the pause, she just let out a light breath and rolled her eyes so hard that they threatened to roll off of her face. 

When was she going to get to the point in her life where every conversation she had wasn't dominated by men? 

She'd asked to sit with Meredith at lunch just so she didn't have to even think about anything that involved the slightest bit of adrenalin.

Her life definitely was not passing the Bechdel Test anytime soon.

An odd expression dawned over their faces, almost simultaneously. 

It was as if a light bulb had suddenly lit up in both Cristina and Meredith, the two women exchanging a look as Beth's silence lasted a little too long. In this case, it seemed as though a lack of answer had incriminated her far more than the alternative.

"Oh my god," Cristina said after a passing beat, "You did, didn't you?"

A pause.

Begrudgingly, Beth shrugged.

"Oh," Meredith drawled in the background, feigning a gasp, "The McScandal."

"It's really not a scandal," Beth mumbled to herself grimly, "I didn't--"

"You totally did," Suddenly, Cristina was invested. 

She scooted closer on the bench, resting her elbows on the table as the wedding magazine was almost shoved aside. Beth watched the perfectly glossy papers crumpled under the movement, her mouth dipping slightly as she felt the conversation move closer to an interrogation. 

"Was it good?"

"Look--"

"He's related through marriage, right?" Cristina continued, barely unperturbed by the way that Beth grimaced to herself. "His Aunt is Catherine Fox? So it's absolutely that good Harper Avery Foundation funded sex--"

"Okay! Okay."

 Beth interjected, feeling her cheeks flush as she looked over at the two doctors. Even though she was silent, Meredith looked intrigued. The psychiatrist heaved a sigh, pushing the stray hair out of her face as she tried her string a suitable sentence together. 

"Yes, we slept together!" Beth said tightly, "No, I don't remember whether it was good!"

That caused Cristina's look of victory to fade into a look of confusion.

"How couldn't you--"

"I don't remember half of the early 2000s," was Beth's very curt response as she glanced down at her cell phone (She was still, very sadly, on hold.) "But, from what I've been told... I was the life of the party." A pause and Meredith smiled to herself, shaking her head. "Dom is just a good friend okay. He's friends with my fiancé... and my... my ex-fiancé."

The realisation made Beth want to groan.

"Oh," Meredith said slowly, her head bouncing up and down thoughtfully as Cristina just stared at Beth unblinking. "Right."

"Fuck," Beth mumbled to herself. It took everything within her not to press her hands to her head. "I'm messy."

Maybe this was the real culprit? 

The fact that she happened to actively go for the same sort of men over and over. She'd slept with all three of them: Calum, Dom and Charlie, and she'd been engaged to two of them. What was this? 

Some sort of competition to see whether she could get a full card flush? Was she trying to collect all of the infinity stones and eventually wipe out the whole of Seattle?

She massaged her eyelids with the palms of her hands.

Fucking McMessy.

"Well," Cristina said finally after her brain had processed everything that had just transpired. "The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem."

"Can you not..." 

Beth trailed off, speaking down at the table, almost in shame. (It was a familiar feeling. Whenever she revisited her past, notably not sober actions, she felt the sting of regret. Was she proud of the fact that she'd slept with her fiancé's best friend? Absolutely not. She'd never been much of a seductress, but dear god drunk Beth seemed to be on another planet.) 

Beth shook her head slowly, "Can we not--"

"He was good, wasn't he?" Cristina said, a slightly dreamy look on her face as she smiled down at a picture of wedding bands. Across the table, Meredith rolled her eyes and shook a warning finger in Cristina's direction, ("Engaged.") "He was so good that your brain completely wiped the memory of it--"

"No, my brain completely wiped the memory of it because I was relapsing and high as a kite," Beth chipped in, feeling her skin bristle. "And I would appreciate it if this didn't come up again... because McFiancé doesn't Mcfucking know that I slept with his best Mcfucking friend."

A pause.

"Well," Meredith said lowly, "That's a bit of a McProblem."

Another pause.

"I bet he blew your mind."

"Cristina."

***

How could the case get worse?

That's the question that Archer asked himself as he entered Nick's room.

He had a very interesting team dynamic already; three people who couldn't stand to be in the same room together but all seemed very reluctant to part, all at the same time. 

If he hadn't been ringleading the whole mess, he supposed that he would've been completely bewildered as to what exactly was going on-- it was beginning to feel a lot like the bad punchline of a even worse joke: A Plastic Surgeon and his two scorned exes walk into a bar. 

Archer assumed that the punchline involved one person leaving alive, but if he had to choose between Mark, Lexie or Beth, he wasn't exactly sure who would be the last one standing--

(That was a lie. From her track record, Archer was beginning to think Beth would even survive a plane crash if she had to.)

But that still left the next question: How could this situation get even worse?

The Answer?

The ex in between.

When Archer found Addison standing in Nick's daughter's room, he wasn't exactly sure whether to laugh or just throw his head through a wall, or even do a happy dance. 

His need for excitement and drama directly hit his concern over Beth's mental stability, making a dizzying cocktail that begged him to sit down to compose himself. 

If things couldn't get so much more worse-- he found himself on the receiving end of a forlorn stare from a tense Mark, who, while tending to the kid on the examination bed, sent a pleading look in Archer's direction to save him from this nightmare of a situation.

In all honesty, Archer had never thought he'd see the day that Mark looked to him for help.

Clearly, the case was getting worse by the minute. Not medically, but personally.

"Why is there an eight-year-old kid with staff inflicted burns on my list?"

Addison's question was straight to the point. 

She was using her professional, doctor voice that barely even had the scathing, intended effect on him. He could see who this was talking; this was Addison Forbes Montgomery, ex-Head-of-Pediatric Surgery and Senior-Pain-In-His-Ass. 

The breath that Archer let out was (first and foremost) more of a wheeze, as he hadn't fully recovered from his little marathon across the hospital earlier, and was exhausted. 

Deeply exhausted, exhausted in the way that conveyed that he really wasn't here for her bullshit today.

"Good morning to you too, Addie."

His reply had a bit of Beth spice to it today, one that made Addie sigh right back at him.

"I have to do paperwork," was her next sentence. "I told Robbins I'd do her admin duties and now I have to write an accident report."

If he'd given Mark and Derek hell, he'd barely even started with Addison. 

There was something about the way that she looked at him, an expression so reminiscent of their mother, that made him want to laugh. 

Why did he feel as though he was a kid again getting scolded by their vacant mother over spilling something on the carpet or accidentally getting grass stains on a new pair of jeans? 

Had his life really transgressed to the point where Addison, after all the shit she'd pulled over the past few months, was attempting to scold him?

"How are the burns going, Sloan?" Archer asked as he smiled at Marika. 

The kid was watching some daytime show on the television in the corner, and sat on an armchair at the bottom of her Dad's bed. It was empty, Nick having disappeared down the corridor for his fourth scan in the succession of a few days. 

Outside of the hospital room, they could hear the distant squeaks of Maja's sneakers as Marika's mother paced back and forth, her ever-present cell phone stuck to the side of her face.

"It's going," was all Mark managed in response.

When Lexie had come to Archer bearing the news that Marika had attempted to burn her fingerprints off like the protagonist in a very poorly written spy movie, Archer, again, hadn't known whether to laugh or cry. 

The kid had looked at Beth with round, glossy eyes and explained that she'd held on because she wanted to help her Dad, and had sustained second-degree burns in the process. 

Not only had that resulted in a hefty task for Mark, who now seemed to be regretting entering this room, but it also meant that they were at a dead end for this diagnosis.

"I need to know how this happened," Addison said. 

Archer had to give it to her, she'd never been quick to annoyance. She had their father's patience (the same, notably, could not be said for Beth.) She placed her hands on her hips and looked between the two surgeons, waiting for something to give. 

"Please just let me have an easy day and tell me how exactly the Hospital managed to maim a kid--"

"You're going to have to talk to Beth about that," Archer breezed back. 

He turned just in time to see the blissfully bewildered expression that broke across Addison's face. It was tranquil and sweet to watch, just like a sunset on a Hawaiian Cruise or a sunrise across the Hudson. 

"Technically," He said, "Marika is her patient."

He could practically hear her brain stall.

"Beth?"

"Yep."

"You have a psychiatrist working on a surgical case?" She sounded completely caught off-guard, clearly having not expected that answer at all. 

Archer's cheerful nod to confirm only seemed to add fuel to the fire. Frankly, he was surprised that her next exhale didn't result in a stream of fire. 

"Beth's responsible for this?"

"Beth was familiar with the procedure," Archer said calmly. 

He spoke as he flipped through Nick's chart, scribbling some medication adjustments that he planned to go brief the nurses on. With every letter he scrawled, he could feel Addison's eyes getting heavier and heavier on his shoulders, practically burning through his scrubs as he clicked his pen against his thumb. 

"Marika was perfectly safe with Doctor Grey and Doctor Montgomery."

(In the background, Mark looked in between the two of them. There were no playful jabs, just Archer's even and assertive tone that seemed to be drawn out by Addison's seriousness. His shoulders lowered slightly. Yeah, he didn't want to get caught up in that.)

As if summoned by her own name, Lexie appeared through the door, her eyes flickering between the two of them in a similar way to Mark's apprehensive watching. 

What a room this was, a continuation of Archer's ongoing joke. It troubled Archer deeply that lately, he seemed to only be in rooms filled with women that Mark Sloan had slept with.

"Safe?" Addison echoed, "She's burnt."

"Through her own choice, it looks like," Archer said, casting a glance over at the kid. She was staring at the television, completely caught up in some cartoon programme that he didn't recognise. "Mark says she's fine."

Eyes bounced over to the Plastic Surgeon. 

He just looked down and kept his lips tightly closed. (Please don't drag me into this.) Mark was in the middle of very carefully redressing her hands, using every single inch of his bedside training to make sure he kept Marika as calm as humanly possible. But then again, Archer figured that seeing Addison's scary Bizzy face was as far from calm as a kid could get-- he knew that, he'd lived through the real thing in his childhood.

"Great," Addison said with a flippant hand waving in the direction of the man in question. "If Mark says it's fine the hospital legal team must agree. How about we all just listen to Mark, I'm sure everything will be all great if we just listen to Mark--"

"Is this really just about a patient?"

He had a sneaky suspicion that this stormy attitude was a red herring and that Addison's frustration was completely misplaced-- don't get him wrong, he hated paperwork too. 

(Fuck paperwork. Some of the worst moments of his life had been back in New York, filing admin work back when he hadn't had enough funding to just guilt trip staff into doing it for him.) 

This, however, the way that Addison seemed to just smoulder at the edges and teeter on the edge of a giant mental break... Yeah, that felt a little bit more than paper-induced psychosis.

Immediately, Addison glanced over towards the hospital bed. 

Archer wasn't sure whether she was wary of the patient or of Mark, but he didn't particularly mind either of them. Marika, with her auditory processing disorder, was unlikely to hear anything anyway; communication with her was explicit and direct, often involving a lot of rhymes to retain her attention. 

Mark, meanwhile, Archer was taking great joy in treating him like a background character. And then there was Lexie-- he glanced at her as she passed, talking in an undertone to Mark, relaying information on a Post-Op patient he'd asked about.

Archer had a feeling that he'd be able to scare Lexie into keeping her mouth shut.

"I just--" Addison hesitated, her face contorting. Archer watched her, his eyebrows raising as she massaged her forehead and shook the frustration from her body. "Beth's getting married."

Ah, so he was right.

This was a nice new little twist to his beautiful tragedy that he'd been putting together. Here they were, stood in a patient's room, discussing very personal matters about how their family was crumbling apart. 

They had an audience, one that Archer tried to distance them by sighing and bringing Addison to the doorway. They stood on the threshold, soliciting a glance from Maja as she continued to talk relentlessly on the phone. However, he didn't miss how Mark seemed to warily glance over at them as if he knew exactly what conversation they were having.

When Archer looked at Addison, he saw the frustration rise in her again. 

He placed his hands on his hips, watching as Addison let out the world's longest sigh and clapped a hand against her forehead, rubbing at her eyes. She stayed like that for a while, eyes closed, back stooped slightly and face contorted. 

He stood there, silent and waiting, surveying how Addison joined Maja in her pacing, although the patient's mother cast herself a little further down the corridor, sensing that their conversation might interrupt the sibling moment that was about to happen.

"She's getting married," Addison repeated, her voice partially muffled. Even from through the cracks between her fingers, Archer could hear her distant displeasure at that fact. Eventually, Addison just shook her head, her arms falling bak. "Tomorrow. She's getting married tomorrow, and Mom and Dad don't even know."

He didn't speak, staring at Addison warily as she turned on her heel, beginning a very nice pacing line that he was sure would leave marks. 

She went back and forth, her heels clicking loudly against the linoleum. Idly, Archer was more focused on wondering whether Addison understood what sort of relationship Beth had with their parents; sure, their own relationship with The Captain and Bizzy Forbes had been fractured, but it truly didn't even begin to touch on Beth's.

"She's not having a wedding," was what Addison continued with, pushing her hair behind her ears and exhaling loudly, "S-She's not going to the Plaza Hotel or wearing a dress... and she's not going to have peonies everywhere and... and nice wedding photos. She's getting married in a courthouse in downtown Seattle, probably right by some dumpster full of crap with some judge that really doesn't care about anything. She's getting married and she's not--"

Again, Archer didn't speak.

He wasn't exactly sure what she wanted him to say. 

Did she want him to comfort her? Did she want him to reassure her that Beth was completely fine? Because, in all truth, Archer wasn't sure whether Beth was okay. 

He'd thought she was, but then he'd watched her hold herself together with her fingertips.

"She's getting married and she didn't tell me, Arch."

So that was the problem.

 Archer had been in the room to see the hope that had flashed across Addison's face when she'd been presented with the prospect of helping Beth plan. Now he could see the opposite of it: the futility, the withdraw. 

When Archer rubbed at his chin, he found himself thinking about how, inevitably, Addison managed to make absolutely everything about herself-- it was something that they were all guilty of. 

They'd all been spoiled kids who had been so estranged to the concept of selflessness. Archer just supposed that no one had quite embraced it like his middle-sister.

"Why do you think that is?"

His question came out a lot more snide than he'd intended it to. 

He watched Addison's reaction to it, an innate almost subconscious twitch that ran through her from head to toe. She paused, her back turned from him and her shoulders raised uncomfortably. 

He didn't exactly have the same amount of patience as she had, it seemed as though the patience gene had skipped him-- when Addison turned to face him, Archer just rolled his eyes.

"Is it really the end of the world?" Her eyes flew to him, brow creasing as he adopted the same tone he'd just before they'd come to Seattle, back when he'd had to drag her onto that plane. "Addie, it's what Beth wants."

"I know," was Addison's response, but she seemed to twist slightly, her mouth drooping into a frown. "I know that--"

"She's happy," Archer interjected. "Just because it's not something you approve of, doesn't make any less valid--"

"I know," she said tightly. Her agitation seemed to flare up in the most charming of moments. "You think I don't know that? I'm happy for her."

Happy for her? 

After the week he'd watched play out, Archer would've been convinced otherwise. He leant against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest and watched Addison pace. (Honestly, could he go one day in this hospital without some sort of drama?) 

He felt like pinching the bridge of his nose and just sighing himself into oblivion. But he let Addison have her time, the pediatric surgeon storming back and forth with hell on her heels.

"I mean, of course, I'm happy for her," Addison continued, "I fully support her relationship with Charlie. I'm happy for her and I've always been happy for her--"

"What, even when you fucked Mark behind her back?" 

He sounded bored. Good, he was bored. He didn't exactly know how many times he was going to have this conversation with Addison. His patience was thinning. 

"Look, Addie, this caring crap isn't really working," He said, "I don't know what the hell has happened this week... and I don't really want to know... but whatever it is, Beth is fully in her right to make her own decisions. If she wants to get married tomorrow, she can get married tomorrow. She's an adult."

"I'm not saying she can't get married," Her brow furrowed. "I'm saying I don't think she should leave everything behind."

Archer's tongue was trapped between his teeth. 

He stared at his sister, at the way that she appeared to have rationally thought something through for once in her life. 

He knew Addison, he knew what self-centred and convoluted behaviour looked like, but for some reason (for some tiny, minuscule reason) he got the impression that she was being honest. Addison was worried. She was whole-heartedly, genuinely worried.

The only issue was this: Archer didn't know whether she was worried because she'd lost Beth's ear and could no longer skew the world around her, or whether she felt genuine deja vu? 

He hated to say it, but he didn't particularly know whether he trusted his oldest sister anymore.

Even so, in a way, Archer could understand what Addison meant. 

He, for one, agreed that running away from things didn't really do anything favours. 

It'd left Beth in a limbo the first time, suspended between past and present, and had put her in such a painful position when everything eventually caught up with her. If Beth's reason for leaving Seattle was to leave some unfinished business, (which was more than likely from the week she'd had) Archer knew that things would just get messy all over again. The sensible older sibling inside him wanted to agree with Addison and encourage her to fix what she'd broken-- but then there was the part of him that knew Beth had given Addison too many chances.

"I can see she's happy," Addison continued, sounding slightly breathless as if each word was taking a very physical toll on her. "She hasn't looked at a guy like that since Mark. I know she's happy-- I'm happy she's happy. I know I haven't been fair in the past, but this time, I'm really, truly happy for her."

He could feel a 'but' coming and it almost angered him.

"But," (Archer felt like giving himself a high five) "I think that leaving Seattle isn't the right call."

"Addison, you don't get to make these sort of decisions--"

"I'm worried, okay?" 

Those words seemed so hard for her to say. Again, Archer had to fight very hard not to roll his eyes. (Really? She was worried now? Where was this when Beth had needed people's concern?) 

"She's been through a lot at the moment and I think her getting married and then running off is the last thing she needs right now-- I think we need to actually work this one this time. I was going to suggest family therapy--"

"Again, that isn't your call--"

"I want to fix it," Addison chipped out, her hands moving to express her inner turmoil. If anyone from afar had been watching there conversation, Archer had a feeling they would've thought she was trying to take flight. "I want to fix us. I want to fix our family. I've been trying since the dress appointment. I've been trying, Arch. Is it so bad to try?"

"You should really ask her that question," Archer replied, a dent appearing between his eyebrows as he was filled with the strongest sense of deja vu. "Have you ever spoken to her since the whole..."

That expression returned. He recognised it. It was the same shameful look on Addison's face that had appeared when she'd admitted that she'd meddled in Beth's life again. 

Archer shook his head, feeling nothing but disappointment.

A muscle clenched in his jaw and he exhaled. (He was doing that a lot today. A lot of long sighs that really made him wish he'd used his inhaler when he'd needed it. He had the feeling that, today, he was going to end up having half an oxygen tank with his mid-afternoon coffee, and just decided what the heck, might as well just commit.) 

The thought of Addison fixing anything almost made him want to laugh. But then, he realised that he'd been the exact same. Hadn't that been what he'd wanted to accomplish this whole time?

Meanwhile, why did the thought of them all going to family therapy make him want to throw his head through a wall? Jesus Christ. 

He couldn't even imagine the sort of rates the shrink would charge for that sort of shitshow.

"Okay," He breathed out, "I'm guessing that, as you're talking to me right now, Beth won't give you the time of day--"

"And rightly so," Addison surprised him. Her feverish nod was such a comparison to the woman who had stood in front of him back in LA, scowling at the thought of being estranged while Archer was embraced. "I've ruined her life more times than I can count. I've been cruel to her and I was the reason things went to shit in New York--"

A pause.

Archer stared at her.

"But this," Another 'but' that had Archer's skin-crawling slightly and head throbbing. "This time I tried to protect her. I asked Derek to stay out of it... and this time I don't think I'm in the wrong. I deserve the chance she gave me."

Derek. Archer almost wanted to groan. Derek. Derek. Derek. Derek. (He should have sucker-punched the bastard when he'd had the chance.) 

He could almost see it in her. She believed every single word she was saying-- it was a nice sentiment, he guessed. He had no idea what was happening between everyone but he did know one thing: Addison definitely didn't deserve anything from Beth.

Beth had been too kind to Addison. She hadn't deserved a second chance and she definitely had not deserved a third. 

It was a little bit entitled to think otherwise. Archer was beginning to recognise a pattern when it came to his sisters relationship, and all he could do was really hope that Charlie didn't have a thing for redheads.

"You should talk to her. Ask her whether that's true." Archer wanted to scoff. This time he truly did roll his eyes so hard they almost fell straight out of his skull. "It's Elizabeth. Just talk to her. I'm sick of talking on her behalf to everyone."

"The last time Beth made impulsive decisions we almost lost her," Addison said, her whole body tensed. Her muscles were bunched as if she was a tightly coiled spring, as if a single jolt or movement could result in a disastrous fallout. He could sense the tension that lurked inside her. "She's acting impulsively and I'm just worried about her. I'm happy for her, but I'm worried-- last time she started making decisions like these, there ended up being a bad reason behind it--"

"You don't trust her?"

His question was simple and it curved curiously. 

He could tell from the way that Addison reacted to it that she hadn't expected it. In reality, it was simple: did she trust Beth or did she not? It was a very easy question, but the fall out was intense. He didn't trust Addison and Beth sure as hell didn't (for good reason), and what of Addie herself?

"I do."

It didn't surpass him how ironic it was for her to say those words, the exact same words Beth was going to say this time tomorrow. 

It was the way she said it too. Her response came with a stormy brow and a slight frown on her face as she stared at her brother. There was so much soul searching going on in her that Archer felt completely confused at what exactly he was watching-- he felt as though he'd suddenly tuned into some sort of parallel universe, one in which Addison didn't act blindly on responsibility and honour, and simply on the fragility of her relationship with her sister. He had to hold his breath and wait for her response.

"I just.... I feel like I've seen how this'll go," Addison heaved in a very long breath, her brow furrowing. "It's like some movie and we all know the ending-- Beth always leaves. Things are always left unfinished. She left New York and now she's leaving Seattle-- but this time... this time it feels final."

(That's what it had felt to Mark, right? When Beth had told him that she couldn't hold onto the past anymore and that she needed to leave everything behind-- the way she'd turned away and not looked back, that had felt final. That had felt as though it was the last time she'd ever acknowledged Mark as someone who had shaped her and defined a period of her life.)

"She's saying her goodbyes," She continued talking despite how deeply Archer was ingrained in his earlier conversation with Beth. He was thinking about "And she's going to leave and I don't think she's ever going to come back."

He could see the tension in her shoulders, see the way it travelled through her body and made her walk oddly, like a marionette doll thats strings were pulled too tight, or a mannequin that had been animated and was taking its first steps. 

Archer wondered what he looked like. Did he look oddly unnatural and crooked? Or did he look as deeply introspective as he felt?

As much as he hated it, again, Addison had a point. 

He could feel it. He could feel some sort of distance. He could feel the whole world just rising, like a rollercoaster that was edging slowly to its apex, leading them closer and closer to the drop-- something was going to happen. He just didn't know whether she was right to want to stop it from happening or not.

He supposed that it was the same vein of sentiment that he'd told to Beth in that changing room: he'd asked her to help him keep his family together. Addison was talking about the same thing, but for some reason, Archer felt his position changing.

"A part of me thinks that's a good thing," As much as it pained him to imagine Beth leaving again, he figured that if it meant she'd be able to finally move on, it was a loss he was willing to take. He watched Addison's face twist, watched the way that she seemed to freeze to the spot, as if she hadn't anticipated his words. "Beth leaving the first time did her a lot of good--"

"We're family," Addison said, not quite in disbelief but in vain all the same. "Don't you think we deserve a shot at fixing it?"

He sighed, "Was it really even fixed in the first place?"

She seemed to tense, as if hearing those little words came at a personal cost. It wasn't a secret. They'd never been a good family unit, with their parents involved and the age gap between them. 

She seemed to forget that the places Beth left behind had been barely inhabitable. Each Montgomery sibling was deeply selfish. Beth had looked out for herself and Archer didn't think it was a bad thing.

"She's not leaving alone, this time," He reminded Addison, "She has Charlie."

She had Charlie.

A Charlie seemed like a better option than any of them could offer.

"I'm not stopping her," Archer said, shaking his head, not exactly ready to address the prospect of their whole family being broken beyond repair. "You're not stopping her either. Let her go, Addie."

***

I fucked up, Addison thought to herself, I've been fucking up every step of the way.

She'd fucked up and it was beginning to feel like it was too late to fix it.

***

Mark had been able to hear every word of their conversation.

Reluctantly. Reluctantly was an important word.

He'd briefly studied Shakespeare in High School, although he supposed that 'studied' wasn't the right word. He'd flipped through Hamlet with a slight scowl on his face and a puffed out chest as if a high school football jock like him could never be seen with a paperback edition in public. 

(Privately, he supposed he'd kinda liked it.) 

Mark wasn't sure what regressed him back to that scorned, hyper-aware teenager with a dislike of dark rooms and a hypersensitivity to the opinions and reactions of those around him-- but he found himself thinking about Shakespeare as the words started tumbling in.

Poison in the ear? Wasn't that how Claudius had snuffed it? 

Professionally, Mark couldn't say he'd ever come across it, but that's what overhearing that conversation felt like in that moment. It felt like a very slow poisoning, gradual and thick until it's all Mark could taste.

He'd never been one to eavesdrop, but their exchange had been completely unavoidable, tumbling in through the open door and filling their ears. He listened absently with Lexie standing opposite him, the surgical intern pausing too, as if she couldn't help but listen too. 

They both listened to Addison as her heels erratically clicked against the floor. At first, Mark was pretty reluctant to give his attention, but then conversation touched on Beth's impending marriage and he could feel Lexie's eyes immediately flicker towards him.

He felt it like a shifting weight, as if he'd been carrying a very heavy object with a partner and they'd just pushed the full force of gravity onto his skin. 

Whatever object it had been, it was now crushing him. It must've been heavy too. 

The only conundrum was, when Mark closed his eyes, all he saw was a ring box that was poorly hidden at the back of his underwear draw.

Mark avoided Lexie's eye, leaning more into Marika's blistered palms and keeping his head down. 

He could practically hear the thoughts that flickered through his ex-girlfriend's head, the long-haul game of word association that was silently thrumming away-- He knew exactly what was encoded in her stare.

(She was thinking. Thinking dangerously.) 

(There was slight scepticism in the way that she watched his every movement. Lexie's head was so far buried in the memory of their last argument that she almost completely lost her grasp on time itself--)

(She was recalling the way her heart had shuddered in her chest when she'd found the engagement ring at the back of Mark's draw, hidden away like a shameful secret. She was recalling the way he'd winced as he'd explained exactly why it was there--)

It was as if Lexie was searching for some sort of reaction. She stood there throughout the whole exchange, staring at Mark almost knowingly. It was a dissection. He was a patient laid out in a morgue. 

She was the mortician who knew the cause of death but dug deeper and looked for evidence. He twitched under her gaze, his skin prickling and the hairs rising on the back of his neck. 

Suddenly, he felt exactly how he had felt in that OR with Andrew Perkins stood in the gallery: observed and analysed.

(--Maybe that's what she was searching for? The same wince, the same tiny inflexion that had told her more about Mark than nine months of dating had.)

( She was waiting for something, just a tiny betrayal like that.) 

(Something to tell her that she'd made the right decision to walk out of their relationship. Something to tell her that the prospect of Beth getting married tomorrow hurt him as much as finding that engagement ring had hurt Lexie.)

A reaction would have been disrespectful. 

A reaction would have been wrong. 

Mark kept his molars gritted and his expression impassive and got on with his job. 

(But why did no reaction feel worse?) 

Lexie continued to stare, gazing at him even as Archer re-entered the room and asked her to join him in radiology to go over Nick's final scans-- she looked away reluctantly, and Mark could feel that reluctance.

She wanted a reaction from him.

The problem was, Mark didn't know what reaction to give.

***

"You know, this would be easier if you weren't abandoning me..."

Eli's slight whine made Beth snort to herself as she set aside Nick's chart, her lips pressed into a sly smile as she felt the nurse hover around her. 

He'd been like this for the whole of the morning: Disastrously persistent and just present enough to make her smile turn fond. He'd pounced on her the moment she'd left lunch and seemed to dig his nails in deep enough to hang on. 

The look she shot at him was humoured, eyebrows raised and head tilted slightly as if she didn't know what to make of the statement.

"Eli," She hummed, reaching across the desk and taking one of her actual psychiatry patients and signing on a dotted line. Staring down at the notes, she found it oddly refreshing to do something she was hired for. "I'm going to France, not into space."

The nurse grimaced, having decided to seat himself in the corner of her office to finish his set of charts. It felt odd to sit in this room, especially when she was going to have such a hasty departure. 

It was half empty, with Charlie already having removed what little he'd brought into space; now it felt oddly detached as if the room Beth had left was not the same when she returned.

Eli rolled his eyes, "That's not the point. You're not coming back."

"Wait," Beth's voice pitched upwards a little bit as she let out a fake gasp, "Is this your way of telling me you're going to miss me?"

Another visible grimace, "I wouldn't go that far."

The psychiatrist shook her head slowly, visibly amused with the antics of the man across from her. She definitely didn't miss the way that he seemed to look around the office, as if he was trying to commit it to memory-- it also definitely did not surpass her that, much like Archer, Eli had gone to the trouble of spending time with her today. 

He'd made the trek from his patients in the ICU all the way into her office in the psychiatry office. Of course, he'd claimed that it was simply in search of some peace and quiet, but Beth liked to think that he was going to miss her when she was gone.

"You can come visit, y'know?" Beth said it so casually and off-handedly, her eyes flickering between the desktop in front of her and Eli in the corner. "My friends family owns a really nice house out there. We were planning on going there for our honeymoon. I'm paying to give you some money for a good vacation, you deserve some time off--"

"Is this your way of telling me I'm overworked and cranky?"

She laughed and rolled her eyes, but eventually craned her neck to give him a warm, fond smile, "It's my way of telling you I appreciate you as a friend."

A pause.

"Eli, you're my best friend, you know that right?"

That seemed to catch Eli off-guard. 

He paused, as if completely uncertain and blindsided by the sentiment that was carried within her words. She could see it move across his face: the loosening of the muscles in his jaw, the way that he seemed, momentarily lost for words. 

(Oh, she never thought she'd see the day the great Elijah Lloyd was speechless!) 

A beat passed, one filled with the sound of Beth's amusement very gradually building and building and building. He seemed to glitch at the slightest sign of affection and Beth had to try very hard not to laugh again.

She supposed that was the weird thing about her friendship with Eli; they didn't appear to be conscious of it, they just were. 

It reminded her so much of her friendship with Amy, where they'd been two people who had just gotten along. They hadn't bought each other Christmas presents and she didn't know when the hell his birthday was, she just knew that she enjoyed his company and hoped that he enjoyed hers.

When Eli recovered from his brief interlude, he seemed to kickstart himself back to life with a low scoff--

The moment was broken.

"I'm not taking time off to go to your wedding," His flat response to her words made her snort, Beth's eyes almost watering from the blunt force of that assertion. 

She wasn't particularly disappointed or sad by that statement: it was exactly what she'd expected. He didn't look up at her. 

"I'd rather watch someone die in the ICU," He said, "than try to talk you out from throwing yourself out a window."

Beth chuckled, "Yeah, I don't blame you--"

"But, saying that," Eli interjected, seemingly not done with his two cents. This time he did look up, his head raised and he stared directly over at her, making sure that she caught his every word. "If I need to drag you down that aisle myself, I will."

She felt her cheeks warm at the vague sentiment of those words. 

It was one hell of an image to imagine and she didn't doubt that he would-- there was something oddly wholesome about the idea of Eli going through hellfire to get Beth into that courthouse, so wholesome that she didn't quite bother to point out she wasn't even sure whether said courthouse had an aisle to begin with. 

Nothing about this was going to be conventional, but, in all honesty, Beth wouldn't have had it any other way.

"Remind me not to wear heels then," She chipped back with a grin.

Beth found herself unable to focus on things today. 

It was one of those days, there were too many things to do and she hadn't been able to handle a fully booked roster since some particularly heavy-duty illegal prescriptions she'd had in New York. 

If she stayed idle for too long, she could feel the migraine that lurked at the back of her head, almost like a storm cloud. 

Even when Eli came and went like light rain that appeared just for aesthetic reasons, Beth found herself troubled with the amount of work she had to do. 

His comedic relief had been appreciated but it had been sparse; between his brief cameo she still had filing to process, phone calls to make and a resignation letter to draft in the very small window of time that she'd left for herself--

But then there was a knock on her door.

She'd been halfway through writing her assessment on Nick's case when the sound had echoed around the room. 

It had been unexpected. 

Beth's head raised and she frowned lightly, wondering whether Eli had left something behind and it had just taken a long time for him to realise. All of her cases were going to her pager and even that had been dormant all afternoon. She shot a glance over at it as she called out across the office, inviting the visitor inside.

"You busy?"

Charlie appeared, his face split into an amused grin as he spied her, tucked behind her desk with paper surrounding her as she tied all of her loose ends into the prettiest bow. 

Immediately, her mood lifted at the sight of him, the soft-natured man who seemed to appear whenever he was needed most-- 

He set a coffee down on her desk and pressed a kiss against her forehead as Beth attempted to readjust her seat.

"Pretty busy," She admitted. 

(She was trying to be honest about her workload, something that Andrew had recommended to avoid falling back into familiar obsessive patterns.) He laid a sympathetic hand on her shoulder, squeezing it lightly as she tried to get comfortable. 

She pressed her cheek into the back of his palm, hungry for a few moments of touch. 

"I've got five patients stacked at the moment and I'm still on that surgical case..."

Then her eyes flickered towards the computer screen, at the crumpled text that appeared through the electronic monitor.

"And this," She inclined her chin back over towards it as Charlie's attention followed. 

Still holding her shoulder, he squinted over towards it, spying the same few words that were, admittedly, enough to give her a heart murmur.

"A letter of resignation..." He hummed those words out, wrapping his arms around her gently until she was hugged to his chest. She didn't miss the light smile that was on his lips as he read each syllable, as if he was tasting each letter on his lips. "Now that's hot."

Beth chuckled to herself, grasping Charlie's arms as they encapsulated her. 

He was dressed in his work clothing and she, idly, wondered whether he was busy too. She'd only seen him in short increments, in bursts that had felt fractured and void of true interaction. They were now sharing an office, orbiting around each other as Charlie found no point in being relocated-- and besides, he seemed to like sharing this space plenty and Beth didn't exactly have any complaints. 

She wanted to spend time with him, so much that she was fully prepared to spend the rest of her life with him.

"I've never written one of these before," Beth said quietly, eyes scanning over what she'd already managed to put on the page. 

It was, so far, unceremoniously short, and needed to be finished as soon as possible. 

(Thank god for the emergency resignation clause that had been written into her therapy contract. They'd made it all too easy for her to leave her job without even needing a two week notice.) 

"I don't want to be rude," She sighed.

"You're going onto bigger and better things," Charlie breezed, shirking the weight that Beth felt on her shoulders with a shrug. 

He said it so easily, as if leaving things behind was so easy,--

(For Beth, it had never been easy.)

--and that it was something to be perfectly unbothered about. When he stepped back from her, Beth had a slight dent between her eyebrows and her lip between her teeth. She knew he was right, but it still didn't take away from the fact that, out of all of her bridges she had to burn, this one was a little bit harder. 

"I don't think they'll take it personally--"

"Well, I'm pretty sure my ex-boyfriend is sleeping with the woman I have to hand this into," Beth chipped back with equal amount of nonchalance. 

She could almost feel the way that Charlie's eyebrows raised; it must've been nice, Beth mused to herself, to be surprised by Mark's ability to insert himself into the most inconvenient of women. 

Beth almost groaned at the thought of it, "And from his track record, god knows what he's told her about me so..."

"Hm," Charlie paused, tilting his head to the side, "I'm sure it'll be fine."

Beth looked over at him, momentarily mystified at how he was able to appear so cool and unaffected by anything. 

At this point, she was half convinced that he'd be chilled through a hurricane. She took a moment to study him: the face was a little gaunt in places, but still the man who gave her hope about her future. 

He seemed amused under her attention, momentarily unsettled by her watchful eyes.

"Checkmate," Charlie added, in almost an afterthought, "I hear the guy you're sleeping with is pretty cool... he's not quite the head of a psychiatry department but I think he can hold his own."

Beth could almost see it in his eyes, the light chastising as if to say, 'Hey, look at what you have now.' 

It was a contrast: the difference between the paths that her life had taken her, although she would have been able to predict it from the start. 

Of course, she was going to end up married and happy and Mark was going to end up bouncing from bed-to-bed like an energizer bunny that needed its batteries torn straight from its chest. She didn't know how he could keep it going. 

Wasn't he tired? Wasn't it lonely? 

Bethenny Ballard wasn't exactly the sort of girl she'd expect him to go after. 

(She seemed mentally stable and sensible. He'd always had a taste for the unattainable.) 

Personally, Beth was starting to get exhausted on his behalf. He was unpredictable. He was old.

But, there was one thing for certain: He didn't have the capacity to even think about marriage or settling down. That man was incapable of it. 

Always had been, always would be. It made Beth's stomach twist slightly to think that she'd almost remade herself over in his image.

Beth's lips twitched into a slight smile, "Didn't you hear, we're getting married?"

She watched as his eyebrows lifted in a faux gasp. 

A chuckle fell right through her as he pushed her coffee towards her, imitating the sort of intense gasp that she'd imagine fall through the lips of some debutante back in suburbia. He even went to the extent of clutching imaginary pearls, causing images to flood Beth's thoughts.

She could envision it now: a white-knuckled Bizzy Forbes baring her teeth as she gripped a letter in her excessively ringed hands. Mom, we eloped, we left never to return. 

Maybe Bizzy would expect it to be cinematically damp with the tears Beth had shed over the thought of leaving everything behind? Maybe the realisation that Beth had done nothing of the short would surpass the botox and the surgery and dare to leave a crinkle in Bizzy's skin? 

She could imagine how tart it would be for Bizzy to face it; that the one kid who'd done things right (Addison was null and void as per her divorce) and gotten in a good healthy marriage with a good established name of a man, wanted nothing to do with her. 

Oh, the scandal. The reality of Bizzy having to look a fellow socialite in the eye and say 'Oh, Elizabeth's moved to Europe', like Jennifer's perturbed mother in Valley of the Dolls... now that was something that Beth could get behind.

When Beth tuned herself back into the conversation, Charlie was watching her with a slight smile on his face. 

It was a soft smile, the sort that made Beth's body feel warm and congested as if she was running a temperature. She cocked her head to the side and swung her chair around so she was fulling facing him.

"Mrs Perkins."

He said it so quietly but she could see the curl of his lips, see that little grin that almost made up for the clench of her heart. 

There was that flicker in his eye; almost a tease, almost a happiness, almost a fulfilment. With a dry mouth, Beth raised her chin towards him, watching as he leant against the office wall and let his smile breakthrough. 

It was like watching sunshine clear a bundle of stormy clouds. 

She didn't let it blind her.

Mrs Perkins.

She'd once romanticised the thought of taking Calum's last name; it'd been a complete doozy and had had Amy teasing her with wicked grins across dimly lit tables. 

Beth March had been an eclipse in time, the sort of name that had felt more of a joke than it had been real. Maybe she'd been swept up in the fictional fantasy of it, of sharing a name with a character eclipsed between the pages of a novel-- or maybe she'd been all too aware of the unattainability that fiction had to offer.

Perkins, however, was a new one. It would've been a lie for her to say she hadn't thought about it: Elizabeth Perkins. 

It read like an elementary school teacher to her or the sort of woman you'd be referred to in HR for a disciplinary hearing that was all wide smiles and passive-aggressive phrasing. 

She'd even considered the double-barrelled alternative: Elizabeth Montgomery-Perkins. She wasn't sure what she preferred-- all she knew was that she'd spent the last thirty years of her life thinking that her full name was already a mouthful as it was. Fantasising about name changes had almost felt like a rebellion in its own right.

(Once upon a time, she supposed she'd romanticised Elizabeth Sloan too.)

As she looked over at Charlie, the name floating around her head, she felt a shadow of the foundation she'd brought with her to New York. 

The old Beth, the one on which these pillars were settled and crushed down upon to build what woman ever so gently turned in her chair. She could feel it, just a presence, a slight ghost of a figure that roused at the back of her head. It was the same girl that had seen New York as the setting of so many Rom-Coms, a place of opportunity and prime real estate for Romance. 

The same girl who had thought getting married was one of the most romantic possibilities in the world, of being someone's something and having someone in return. 

The same girl who had set her eyes on Calum March and said 'that one right there', and had been so confused when things hadn't worked out as they did in the movies. 

The same girl that had taken all of those feelings for Mark Sloan and just hoped that things would figure themselves out in the end--

In retrospect, it had been foolish for a doctor to think of love, an emotion, as a cure-all. 

She'd been taught better.

"Doctor Perkins."

Beth corrected him while looking over at the clock above her door. 

It was late afternoon and her last full day at the hospital had gone almost too quickly for comfort. 

She found herself staring at the sight of her doctor's coat hanging on the back of the office door. She stared at it for long enough so the stark outline of it was burned into the inside of her eyelids. When she blinked, she momentarily forgot herself; it was only when she looked over at Charlie and saw the way he looked at her, that she remembered again.

She wasn't Mrs. Perkins. She was Doctor Perkins, if anything. Beth wasn't sure how this was gonna go, but whatever happened she was a Doctor first and foremost. She'd worked too damn hard to be known as anything other than by her qualifications.

"Doctor Perkins," He agreed, nodding his head, a smile playing in the corner of his mouth. Then he bowed his head slightly and scratched at the crown of his head, his grin turning sheepish. "I guess my Mom's Mrs Perkins still, huh?"

Beth paused.

"Does she know?"

Why did he seem to tense, as if that question was an ambush? It'd been a subconscious question, that sort that Beth hadn't even realised she'd spoken before Charlie was reacting. 

She watched the way that he paused too, his breath catching as his gaze slid away from her. Like she had done just moments before, Charlie threw a glance over at the clock in the corner; she could practically hear the way his molars interlocked tightly, as he was slightly pained.

"Of course," He responded, meeting her gaze again with an easy smile. It was the sort of smile that could melt snow; not hot or feverish, but warm enough to make her chest ache. "I spoke to her the other day. She's excited."

(Lie, they hadn't spoken since Christmas.)

"Great," Beth breathed out, feeling somewhat relieved by that assertion. 

She knew how important family was for Charlie, something that was so deeply estranged from Beth's reality. But that thought made her divert her attention completely. 

She was reminded of her conversation with Teddy; she tilted her head to the side and proposed this question so nonchalantly: "Do you think Andrew's going to bring Teddy as his plus one tonight?"

Charlie raised an eyebrow, "Huh?"

"They're seeing each other, right?" Beth continued, unperturbed by his slight confusion and alarm at the subject. She reached over to her computer, opening an email and missing the way that his brow furrowed beyond the normal response. "I was just wondering whether you think he'd bring Teddy to the dinner as his date or if you think he'd--"

"Andy's not coming."

Oh? Beth couldn't quite figure out how to react to that. 

She looked over at her fiancé, realising that this was the first she'd heard about it. Charlie didn't say it sadly, he didn't say with disappointment or with particular regret. He said it with a light shrug as if to say 'what can you do about it?'. 

Beth stared at him, her mind struggling to keep up with what exactly was happening. She opened her mouth and then closed it, caught off-guard by how casually he could just tell her their plans had changed.

"Oh?" She managed to vocalise it this time.

"He's flying out tomorrow," Charlie said, again carrying the same sense of nonchalance, despite how much Beth wanted to shake him. She watched with a tightness in her throat, watched as he ran a hand through his hair and stooped to grab his bag from under the desk. "I think he's got a lot that he needs to prepare. Why did you ask?"

Why?

"Teddy was just surprised when I mentioned it to her at my appointment earlier," Beth played it off, trying to ignore the way that something ticked over at the back of her head. She heard Charlie hum to himself as if that surprised him in return. A pause. "Is Andrew coming to the courthouse?"

Charlie seemed to hesitate.

She looked over at him this time, drinking in the way he seemed to linger. 

As far as she was aware, in conversation, Andrew was still Charlie's best man. As far as she was aware, they were on good terms. As far as she was aware, there was no bad blood between them and everything was perfectly okay~~ but Charlie's hesitation, that was enough to stir something in the furthest corner of her mind. 

He cracked a small, grave smile and let out a breath that was almost perfect for the suddenly sad mood.

"He can't make it."

Red flags. Beth was no stranger to them. She'd twitched at the first sign of misfortune with Mark, always the first person to jump the gun and spout accusations. She'd been wildly paranoid and skittish. 

She'd been driven to the point of no return. In fact, Beth was pretty sure that she'd accused Mark of cheating before he'd ever actually started partaking in it. (If there were to be a list of regrets she had in that relationship, that would've been pretty high on the tier.) 

She was a pessimist through and through, so when she saw the twitch in the corner of Charlie's eye, something she was sure was a subconscious indicator that he was lying, she felt the storm build at the back of her skull.

(She'd felt that tension between Dom and Charlie and tasted the conflict between her fiancé and his brother in a westerly wind. She'd had so many suspicions and thoughts and she'd pushed them all aside for the man in front of her-- for the man she loved.)

Beth chewed on her bottom lip.

"Hm?"

It was a throwaway, a prompt for him to continue.

Charlie's eyes swung over to look at her. 

Her head was tilted slightly to the side as she studied his face again. The face she loved. The face that she'd kissed every inch of, lightly ran her fingertips across. A face that appeared so tired. He exhaled heavily, his shoulders falling in a way that conveyed disappointment. 

Again, he scratched at the crown of his head.

"Yeah, he's really mad about it," Charlie continued, walking towards her lightly with a dent between his eyebrows. She looked up at him, her eyes never leaving his face. He seemed to move sluggishly as if he had very little energy left within him; idly, Beth wondered when he'd last had a good nights sleep. "But you know what older siblings are like... job comes first."

Beth's jaw slackened at that. She did know exactly what he meant. She had Addison, after all.

 She supposed that a wedding and a death were pretty close when it came to family events. Similarly, Beth had always joked that she was never 100% sure that Bizzy would've come to her wedding, anyway. Who was to say Addison wouldn't just follow in her footsteps?

He reached out and took her hand, running his thumb across her knuckles and staring at the rock on her finger. 

Beth's breath caught at the back of her throat. It was such a tender movement-- touch, she'd always yearned for this sort of intimacy and here Charlie was, granting it to her like a dealer granting a fix. He seemed to grant her everything she'd ever wanted. 

Everything she'd ever needed.

Charlie and her were similar. Beth had always known that. 

They were cut from the same cloth. His problems were the same as hers, his motivations the same and his smile clean of any misdemeanour. When he held her she felt the strongest impulse to hold on tight.

"This is my Mom's engagement ring," Charlie said, a very delicate smile musing on his lips. 

He held her hand so tightly, as if he couldn't imagine letting go. Beth just continued her long examination of his features, unable to quite place his expression. 

"She gave it to me at Christmas... She thinks you're the best thing that's ever happened to me." His smile grew into something a bit warmer as he looked up. "I agree with her."

Beth searched his eyes. It was such a tender moment. She hadn't felt this sort of pressure since she'd been proposing, catching his eye across the dining table. 

But now Charlie was speaking, holding her attention as if he'd trapped her behind frosted glass. His hand raised to cup her cheek.

"I don't need my family to be there," She hung onto his every word, so caught up in the feeling of his skin against hers. "It sucks that Andrew's not going to be there, but I don't need him. I don't need anyone. I've got you."

Red flags. Beth had always been too sensitive to them anyway. She'd always freaked over the tiniest things. 

She'd taken Mark for granted half the time and she was fairly sure that it'd opened the door wide for him to walk out of. Her chest ached at the thought of having the cycle begin again: Maybe this was the point where things changed? 

Maybe things were as crystalline and perfect as they appeared? Maybe she was overthinking again? Maybe she needed to just sit here and melt into the palm of his hand like a snow figure in the rising sun?

She was overthinking. She was getting married. 

She made the silent resolution to push everything aside. This time she wasn't going to let those nagging thoughts best her, she was going to love without fault.

Her smile grew against his touch.

"I just need you." 

Need. Need. Need. Beth loved the sound of it. 

It was as if he knew exactly what she needed to hear.

***

Mark figured that it must've been something in the water.

He wasn't feeling particularly great today. 

He wasn't hungover and he certainly hadn't been beaten to a complete pulp by Addison and Archer's eavesdropped conversation-- but when he eventually found his way back to Callie's company, he felt rough enough to be admitted as a patient himself. 

His body felt unnaturally tense as if he was preparing for some sort of build that he wasn't even sure would ever come. The orthopaedic surgeon seemed to notice as he sat beside her, a coffee in hand and a storm brewing behind his eyes. 

In fact, Callie completely paused in conversation with a forever perky Arizona, the two of them turning to look at him as he lifted the lid off of his drink.

They both watched as he poured in a single sugar.

Callie's nose wrinkled, "Is that a black coffee?"

"It's been a long morning," was all Mark could really offer in return.

For him, time seemed to be going excruciatingly slowly. 

It had taken him an hour to redress Marika's burns but, in that stuffy small room with a staring Lexie stood across from him, it had felt like days. Every movement had felt scrutinised and constricted as if the air in the room was scathing and stiff. 

He'd been beyond relieved to leave it, thankful that he could put as much distance between himself and those four letters that seemed to work their way under his skin when he least expected them--

"... Beth's gonna love it, right?"

God fucking dammit. 

Mark felt himself tense up subconsciously at her name, feeling the same exhausting hitch in his muscles that he'd felt in that patient room. He'd decided to tune into the conversation between the two women just as Arizona mentioned the woman of the hour. 

His reaction seemed to be something biological, a handful of goosebumps that he'd been unable to shirk off. He tried to play it off as a yawn, forcing it so unnaturally that his eyes almost watered. 

He flushed the discomfort out of his system with a mouthful of burning hot coffee.

It seemed indicative of every conversation he'd had with the couple these days. 

It seemed to be the only thing that Arizona would talk about: Beth and Charlie. 

She was so excited by the prospect of an impulsive, last-minute wedding that it's all that Arizona could focus on. 

Apparently, she'd been helping Charlie since the start, giving him ideas for his vows and helping them organise whatever they needed-- Mark could almost imagine the blonde sat in the couple's apartment, excitedly talking about something with erratic hand gestures and smiles. 

No matter what conversation topic Mark brought up, it always inevitably led back to the hot topic of the hospital.

Callie, on the other hand, seemed less obsessive. 

She'd explained at length that her girlfriend's friendship with Charlie seemed pretty logical; they were both nice people, the sort of nice that made your teeth hurt from the sweetness. 

Callie, on the other hand, preferred Beth if she had to choose out of the two. 

Apparently, where Charlie was unconditionally optimistic and go-lucky, Beth was the one who was capable of the sarcastic rhetoric that was the baseline of so many off Callie's friendships--

(Being told that made Mark's head ache. I know about Beth, he wanted to say, I know what she's like. You don't have to tell me.)

It was the way they spoke of her, as if she was their friend and not his, telling him things about their shared experiences as if Mark had never met her. It unsettled his slightly. 

They described double-dates with shared smiles as if it was some sort of inside joke that Mark would never understand. He'd even stood there, the hair on his arms raised, as Charlie appeared a while back and told a joke that Mark couldn't follow. Beth, to them, was their neighbour, the one who came with a plus one of a tall, handsome, nice guy. 

She was their friend, their friend, not his. 

A friend who would give them stories about how she'd travelled around the world giving relief and counselling only to fall into Seattle unceremoniously like a misguided comet. 

It was as if they knew a whole different person with a whole different past.

I know her, Mark, again, wanted to say, I know everything and more.

He massaged his forehead as he tried to tune out the conversation. 

They were talking about vows. According to Arizona, she'd been helping Charlie with his and acted as some sort of pillar stone of romance. 

Mark didn't really want to think about vows, not since the conversation he'd overheard. 

Addison seemed to think that the hurried wedding was an omen of the end and Mark had forever been more of a beginnings guy anyway.

As happy as he was that his friends had found a couple so similar to them (to the extent where he was no longer inclined to third wheel whenever they felt like going to Joe's or any other couples event), he wished they'd found someone different. 

Why couldn't they have befriended any other couple in the apartment block? Why not the gay couple on floor 2 or even the elderly couple three doors down? There were so many people around them and they'd chosen the two people that made Mark feel dizzy and vaguely haunted.

But he'd told them it was fine. It was one of the first things Callie had asked; is this okay? This is your ex-girlfriend, this is your past that we're getting caught up with. She'd asked him that question so attentively that Mark had almost broken out in hives. 

That had been back when Lexie had been around and, with an insistent smile, Mark had confirmed that it was fine. 

Of course, it was fine. Everything was fine.

But christ, he wished they'd talk about something different.

"Do you guys wanna go to Joe's tonight?" He proposed tiredly, not quite thinking it through as the couple exchanged a glance. "I'm feeling like I'm going to need a lot to drink tonight. Might put the damn place out of business--"

 But then he caught the expression on their face. The realisation set in like a cold chill. 

"Oh, shit, yeah, the dinner thing--"

"Didn't you try to get an invitation?" Arizona asked, her head tilted slightly as she watched Mark hold onto his coffee for dear life. 

He shook his head.

What a jackass that would've made him. 

He could imagine how foolish he would've looked. Hey Beth, I know you asked me to leave you alone but I really fancied getting free food so I was wondering if you had an empty chair. 

Not even he could stoop that low. He fully intended on leaving her alone, just as she'd asked. He didn't want to be a burden to her anymore, he didn't want to be a symbol of her past--

God, he grimaced as he let the coffee burn the insides of his mouth, How can she drink this crap?

Callie was watching him, her dark eyes fixed on him as Arizona continued the topic without faltering. It was as if his invitation had been nothing but a slight bump in the road, one that didn't faze either of them. 

Mark couldn't exactly tell what she was thinking, but whatever it was, it seemed to warrant a long observation. It was a doctor's observation, the sort that seemed to produce a diagnosis. 

He shot her a look, his brow crinkling slightly as he noticed her stare.

He wasn't bothered that they already had plans, it always seemed to be that way. His friends had other friends and they were busy with them. Mark supposed that it was one of the reasons he'd taken to sitting in Joe's alone over these past few months. 

He wasn't bothered. He was not bothered at all. Callie had cancelled more plans than he could count in favour of her girlfriend's new best friend, but Mark wasn't bothered. 

Seriously, he wasn't bothered at all.

"Still," Arizona exhaled, looking over at Callie as she continued to blaze through Mark. "I don't know whether to go for the green china or for the ceramic bowl. I mean... I know Charlie really likes cooking so I think kitchenware is a good call to go for. I feel really bad for doing all of this so last minute--"

"This whole thing is last minute," Callie responded, shrugging, "I'm sure they won't take it personally if their wedding gift isn't perfect." Arizona paused for a moment and then begrudgingly sighed, realising she was right. "And besides, they both love you so I don't think you should put so much pressure on yourself--"

Mark, for the hundredth time in the past few months, found himself wondering how exactly he'd ended up in the middle of these sorts of conversations.

"I just want to give them a good send-off," Arizona said lightly, although her insistence wavered with a deeper determination. (Subtly, Callie shot a glance in Mark's direction, as if to indicate a question whether her girlfriend was completely sane.) "They've just been so nice to us and I just wish I knew exactly what they wanted so I can show my appreciation."

And then, as if something had flipped in her brain, her eyes flickered over to the Plastic Surgeon.

"You know Beth," Why did that feel like an accusation? With her gaze zeroed on in Mark, she said those words directly to him. He shifted in his chair, sensing exactly where this was going (Oh crap). "What would you get her?"

In his peripheral, Mark saw the way that Callie grimaced to herself, questioning the choice Arizona had made to bring him into the discussion. 

It was, in fact, a choice. Mark found himself staring at the blonde pediatric surgeon, blood rushing to his ears as he registered what she'd said. 

(What would he get her?) 

He wasn't sure what was more startling, Arizona's realisation that they'd once meant something to each other, the realisation that he knew Beth better than they did, or the instruction to think about something he put so much energy into trying to avoid. 

From the corner of his eye, he couldn't exactly tell whether Callie look amused or just slightly in pain, as if she was all too aware of the biological reaction that was currently hammering away in his head.

Mark wet his lower lip, "What?"

"What would you get her?" 

Arizona repeated the question, seeming to be caught up in a very lovely rose coloured cloud that made her oblivious to the way Callie's head inclined. The orthopaedic surgeon looked over at Mark, watching the way his shoulders heaved with a long breath. 

"You know her better than any of us. If you had to choose something, what would you get for her?"

There was a pause.

Callie leant forwards, reaching out for Arizona's hand, "I don't really think that's--"

"I don't know," Mark's answer came easily. He feigned a look of deep thought, shrugging nonchalantly as his mouth dried. "I used to get her surgeries. I got her on cases for Christmas. It's all she'd ever want."

There it was again. 

He felt as he had at that table with Ballard, slightly exhausted and drained. He felt the same feeling crawl over him, he felt their gazes just as he'd felt Lexie's. 

Callie was looking over at him with an unreadable expression. Her eyes were hard as if she knew a lot more than what Mark was saying.

He felt oddly useless. 

With his words and train of thought came the question of whether he even knew Beth at all. Maybe he didn't know Beth at all, not now at least. He'd spent so much time thinking about how she was different and the same, all at once. But she was different. 

She thought and felt so differently. She'd changed. He'd changed. 

The world had changed and Mark had just been thinking about what it once had been far too much--

"Well," Arizona said in a small voice, "I don't think she'd want that now."

Yeah, Mark thought to himself as he forced himself to drink more coffee, I guess you're right.

He'd tried. He'd tried to suggest something. 

He was reminded of why exactly he was trying to stay out of Beth's business. 

There was no space for him here. Getting involved with a wedding gift felt a look like something Addison would do; they were friends with her too right? Why not ask the sort of person who couldn't help but get involved?

"Aren't they going to rural France anyway?" Callie questioned, adding a further bullet point to the list that embodied Arizona's panic. "Why would they need kitchenware?"

"Well," Arizona exhaled, looking momentarily panicked. She clearly hadn't anticipated that, whatever they were given, they were going to have to either pack or leave behind. It seemed to shake her to her core. "Beth said that it was all going to have to work--"

"I don't exactly see the point in getting them a blender if they're just going to be in some cottage--"

"I thought it would be a nice gesture and Charlie thought it was nice--"

"Charlie's too nice to disagree with anything--"

Oh for god's sake.

"Can we just talk about something else?"

Mark's exasperated interjection caused the two of them to pause. 

His face was contorted, shoulders raised and his tone pitched in frustration. 

One by one, they looked over at him again, spying the way that Mark tiredly sighed, already regretting speaking. He could see from the expression on Arizona's face and the slow dwindle of realisation that rose inside of her, that he'd made a major mistake. 

(Oh crap.) 

Callie, too, seemed to bite her tongue, staring at him again with those dark, unshifting eyes.

A long sigh fell through his lips and he rubbed at his chin.

"Sorry."

Expect, he wasn't particularly sorry at all.

He felt swamped. He felt as if everything was constantly orbiting around Beth. His life, for the past two months, had been completely wrapped in the woman that had removed herself from his life five years ago. 

It was disconcerting. He was sharing Seattle with her, sharing his friends and his cases and this hospital and he was exhausted. If Beth was exhausted with being reminded of the past, Mark was half deceased and the thought that she was leaving tomorrow was the only spike on his heart monitor.

He didn't want to talk about her. He didn't want to hear about her either. 

If he'd been a woman and Beth was the man, his life would have never passed the Bechdel test. 

For a split moment, for the tiniest second, could they talk about something other than how happy and successful and better off Beth was with Charlie Perkins.

Callie continued to stare at him as if she could hear his thoughts loud and clear.

Yeah, Mark thought to himself as he forced himself to finish his coffee, I'm going to need something a little bit stronger.

***

Receiving a page to respond to a visitor in the reception was, admittedly, the last thing Addison had expected.

She'd been working, chasing admin around the surgical floor until her heel-clad feet throbbed angrily. By the time she stumbled in the direction of the elevator, screaming pager in hand and the sound of 'Doctor Montgomery to lower ground reception' echoing around her, she could imagine how red they'd be at the end of the day. 

She'd always considered herself a little too delicate for athletics, and yet here she was, engaging in some cat and mouse game with Beth, the woman who, apparently, did not want to be found.

Maybe that's why, when the elevator doors parted and revealed an empty space that was only populated by the woman of the hour, that Addison felt her chest tighten. 

She set her eyes on Beth, the psychiatrist who was so hell bent on keeping her distance, and hesitated on entering. Their eyes met and Beth seemed to chuckle to herself, releasing what had happened as she raised her own pager--

"Three Montgomerys," Addison said as she stepped into the elevator, nodding her head with the acknowledgement that Archer was probably going to appear too.

 It seemed as though the reception hadn't known who to page and had just decided to contact all of them. Beth responded with another chuckle, although it appeared far more bitter than the first. The elder sister paused awkwardly, revisited by what Archer had said earlier. 

"Yeah," She sighed, "I forgot about that."

If Addison was thinking logically, she would've left this to Beth, but Addison was drawn into the elevator like a moth to the flame. 

She'd been trying to find her sister all day and here she was: gaze averted and fixed on the floor counter over the door. Technically, only one person needed to respond to the page, only one person needed to go down and see whoever this visitor was-- Addison should have left Beth to do it alone.

The elevator doors closed, effectively trapping them together until they reached the bottom floor.

Beth didn't speak.

They stood side-by-side in silence, feeling the contraption shudder around them as it slowly began its descent. 

It struck Addison, in that moment, how slowly this elevator could be at times; or maybe it was just how time was working today? Seconds felt a lot nearer to lifetimes.

Addison, immediately, was swamped by the impulse to say something. 

Archer had been right in his assumptions earlier, they hadn't spoken since the showdown in Derek's office, where Addison had only been able to take away a throbbing cheek and a few hours of tears. She looked over at her sister as she stood directly next to her, almost shoulder-to-shoulder. Beth appeared completely unfazed, but there was a muscle jumping in her jaw. 

Closer examination made her realise that the psychiatrist's whole body was tensed, like a compressed spring just waiting to ricochet.

There were so many things Addison wanted to say.

She wanted to apologise. She wanted to tell Beth that she was sorry for all the pain she'd ever caused her. Addison had never set out to be the villain of anyone's life, she'd never made a conscious and continuous decision to make everything fall apart. 

She'd been selfish, she'd been stupid and she'd been blind to what she'd triggered in Beth's life. And that's everything that came to mind as Addison stared at Beth's profile; honestly, she didn't even know where to begin.

A few times, Addison went to speak. She opened her mouth and tapped her feet and debating on where exactly to start or how to word it. Whenever she went to speak, she was revisited by Archer's words, by his push to leave things be, to let them be unfinished-- but Addison didn't believe in leaving things unfinished. She was a surgeon. Leaving a patient unfinished meant leaving them for dead and Addison was going to be hard pushed to let Beth bleed out again.

"Beth," Addison began finally. It had taken her three floors to realise where she wanted to start. "Beth, I just wanted to apologise for--"

"I'm getting married tomorrow."

Beth's voice took her off-guard. 

She spoke almost robotically, her eyes unmoving from the door in front of them. She tone was devoid of any particular emotion and she didn't even spare Addison a glance. It was as if they were standing in two different rooms. 

There was a disconnect that made Addison's heart squeeze tightly in her chest.

She stared at her, feeling the blood rush to her ears.

"I'm getting married," Beth repeated, face blank despite the way her fists seemed to clench very slightly. Suddenly, Addison found herself unable to speak; all apologies dwindled into a smouldering mass of ash at the back of her head. "I'm going to a courthouse downtown and I'm marrying Charlie at midday."

At first, Addison thought this was an olive branch. 

She supposed, back in New York, that she'd become accustomed to them. Beth had always been so good at forgiveness, even when they knew it was against her design. 

She was a beacon of bitter acceptance-- was this an invitation? Was this a welcome, extended hand? Addison was all too aware of the strikes that Beth had already made to wipe herself clean of them. Derek had been served, Mark had been removed and Addison had been left in silence and despair--

Maybe this was hope?

The sensation didn't last very long.

"Beth I--"

"You have until midday."

Addison's brow furrowed.

"What?" She was breathless, completely caught off-guard by the way Beth continued. 

Why did that sound like an ultimatum? What exactly was happening? 

She was inclined to think that this was the invitation she'd been hoping for. She was hoping that Beth would say something about how Addison had under twenty-four hours to get a dress or organise something nice. 

She wanted Beth to tell her that. 

She wanted that olive branch. 

"Midday?"

"You have until midday," Beth repeated, again, not even sparing a glance in her direction. "If you're not out of Seattle, on a flight, by midday, I'm not getting married."

It was delivered in the same manner that Beth had placed those papers on Derek's desk. 

Cold and impersonal, like the manner of a lawyer who was about to ruin someone's whole life's work. She didn't look over, she didn't smile or laugh or indicate that she was joking-- she stared at her own blurry reflection in the back of the elevator doors, at the metal woman who was making an assertion was not going to melt anytime soon.

Addison was frozen. 

Her eyes drilled deeper and deeper into her sister as she struggled to turn those words over in her head. Her immediate reaction was confusion as if her brain hadn't been able to comprehend this happening. 

Her second reaction was disbelief; her brow furrowed, her lips curled and she tried to grapple with the concept of response. And then came the blow of a sadness that was so deep that she almost had to steady herself.

"What?"

(If she'd been breathless the first time, the second was a completely collapsed lung wheezing its way out of chapped lips.)

"I want you out of here," Beth stated firmly. They appeared like completely unnegotiable terms. Succinct and unwavering. "I want you out of this city. I don't care how much you have to pay for a flight back to California. But I refuse to go that courthouse until you're out of this state."

"Beth--"

"If you make me tell Charlie that I can't marry him, I will never forgive you."

Addison's throat was dry. 

She could feel every inch of her being throb so painfully-- all she could do was stare at the way that Beth's every movement and decision seemed so precise and systematic. She was so distant, even though she was stood right there; how easily Addison could have reached out and grabbed her arm and tethered herself to her. 

There was no blood in either of their faces, they both appeared so pale and fractured, as if the past week had delivered the exact blow to their relationship that Addison had predicted.

I will never forgive you.

There was something about that in particular that made Addison feel chilled to the bone. All of the fight that she'd felt earlier, ranting in a corridor outside a patients room with a miffed Archer, that all seemed to sink away. 

All that was left was the imagined scene in Addison's head: she could see Beth stood in front of Charlie, gravely telling him that her sister had screwed up yet another chance for happiness. Somehow, not a cell in Addison's body doubted that Beth was telling the truth. 

Would it crush Charlie? Would it beat them beyond repair? 

Would Addison be responsible for yet another heartbreak?

I will never forgive you, it was said with so much gravity that Addison felt pinned to the floor, especially how Beth had forgiven her for so much already. 

She'd been right. This was a breaking point. 

This was the end.

(She didn't want to say goodbye. Maybe that's why she didn't have any words to say.)

"You're a disappointment, Addie," Beth twisted the knife. "All I've asked, every step of the way, is for you to be there for me. You had one, single, job. Just like Mark, just like Derek. But unlike them, you were the one person who couldn't walk away. You didn't just walk, you ran and took everything I had with you. You disappointed me. Just like you disappointed your husband. Just like you disappointed Mom and Dad."

She felt every syllable.

Was this how it had felt for the others? 

They'd all lined themselves up in a neat queue for Beth to cut them out one by one. Derek, her, Mark-- Had they felt the sting of it too? Despite how impersonal and detached Beth appeared, the words felt deeply, irrevocably personal. She was disappointing in the same way that Derek had been cruel and that Mark had been a bad trip down memory lane. It was personal. It had always been personal.

"I don't want you in Seattle," The words came so easily to the psychiatrist that Addison, if she hadn't been suspended in grief, she would've thought Beth was scripted. "I don't want you here and I don't want you in my life. I don't need you. I don't want you to pretend you care. I don't want to have to settle or make amends-- I want you gone. Permanently."

A beat passed.

The air in the elevator was stiff and every breath Addison took seemed to fill her with concrete. She was hard to waver, impossible to move and, when Beth finally looked over at her, she wondered what she looked like. 

There was nothing to be seen in Beth's eyes, no regret, no sadness, no emotion. Addison's surprise and alarm at the suddenness of these instructions seemed to bounce straight off of a clean, unmarked slate. Beth didn't see this as blindsiding. It had been a long time coming.

Beth wanted her out. She wanted her gone.

This time, Beth being the one that ran away, wasn't enough. 

If Beth didn't belong or deserve Seattle, Addison sure as hell didn't either. 

Just like Beth, she was walking on borrowed land and biding her borrowed time; her contract here was only on Derek's terms. Derek, the same jackass that had burned everything and left Addison's heart bruised the first time. As Beth held her gaze, impassive and unyielding, Addison thought about how every step of the way, she'd tried and failed to help her little sister.

Half of her wanted to tell Beth that this wasn't it. This wasn't the end. This wasn't the answer. 

Just as Addison didn't believe Beth leaving Seattle and disappearing into a hail of storm clouds wasn't how this should go, she didn't think that her own removal was the right call either.

 She wanted to put her foot down and tell Beth that she wasn't leaving, that she wasn't giving up. She'd given up on Beth so many times in the past but not now, not today. 

She wanted to challenge Beth's assertion that she was going to sacrifice her whole relationship in the face of revenge-- she wanted to stand her fucking ground like Bizzy Forbes had raised them to.

But then there was the way that Beth didn't falter. She'd faltered in the past. She'd faltered big. But now, she was cold. 

It was as if there was a replica of her, perfectly made out of marble and Addison could imagine her skin being ice to the touch. She was unmoving, uncompromising and unattached, staring at Addison as if the ex-Shepherd should have seen it coming.

Maybe, Addison figured, maybe she should have.

This was, after all, the same execution that Beth had exercised on the others. 

She was chopping them off, one by one, and Addison would've been a fool to not see it coming-- but she'd been hopeful. She'd hoped that things would be different and that things would salvageable. That same hope withered inside of her and made her palms clammy.

How easy it would've been to deny Beth this, to tell her to snap her plans in two just to rise to the occasion. 

Beth was capable of fire, they'd all seen it; whether it was a standby doctor in that OR corridor or Mark Sloan in that apartment back in New York, Beth could burn when necessary. This approach, however, this bitter tongue with a frosted exterior bit deep, deep enough that Addison could almost feel her bones shake.

She swallowed, tasting bile at the back of her throat.

"If that's what you want..."

Addison almost didn't recognise her own voice. 

It was barely a sound, just an exhale that appeared restrained and nearly squeaky. She sounded so small, so backed into a corner. (But hadn't that been Beth's only vice over the years?) Addison wasn't accustomed to surrendering, so when she did, she felt her eyes water and her breathing catch. 

Her body, so it appeared, wasn't biologically programmed to give in.

Was it giving in? Addison couldn't tell. 

What she could tell, however, was that Archer's words had grilled themselves deep under her skin. She'd been determined for things to work out and now look at her. She couldn't bear to insert herself into her sister's happiness again-- Beth's threat was exactly what it appeared to be and, ironically, she'd chosen to serve it at the exact time that Addison had decided to step up and be a better sister. 

Her planned apology withered and died like an overwatered flower drenched with snow. Syllables were lost and her brain was frosted over by the bittersweet ice of an unyielding storm that she could name with four specific letters.

"It is," Beth responded, with no hesitation.

Jeez, Addison thought to herself as she looked away. 

Her body felt tight and her eyes kept watering, despite how badly she willed herself to mirror her sister's composure. She dropped her head to stare at the floor, blood still pounding in her ears.

  You could've at thought about it for a second

Archer had told her to let her go. 

He'd encouraged Addison to leave things unclean and dirty. She'd always been more of a compulsive cleaner herself, to the point where everything was specific and ordered. Beth had always been the dirty spot and now, Addison was trying to grit her teeth and let things work out for the best.

She didn't want to leave, but she would if that meant it made Beth happy.

Somehow, leaving the elevator was so much harder than entering it had been. Her whole body was stiff and uncooperative as if she'd forgotten how to walk. It struck her, as she watched Beth leave without a second glance, that Beth had barely even spoken or said anything, and yet Addison felt as though a part of her had died. 

As she made plans to follow and attempted to coax her body into movement (despite how shell-shocked and sick she felt) Addison wondered whether the part that had died was the bond they'd had.

Permanently.

It was what Beth wanted. It was what she needed. It was just as Archer had said; Charlie was Beth's family now. 

She had someone she could rely on, someone who loved and cared for her without fault. He was a nice guy, a good guy. He didn't lie, he didn't cheat and he didn't disappoint. He was better for her than they had been. Charlie was exactly what and who she needed.

Following Beth through the reception redundant as Addison had almost forgotten why they were down here. 

Their pagers had stopped and Addison's head was spinning slightly, like a carousel that was cantering out of control. She was silent as Beth appeared so unbothered, asking one of the receptionists where the visitor was that had asked for them--

A visitor? All the way out in Seattle? Addison didn't have the mental capacity to be bewildered by it.

"Over there," the receptionist said, pointing the two sisters over in the direction of a seating area. 

Beth thanked her with a gracious smile, a warm expression that made Addison twitch at how easily Beth could navigate between hot and cold. Again, Beth did not acknowledge Addison at all as she turned away and directed her attention towards the space.

Addison felt useless and see-through as if Beth had finished with her and thrown her aside. 

She'd fucked it all up.

The reaction Beth had to the surprise visitor felt out of place. 

How was it that Beth could go from a cold, deadly deliver to a splitting, delighted smile? The change was so sudden that it almost gave her motion sickness. It made her body ache and her eyes sting. 

Within moments of picking out the familiar face on the other side of the room, Beth thawed and became full of light, immediately let out a small yelp of surprise and contentment-- before Addison could even register what was happening, or see who this person was, Beth was rushing across the room and embracing someone tightly.

Addison's head turned.

Oh.

She could hear the delighted laughter from here. 

Two friends who hadn't seen each other in years. She picked her way across the reception, blinked back her tears and crossed her arms over her chest. 

She waited until the greetings were finished and gave the newcomer a tired and weathered smile.

"Amelia," Her words felt weak. She felt too old and too battered. "It's good to see you."