Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟴𝟵 grieving for the living

𝙇𝙓𝙓𝙓𝙄𝙓.
GRIEVING FOR THE LIVING

evermore, taylor swift ft bon iver

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SEATTLE

HISTORICALLY, MARK HAD been good with bad news.

It'd been one of the first things they'd been taught in medical school, the practice of sitting down and gently informing a loved one that their family member had passed away. 

It was hard but it was tender, telling them that they'd done everything they could. But sometimes, things just didn't work out how people wanted it to, people died in surgery because there was nothing else they could do. 

A bleeder went unnoticed or an organ just simply stopped working, and a patient would die right in front of their eyes.

Mark remembered once, on a cardio rotation, he'd watched someone's heart quite literally burst in the centre of the patient's chest–– he'd been given the task of giving that bad news to the patient's father himself. 

A small resident with his hand on the shaking shoulder of a man triple his age. It'd been a car crash, the father had driven into parked cars after passing out from heatstroke. His son had suffered a severe wall rupture and that had been it. 

He'd bled out in seconds, and Mark had had to watch the grieving process start right in front of him. An extensive, gruelling process that Mark had decided he didn't want for himself––– why love when loss can be so fucking painful?

Of course, he'd told more patients of their losses over time. 

It was part of the job. He found it just got easier, the more people's lives got ruined, the more people he saved. He was proud of the fact that he didn't often lose patients, that more often than not, Mark pulled through and went through the reinforcement of the grateful and grateful tears. 

Success was not just addictive, it was gratifying: he really did not like having to deal with breaking that bad news.

But even so, there was that consciousness through every single day: of how closely loss followed his every win.

He'd listened to Andrew Perkins talk about it at length for an hour in that hospital-wide seminar, of how Andrew had spoken so animatedly about grief and it's physical and emotional impact on the human experience. He'd really engaged with it, taken them all collectively through how it broke into the human psyche, really forcing everyone to reflect on loss and how exactly mourning efficiently could help you rather than hinder you––

Doctor Perkins had, unfortunately, forgotten to tell them how to mourn something you never had in the first place.

Now that sort of loss? Mark didn't know what to do with it.

He was, emotionally, perpetually stuck outside, on that street with Lexie Grey, stooped against the sidewalk and wondering how exactly the world could keep going when he was still stuck in place. 

He walked through the rest of his work day, completing successful surgeries, all while mentally still caught in the heat of three words. 

He could remember the expression on Lexie's face so vividly, the torture in her eyes as they both processed what had just passed. 

She'd hugged her knees to her chest and laboured over it, over how something so major could happen to someone and yet, outside, it would be as if nothing had happened in the first place––

"Hey, Romeo!"

Just like the first time, Mark faced it with his hand reaching for his apartment door. 

He'd been stuck to the floor, lost in thought as he avoided looking at the neighbours. 

It lurked in the corner of his eye, something that he knew was there but he just couldn't–– he wouldn't–– and then he realised someone was talking to him.

It took him longer than he would've liked to admit, to realise that Amelia was standing in the hallway. 

She'd just left the very apartment he was avoiding, leaving Mark with the sour taste of deja vu in his mouth. (He'd seen this exchange before. Him, disoriented, mouth dry and head heavy. A passerby, closing that door and turning to look at him. Last time he'd handed over an engagement ring. This time, Mark got the feeling he'd be handing over his sanity.) 

She gave him a slight smile, one that Mark couldn't quite place on her face. 

Hands shoved in her pockets, Amelia approached him, the sound of her feet thudding against the carpeted floor echoing around his head–– 

Mark's head turned so gently, as if he was worried any movement would cause him intense pain.

Under these lights, Amy didn't look like the same person he'd seen just a few hours ago. 

They hadn't seen each other after the meeting with Derek and Mark hadn't responded to Amy's calls. She'd sent him messages, asking what had happened and whether Derek knew where Beth was, all until she'd gotten the silent message and stopped trying. 

(Mark guessed he'd stopped trying too. He'd simply concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, done his damn job and gotten on with his day as if nothing had happened.) 

Just as he'd been acting all day, Amy looked at him as if they hadn't spent their morning in shared stress–– she approached him like a carefree, old friend.

The youngest Shepherd's head jerked in the direction of the apartment that she'd just left.

"Juliet wants a chat."

Mark supposed that, if today had gone differently, he would have chuckled at that joke. 

Maybe he would have even sighed, rolled his eyes and shook his head at Amy's nonchalance.

 She had this slightly amused glimmer in her eye, but alongside what looked like a very deep stress; Mark's brow crumpled and his eyes flickered, momentarily, towards Beth's apartment door. 

Instead of any form of amusement or exasperation, Mark was just frozen to the spot, just as he was frozen in time.

There was a weight in Amy that only seemed to weigh him down further. 

He could see the exhaustion in her eyes, the way that she seemed unable to stand still. Again, he looked over at the door. It was something he'd been trying to avoid thinking about by throwing himself back into his work: what exactly was happening behind that closed door. 

A sour taste flushed through Mark's mouth and he wobbled on his feet slightly, his head swamping with those familiar, reoccurring four words:

She was pregnant, Mark.

(Amy stared at the man in front of him, forever impressed by the fact that he seemed to look worse every time she saw him.)

(She figured he must've been the Benjamin Button of emotional regression, watching him grow smaller and smaller every time she set her eyes on him.)

(Now, haunted eyes sunk right through her, leaving her breath to hitch as she found something in Mark's gaze that hadn't been there before.)

(She was fully acclimatised to the sad bastard hours that were currently taking up all of his time but fuck, that emptiness and disorientation in his eye?)

(Had Derek died during their conversation or what?)

Mark bit down on the tip of his tongue and then very slowly, continued what he'd intended to do in the first place. He inserted his key into his door. He turned the key and then he opened it. 

Over his shoulder, Amy frowned.

"Mark–"

"Amelia."

He didn't sound like himself––

Or, maybe he did? 

Maybe he sounded exactly like he'd sounded in that OR with Teddy Altman staring at him like he'd just grown a second head. 

(He'd seen that newspaper cover, with the photo of him drenched in Beth's blood, at the bottom of a recycling box in one of the receptions today. He'd stared at it, almost not even able to recognise himself.) 

He sounded so small, so tired, so malleable as if Amy could hold a hand out and press him down into the floor like putty under a child's fist. 

Just hearing the breath leave his lungs like that, in a long, desolate drag that failed to really show how exhausted he really felt, Mark didn't know what to do with himself.

Mark didn't look back at Amy. 

He didn't dare look at the calculation in her eyes as she seemed to silently assess every part of him. 

He wondered what she'd find in front of her; would it be one of the most acclaimed Plastic Surgeons in the world, an arrogant hotshot with no dignity, or would it just be Mark? (said in the same inflexion as Derek Shepherd, with slightly glassy eyes and horror at his own words.)

She sighed.

"Mark."

"I mean it," He chipped the words out, not at all enjoying how they felt on his tongue. 

Mark kept his head down, chin tilted so he was staring at the key wedged in his lock. He watched the hinges swing open with a push on his hands. 

"I mean it, Amy––"

"Jeez," Amy breathed out, sounding vaguely disappointed, "Derek's really put a pitchfork up your ass, hasn't he?"

Mark didn't speak.

He didn't know how to put it into words. 

How was he supposed to say it out loud when he didn't even understand what he was thinking or what he was feeling? 

A pitchfork felt like an understatement.

(Amy stared at him. She stared at every single detail that she could pick up on.)

(After spending the whole afternoon picking up the pieces that had been left in today's wake, Mark's estranged and distant behaviour didn't go amiss. She knew he was going through it but this–– this.)

In Mark's peripheral, he watched Amy's shoulders fall.

The youngest Shepherd glanced over her shoulder back to the Beth's apartment door. 

He watched her wipe her palms on her jeans and clear her throat, visibly unsure of what to do. 

That, in itself, was odd, Amy always knew what to do. 

She always had a backup plan or a backup backup plan, always had an escape route and a motive. 

But here, stranded in the centre of the corridor as Mark refused to meet her eye–– Amy was completely stumped.

She dragged in a long breath:

"C'mon Mark."

Oh fuck. 

He didn't like her tone. 

There was something buried there, something which left the same ringing in his ears as earlier when she'd looked at him with alarm, realising that she had no idea what was happening with Beth. 

She was uncharacteristically quiet and subdued, her tone wavering very slightly in a way that reminded him of when they were kids, but Amy had never been the type to need help. 

She'd fallen off of her bicycle and got straight back on it. 

She'd cried, she'd never pleaded, and yet there it was in her voice––

Mark swallowed the lump at the back of his throat.

His head turned towards her and, in unison, the two surgeons saw what they dealing with.

 Emotions on their faces, Mark was faced with the nervousness of a woman who was always so sure of herself and her actions. 

Her foot was nervously twitching, her body moving in a way that told him she was so deeply backed into a corner that, once again, this plea was her last resort.

(Amy, meanwhile, was met with a man who, very clearly, did not want anything to do with Beth Montgomery, quite possibly ever again. She watched how his jaw clenched and unclenched and her heart beat a little too quickly for her chest––)

(Motherfucker, Amy thought to herself. She had a feeling she knew what Derek had said.)

"You're, uh..."

Amy's voice scraped the air as she looked away, quickly as if looking at Mark was like looking directly into the sun. 

She crossed her arms tightly over her chest and smiled a smile that was crooked and lopsided.

"You're gonna regret it if you don't."

***

─── Amelia had left the apartment door slightly ajar.

Maybe it was out of strategy or maybe it was out of carelessness? Mark could never tell when it came to her. 

All he knew was that she left quicker than she'd arrived, disappearing down the hallway without him realising she was even gone. 

When Mark looked back, to tell her that this was as bad of an idea as his suspicions told him it was, he just caught the click of the elevator doors closing, leaving him alone in a corridor that suddenly felt way too small.

What now?

Mark had been in Beth's apartment twice. 

The first: The dinner with the table that was a little too short for all of the people it had seated, but they'd somehow made it work. 

He could still feel the nervousness that had run through his body, humming as if he'd stepped onto a live wire, and the way he'd fought so hard to keep his cool. 

He'd followed Lexie as she stepped so ambitiously into a field of landmines without knowing it–– and what was he doing now? 

Standing in front of a door knowing that it was, more than likely, rigged to explode as soon as he opened it?

The second: the heated exchange across pizza stained boxes, the way that Addison had melted right in front of their eyes like a wax figurine. The last time he'd crossed this threshold he'd watched Beth's anger, felt the heat of her fire...

He couldn't express how deeply he didn't want to enter this apartment. He couldn't–– what would he–? Mark didn't know where to start. 

What was he supposed to say? 

Was Charlie here? Was she–– the wedding? What Derek said––? How was––?

What were you supposed to say to a person after something like that?

His body, however, seemed to move on its own accord.

His knuckles glazed the door as he, very cautiously, pushed the door open.

The first thing he noticed about the space was how everything was packed. 

Everything neatly arranged in some order that he knew made sense to someone somewhere, in boxes and crates and little divided trays fit for storage. The sight of it all, of everything bare and stripped rendered Mark, for a moment, silent and still. 

A distant recollection of Beth's apartment that night everything had happened. 

Rushing to that building in Bloomingdale, only to find every single trace of her wiped from existence. 

When he closed his eyes he could feel it: his heart in his mouth as he hurried to stop Beth from leaving, the way that her new roommate had been so caught off-guard by it too. Every single thought in his mind told him not to enter, to just leave things be, but he couldn't.

You're gonna regret it if you don't.

With a single over the threshold, Mark squinted through the dark, barely lit interior, wondering whether he was about to get a jump scare. 

From here, he could see across the open plan room, just like he was familiar with in his own. 

The storm was still low in Seattle and the windows felt clogged and almost boarded. 

This whole space, this whole room, felt so abandoned. 

Chairs were still drawn out from under the table, a half-drained water bottle lying on its side on the countertop and a stereo in the far corner played a song that Mark recognised very faintly. It was a piano concerto, the sort you'd dance to–– he cleared his throat.

"Beth?"

His voice echoed around the dark space.

Maybe she's not even here?

Mark hoped she wasn't here. 

That was the best case scenario. 

Beth had scaled her way out of the building and blind sided Amy, leaving him to skulk around some abandoned monument of Beth's time in Seattle. 

He really hoped she wasn't here. 

He hoped Charlie wasn't here either.

 He didn't want to have to talk to either of them right now. 

He didn't want to have to congratulate the happy couple or even flash that stilted, slightly frazzled smile that he'd once mastered. 

He really didn't want to have to––

There was a broken mug on the floor.

With his hands buried in his pockets, Mark hesitated in the centre of the room, his eyes drawing to it as it was illuminated by the slight glow of a street light across the road. 

He could distantly see the green glaze on it and wondered how it'd gotten there. 

His head moved in between the dining table and the back of the couch, his eyes bouncing between the positioned chairs and the distance the mug must've covered. If he didn't know better, he would've thought it'd been thrown.

"Out in the back!"

Beth's voice floated across the apartment, mixing with the music in a way that almost felt nostalgic. 

He would have loved to say that he didn't recognise her voice, that he'd just passed it off as a fluctuation in the wind outside, but he knew that he could recognise that sound anywhere. It caused his heart to jump into his mouth and his stomach to twist. 

This time, there was the thrum of his wit too, of a man who was spread so thin that just looking at her bedroom door made his heart want to burst out of his chest.

Mark heaved a breath and walked through.

The bedroom was packed too, the whole room condensed into boxes like fragments of what once was. It had the same emptiness that the other spaces had, one that Mark felt a very strangled kinship with–– he knew what it was like to be left behind. 

He tensed, as if expecting to see Beth standing in a dark corner or in a show, but she wasn't there either.

He looked towards the faint light in the bathroom.

Mark found her in an alcove in the back of her apartment, window ajar as she huddled underneath the awnings from the property above. 

He knew this area from his own, a little area where you could wedge yourself out the window and onto a plateau just above the bottom apartment. 

He'd briefly used it to house some potted plants that had needed a little bit of extra sunshine, back when Sloan had lived with him, but now his own alcove was bare. 

(He'd thought about making it nicer, putting some pride into the space that had become his home. But those potted plants, over the past two months, had been neglected just like Mark had neglected himself.)

The dead girl walking was sat with her knees pulled to her chest. 

Her back was turned to him. 

There was a slight slump in her shoulders, her torso resting against the wall like a puppet with its strings cut. 

From here, he could see a cigarette in between her fingers, a blistering fire extended into the dark, stormy evening–– the wind tossed her hair and rain sprinkled a light melody on her shoes, but Beth didn't seem to mind. 

The storm in Seattle seemed no match for her.

If he'd thought the concept of talking to this woman was foreign to him, he had not prepared for the execution.

He knew it was a bad idea and yet here he was, staring lines into this woman's back as if she was a stranger to him. 

But she wasn't a stranger; she was so painfully familiar to him that he was sure he'd know the feeling of her hair or the smell of her sigh as she seemed momentarily stuck in a thought. 

He knew every detail of her, every little flaw and every little quirk and yet–– and yet Mark couldn't bring himself to speak.

How many conversations he'd had, how many silences he'd broken and how many sentences he'd started and finished... fumbling over sentences was not in his genes nor was it in his history and yet his mouth was full of alphabet soup, whirring around like a mouthwash that he didn't like the taste of. He was so sure that if he started speaking then the letters would just collapse through his teeth and be gloriously nonsensical. 

Would they even be coherent? Would they just be sounds?

He was so convinced that he was incapable of anything but long gasping noises–– like a fish gouged from water or a newborn ripped straight from the womb, gulping air right before it splits the air with its first cry.

Talking was so fucking hard. 

He was afraid he'd get angry. 

He was afraid he'd get sad. 

He hadn't been able to grasp his emotions at all. 

How even was this conversation going to go–– 

did she–– would she–– did she even know?––

"I knew you'd come crawling back."

He knew the sound of her voice as well as he knew the sight of her.

He'd heard some many iterations of it over the years.

It caused chills to prickle his skin to think of how much it could fluctuate: from the soft heavy whisper that only occurred beneath a comforter, to the sort of sordid, rugged yell that could rip vocal chords. 

He knew the tiny details, of how she spoke differently on the phone compared to in person, of how she would speak differently to a patient than she would to a friend. 

He supposed she'd spoken to him differently too, once, but Mark's head ached a little too much for him to think of that now–– he knew what his thoughts were doing, anyway, they were dragging him on the tiny things to try and distract him from the big.

Now. Now she had a smile in her tone. 

A crooked one. 

Mark could picture it. 

Her words were enough for a lump to grow in the back of his throat and his brain to stall slightly like a overheated computer–– what did she mean? Crawling back? What did that ever––?

Her head turned back to him and he saw it, briefly, that smile. 

It was, very slightly, bitter and full of a sour resentment, the type that would make your teeth rot. It struck him like a camera flash, solidifying his state of confusion in one millisecond of light. 

And then, just like moments like that did, it was over–– the surprise in Beth's eyes caused her grin to lop-side into a sharp inhale, as if she very clearly did not anticipate him to be standing there.

"Well, I wouldn't quite put it like that."

Mark's voice was strangled. 

Fit into a tiny little almost wheeze that didn't feel ergonomic. 

It was a wedding dress stuffed into a suitcase struggling to get through security.

Dammit Amy.

The handful of footsteps between them felt almost like years.

Five. 

He'd counted them absently at the back of his head. 

It'd take him five steps to cross this room. It'd take him five seconds too. 

All of these fives and then five years that separated them, Mark felt like there was some sort of poetry there, at least somewhere.

They stared at each other. He so strongly disliked how, when her eyes met his, Mark felt the fogginess of the day lift–– her gaze blazed straight through him, burning his skin and every thought that Mark had carried into this room. 

For such a small moment in time, Mark felt some degree of clarity. 

He was just a man standing in a bathroom in downtown Seattle, hands buried in his pockets and heart low. Beth was just a woman with a dwindling fire in her eye. 

Things didn't feel so complicated–– he saw things for what they were: two people who were clearly not having a good day at all.

The dent appeared between her eyebrows, "Mark."

His name didn't seem to fit in her mouth. 

She said it with a clumsiness that Mark recognised very faintly; he knew he felt the same saying hers. It was as if she hadn't prepared herself for the weight of it and staggered very slightly with it's full force. 

Partnered with the surprise in her eyes and the way that her head tilted, as if to question his appearance, Mark knew that she, without a doubt, had not expected him.

He'd made a mistake.

He knew that before he even got to the speaking part.

He'd been incoherent with rage and hurt for the remainder of his day, ever since Derek's loose lips had sunk whatever half-shipwrecked cabin Mark had been hiding in for the past few weeks.

 But there, in the contact of two people, he felt the dust settle and his coherence loom. 

Things felt sharper when she was just there in front of him. 

His anger had a face; a confused one, a bewildered mouth, eyes and a nose. His hurt had a face too, it was the tenderness in which she surveyed him, gently looking him head to toe as if, on his every appearance, Beth associated it with something so gravely alarming that she almost expected to see blood.

Speaking, now that sounded like a terrible idea. But he tried it anyway:

"The door was open––"

"Oh," Beth said, almost breathlessly in response.

"I didn't mean to––"

"Oh no," She shook her head, "I thought you were my lawyer–"

Mark swallowed thickly.

"Sorry to disappoint."

His own apology felt clogged. 

Could she hear the strain in his voice too? 

He felt so uncomfortable that, for a moment, Mark couldn't handle her stare. 

She watched him for a few moments, her eyes searching every muscle and twitch of his face; Mark was fighting so hard to be impassive, his jaw locked as Beth eventually just chuckled to herself. 

It wasn't an amused chuckle. It was awkward sounding too.

It occurred to him, for the slightest moment, that if someone had to apologise, he wasn't the person to do it. 

He had indeed spent the last few hours wondering what would happen if he mentioned exactly what Derek had told him, the full story that the Shepherd had woven into his mind. 

What if he just came out and said it? 

Said everything curtly just with an emotionless indifference? 

What would Beth do? Would she tell him it was all wrong? 

Would he watch the realisation dawn across her face? 

Would he watch her lie herself even further into oblivion? 

Perjure herself in front of him, both the judge and the jury?

(Mark deeply disliked the fact that a part of him wanted to give Beth the benefit of the doubt. That, one tiny part of him, wanted Beth's reality to be true. It'd be easier that way.)

A chuckle chipped its way between Beth's teeth. Her chin fell to watch her pale fingers in the dim, overcast light.

"I'm sure I'm really not the first woman you've ever said that to, huh?"

Her joke didn't settle right. 

Mark wasn't sure whether it was the tension in his bones or just the sad gleam in her eye, but he knew that he wouldn't be laughing tonight. 

Instead, his whole body just seemed stifled by her slightly jaunty smile. 

There was an awkward pause where his response was supposed to be. Maybe it should've been some off-hand comment about how Mark didn't have to prove his ability to exceed expectations, especially not to her. 

Maybe it should've been exactly that, the sort of response that toed the line between coy and a retort, between flirtatious and just scathing––

Mark just stood there, silent. 

She turned her head back to the window and took a long drag on her cigarette, thoughtfully tapping it against the window ledge. 

He watched the ash catch on the breeze. He watched a muscle catch in her jaw, as if she'd been waiting for his response. The beat of silence lasted too long. It was an odd feeling, to be waited on like that. 

It was as if Beth was dependant on it. She waited for a joke that never came and, instead of being visible caught off-guard, she just cleared her throat.

"I'm not disappointed," Beth said finally, once it was well established that Mark didn't have anything to say in response. "Surprisingly, you're no longer the last person in the world I'd want to find in my bathroom."

Mark didn't know what to do with that. 

She seemed to say it to herself as if in a moment of realisation, as if she was realising how wildly things had changed. He was no longer the person Beth wanted to avoid in a room the most–– but, Beth was that to him. 

He wanted to avoid her. He didn't want to look at her, he didn't want to speak to her and he definitely did not want to laugh with her. 

Mark wasn't sure whether this feeling had a short shelf life or whether he needed his own five years to make sense of the noise in his head. 

All he knew was that he wanted to walk away and never come back.

Even so, he continued to stand in the doorway of the bathroom, too caught up in between leaving and simply walking up to her and grabbing her by the shoulders. 

He bit the tip of his tongue, his head filled with the impulse of shaking her too and fro until she told him something truthful, something real. 

Mark had never been a violent person, but sometimes he imagined Beth to be like one of those Magic 8 Balls; shake from side to side and severely doubt the truth of the answer.

But he didn't. He just stood.

"I'm guessing Amy left it open," were her next words, soft and off-handed. 

She spoke to the floor. Her foot scuffed against it with a unceremonious noise that Mark could almost feel–– in fact he could feel every single passing second. Meticulous. Draining. 

"You must've just missed her."

He wished he had. He really wished he had. 

What was it about this universe and timing? 

He felt as though he always missed the important things and stuck around for the sort of shit that put unnecessary stress on his heart. 

He stood there, thinking about all of the things he'd missed by a slim window of time: job application deadlines, subway trains, restaurant reservations... and then there were the other things too: his text message warning Beth against coming to work to avoid that shooter and his frantic attempt at stopping Beth from leaving Manhattan for good.

For the first time in a very long time, Mark would've preferred to be alone tonight. 

"I'm surprised you're still here," He said.

Mark didn't quite have the wits about him to pay attention to how he sounded.

She nodded her head lightly.

"Yeah," Another chuckle. It seemed to catch on the back of her throat. "Me too."

There wasn't something right there. 

There was something off. 

Between the cigarette in her hands and the way that Beth's shoulders hunched very slightly, Mark could tell something was wrong. 

His head was working very slowly to link things together, to form some sort of coherent flow to conversation. 

All Mark could really grasp was the fact that Beth was here, right in front of him, and was visibly upset. 

He was sure that to anyone else, she would have appeared unbothered; here this woman was on the day of her wedding, that he was beginning to think had not panned out how she'd wanted it to, just sat here nonchalantly throwing words out between her teeth. 

There was nothing ambiguous about her, nothing vague–– but Mark could see the tell-tale signs in her movements, in the way that every sentence seemed to drag slightly as if she was doing her best to hold things in. 

Just as Mark was able to read Derek, he was able to read Beth.

She inhaled the smoke from her cigarette through her mouth and exhaled through her nostrils.

 He watched the rush of it, those quivering lungs that he'd watched Teddy painstakingly inflate, trembling under the toxic air that rushed through her.

"Are you–"

"Don't ask me if I'm okay," Beth chipped, her words sharp but a sudden warmth appearing in her face. 

It was almost defensive, as if she spontaneously had to remind herself to emote just to use it as a weapon. 

A dent appeared between Mark's eyebrows. 

A wry chuckle exploded in another jagged exhale of smoke, "Amy has asked me that a hundred times today and... and I don't think I can take it right now."

A beat passed.

He wasn't going to ask. 

(He didn't want to ask. He didn't want to know.)  

He wasn't planning on asking her.

Actually, he was going to ask whether she was supposed to be smoking. 

If he strained closely enough, he almost could hear it, a pair of lungs so bruised and so tired that they could barely handle it. 

His eyes zeroed on the little object in her hand, wondering whether he'd ever seen Beth habitually smoke like this before–– was this a thing now? Did she smoke through a pack a week? Was this just one other thing he hadn't noticed?

(His chest throbbed with the reminder that maybe he didn't know her as well as he thought he did.)

"You sure you should be doing that?"

Mark's nod down at the cigarette almost felt paternal. 

No matter how much his body ached and his head spun, he was still concerned. Her body couldn't cope with stuff like that; he'd watched it first hand. 

There weren't many noises that stuck with him, but the sound of Beth on that boardroom floor had infected him, reaching deep into his memory and planting itself there like a weed that just wouldn't wither away. 

Maybe it was the circumstances around everything, of knowing that her gasps for air were the sound of her lungs slowly collapsing from the bullet in her chest, or the fact that it was Beth and he, as always, was Mark–– either way, Mark could hear it distantly as Beth gently blew smoke between her lips.

"Teddy definitely said not to," She said it with a shrug. Mark buffered in between the cold wind and the warmth of the light at the bottom of her cigarette. "But this feels like the lesser of a thousand evils right now."

A pause.

Beth smiled as if there was an inside joke there, "It's been a long fucking day, y'know?"

He did know. He felt the exact same way.

He stared over at her, his jaw clenched so tightly that he was surprised his teeth weren't splintering. 

His day, to put it into simple terms, had been fucking shit. 

The same sort of grief that flickered behind her attempt at comedic relief and strained smiles, yeah, Mark could relate to that. 

He knew exactly what she meant.

Derek hadn't told him what had happened in that meeting. 

He'd left details out, holding onto whatever semblance of privacy Beth had. Mark didn't know what had happened with Charlie either and, in all honesty, Mark didn't think he wanted to know–– he didn't want to be involved with Beth's pain, with whatever tragedy her day had turned out to be. 

He couldn't. He couldn't get involved. He shouldn't––

But, then he remembered what was missing.

Mark's head turned to look back into that bedroom, noticing something he'd walked past something hung up on the closet door. 

He could see it from here, in such a overcast room where no lights had been turned on, the phantom outline was so bright against the dark. He felt a lump form at the back of his throat and he felt the grief resume. 

He could see the shape, the unceremonious form of a hastily bought off-the-rack dress that had been picked out not because of the fit but because of the colour. 

He could see the care that it'd been hung with, the tenderness that it'd been prepared with just the night before. 

A small image played out of a woman smiling up at it, arms folded across her chest as she fantasised about the next day––

(The dress looked untouched.)

When Mark turned back to look at Beth, she was still smiling. 

Although, now, the corners of it were folded and downturned, like a dog-eared crease in the corner of a book page. 

As if she could read his mind, Beth sighed. 

He watched the air squeeze its way out of bruised lungs. He felt the chuckle as it tangled deep within her and seemed to echo between the empty caverns of a bloodied chest.

"Yeah," Beth murmured, so faintly that he almost didn't hear her, "Like I said... it's been a long day."

Charlie was missing.

That was the detail that Mark hadn't been able to place. 

She'd expected her lawyer but she hadn't expected her fiancé? 

Charlie, who was as permanent in this apartment as the feeling of foreboding that Mark got at the door. 

Charlie, who had heralded some level of romance that Mark was incapable of ever reaching.

Charlie, who had been her one way ticket down that aisle––

Mark's eyes glazed over a packing box that had been left ajar on the floor, half expecting to see the Boston-native packed in between the hand towels and body wash. 

He wasn't there, nor was he anywhere else in the apartment. 

Everything felt a little too clean, as if something very bad here had happened and he'd just walked into the scene a little too late to catch a crime...

Mark thought about the broken mug on the floor in the next room.

"Where's––"

"She went to get pizza," Beth breathed out, but again, that wasn't what Mark was going to ask.

 He looked at her, wondering what exactly had happened in this apartment before he'd entered it. But she wasn't looking at him. Her chin was tilted back as if she could feel the raindrops on her cheeks. 

"She said that she'd be back in a second––"

"––Charlie?"

He could feel that pause.

(Retrospectively, it was a pause that would stay with Mark for a while.)

(The off-handed question that had been tossed with into the conversation with nervousness. Mark knew what this day was supposed to be, that this was supposed to be Beth's wedding night and that she was supposed to be celebrating... but the energy in this apartment didn't feel right and the silence was a demonstration of that.)

He felt Beth halt completely, her body stiffening as her fiancé's name floated across the equally stiff air. 

That was not a good sign. 

Immediately, his head was clogged with what-ifs, of long rattling stories of Beth running from the altar because she was going to make a mistake, of the big romantic comedy type things where you'd find a bride on your doorstep and hesitate before letting her in–– Mark could feel his heart beat in his tongue, his eyes flickering over to the back of his ex-girlfriend's head.

Immediately, Mark knew that he'd misspoken.

"Charlie?" She said as if she hadn't thought about it at all, "Oh, he's gone."

Gone.

It was a word that got caught up in the back of Mark's mind. 

Gone. 

It was another one of those euphemisms that people used for death. 

Gone, deceased, passed away, lost, moved out to a farm in the country for a better life and a thousand other repeated rhetorics that had been listed to a pale-faced class of first year medical students. 

They'd been told not to use that word when comforting patients loved ones, to just grit their teeth and say time of death like an adult. Bad news was just part of the job. 

People were gone, people were lost and people didn't appreciate a big word like dead.

In the painful silence that followed that statement, Mark found himself repeating that word over and over to himself: gone, gone, gone, gone–– 

He wished she'd been more specific. 

Did she mean that he was just around the corner, picking up crappy pizza from a crappy pizza shop?

 Or, did she mean he was stone cold in a morgue down at the country sheriff's office? 

Gone was just absent. It didn't sound final, it just sounded crap. 

Charlie's Gone. 

Charlie's not here but where did he go––?

(He'd used that word once too. It was how he'd appeared in Addison's brownstone, hair matted from the rain and chest heaving as he met her horrified gaze. She'd been waiting in the foyer, arms wrapped around her chest so tightly as she watched him chip those two words through lips that threatened to tremble: Beth's gone.)

The first thing that struck him was the way she moved. 

She moved so delicately as if every movement was so taxing that she'd be exhausted by the end of a simple sentence. 

He watched her head turn towards him in almost slow motion, everything so soft and careful. 

Thunder rolled and lightning flashed and Mark found himself looking at her in briefly windows, her profile eclipsed against a sky at war. But if he'd thought the outside world was brutally violent, the emotion in her eyes was beyond words.

Beth just stared at him.

How quickly things had turned. 

There were no more jokes to give or contribute to the space between them. 

He could see the conflict in her. It was familiar. 

Beth approached everything with such humour, they were one of the same. 

Her light jokes and her breathy chuckles fell limp at the back of his throat as he noticed how small she looked–– she was hunched in on herself, curled up as in a fetal position, with her body preserving what little energy and heat she had left. 

Her face was set, like concrete poured into a mould, but her eyes swirled with something that did not look like grief–– No, it looked like the opposite.

His head filled with memories of moments like these. 

They made his bones ache. Long nights of finding Beth drinking in a dark room, long nights of finding the woman he'd loved in a hundred thousand pieces on the bathroom floor. 

It was painstaking and it made him think back to his conversation with Derek, of how Derek had been so sure that Beth was just the same as she had been five years ago.

In that moment, Mark agreed with him.

"Gone?"

His prompt was regretted immediately.

He saw the shift in Beth's eyes at the repetition of that word. 

He saw how those locked, tensed muscles seemed to tremor with the anticipation of speaking. Her hair danced slightly on the wind and her cigarette swayed in between her pale finger–– if he hadn't looked at her in such close detail, he would've thought this whole image was almost peaceful.

"Gone," Beth repeated, although her lips barely moved. "But the uh... the...dust hasn't even settled yet, so, um..."

She said everything with such a distant indifference as if the cold weather and the storm had numbed her to the core. 

Mark didn't doubt it, either, he saw the goosebumps and the hairs raised on the back of her arms. 

It was cold, it was very cold; he had half a mind to ask her whether she wanted a jacket from her closet. 

Then the thought of walking into her bedroom and finding her wedding dress just hanging there pinned him to the floor.

(Mark found himself stuck back in the concept from before, the mental image of Beth in a wedding dress standing on his doorstep.)

(The thought of it made his whole body feel heavy and condensed like lead, his mind almost dizzy from the reminder that she would always choose Charlie, but the picture, despite it, standing strong.)

(He could picture it so clearly, the way she'd tremble slightly, breathlessly, hands hiking up the front of her skirt as she stood on unstable legs in his doorway.)

(The slight hope in her eyes as something played out between them. A beat of fantasy, a sliding second of falsehood––)

He bit the tip of his tongue again, feeling his pulse thrum in between his teeth. 

(What a odd thought it was to think of how much things had changed within a handful of hours. He supposed that, a few hours ago, he would've kept that door open. He would've let her inside with his heart on his sleeve...But now. With the way that he felt, the words in his head and the echo of Derek's voice in his ears, Mark knew that wasn't true. He would've closed that door, firmly too. Right on that hopeful face and smile.)

(But it's not like fantasy had ever got him anywhere anyway.)

Mark, very slowly took a step towards her. 

He noticed how she seemed to stiffen at the sound of his footfall against the tile. Her shoulders hunched further and she seemed to curl in upon herself; a voice at the back of his head questioned what she'd do if he came closer, if he was beside her just like he'd been during the confrontation with Addison in Derek's office, if he had to restrain her life he had in that corridor. Would she recoil like his muscles wanted to? 

Would she claw herself out of his reach? 

Did she feel as deeply uncomfortable as Mark did? Did she want to run away too?

Mark swallowed. His throat was dry.

He was still staring at her, watching the nonchalant chuckle as it fought against the tension in her shoulders. 

She was, for all intents and purposes, rigid, as stiffly cut as rigor mortis setting in. 

When he blinked, he almost mistook the pale flush in her cheeks as the deathly pallor of a cadaver. 

The only life to be seen was in the sparks of her cigarette as they toyed with the whites of her eyes.

She even cracked another very placid smile.

Her head turned to look over at him.

Staring at her, face straight on, Mark couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her so upset.

It was so subtle on her. 

It was the creases in the corner of her mouth as she looked over at him, her eyes squinting through the cloud of smoke around her. It was the way that she gnawed on her bottom lip, pausing in thought as her chuckled echoed through both of their chests. 

Mark just stared at her, picking up on all of the little details that made me a muscle twinge in his diaphragm–– she held his eye for a little too long. 

And then she said this:

"You're angry at me."

He didn't know what to do with that.

He was, for the record. 

He had more inside of them than he could even keep track of. 

He'd never been a particularly angry man, it really did take a lot to rile him up–– but Beth had always been that. She'd been a lot, all at once, too much for him to handle and too little all at the same time. 

Mark would've been so strained to recount a time that he hadn't been angry about her, at her, with her... but his anger was so much different to hers.

He shook his head, just as he'd shaken his head fourteen hours ago, back when he'd denied loving the woman now sitting in front of him.

"No."

Beth snorted.

"You are," She said with a chuckle, and it was her turn to shake her head too, "You're pissed."

His voice was subdued, "I'm not."

"Mark."

If he had to list the things he disliked most in the world, the way Beth said his name had to be one of them. He didn't like the way it rolled off her tongue, especially in that moment. 

She said it as if it was so easy, as if she didn't have to pry those syllables out of an aching jaw, just like he did. She even used a very teasing tone, one that didn't fit the discussion of fury and rage–– his hand clenched at the bottom of his pocket. As did his jaw.

Usually, he was a better liar. 

He'd lost count of how many times in his life he'd lied to Beth.

 They'd hurt each other that way. It'd been like some sort of sick exchange between them, bending truths until their heads had been dizzy with what was real and what was fake. The only problem now, was that Mark was remembering how much it had fucking sucked to constantly question reality. 

He hadn't had to until he'd found himself in Derek's office, being told that Beth had been pregnant and simply erased all traces of it from existence. It felt like one prolonged and sour philosophical lesson:

If your ex-girlfriend is pregnant and no one is around to see it? Did it even happen in the first place?

"I know you, Mark Sloan," Beth said and a shiver fell down his whole spine. He glimpsed the smile on her face as she glanced over her shoulder at him, breathless and blue. "I've pissed you off enough times to know what rage looks like. It's all in your jaw and your eyes–– I know you well enough to know what it looks like when you hate me."

You might know me, Mark thought with bitter blood in his veins, But I don't know you.

He thought he had. He really, really, thought he had.

When he didn't challenge her (thus indicating that she thought right), Beth seemed to celebrate her reading of the situation with a light laugh. 

It turned into a splutter, the signature of lungs that were, very clearly, not able to withstand however many cigarettes she'd burned through today. It almost sounded like a dead rattle. 

She pressed a hand against her lips and sunk her eyes into the city skyline, leaving Mark his moment to digest his own feelings–– the hurt, the anger, the bewilderment at what exactly had happened in this apartment behind that closed door. 

Admittedly, Mark had been left out of the loop so many times that the latter was beginning to feel like the constant to him. He couldn't remember the last time he'd ever actually understood something that was happening in his personal life.

"I'm angry too."

She spoke again.

"I'm fucking furious, actually," Beth's voice trembled slightly, and if Mark hadn't known better, he would've thought it was distortion from the wind. "Everytime I blink I just see red. I thought this cigarette would calm me down but... but it's not doing shit. I'm so angry I went through my contacts and just... I just blocked every number... hence why I, uh, I thought you were Dom."

Mark didn't know whether he quite believed her.

"I'm so angry I feel like I'm on fire," She continued. 

Mark understood, in that moment, that she was speaking for the thrill of being heard. It wouldn't have mattered who was stood in his shoes, creaking across her tiled floorboards, no matter what, she still would've flushed red. 

   "I'm burning through everything I touch. My blood is boiling and I can feel my whole body physically shaking––"

Beth cut herself off.

"Oh," She said slowly, as if she was only just coming to terms with the world around her, "Oh."

He was so captivated by that moment. 

In amongst all of the tense muscles, the smile that didn't seem quite right and the flicker of rage in her eyes, there seemed to be some sort of release. 

Suddenly, everything about her was soft. Where there had been jagged lines of fight and resentment, now there was a vulnerability that made his whole body twist–– he felt her dry laugh as it forced itself way through chipped teeth, scraping through the air like a dying man's finaly swipe at the world.

"Crap," Beth said breathlessly to herself, and then she laughed again. This time, Mark could've swore he saw the flash of tears in her eyes as she shook her head. She spoke with a cigarette just seconds from her shaky smile. "I really almost forgot what withdrawal feels like."

The sensation that filled him at those words was as familiar as it was estranged.

It was a rush all the same. 

A painstaking one, the realisation that his war cry and his deliberation had all been for nothing— it took him back to that corridor in the Psychiatry department, watching the dawn of a suspicion rise across Amy's face as she played the tensest game of Guess Who? the world had ever seen. 

He'd defended her. 

He'd fought for her. He'd rallied her sobriety and he'd stood in the face of everything for her—

There was something so bittersweet about the word almost.

***

Mark had used it a lot in retrospect of their relationship. 

Things had almost been okay, in that same way that you'd almost make that last train in Grand Central or almost make it home before the onslaught of rain. 

It was almost in the way that it'd been close, but the distance that had been there, that had been left, had been catastrophic. 

(The cold feeling of metal against cheek as you slept, drunk and bedraggled on a bench outside the station. The shiver of saturated clothing against skin.) 

They'd almost made it. They'd almost survived. 

They'd almost been enough for each other. 

They'd almost known peace. 

Mark had almost had the life he'd always wanted and Beth had almost come out of Manhattan in one perfectly flawless piece––

Beth's almost was one that lit something within him, that made him reflect on the last five years with startling clarity. 

How high she'd climbed, he'd seen that glow in her face whenever she looked at him, seen it at the bottom of her eyes. 

She'd replaced her own almost with definitives, with clear outcomes and changes that Mark had never been able to make. She'd made it out of Manhattan, not in one piece but on her own accord all the same. She'd found her own peace in a sobriety that, if Mark thought too much about, made his whole body ache with growing pains. 

She'd made herself be enough for no one other than herself, standing on her own two legs and puffing out her chest. She'd survived and she'd made it; right to this morning when she'd stood in that elevator and looked him in the eye and told him that she was onto so many happier and brighter things.

But, there was a tear in this fabric. 

The hems and edges she'd sewn were frayed. There was a pack of cigarettes on her lap and that tremor to her limbs (Now she'd mentioned it, it was all he could notice) as if she couldn't control her own body. 

He bit on his cheeks, swallowed his rage (condensing it until it was smaller and smaller but still so sharp) and reminded himself that this was a road they'd both walked so many times before.

She'd almost forgotten what withdrawal felt like and he'd almost forgotten how this type of gravel felt under his feet.

When Mark looked at Beth (in which he squinted as if he was staring straight into the sun), she was looking back at him. 

A transparent stare, one that went straight to her soul and back again. His heartbeat thrummed in his mouth, bile boiled at the back of his throat and his whole mind questioned whether Derek's assessment of Beth was correct.

There was a speech brewing at the back of his head, one that felt more like a reprise than a new beginning. He had so many words that he could say, so many lessons to resurface, so many curt, sharp sentences to lay between them. 

Mark wondered whether Derek had lectured her; had Derek filled all of those boxes? Had he reminded Beth of the consequences of her actions? Had he reminded Beth how many times they'd travelled this road and how denial and lying never, never helped anyone––

As if she could feel it brewing, Beth just smiled again.

"Yeah," Beth murmured and then drew a long breath, only to cough and hack into a crooked elbow. His skin bristled at the sound of a body barely holding itself together, "If you think you're pissed about my relapse, you should try being me. I think I've got the crappier draw here."

***

─── Historically, Mark's anger had never mixed well with Beth's emotions.

It was a chemical explosion waiting to happen. 

His anger, his frustration and temper plus her painfully human inclination to feel: it'd been a toxic mixture from the start. It was the sort that made forest fires, flames and dry leaves in the height of the summer, just seconds away from turning a whole picturesque landscape to ash. 

Maybe she was the spark? 

Or maybe she was the match?

 Mark had yet to figure it out. 

All he knew was that the two of them, untethered, seemed capable of burning whole empires to the ground.

Even here, now, he felt as though he had a voicebox full of gasoline. 

There were so many things in him that could just slip free and spill all across a moment that was already damp with the look in Beth's eye.

 He recognised her humor, of her cracked smiles and jokes; it was defensive, everything about her, right now, was defensive. She was so flammable, just skin and bones. 

The word 'fine' was null and voided by the way that Beth appeared in front of his tired, strained eyes.

She didn't look fine. She looked soft to the touch.

There were so many soft smiles and pauses, even the slump of her shoulders had a softness that was so out of character and reserved only for Beth's worst moments–– but Mark felt sharp. 

He felt like he was constantly on the offense, constantly a few moments from saying something serrated, something that would split the moment in half like the edge of a scalpel. He was full of harsh thoughts, of words that were designed to attack rather than to soothe or console. Even his heart had a razor edge to it. 

His movements felt sudden and cutting and his breaths felt like mechanical shudders that could blow Beth's softness into dust.

He knew what chaos he could bring. He was scared of what he could do. 

What he would say. He knew what he wanted to do, he had since Derek had spoken to him in that office–– he wanted to raise his voice and set Beth in her place for hiding things and lying to Mark as if Mark didn't deserve to know a damn thing that happened in his life. 

There was a constant hunger for it, for the confrontation, for the look on Beth's face when she realised exactly what Mark knew; it was so familiar to him, it'd been all they'd known in New York, the conflict and the back and forth of them hurting each other repeatedly until the other eventually bled out. 

He could feel that moment so vividly, the moment when the truth was revealed and everything else just curled into a long, painful silence––

This wasn't New York.

He couldn't just get mad. Not now.

Mark kept his jaw locked tightly. 

A tongue coated with venom stayed behind clenched teeth, thrumming with a pulse that was simply too fast for his chest. He knew what he wanted to do. 

He knew what his temper wanted of him, but he also knew what was best. No matter how much he wanted to just yell his lungs raw, concern was such a potent medicine to be burdened with.

Wordlessly, Beth tapped the windowsill beside her, inviting him into her swan song. She didn't make eye contact, she didn't speak, she just laid the invisible invitation between them.

So, Mark sat.

Sitting beside her was not something Mark was enthusiastic to do. 

But he moved with an almost automatic indifference that had him biting on his tongue until it almost bled–– 

He still didn't want to be near her, to have his nostrils full of that perfume and cigarette smoke. It was such a distinctly Beth scent, the cocktail of two things that didn't quite match. It brought him back to nights in Manhattan, of half cast streets and kissing outside nightclubs.

(Mark tried to breathe through his mouth, but then she was all he could taste.)

The window was wider than he'd anticipated, but he watched Beth shuffle out of the way until there was a space suitable for him. He sat there, in a cloud of smoke and with the storm boiling in his face.

His thigh pressed against hers. 

He inhaled sharply at the prolonged contact. 

Beneath his jeans, his skin seemed to scald, as if just the slightest touch had burnt him crisp. 

He held his breath and bit his tongue and found himself immersed into a tiny world with her.

The last time they'd sat like this they'd been on Meredith's back deck, staring over towards downtown. 

It felt like a lifetime ago, back before things had escalated and back before he'd had her blood on his hands. 

The weather had definitely gotten worse, Mark could feel the icy cut of the wind on his knees as the two of them sheltered underneath the awning. 

Beside him, Beth seemed barely bothered. 

He watched her toes dip occasionally over the line between dry and wet.

Her swan song felt different than his had. 

His swan song had been over his daughter and his grandkid and how everyone in his life inevitably abandoned him. 

Hers felt a lot more catastrophic.

"I guess you saw it coming?"

The candidness of her last statement had evaporated into the same dry tone that Mark expected. 

It left something hoarse in it's wake, like the acrid sands of a barren wasteland. It was a hard tone to digest. He broke it down into syllables and rhythms. 

Admittedly, Mark wasn't sure whether the question was just rhetorical and if Beth was even expecting an answer, but he either way, he was caught off-guard. He listened to her bitter smile and felt his brow fold.

"Hm?"

He stared at her profile. 

He watched her immediately thumb the pack of cigarettes that he hadn't even noticed on the floor beside her. 

His eyes strained through the darkness to watch her pale fingers reach for it almost as a second nature. 

"I mean, there should be a party," Beth said, this faded amusement painted across her that just appeared exhausted. He dropped his chin, staring at his fingers as they dug into his thighs. "A whole celebration–– it's only taken four years... four years and finally, finally I cracked."

He didn't speak.

"Everyone must've been waiting for it," Beth continued, "Looking for it... waiting for that one moment where I fall off the fucking rocker and remind everyone how crappy it can get. That whole hospital of spectators–– I mean, they call me McMessy, did you know that?"

A dent appeared between his eyebrows.

He didn't know that.

"I'm messy," She said, her chin still in the centre of her palm, "You get McSteamy... you get to be this hot and sexy McSteamy and Derek, Derek, gets McDreamy. And I'm messy."

Messy.

 "I guess I'm the woman that... the woman that everyone was just waiting to inevitably fuck everything up," She sighed, "The girl that... that when things looked bad they didn't even question it. They didn't even wait for five seconds to think that maybe something else was going on–– they didn't even hesitate."

I hesitated, Mark wanted to say.

He had hesitated. 

He'd walked into Derek's office and it's all he had done, hesitated with every part of him. 

He'd looked at Derek's face, at the Chief's expression and then he'd hesitated even harder. 

He'd been driving and then he'd pulled the emergency brakes. 

That's what had happened. He'd swerved into Derek's lane of traffic and then stopped him, stopped him dead in his tracks. He'd gotten out of his car and knocked ruthlessly on Derek's window, telling the Chief of Surgery to do a U-turn and drive the other way 

(She's changed Derek. She's clean. It's not fair to constantly hold everything against her.) 

And then Derek had rolled down the window, looking Mark dead in the eye and told him that he didn't know Beth anymore and delivered that fantastic final blow, the fender bender to end all fender benders.

So Mark didn't say anything. He just adjusted his jacket and leant back until he could feel the burn of brick on his back. 

Beth was suspended in a long, very bitterly candid pause and Mark, for the first time since appearing in her bathroom, really could've done with a joke now. 

This felt too serious, this felt too vulnerable. 

He couldn't afford to get caught up in the slight tremble of her lip as she dragged in another breath and ran her fingers through her hair. 

He couldn't afford to tense like he did when her elbow knocked into his shoulder and she let out a very faint apology. He couldn't risk it. He couldn't entertain it––

So why did you sit?

"I don't exactly blame them," Beth sighed, "I don't blame them for watching. It must be good entertainment." And then that dry smile appeared in her tone again. "Give me all the crap you want, but I give good drama. I make things interesting."

Interesting, somehow, wasn't the word Mark would've used.

(A incoherent, lost voice at the back of his throat, wanted to tell her that she'd never just be interesting gossip.)

(That her sobriety and whatever came with it was not, and never would be just some form of entertainment. But the words caught there, lodging deep like the knife in his back.)

"People expect me to fail," She said quietly, and a lump appeared at the back of his throat. "I'm pretty sure that Derek just sits there and waits for me to fuck up. God," He watched her shake her head back and forth. "He probably has a whole ass fucking incidents chart like... like fucking Monsters Inc or some crap––"

He had a feeling that, as much as Beth wanted company, she just wanted someone to listen. 

Her swan song was not a duet, it was a lonely call into the dark, the feeling of the wind meandering into their alcove and rustling their hair. 

Mark was sure that anyone in the whole world could've sat here and Beth would be the same; not quite drunk like she wanted to be, but dizzy by despair.

Mark didn't want to listen. 

But he did. 

He, very slowly, looked over at her. He looked across her shoulders as she spoke into her hands, face buried out of sight. Her hair was slightly dishevelled. Her shoulders taut. She let out a low groan.

"You probably really missed this," Beth sighed, her smile permanently fixed. He felt her eyes wander over to him, sticking on him like a moth to a flame. "The drama, the up and the down... not knowing what's gonna happen next and then getting completely blindsided––"

She seemed to falter at that last word. 

He watched the muscles tense in her face, the way that her jaw clenched as if she was reeling from a physical blow. 

He stared at her, staring until her profile was burned into his retinas. Her lips twitched into a slightly pained smile. 

A pause as she seemed to process what she'd just said–– Mark shuffled his weight from one foot to the other, adjusting himself once again.

He didn't like the expression on her face.

"Shit," Beth said under her breath, "I never fucking learn."

That, the way that Beth looked back over at him again, right on cue. 

If he could take a mental image of that evening, it would've been right there. 

There was a crinkle in her strong face, her built up wall and it shone through for the briefest moment. It opened the door wide to memories of Manhattan, of the way that Beth would be recklessly human while she was intoxicated. 

Of how she would simply never stop emoting, how everything would be so messy and so much, all at once. 

He could see it, streaked across her face, just where her bridal happiness had been there just hours before.

Now there was so much pain there. So much disaster.

"But four years," Beth said quietly, filling silence out of hatred of leaving things too quiet. He bristled at her persistence. "Four years... I had a good run."

It occurred to him, in the pause that followed her words, that he didn't really know whether she meant her sobriety or Charlie. 

The word 'gone' felt pretty final, but at this point, he was hesitant to ask. 

"You should get a balloon," She cleared her throat, "A balloon that has a big four on it and... and maybe some sort of... themed banner––"

"I'm not throwing a party."

Beth's head turned very slightly in his direction and, once again, Mark was reminded of how bizarre this whole situation was–– there weren't many times where the sound of his voice was rare, that just him saying something was able to catch someone off guard. 

He watched her profile, the cheek that was turned towards him and watched the twitch of her lips as she shook her head very slowly. 

He was close enough to hear the very soft 'cheap bastard' that she muttered under her breath. It was paired with a long drag of smoke as Beth crossed one leg over the other, jostling against him.

"It's the least you can do," Beth's crack at a joke caused Mark to almost wince. Her cough was loud and it made his ears pulse with the suddenness of the loud and the silent. "I mean... look at me, I'm looking pretty fucking sorry for myself..."

She paused as if to leave room for his laugh. 

He didn't laugh. He felt too cold for a traditionally happy noise. 

He also didn't want to laugh, he didn't find today funny; he found it exhausting and painful and wanted it all to end.

"I mean... Derek probably told you all about–"

All about what? About the pregnancy?

"––today, right?"

Beth was still talking as if this was all one big joke. 

Her manner was so strange to him, but he understood it. 

They were programmed the same, both built to hold onto humor like it was their last ditch attempt at clinging to life. Only, now, he found it exhausting and he found it all so draining–––

"I can imagine you both in a little meeting, just bitching away me and––"

"He didn't."

Again, Beth seemed to freeze at the sound of his voice. I

t was a very noticeable pause. 

For a slight moment in time, she was statuesque, her whole body halted. If he strained close enough, Mark was sure he would've heard the skip of her heart, the trip of every biological rhythm as she seemed to struggle with the interruption.

Mark cleared his throat.

"He didn't," The Plastic Surgeon added, his voice hoarse, "He didn't tell me anything."

"Oh," Beth said.

...

"Well," Beth continued after a beat, "To make a long story short... I'm pretty sure I lost everything."

Lost. Gone. They were words that didn't mix well with Mark's state of mind.

"My job..." She listed it with a click of her tongue, "Which fucking sucks, because I liked my job. I liked what I did... y'know? But I've probably lost my license too. So if you, uh, if you know anyone whose looking for a secretary... let me know."

(Deja vu. Seeing that look on her face all those years ago. Witnessing her whole surgical career go up in flames. Being the person who had witnessed it all first hand, from that first phone call to the meeting where it'd all been put into stone.)

Another pause.

"I think I've lost friends..."

(Mark thought about Amy. He thought about how she'd stood by Beth like a ship she'd sunk herself. He'd always figured that Amy took to Beth like the captain on the Titanic. Beth was as manmade as she was tragic, her every detail had been manufactured, between every trauma and every pill. Amy's loyalty, Mark knew, was less of a courtesy and more of a guilt.)

(But wasn't that why he was sat here too?)

"And God, you should've seen the look on my brother's face."

(He thought about that feeling. The thrash of what-should-have-been-expected and how deeply it stung. It was as familiar to him as it was traitorous. He wondered whether it had been kind to Archer, or whether the Montgomery had found it as ostracising as they had? Had his body burned too? Had his skin crawled? Had his blood flushed with Manhattan downpour and his skin welled with so much sadness that his muscles tore?)

Beth pressed her lips into a very bitter smile.

"And Charlie..."

Mark eyebrows raised.

She laughed again, as if the dry self-deprecating humor was all she had left.

"I've lost Charlie, too."

(Now for that, Mark thought about himself.)

***

─── Historically, the role of Beth's boyfriend had been a very tumultuous role to lead.

Stage set. Enter right. Mic'd and ready to go–– Mark had lost count of how many times he'd reprised it. 

They'd broken up and gotten back together so many times that it'd become something like a recurring Broadway stage show for him. He'd move in and out like an actor changing dressing rooms, always ending up on the same side of the same bed. 

He'd known his lines (No, I only care about you, only you. Take me back, please. It's always been you.) and he'd known his choreography (The kiss. The slip of the wanton hand in between the thighs). In retrospect, the bitter and ruthless part of Mark was tempted to demand a Tony Award.

Didn't he deserve it? After all of the crap they'd put each other through?

It didn't occur to him, until he felt the weight behind Beth's pause, that Charlie had stepped into that role too.

It was funny, really, to hear that a relationship had completely collapsed. A relationship that had appeared so perfect and spotless from the outside. Mark wasn't sure why he was so surprised–– this was Beth. 

Beth. 

Just as Derek had said. There was nothing new about her, nothing changed. 

It was the same woman in the same skin with the same bones, with the same sad wilt to her edges like a flower that didn't have the strength to fully blossom. 

This was a Beth he knew all too well.

By that logic, Mark figured that she must've loved the same way too.

If Mark had had to compare her love to something, he would've compared it to a lightbulb. 

In the tradition of something manufactured but durable. Her love had been warm and bright to own. (It must've been his, at least once.) 

She'd been useful; wonderfully domestic and soft in the way that Mark hadn't known before. She'd lit every room, brought warmth into the palm of his hand with her smile––– until she hadn't. 

It'd been like a switch. One moment it had been there and it had been warm and then the next he'd been that kid again, stranded in a dark apartment, hungry for light to keep the shadows at bay.

Had that been it, then? Was this just a symptom of an end that was just like theirs. 

Had Charlie been pushed to a boiling point too? 

Had Beth pushed and pushed and pushed? 

Had her behaviour driven him out? Driven him out of this city completely? 

What exactly did Beth mean by gone and what exactly did she mean bu lost? What had been the breaking point––?

No.

Mark's subconscious slipped and slid. He wasn't going to get involved. He wasn't going to get invested––

But he could imagine it. That was the problem. How easily he could take all of this anger from the day's events and project it onto the man that had followed him. 

Maybe Charlie had faced the same issues that Mark had, faced the same hurdles and the same tests? 

He assumed that Charlie had faced the same trials and the same tribulations, probably bowed to the same applause and received the same roses at curtain call. Mark didn't know why he hadn't thought about the two of them facing the same issues; maybe it all just came under the same assumption that things had gotten better, that Beth had blossomed into something new–– that she'd taken her sad ballad and turned it around into a stronger, more definitive reprise–

No.

His mind repeated that back to him with a very conclusive jolt.

No, nothing has changed.

That brought him back to that conversation, his knees pressed together as Beth exhaled into the wind. 

He was so cold, but aching with a chill that felt more emotional than it did physical... he was caught in the cyclical feeling of everything, of how history seemed to repeat itself. 

How four years had passed and yet, yet if Mark really tried to calm the slight tremble in his hands, the air tasted as bitter as it had in that apartment on that fire escape.

His anger revisited him. It felt the same. 

He felt it as he had in Derek's office. He felt as he had in the dark of the New York night, drawing on the same frustration and aimlessness that had driven him into Addison's bed.

God, Mark felt bad for Charles Perkins.

He imagined Charlie the same. 

Jaw locked a deep turbulence within him, plagued by the knowledge that Beth would never love him more than she did herself, than her addictions, than her erratic and self indulgent behaviours––– 

God, Mark hadn't felt those things in a very long time––

He greeted them reluctantly like an old, estranged but persistent friend.

Fuck, Mark thought to himself, he'd fought for her.

"I know I've done shitty things..."

Everytime she spoke, he got goosebumps like he was hearing her speak for the very first time.

"I know I've hurt people and I've done shit that I'm really not proud of," He inhaled so sharply at the end of her sentence. She let out yet another low, disparaged laugh. "But god, I must've really been a bitch in a past life to have all this."

Mark wondered whether their breakup had been as momentous as their own had. Had Beth fought the same? Had Charlie fought back? 

He sat there and thought about how gentle and subdued Charlie always appeared. He couldn't imagine the mild-mannered, soft-spoken psychiatrist as the type to reach a breaking point in the first place. 

He couldn't envision the breaking point, he couldn't imagine Charlie getting angry. The man had always been so composed and put together that just the thought of things escalating between them made Mark's head ache. He couldn't fathom it. He just couldn't picture it––

But Beth. Beth.

"Maybe I should just get the memo," She continued, oblivious to the way his thoughts seemed to submerge him in bitterness. Mark tensed as she brushed against him, tapping her cigarette against the wall. "I mean... I mean maybe it's just my taste in men..."

Beth was the sort of person he could imagine escalating things. He could imagine Beth with that mug in her hands. He could imagine Beth, blind with rage and drugs and everything in between and the sound of ceramic splintering against the floor. He could imagine the wrench of Charlie's gut. He could imagine the realisation that would creep in like a cold sweat, the unwavering sensation of not recognising the woman who stood in front of you––

"No offence," Beth said and Mark had to blinked New York from his vision like sun spots. "But my taste in men sucks. Like seriously sucks. Worse than Amy or worse... worse than fucking I don't know––" She spoke passionately. He could hear her chest as it ached beyond repair, "But then, and then I think I've found a good one. A great one. A man who makes me feel better than I have in decades. I find a man who feels like home and he turns out to be..."

Mark's face felt numb.

The longer he stared at her, the more he saw it–– she was barely held together. 

Her smile had faded into a grimace, all joy and joking had slipped from her flushed, pallid face. The hand that held her cigarette was trembling, the other was wrapped so tightly across her midriff, as if to keep herself physically together. 

She flinched at her own thoughts too, jolted in a way that made her bruised body go rigid with pain.

What made you like this?

Her laugh was mechanical. It was forced.

"Well, what turns out... It turns out I have a thing for liars," Beth began with a sigh. Her face contorted with a grimace. An uneasy chuckle, "... and uh, Charlie... Fuck, Charlie was just my type."

His ears rang with those words.

His brow furrowed.

"What?"

He'd heard the word 'liar' so many times today. 

He'd said it at least five times during his conversation with Derek. He'd brandished that specific word like a weapon. 

He'd used it against himself, against Derek, against Addison and against Beth too–– they'd been liars, each and every one of them, so full of bullshit and convoluted reality. He'd argued that they were all as bad as each other but Mark had spent the last five hours of his life reminding himself that Beth really was a good liar. 

She'd fooled them over and over again, both in New York and in Seattle. 

She was a liar by trade, someone who buried things instead of facing them because things were just so much easier that way.

Charlie, however, was the nice guy.

The word 'liar' felt like a puzzle piece that didn't fit. 

Maybe that's why that shocked exhale slipped through his lips without him realising–– when Mark thought of Charles Perkins, he did not think 'liar'.

He thought squeaky clean East-Coast socialite, the sort that Addison would've invited to her soirées and probably introduced to Beth herself. 

He thought of the apex of happiness and romance, to the extent where Beth had encouraged him to find his own 'Charlie' and pursue love with Lexie or some bullcrap that he didn't really understand in retrospect. 

He thought of the guy who had never, once, had any issues with anything, had never given Mark a piece of his mind for how things between him and Beth had ended, or had ever raised an eyebrow at finding him sat at their dining table.

Charlie was a saint. He was clean, he was nice. 

Mark had spent too long searching for a flaw in his perfect, porcelain figure. He'd mentally run over every detail, looked for something that wasn't right or didn't fit but he'd come up empty every time. He was not, as far as Mark was aware, a liar.

Needless to say, he hadn't expected the slight serrated edge that lingered in Beth's voice when she spoke her lovers name–– lover? Ex-lover? 

Mark didn't know what the hell was going on. All he knew was that, this morning, Beth had said Charlie Perkin's name with stars in her eyes, and now she was grimacing as if each syllable carried a bitter taste.

That bewildered him.

"What do you mean?"

He shouldn't have pressed her, he knew that. 

He shouldn't have asked, but there was an incredulous little part of him that was still riled up. Was she really going to go this far to lie this time? 

Was she going to paint this man who seemed completely incapable of doing any wrong just to satisfy her need for secrecy–– she'd already, quite literally, been caught red handed.

She smiled.

It was sad.

"I mean I shouldn't be surprised," Her words were breathless. Her chin was low, "He probably saw me coming. I was probably the exact sort of girl that he needed, y'know. I was sad, I was needy and I was so fucking desperate to be loved––"

Mark knew that his reproach was doused in personal experience, that his sudden impulse to defend Charlie Perkins' honour was selfishly motivated. 

It wasn't Charlie, per se, that he was defending–– it was him. It was his feelings, his experience, every little shitty thing he'd ever felt because of the woman sat beside him. He'd been feeling it all. It was a rush, a sharp exhale of her name through cracked lips. It was the way that they both stiffened, almost in unison. It was a explosion at the back of his mind, a dry mouth and a moment that felt like a supernova.

It was then that she lifted her cigarette upwards and he happened to see it, everything all at the same time. 

He caught the fall of her sleeve as she attempted to fix her hair in the breeze, his eyes tracking the skin underneath the fabric as it appeared–– it was then that the bad feeling in him was validated. 

That sneaky suspicion, that sick feeling at the bottom of his stomach, it all retched at the sight of her red, irritated skin.

Fuck, his defence had all been for nothing.

He breathed her name out with all of the smoke of the fire Derek Shepherd had put out:

"Beth."

Her chin turned towards him.

"Hm?"

She was looking at him dead in the face, her nose a little too close to his as she responded to him. 

If Mark had been looking up, he would've seen her cracked facial expression, eyebrows hitched upwards apprehensively and mouth drawn into a slight look of bewilderment. 

Maybe she was caught off-guard by his tone; it was barely a coherent sound. 

She stared at him, eventually following his gaze downwards, and catching sight of the rash blazing across her skin.

It was the most literal red flag either of them had ever seen.

(Is Beth Okay?)

A thousand thoughts flooded his mind. He found himself unable to look away–– how many times had he held that wrist? 

Mark had lost count of how many times he'd held her hand, of how many times he'd reached across the centre console in his car and laced those fingers with his own. 

He felt every single interaction play out right in front of him, from the first hastily faked couples stroll to the last, when he'd squeezed Beth's hand so tightly that he'd felt his heartbeat in his finger tips. 

He felt the crash of knowing, of realisation, the reappearance of the urgency and the knowing in Derek's eyes as Mark fought so passionately in favour of Beth's sobriety.

(Beth's Beth.)

God, yeah, this felt too much like deja vu. 

This exact moment. The bile that suddenly got a little too thick for the back of his throat. The suspended moment in which they both stared at the red flag raised in hives just beneath that sleeve. 

They were both holding their breaths and Mark had no, NO doubt that Beth was thinking the exact same thing that he was.

He didn't know what to say.

He didn't know what to––

Beth broke the silence first.

In his peripheral, he caught the way her lips twitched into a smile. 

She was observing her own body, her eyes searching her own skin as if it was all new to her. He didn't like her smile. It felt perverse. It was as if she simply didn't care anymore, as if this, out of everything that had happened today, was just––

"I got a new body wash."

Those words came with a slight chuckle. It was different to the others.

 If Mark hadn't been so sensitive to her every movement and inflexion, he would've passed it off as a simple exhale. 

But he knew her, he knew the sound of her very dry attempt at trying to shrug off a serious conversation topic. If this was New York he would've grilled her-–

Fuck, no. Fuck New York. Fuck Seattle. This was now.

He was so fucking sick of sorting everything into the past and present. His anger was as scathing as it had been then. His hurt was still wrenching. He was so tired of biting his tongue. He was so tired of just––

"Beth."

His iteration of her name was sharper now. 

That venom on his tongue was thicker now. 

He felt his temper raise at how indifferent she seemed about it. 

It wasn't just a rash. It was what it meant. It was the universal sign that reminded both of them of where everything had gone wrong. 

If Mark had to pinpoint it, specifically, it was when her whole body had shone with her indiscretions. 

She'd flushed with a rash that she'd pinned on an allergic reaction, something that had become indicative of a long relationship of lies and mistruths. 

No matter how many times she could just shrug things off, biology never lied.

Beth did not miss the serrated edge to his tone. 

He wondered whether she could taste his petulance in the air. 

It was so humid out here, so stormy and so uneven, that Mark, felt as though he'd been swallowed whole by the storm. He'd become part of it, overcast, dark and heavy as he fought against the urge to pull her sleeve back.

His eyes flickered upwards to watch the very slow transformation of her smile. 

Something that had been so miffed turned so sad. 

She was looking down at her own arm as if it'd betrayed her–– he couldn't tell whether it was because she thought she'd get away with it or just because she thought she'd had things under control. 

But either way, Mark couldn't miss the long breath she took in as her red, irritated skin bristled in the cold air.

It seemed as though Mark couldn't make sense of any of his emotions today.

Why was he angrier than he had been two minutes ago? Was it because Derek had been proven right? Maybe it was, maybe it was making Mark wonder exactly how many other things Derek was right about too––

"I did," Beth said quietly, "I got a new body wash."

She never fucking changes.

He couldn't swallow his disappointment. 

It was too big. It was uncomfortable to shelter in his mouth away from the hostile weather and the drop of Beth's chin, but he held it there. 

Everything tasted bitter, every breath was another cold chill down his spine as he forced himself to look away. 

Mark couldn't do anything but feel the regret roll across him.

He'd defended her and yet, here she was, still lying.

He felt foolish in thinking that things had changed. 

He'd been so convinced, so caught up in some sort of hyperfantasy that people could change.

 (There was something so startling about it too, Mark found, to sit at rock bottom and look back in retrospect in how much awe and respect you'd had for someone. You didn't really notice it until it was in the rear view.) 

He'd been so sure Beth had changed; that she'd shed New York like a second skin and birthed into some sort of supernova. 

What the fuck? What the fuck had he thought? 

Had he believed it? She'd had so many people vouching for her––

"Beth, don't just––"

He was tired. He was so tired. 

Today hadn't just been long for her. 

If he had to rank it, it probably would've been up there in the 'Top 10: Shittiest Days Of Mark Sloan's Life'. 

He'd have to place it in between the day everyone had abandoned the Big Apple and the day that his parents had died. 

He didn't have a very coherent order to these sort of things, but in this moment, this very much felt like the top tier. He was sure he'd feel different about it tomorrow (as the shooting in particular was a day that liked to pop up when he went to sleep and play on his head like a broken VHS tape destined to loop over and over), but right now, with the things he was feeling, Mark knew this had been a very shitty day.

He had so much rage in him that he didn't know where to place it. 

He was overflowing, a bath too deep with water that burned like saltwater in the eyes. Maybe that's what would come from him if he spoke his mind any further–– not fire but mouthfuls of salt water, coming from a split vein inside of him and flooding across Seattle until they were all doomed to drown.

"I just..." Beth said, "I thought it was my body wash."

She had a very peculiar, sad smile on her face. 

His attention drew to it, lung heaving and eyes aching. 

He watched Beth trail a nail across the perimeter of a large hive raised on her skin. It looked painful, it looked as angry as he felt. 

Bitterly, Mark felt like a kindred spirit with the reaction taking place in her body. Did she feel flushed too? 

Burdened with so much rage that she felt too big for her own skin? He didn't have the words to communicate...

What did she mean?

Beth heaved a breath.

"We ran out the other week," were her next words. Mark was bewildered by how she could lie like this with such a fragile and wavering voice. (She'd gotten better at it. He should've known.) "I made Charlie run to the store and he got... he got some weird fruit scented gel and I... I broke out..."

She sounded as if the shower gel was the worst thing that had ever happened to her.

Mark found it difficult to breathe.

Allergic reaction, my ass.

"I thought it was the shower gel..."

The two of them stared at her as she pulled her sleeve back up. He wondered whether the pattern of hives continued across her body. (Was she red and raw all over? Did her skin ache with the consequences of her actions?) Slowly, Beth's head shook from side to side. 

  "Charlie was covered in it too," She said, "He had all these hives and this irritated skin and I... I really thought it was the body wash. I thought it was some weird reaction or some... some chemical problem–– I thought it was the gel. I really did."

He didn't like this.

She was speaking sadly, the whole mood of the evening changing within a matter of moments. 

It became hard for Mark to follow her, his chin dropping as he looked at his clasped hands. But he listened to her, listened to a voice quiver slightly with a vulnerability he hadn't seen since she'd nearly died for good. 

His heart was somewhere between boiling over and seizing in his chest.

Mark didn't like the fact that she felt so genuine. She felt genuine. 

Every word felt too genuine for Mark to process. 

He couldn't tell whether she was genuine in the tradition of a fake that was a little well too made, by an artist who had spent decades perfecting their craft and ability to copy the real deal, or whether Beth was really telling the truth. 

Either way, in the corner of his eye, he watched Beth resume her smoking, a cough spluttering into the corner of her elbow as her lungs heaved from the toxic smoke.

"You can't do this."

He said it in the smallest voice.

Beth stiffened beside him.

She knew what he meant, that he meant the lying and the using and all of the crap that had come before. Mark had gone against his better judgement and he'd said something, leading Beth to chuckle under her breath and tap her ashes against the wall. 

Her laugh made his stomach lurch and the sharp pang of distaste run through him from head to toe.

"Yeah," Beth murmured lightly, still smiling the saddest smile in the world, "I didn't exactly have a choice this time."

He looked at her.

His brow furrowed as he stared at the profile of a woman he'd watched go through fire in Manhattan. 

She couldn't quite meet his eye. 

He wasn't sure whether it was from the proximity or from the startling clarity of her last few words. 

Her chuckle had buried itself deep under his skin, raising goosebumps in the places the wind couldn't touch. He wondered if they held their arms side by side, would they recognise their biological rhythms? 

Mark, chilled to the bone, and Beth burning too violently for her skin.

Beth's head turned to look at him.

She was so close but she'd never felt so far. 

Not even when she'd been hundreds of miles away, oceans away, beyond continents and mountains and road–– the woman that looked at him was so, so far away from him. 

She seemed caught off-guard by his tone, by the low, almost warning of his voice. He held her eye, even when she assessed the clench of his jaw, the way that his whole body seemed tensed as if in preparation for confrontation. 

Her gaze, eventually, dropped downwards, flickering between his every muscle; how Mark was leaning away from her so slightly, how he seemed to hold his breath as if it physically pained him to––

The same faded, exhausted smile attempted to pull at her lips. 

Only, this time, it seemed to catch. Her little grins were traditionally sad, but this one, this one seemed to wilt before it'd even bloomed. It twitched, every muscle falling out of line and resulting in a flutter of a grimace that came with a glassy sheen in her eyes.

Beth looked away. She cleared her throat.

"Like I said," She sounded uncharacteristically composed, "People expect me to be the messy one––"

He shook his head lightly.

"Beth."

He couldn't stop him from saying her name. 

(Beth. Beth. Beth. Beth. Beth. Beth.) 

Look at the fucking mess that you're in. 

He had to fold himself in half just to restrain himself from saying it to her, thanking her for reinforcing the message that Derek had been telling him all day–– these words were as much Derek's as they were hers–– but Charlie. 

Charlie. He wasn't–– He couldn't––

Charlie hadn't even cheated. If a saint like him was a tragedy, what the hell was Mark?

"I'm McMessy," Beth repeated and he honestly felt like just cutting her short completely. "And Charlie's nice. He's a nice guy. It's what he is. He's all charming and nice and he... and he picked me off the ground and dusted me down and made me feel like I was shiny." Mark didn't speak, he just continued to watch her as her lips fell into a subconscious frown. There was something boiling in him. He wasn't sure whether he had any more blood to sacrifice. "He's McNice. Or was. Or–– I don't fucking know."

"You can't–– "

His voice was so quiet.

"He was my Charlie. My Charlie and he just–– this is his fault––"

Her voice was so loud.

"It's not––"

"He was...He was shiny and then I find out he's some pathological liar and the whole fucking joke is on me––"

So what if he was projecting? 

So what if Mark couldn't fathom any of this pain or grief being the direct consequences of actions that were only his own? 

So what if, from the moment Derek had spoken, Mark had once again been forced to revisit New York, reevaluate his actions with the same scrutiny that he'd assessed hers? 

So what if he felt stripped and bare? Guilty and barren––?

"You can't do this, Beth. Not now," Mark said before he could stop himself, "Your relapse isn't his fault."

(The goosebumps that raised on his skin were the symptom of something far too chilling for him to quite put a name to. But he would identify it, eventually; for Mark Sloan, for the first time in years, felt vulnerable.)

Fault. That was a word, too. Mark tried not to dwell on it too much.

Beth, however, seemed enraptured by it. 

When he found himself physically able to look at her, he saw the way her eyes glistened as she looked down at the city. 

She appeared so fragile in that moment, that Mark almost forgot his train of thought. 

All of that anger, all of that spite... wrapped up in the way that Beth seemed to sit there, caught in a spell. She was lost so deep in thought that Mark wondered whether she'd ever resurface.

Maybe it was best for the two of them if she didn't.

There was an unspoken second half of his sentence, one that was locked too tightly behind a jaw that was begging to be opened. It's not his fault. 

Mark wondered whether Beth could tell how easy it could've been for him to raise his voice. It's not his fault. It was so tempting to explode and overflow and burst just like always had. 

It's not his fault. 

It was more than tempting, it was almost inevitable–– but he bit his tongue.

It's not his fault. It's yours.

Even if Beth hadn't changed, Mark was determined to show that he had.

"Derek didn't tell you about the Fentanyl, did he?"

He didn't like that question.

Mark didn't understand it.

His brow folded and she nodded her head.

"I find it funny," She said quietly, "It's hilarious that Derek suddenly found morals... Last week he was so happy to tell everyone all of my problems and now... now he chooses to be quiet." Beth's tongue clicked against the roof of her mouth and she chuckled. "I wonder if he had some sort of awakening... or whether he can just tell that things don't add up, too."

She knew what he meant by this, that he meant the lying and the using and all of the crap that had come before. Mark had gone against his better judgement and he'd said something and now he was rendered silent by her quietness. 

She was thoughtful, using the word 'funny' despite the fact that nothing about this whole conversation remotely felt funny. Nothing about the last twelve hours of their life felt hilarious. 

If he had to agree with something, Mark guessed, it was things not adding up. Nothing was adding up. Everything confused him.

Fentanyl. That didn't sound like Beth's sort of thing.

"It wasn't––"

"Painkillers? Yeah," Beth breathed it out, growing more and more resigned. She folded her arms across her chest, drawing her knees up further so she was curled into herself. In the corner of his eye, he watched her bittersweet smile. "Apparently, I have range now."

"It's not––"

"I know," Beth said and, for the first time, Mark wasn't annoyed that she'd spoken over him. 

Her breathy, bottomless laugh as she pressed her hands over her eyes to massage her eyelids, now that sunk deep under his skin. 

"It's not my thing but..." She looked so small. Another laugh. "Fuck, it's sure as hell Charlie's."

That was a statement that Mark didn't know how to deal with.

It rushed through his veins like a strange high that did not fit well with the amount of venom that was still in him. 

It was swallowed and locked tightly away: the fury that trembled in his blood and made his bones ache. It was why his words were clipped and his whole mind was reluctant to even process the words she was saying–– but then there was that image, the gradual joining of one concept to the other. He saw the threads catch each other, one by one––

Relapse. Charles Perkins. Fentanyl.

"Beth–"

"Like I said, I know I've done crappy things..." 

She repeated her words from earlier, but her head was buried in her hands. Her voice was muffled, fingers snaking through her scalp as if she was trying to pull herself back to earth. 

"I've done some really, really crappy things. I've hurt people. I've said shit. I've lied and I've cheated but god––" He felt his stomach dip. "I'll own up to those things. I have owned up to those things... But this, this wasn't my fault."

Beth raised her head with a sigh and, it was then, that Mark wondered whether she'd been crying. Her voice was hoarse like she was on the verge of tears:

"Not this time."

***

─── What sick stroke of fate had brought him to this moment?

Sitting here, listening to Beth give a speech that had felt a whole lot like a eulogy. 

Maybe by gone, Beth really did mean dead. 

Maybe their wedding had unfurled into a massacre like one of the action movies that he could never convince her to watch? 

She must've had vows written, right? 

She must've been fully prepared to profess her love just like this, with the same intensity and the focus; but now she was speaking as if he'd died. Beth was speaking as if she was dressed in black and stood at the head of a coffin, hands grasping flowers and eyes too strained to tear up.

He wanted to speak, but he couldn't. 

Mark was frozen in place, completely fixed on the way that, for the first time since sitting, his anger was muted. 

It'd taken a back seat, shoved into the back of a vehicle that was moving a little too fast for such a delicate moment–– in fact, that was what had pushed it aside, how vulnerable Beth appeared, for just the tiniest second. 

He saw the slump in her shoulders, saw the way that she crinkled at the edges and Mark was thrust right back into that room with Derek––

There was a pressure on his skull as if Beth had wrapped her hands around his head and dug her thumbs in deep. 

He couldn't quite shake it off, whatever it was, but it was hanging on for dear life. He could feel it within his every thought, within his every breath–– that feeling, that weight. It was such an invasive pressure, almost like a second heartbeat or pulse. 

It thrummed, it suffered and it caused his whole body to ache.

Mark was staring at Beth just as someone would stare into the sun. 

It burned, in the tradition of the brightest star in the sky seething into your retinas and leaving blindspots of cloudy delusion. 

He found himself watching every detail in startling clarity, taking breaths that were shallow and quiet as if he was worried the smallest sound would startle her. 

He studied her so carefully, feeling blinded by the very sudden intensity of pain on her face–– she was so clearly fighting it, chewing on her lip as her eyes stuck on the Seattle skyline so stubbornly. But her hands were shaking. He watched them fold into each other and squeeze.

He wanted to ask.

What happened to you?

He wanted to get invested–– for a sick moment in which New York felt a whole lot closer than it had moments before. 

For a moment, that conversation had never happened with Derek. 

He was, once again, the man tortured by the thought of being lost to the past, of being forgotten and left behind all over again––

What made you like this?

"Charlie has a pill problem," Beth said, and Mark didn't know what to do with that information. It was as if she'd heard his silent call. She'd always known him better than he'd known himself. "Charlie has a pill problem too and I didn't even notice."

Mark didn't speak.

The phrase pill problem. He knew it was another gone. 

A euphemism that made her words trip over each other clumsily and her brow fold as she struggled with it. 

"I keep telling myself that I should have noticed something," She continued, talking and talking until her lungs didn't have any air left to share, "I keep telling myself that I should've been able to tell that–– I know the signs... I fucking know what this shit looks like, y'know? I should have been able to see it–– I should have caught it earlier and–– I should have seen the signs–– but fuck...... fuck––"

It was as if she'd tapped a vein. 

She was bleeding out again right beside him, speaking words that were so fast that Mark barely had time to fully process them. 

She was shaking too, so pale and cold in the overcast light. He found himself unable to look away, watching the words slide out of her like her coronary artery was sliced in two. 

The image of her slowly fading was so imprinted into his retinas that it was all he could see–– and yet why did this feel so much more tragic than watching her die had?

There was something genuine behind that sentiment, of her brief frustration as she exhaled that word into the air. FUCK. 

He'd lost count of how many times he'd heard her say that. (He'd learnt over the years that it was the most expressive word in Beth's vocabulary. He felt it in his soul.) It was the weight she put onto it, now, the heavy exhale that made everything fade into nothing. 

He could relate to the exhaustion that lingered behind it; hadn't that been how he'd felt and insisted to Derek: that they would've noticed, that someone, somewhere would've been able to tell?

"I guess there's some poetry there," She murmured, making Mark's eyes burn so tragically through her until she was transparent and spread thin. He watched her speak with an indifferent impassivity. "I don't know... isn't there some... some poetic shit about fucked up people finding each other?"

He didn't like the way her voice sounded so unlike her. It was strangled as if she was carrying something in his throat–– Mark recognised the feeling, he was carrying something too. 

It was grief, the art of mourning for something that he would never feel, never have.

 Again, he didn't say a word. He couldn't. His tongue was tied. Just as his hands were tied before, now came the words. They were backed up in his throat, carried right beside his rage.

"He's been forging my signature on prescriptions for months," She continued, "He's got a real talent for it too–– uh, his brother told me not to take it too personally 'cuz he's forged other peoples in the past too––"

This felt like a lot to process. 

He wondered whether this is what a detective felt like in old crime movies, listening to witness testimonies with a war behind their eyes as they debated whether things were true. 

His mind told him no, told him that Beth was exactly what Derek had presented her as: a pathological liar, the sort that lied and lied and lied until they were backed up into a corner. 

She would do anything to get out of a situation like this, even if it meant selling out a man she claimed to love.

But then, there was the rest of him. (Mark's problem was as follows: It was second nature to hold Beth's pain in the palm of his hand.)

(It was such an inherent inclination that was wired into his DNA. He felt it as he sat there, biting on the tip of his tongue so hard that it almost drew blood. He listened to her words, felt her sadness, and a part of his chest that had been dormant for years started to ache in a devastating, twisted way.)

"There are pills everywhere in this apartment," Beth said, "I didn't know... I didn't..." 

Her fingers were shaking and Mark had to bite down on his tongue to repress the impulse to reach out and take them. Stop them. Anything to still her. 

(But, he was still so mad, he was still so hurt. Mark didn't know what to do with the feelings inside of him.) 

He didn't move. 

"I didn't know how bad it was until I was watching Andrew going through all the pill bottles in my medicine cabinet and just––" Beth shook her head, "I didn't know how bad it was."

Mark didn't know what to do, and he sure didn't know what to think.

"But fuck," He flinched at it this time, "Fuck, I should have... I should have noticed––"

His mouth was dry.

"This whole time," Beth said, "This whole time I didn't notice... I didn't even–– I didn't even suspect it." 

A pause that felt too long. She spoke with her head pressed in her palm. 

"I mean... I felt that something was off after Christmas but I just... I thought maybe it was..." A slightly stifled chuckle forced its way through her lips. "God, I thought maybe he cheated."

Mark's eye twitched.

He felt her stumble on her words. Their legs were still touching. He felt her every movement. He felt her bones as they tremored, shaking with a turmoil that she was struggling so tightly against. It was so intensely human. In a way that couldn't be manufactured or replicated–– No, stop. 

It was again, in that splinter of a moment, that Mark felt New York again. It was like an IV, directly fed into the vein. 

Just a push of a button and it was in him, wretched and hot and as if it had never left in the first place.

"I think the cheating would've been easier to deal with, I've dealt with that before but I..." 

Those words left a sour, metallic taste in his mouth, like all the blood in his body was burning. 

"I didn't notice," Beth lamented, "I didn't notice him just like I didn't notice you or Addison. I don't notice anything. I'm supposed to love people and I just–– I'm too invested in my work to even fucking notice that my fiancé is struggling with fucking a painkiller addiction."

It occurred to him, in that moment, that she appeared more guilty than she did sad. 

Guilt. That was not... He didn't... What was he supposed to do with that?

"Beth," He said so quietly, "You got shot."

(There it was.)

(The concern that so desperately clung to a part of him, just like moments of deja vu in which he'd feel like he was in that Bloomsbury apartment all over again.)

(He wished it'd go away. He regretted it as soon as he spoke. If he'd guessed what he'd end up doing today, supplying half-ass comfort to the ex-girlfriend, of whom he was vehemently pissed with, would not have been even on his list.)

(It was as if he was trying to qualm her guilt. You got shot, as if that would make up for it all.)

"Not at Christmas I didn't," Beth cut him short, her voice sharp and full of mirth. It sounded strange when it wasn't directed at him. "Not at Thanksgiving... Not in France... Not in Boston–– Not in New York either. Not when you were fucking Addison and I didn't notice until it was right in my face..."

A shiver ran down his spine. 

Silently, Mark insisted that it was the cold, but in retrospect, he'd figure that it was her voice. It was the strain, the sound of a woman who was feeling everything all at once.

"I'm angry," She said, and Mark could hear the rage splinter bone and muscle within her small form, "He's been suffering this whole time and I've been too fucking self-involved to realise it. I'm angry because I didn't notice. I'm angry because I fucking took his medication without realisation that he'd swapped it out for Fentanyl. I'm angry because I feel like I've fucked up for the both of us."

"Beth–"

"And of course Derek found out and of course I'm now the bitch burning at the stake," So much nonchalance, but so much pain. It was as if Beth had split a vein and she was bleeding out again, right next to him. "Of course I am. But everyone fucking expects me to be the one that fails."

Mark held his own hand tightly.

"I had to go down one way or another..." 

Her comment was dry. 

It caught at the back of his throat when he inhaled, burning his senses as if he'd just breathed in a handful of dust. 

He cleared his throat and dropped his chin, fighting the urge to cough. 

  "I sent Charlie away and now I'm going to clean up his mess."

There was something about her intensity and her turmoil that just eclipsed everything else. 

He'd almost forgotten what it felt like to sit beside this sort of astronomical event–– the burning of a supernova. The explosion of a star when it fizzled into the distant light that you had to squint to find. 

(The only problem was, as Mark had figured long ago, they were the type of people who couldn't lose each other. They'd always be able to find each other, no matter how far away they appeared.) 

Her pain and her anger and her fury was so much more potent than he remembered it–– for a moment, he knew that he was foolish to think this could be ingenuine.

But why him? Why now? Why did he have to sit here and witness the death of a star? What was there to regret about not being here? Why did Amy drag him in here? Why was it him that had to deal with this? With something that had absolutely nothing to do with him––

"You ever think about New York?"

Her question came at a very unexpected time.

Mark had a very physical reaction to it, tensing as if she'd scalded him. 

His immediate reaction was to blanch, to pull away and tell her that he didn't want to be here, that he didn't care about her swan song... and that the only thing keeping him sat here was the guilt he still felt about how things had ended back in New York. 

But, he didn't say any of those things; they all got jumbled at the back of his throat, both impossible to speak and impossible to digest at the same time.

He didn't answer.

But if he had, he would've answered: Always.

"I do a lot," Beth said before he could say anything, "Right now it's just... it's all I can think about."

His turmoil was hard to swallow.

"I just keep thinking about how things ended––"

Mark felt his face go numb.

"––and how much anger I had in me––"

He couldn't feel his fingers or his toes.

"––and how much I hated you––'

He supposed that it was inevitable, in a way, to think about New York. 

If Mark had to list all of the lessons he'd been taught in that city, he would've been there for a while. 

Maybe, fairly towards the top of that list, he would've found the one thing that Derek's eyes had reminded him of as he stood in that office: don't take Beth for face value. 

Don't believe her. Don't trust her.

Mark was trying his best not to think about anything, but he was, admittedly doing a terrible job at it. 

He figured that, in a way, he should've been thankful for Beth's constant talking— listening to her ramble in her twisted idea of mourning was the closest Mark was going to get to a distraction. 

The longer he spent listening to her, the less time he spent thinking about the things that had gripped his all day. 

The less time he thought about the little things that had trapped him into a cold sweat; the future that had crumbled before he'd even realised he could have them: Beth, that baby and the life they'd romanticised in that little Bloomingdale apartment together.

Mark, admittedly, wasn't sure whether he was angrier at Beth or at himself.

"And today with everything that's happened..." She shook her head and looked at him, pale and bloodless in this light, "I feel like I'm going crazy because the only thing... the only thing I can think of is you, Mark."

***

─── Being thought of.

Mark supposed there was some tenderness in that.

If she'd said that to him this morning, with anything but sadness in her eyes and mirth on her tongue, Mark figured that he might've internalised it. 

What a soft and estranged concept that was: being on someone's mind, being something that someone thought of, being the only thing someone could think about.

He'd once hypothesised out loud that he wasn't the type of person that people thought about without a cause. 

It was a thought that plagued him whenever he wasn't in the moment and in the immediate attention of prying eyes–– Mark was sure that no one ever thought of him unless they wanted something from him.

Just the concept of that, of being on Beth's mind. He couldn't fathom it. He was sure it would've grounded him just this morning. 

It would've caused his heart to stick in his throat, beating erratically as he digested that sentence letter by letter. He would've cradled it in the palm of his hand alongside his hope and his fear, and he would've held onto it. 

He would've taken the knowledge that Beth thought of him and only him, for even the slightest amount of time in the universe, and he would've thought about it. He would've thought about it for a very, very long time.

I wish I was the only person someone thought about.

But now? After a day full of revelation and that aching, forever feeling in his chest–– Now Mark found the sentiment sour. 

To know that he was in Beth's mind as much as she was in his was more of a chore than he'd anticipated. 

He felt, with a sick sense of bitterness, the strongest hope that he was haunting her.

"It's weird, really," Beth began and Mark was too shell shocked to really listen. "Well, not just weird it's completely fucked–– completely–– I was so close to it, y'know? To everything that you're supposed to want."

Mark's whole body clenched with the weight of today. 

It was as if, just by the sound of those words, he was bracing himself to assume it all over again, to take it on his shoulders and carry it with him. 

How far? For as long as it took for things to stop hurting.

"I almost had it," She said, and there was a sadness in her voice that Mark almost flinched at. The weight grappled in his hands, almost falling to the floor, but he recovered. "The husband... the dream honeymoon... probably a thousand cats... Fuck, a probably a kid if he'd wanted it..."

Mark tensed slightly. 

  "I was going to give him everything..." She said, "I was going to get everything. I was so determined to be the first Montgomery in like five generations to have a happy marriage."

He didn't know what to do with that information. 

Where did he put it? He already was holding so much–– a day's worth of grief and the sour taste in his mouth as he was reminded of what Amy had said to him that morning. 

Now, in retrospect, he felt vaguely foolish, as if all of that panic and pandemonium had been the result of a very intricate scam––

"Everything in my life is too good to be true."

Her face was hidden again and Mark compared it to the sun disappearing behind cloud, or the moon half cast by the earth's shadow. 

Mark stared until his eyes hurt, caught up in a moment that felt so intense that he barely could even breathe.

"And when I look at today, y'know, I realise that I've kinda had the worst fucking day of my life," Beth's words were matter-of-factly and he almost flinched again. "I've lost my fiancé, my career, my sobriety... I mean there's just list after list–– and even everything that I lost and every fucking thing I felt... all I could do was think about New York."

He watched as she smiled so hopelessly, her face appearing up again through the gloom.

"About you."

Mark opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out.

He'd lost his voice, but not in the way of aphonia or general vocal loss. 

He'd dealt with that thousands of times in his career, faced patients who had scattered speech, maybe ever aphasia or vocal cord tearing. He'd seen it, he'd even faced it (god forbid the day when the great Mark Sloan was too hungover to even speak) but this felt so different. When he reached for his voice it wasn't there, as if it had been physically misplaced or cast aside. 

There were no words in the back of his throat, no sounds, just a gaping hole that felt a whole lot like his chest. His head was dizzy with blood rushing upwards, veins dilating and his heart skipping a beat––

The two words rang through his head like wedding bells across a dewy morning:

About you.

"I think about it too much," Beth said so quietly, and he wondered whether she was crying. She sounded hoarse as if she carried every word in her chest and struggled to let it out through her teeth. "It's obsessive... and I've obsessed over it for years but not... not like today. Not like... not like the last few hours of my life––"

Mark knew the words she was saying resonating too deeply with him. 

How could he couldn't possibly put into words how much, for the past two months, she'd dominated his mind like no other topic–– that he'd sunk into some sort of void where he thought about soft touches between palms and stolen kisses and god–– Mark couldn't afford to give any more time of day. 

His heart was in his mouth and he let it beat there, wondering whether it'd finally have shelter from the pain that it was subjected to behind his ribs.

"I had some realisations," She continued again, and Mark, this time, didn't want her to stop. 

He stared at her, silently desperate for her every word. She leant back up against the window frame and thumbed the pack of cigarettes on the floor. She breathed deeply and Mark could hear the congestion in her nose, the sign of very rare candidness. 

  "I, uh, realised..." Beth cleared her throat, "When I was sending Charlie away so he could back to Boston and... and to rehab... I realised as he was calling me a stupid bitch and um, threw shit across the apartment––"

He thought about the broken object in the next room.

"––I realised he wasn't my Charlie."

 Mark's eyes dropped downwards to watch her pull out a cigarette and hold it between her fingers. 

God, didn't her lungs burn? 

Mark's did and he wasn't even smoking, they were growing pains. 

"Like when I told you that Lexie's your Charlie... like the... like the love of your life–– Charlie wasn't my Charlie." A pause and she looked devastated, "He was my Beth."

His brow furrowed as he stared at the profile of a woman he'd watched go through fire in New York. 

She couldn't quite meet his eye. 

He wasn't sure whether it was from the proximity or from the startling clarity of her last few words. Her chuckle had buried itself deep under his skin, raising goosebumps in the places the wind couldn't touch. He wondered if they held their arms side by side, would they recognise their biological rhythms? 

Mark, chilled to the bone, and Beth burning too violently for her skin.

"I've spent years hating you for not staying with me in Manhattan," Beth said, "I spent years cussing you out for not supporting me while my whole world fell apart. I didn't understand why how you could just... just walk away from someone you 'loved' and leave them to die–– but now, now I do."

Mark, suddenly, found it really hard to swallow.

"I can't do it."

Those words were so small.

She looked over at him with tears in his eyes and Mark felt his whole world slow–– their eyes met and she was so suddenly, so intensely, his Beth. 

He recognised it in her sadness, in the pain that she was unable to bite back.

"I can't," She repeated, as if those words scared her as much as this whole situation terrified him. He was holding his breath, face set in a look of very vague confusion as she wiped a tear across her cheek. "I hate myself for it–– but I can't be the person that Charlie needs right now... I can't––– I won't––"

"Beth."

(He almost placed a hand on her back.)

(He watched it hover in between them.)

(He stared at it as if it was alien to him. It was a second nature impulse, one that had crept out of nowhere.)

 (As Beth buffered beside him, Mark withdrew the gesture. Instead, he just imagined what her aching lungs felt like as she drew in a long, shuddering breath.)

Fuck, being so full of rage was so much easier than this in between. 

Within minutes, Mark's fire had turned into something that was so torn, caught in between the shaking form beside her and the feeling on the tip of his tongue. 

It'd felt like the right time to interject, his voice just a soft and very malleable sound that Beth seemed to stall completely at.

A moment passed and then she placed the cigarette between her lips.

He watched her fingers tremble as she struggled to light it. 

Her thumb fumbled with her lighter, a very quiet fuck falling past her lips as her tears just kept coming–– a gutteral sniff as the cigarette wobbled in between chapped, bitten lips.

 It was a buffer in a conversation that Mark was holding onto with every part of him. 

Her watery chuckle, caught up in the failure of not being able to light just one cigarette––

Silently, Mark held out a hand.

That same hand that had been reached out to press so lightly into her spine–– 

She stared at it, watching as it appeared and held out to her, quiet but so loud all the same. 

The lighter in her hand was still teetering between finger and thumb, a tiny object that fit a woman who appeared so small.

She brushed against him as she passed him the lighter. 

He was too concentrated on receiving it that he didn't tense at the contact like he usually did–– his numb limbs manoeuvred into a position, one hand cupping the flame as he successfully lit a very delicate flame. 

He watched fire dance in her eyes as she held his gaze, a beat passing before she, so slowly, leant forwards and let him light the end of her cigarette. 

He watched it catch light, momentarily caught off-guard by how such a soft, careful moment could be immersed in such inherent violence. 

Close, her perfume crawled out towards him, evasive and bittersweet at the back of his throat. She drew back. 

He placed the lighter on the bench between them.

She sighed, her exhales patterned grey.

"He's my Beth," Beth repeated and Mark knew that she was far from finished. "And I'm saying that as one of the worst things that can happen to someone... I know what I did and I know what he's done to me–– the sort of person that really affects you and you just... you just don't know what to...."

It felt so bizarre to hear from her: Beth's assessment of who she'd been to him. It was close, but not bitter and sad enough. 

It didn't feel like the same eulogy she'd given Charlie and didn't correlate to the lump that grew at the back of Mark's throat as he registered her every word. She said everything with such clarity, as if today had been as much of a revelation for her as it had been for him–

Mark didn't want to think about his revelation.

"He's not my Charlie," She said it so quietly and then groaned to herself, shaking her head, "Or maybe... Or maybe this is what Charlie was all along... and I'm just... He's the Beth and I'm the Mark. It's New York. Nothing ever fucking changes. This is just... This is just karma, for all of the shit I did–– and now he needs someone to give him the same sort of care that I needed and I can't... I can't give it to him..."

Her silence, somehow, spoke more than her words did. It was brief, but Mark felt it.

"I needed someone to hold my hand," She continued, and Mark felt his heart sink low in his body, "I needed someone to look me in the fucking eye and love me unconditionally even when I was screaming at them and calling them a fucking asshole while high off my fucking head–– I needed that. I needed a hug, I needed someone to hold me as I woke up in hospital–– and I know that's what he needs too, I know that he needs someone to not give up on him but I just–– I can't do it. Not now. Not with all the shit that he's thrown me into right now. I can't. I really fucking can't––"

It was as if she needed someone to understand. She spoke so quickly and with such determination, punching each word into the air as if she was punching holes into clock cards or cinema tickets. Each word carried itself with unwavering intensity and Mark knew, he knew that this was genuine. Heartbreakingly so.

He didn't look at her as she spoke. He knew that it would've reignited that concern and tenderness that he was trying so hard to restrain in his anger.

"So I thought, why not just do your best?" Beth said so matter-of-factly. In his peripheral vision, he watched her cigarette wave expressively. "I know what it's like to lose everything and how fucking hard it is to cope with it... and I figured that my act of kindness, my wedding gift, could be taking the fall for it. For all of those prescriptions, for the painkillers that he's been prescribing for my patients with my pad, with my signature... Fuck, he had my crappy signature down perfect. " She snorted and shook her head, "But I know that if I had to go back and save one thing in that city... it would've been my career."

He still felt the very slight burn of being second best, even five years later.

"Dom figures that if this all goes to trial, we could probably push for personal bias in the prosecution. Derek's on a warpath... and I know he thinks it's me because of all the shit I did in New York, but this is not me," She sounded so sure. So convincing. "It spins a nice narrative. A doctor shot and gets addicted to pain meds. He reckons we can find some sort of fault. Maybe, maybe Teddy wasn't as thorough as she could've been––"

"Why are you telling me this?"

His question was, quite possibly, the most desperate thing that had left him since he'd stood in Derek's office and begged for the truth. 

It gave him that same heaviness, the same tightness in his chest when he asked for answers to questions he didn't know. 

He'd always been so sure of things, always having the answers to everything–– and if not, at least a comedic offhanded comment. 

But ever since he'd met Beth, things had just been so wildly different–– he was blindsided, by every smile, by every sentence, by every touch. He was completely caught off-guard by every part of her.

In his peripheral vision, he caught her weak smile.

He turned and looked at her.

If Mark had to describe Beth's appearance, in that moment, he would've likened it to the image that had been locked at the back of his daydream–– that image of the runaway bride on his doorstep, windswept and devastated like a pre-raphaelite painting. 

Her cheeks were flushed, eyes red and the tremble was so deep and inherent to her bones that it seemed incapable of stopping. Gaunt shadows under her eyes were illuminated by the overcast light behind them, her chin turning to him as she offered him her cigarette (He declined). 

The runaway bride, pale, pasty and a ghost of New York's past if he'd ever seen one.

"I'm your Beth," She said, her voice barely a rasp, and Mark felt the air squeeze out of his lungs in a long, silent gasp. "Charlie's mine... but I'm yours. Going through all of this makes me realise that... that you're the one sorry motherfucker in the world that could understand what I'm going through right now."

(Mark, in retrospect, would think about that a lot.)

(In fact, he'd think about this evening a lot in the months to come.)

(He'd think about the way she looked at him, a way that he almost didn't recognise–– there was no hate, he found, no negative feeling caught and captured in her chest.)

(There was understanding, shining through like a sun half cast through a storm.)

(Beth appeared, for the first time in a long time, just pensive. The hazy smile, the way that she said 'your Beth' as if the bad belonged to him exclusively. It'd embed itself into his brain and twist in deep, like the hilt of the dagger she'd left half buried in his spine.)

Did he understand her? Did he recognise it?

Yes.

"Plus," Beth said and he felt the dryness in her, brutal and harsh against his turned cheek, "If you tell anyone, they won't believe you... they'll either think you're lying to try and ruin my happiness or that you're... well, they'll think you're trying to save my ass. For whatever reason that might be."

And then she laughed, as if what she had just said hadn't just chilled him to the bone.

It was the sort of laugh that made him question whether he'd done something funny without realising it, cause the burn in his skin that was half from paranoia and half from embarrassment. It was such a jarring sound, one that faded as soon as it appeared–– he watched the smile fade into a shrug and that shrug migrate into the smallest spark, smaller than the embers on the butt of her cigarette.

"You're allowed to be happy, y'know?"

Admittedly, Mark wasn't sure whether the question was just rhetorical and if Beth was even expecting an answer, but he was caught off-guard. 

The word 'happy' did not fit in this moment; if Beth was soft, the word happy was unusually sharp. He listened to her bitter smile and felt his brow fold.

"What?"

They both spoke into the city, into the wind and the chaos, but their voices were not carried by the wind. He could hear everything in clarity, even down to the sizzle of smouldering cigarette ashes beneath their feet.

"Happy," Beth said, and for a moment, Mark wondered whether she'd mention Lexie again. But then she didn't. Instead, she went down a whole different avenue that he hadn't expected: "You can be happy that my life has fallen apart... it's okay, I get it. My relationship, my career..."

Oh?

"I think I have some champagne somewhere left over from my failed wedding," Mark was too caught up in his own surprise to hear her words, "You always were good at opening those bottles––"

"I don't think that'd be..."

She wasn't looking at him, mostly because it her head twisted towards him, their faces would have been too close. 

He didn't know what he would've done if she'd looked at him during that question–– it was the only thing he was thankful about in this proximity. 

Everything else was his idea of purgatory. 

Being this close, especially after everything that had happened... Mark didn't know whether to laugh or simply just unload all of the bile at the back of his throat.

She missed the look of complete and utter bewilderment that was painted right across his face.

For it was, in that moment, that Mark realised he had never wished harm to Beth's relationship with Charlie. 

He'd never planned to celebrate the destruction of her engagement and didn't feel any joy on discovering that something had gone wrong. 

He wasn't mentally planning the champagne shower he'd have, or, even, planning on saying anything about it at all. 

Mark, in fact, never wished harm on her at all, even when they'd been at each other's throats-–

He'd only ever wanted her to be happy.

"No, c'mon!" Beth seemed put off by the hesitance in his replies. She waved her cigarette around expressively, "Even I can admit I was pretty gassed when you and Lexie called it quits––"

"You were?"

He didn't know why it surprised him. 

So many things about her were surprising him, reminding him of how deeply Seattle Beth had sunk into his bones. Maybe Beth was right, maybe she really never fucking learned. Maybe she was the same malicious New York woman that had bled him dry? 

Or, maybe she was just saying things to fill the silence.

"Well, yeah," She seemed equally surprised that he'd question it. Mark felt the words pound against his eardrum, "Or at least I did for the five minutes I got before Lexie came along and ripped all my skeletons out of my fucking closet."

If it had been yesterday, Mark supposed he would've apologised for it again. 

He would've apologised for how he'd, honestly, never wanted Lexie to ever cause Beth any distress. 

He hadn't intended on building this dynamic between them, some sort of sick back and forth in which none of them even wanted to be.

Tonight, however, was a different day.

He didn't know what to do with himself. The silence that followed Beth's confession that she'd celebrated his last break up made Mark feel uneasy. 

He shouldn't be here, that's what his mind kept reminding him. 

He was sat in an apartment that was not his and was sat beside a woman who was, very distinctively, not his either. 

He really, really shouldn't be here.

"Someone's got to be happy," Beth murmured and Mark almost felt the air reverb with it. "Someone needs to laugh with me about this situation because if I don't laugh I think I'm gonna cry again." A beat passed. A half hearted smile and words that left him feeling heavy, "And if I cry again... not to sound dramatic but fuck, I don't think I'll stop."

In his peripheral vision, he watched Beth bring that cigarette to her lips. 

She did it so automatically, as if it was the only punctuation she could manage to every sentence. 

Idly, Mark wondered whether Amy had known the state she'd left her in–– did she know that Beth wasn't supposed to smoke? 

Did she know that she had a bottle of champagne in the fridge? Mark almost felt his stomach knot from the thought of Beth being left alone in this apartment when she was so visibly...

No, He caught himself, biting on the tip of his tongue, He couldn't do that concern thing. Not tonight.

It was such a heart wrenching feeling to want to care for someone you shouldn't. Mark knew he'd been grappling with that for years: from the moment the way he'd looked at Beth had changed, Mark had known that things weren't going to be easy. 

Even sitting here, right now, thinking about Beth being left alone, while clearly not okay, in this big apartment with a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of champagne–– Mark felt as though his every thought was a blatant conflict of interest. 

He was supposed to be mad, and he was, he was furious. 

But ever so often, his heart squeezed with the knowledge that she could throw everything away.

All of that progress, all of that work, everything that she'd come to Seattle with.

Sitting side by side almost felt like a funeral.

Here lies the person Beth had fought to be.

(Right alongside the future that Derek had set in front of Mark just this morning and then burnt to cinders, all in one sentence.)

(Service lead by the man who personally put her six feet under.)

Mark cleared his throat, "I don't really have any jokes tonight."

There was something about that that almost felt like a confession. 

He'd spent so long just pretending everything was fine that something about that seemed a little too much. He regretted it as soon as he said it. 

He felt Beth shuffle beside him, as if they, both in unison, understood the weight behind.

Mark was the comic relief. He always had jokes.

 There was something about his silence, about him admitting out loud that, for the first time, he had no humor to share, that struck both of them. 

He felt stupid that it was something out of the usual for him. He was a man whose only use, to so many people, was the moment of hilarious commentary he could give to a moment. 

He was only as good as his wise cracks and his witty repartees. But now he sank unceremoniously, head low as he played with his fingers.

"Ah, that's alright," Beth said, sounding honest, "I've got enough for all of us." A pause, and then she chuckled, "Starting off with my life, of course. The biggest joke of them all..."

Lightly, Mark just sighed through his nose.

"It's not a funny joke," She continued, as if she couldn't bring herself to face the silence. She kept talking and talking, a slight discomfort in the way that she sat. He watched the hand holding the cigarette tremble in the corner of his eye. "It's not a good joke, but it's all I've got right now. Literally, all I've got."

"I'm sure I've heard worse jokes."

He shouldn't speak. He shouldn't console her. He shouldn't even be here––

So why was he still here?

Oblivious to the storm raging in Mark's mind, Beth let out a breathy, unassuming chuckle: "Yeah, I doubt that."

He stared at her, stared at the way that she just trembled with the combination of the sad and the cold and everything in between. 

There seemed to be so much on her wind and Mark was silenced by the very persistent impulse to let her talk, let her talk and fill the silence, let her continue on and on and on so Mark didn't have to think about his own problems––

"I need to stop doing that," She added as an afterthought, and Mark watched her face contort from her half submerged thoughts. Beth swiped under either eye with the back of her hand. "Joking around. I'm a psychiatrist... I should be able to just talk."

"It's hard," Mark said.

Beth looked over at him.

"Yeah," She said after a pause, "It is."

She stared back at him just as he'd stared at her. 

He was immediately confronted with the feeling of being observed, of his every detail being internalised, documented and studied. Beth seemed to stare straight through him as if he was just another pain of glass shuddering from the storm. 

It made his mouth go dry, the tenderness contrasted against such an intensity as they held each other's gaze. A bittersweet smile wobbled the corner of her mouth and she blinked suddenly, as if to withhold her tears.

Beth cleared her throat.

"I think I fucked up."

He didn't exactly have space to disagree. 

Her leg was still pressed against his, her shoulder still occasionally brushed his own. Hairs were standing on the backs of his arms and his neck, but Mark knew better than to think it was just from the cold. In fact, with her so close, with her perfume so strong, Mark knew he'd never been warmer in his whole life.

"I love my job," She said, "I love it more than I love anything. But I feel like such a hypocrite, every time I'm helping someone get their lives back together, helping them through something that's really weighing on them–– What would my patients think if they saw the state of me? Of my life?"

It was definitely rhetorical this time, he could feel it.

"I mean, I'm a joke, I really am," Her tears were coming forwards again. She retreated into her own skin and sunk downwards, shaking her head from side to side. Side to side. Side to–– "I'm not a good person... and I spend the whole of my life making people feel better about themselves. I tell people to be honest, to be open, to tell people what they really think––"

"You're doing your job."

His interjection didn't feel as productive as he'd intended it to be.

Beth just snorted.

"Yeah," She said, "But I'm not exactly following what I preach, am I?"

Mark didn't respond to that. It was the equivalent of cold water, a sick rush that made him revisit exactly what he'd been avoiding. He supposed it was inevitable, in a way, to think about it–– to think about the look on Derek's face as the Chief of Surgery realised what he'd just said. (

They'd been both like that, buffering in an extended moment as the words sunk in. As the blood had rushed to Mark's head and the room had started to spin very slightly, Derek had just stared with sorry eyes. He'd watched his best friend's world wobble and splinter and just let the chaos descend. It'd only been when Mark had been stuck to the floor, his muscles locked as if he was frozen to the core, that Derek had tried to speak. He'd cleared his throat and said Mark in such a low, hoarse tone, but before Derek could continue, Mark had already been halfway out of the door, a shoulder shoving open the office door.)

(He'd come back to that office ten minutes later. He'd demanded to see some sort of proof, some sort of document that could prove what Derek was saying was true. Mark had been so sure that he was lying, that he was just throwing something into his face like he always did, trying to throw Mark off-balance because he knew that Mark had a good point when it came to Derek's role in Beth's history. But then Derek Shepherd had produced a file and, with the gravest look on his face, he'd apologised as if Mark had just lost a loved one in surgery.)

I'm so sorry Mark.

Beth, meanwhile, was looking at him again. 

She was attached to his eyes like a moth to a flame, studying them as he briefly lapsed into deep thought. 

Something slackened in her jaw, a thought festering behind those brown, bottomless eyes–– by the time Mark had resurfaced, she looked pale and a very strained, tired smile picked at her chapped lips.

"He told you, didn't he?"

She didn't tell him what she was referring to, but Mark knew. 

She didn't have to say it, not out loud. She grew quiet and he just knew. He knew what it was. He knew her. He knew her tone, the way it catched at the back of her throat and almost broke, as if she'd tripped vocally and caught herself last minute. She swallowed a lump and looked away, and Mark didn't look back–– he clasped his hands in front of him and thought about it. He thought about everything in the span of a few moments. He thought about how she was having the worst day of her life. He thought about how her whole world had spun off of its axis––

He'd thought that this moment would break him.

Mark had dreaded that look in her eye, the way that she knew that he knew without him even mentioning it. 

He hated the way that it seemed to drain her, so immediately, after everything they'd spoken about. It hit her harder than her sobriety had, than Charlie, than the mentions of Manhattan in between. 

In the corner of his eye, he saw the effects of betrayal overcome her, something that Mark was so familiar with––

He didn't even have to answer. She knew exactly what was happening.

"That's why you hate me, right?"

Derek Shepherd, you son of a bitch.

She was on the verge of tears again, suspended in this moment that Mark thought would flatten him. 

Beth was spread so thin, her arms squeezing her whole body together just to keep herself intact. 

Her cigarette almost brushed against her skin and, in the chaos, Mark almost held out a hand to stop herself from burning herself. 

In fact, he was so caught up in her, in the visceral vulnerability of her shaking shoulders and limbs, that Mark forgot about his anger. All he knew was her: frightened, small and so alone through all of this––

"No."

Mark shook his head.

He didn't believe his own lie, maybe that's why the look on Beth's face barely surprised him. 

He saw it, the flash of a pale face in his direction, gaunt and dissatisfied with the noise that had escaped him. His denial caused a shot of adrenaline run through him, the same twisted feeling that made half of his brain question what the hell he was doing. What was he doing? 

(The exact same thing he'd done in that city all those years ago. How royal for him to mourn how Beth hadn't changed when Mark was here, doing the exact same thing.) 

Beth's response was a sound of very clear dissatisfaction and Mark, briefly, was reminded how well she knew him.

Could she sense that lie? Could she hear the erratic beat of a bloody and bruised heart as it hammered in his chest? Could she tell that Mark was as dishonest as she was? That they were as bad as the other, two criminals just waiting to be caught out?

Just as he'd said in that office, right in front of the man he was now lying to protect: they were all liars. They all had blood on their hands.

"I figured it out."

Admittedly, Mark didn't exactly recognise his own voice. 

The noise that left him was half strangled and subhuman, a breathy pitch in his lungs that Beth somehow seemed to understand. 

She looked over at him and he, at her.

Two people staring straight into the sun.

Beth looked winded.

"You did?"

She didn't sound skeptical, she sounded small. 

Mark had never realised someone could shrink right in front of his eyes. 

The woman who had been so loud and direct in her pain, was now fading right in front of him–– she seemed to wither like a flower with a cut stem, eyes round and pinned to the look in his eyes.

Mark's throat felt dry. 

He swallowed, but it felt as though he was eating sand. 

It took a lot more effort than he'd first realised to chip out every word. 

Lies, today, came at a very physical cost.

"Your tattoo," He lied, and he felt numb. 

He felt as though he'd just slipped and fallen off of this building, left in a pile with all of the mistruths and lies at the bottom. Mark was simply bracing himself and waiting for the pain to hit, like a drug that was just moments from setting in. 

"You hate the word baby––"

(Fuck, Mark had thought to himself, It was right in his face, all along.)

He was cut off by the sound of her wet chuckle and the sight of Beth Montgomery collapsing forwards again, burying her head into her hands.

(What Mark didn't say was how Derek had placed that medical file between them and directed Mark's attention to the surgical column, a complete list of all of her medical procedures.)

(There, Mark had been faced with every little bump and scratch Beth had ever been faced with–– he'd recognised some of them, a few late night ER trips where she'd been blurry-eyed and drunkenly incoherent, breaking her nose or cutting her hand.)

(He'd seen his name there too, listed as the sorry soul who had had to patch her up, press a kiss against her forehead and send her on her way. But then there had been the others, things that had come after him that he hadn't ever seen–– a broken toe in Indonesia, a mole that hadn't looked quite right in France, a breast augmentation that he actually did recognise––)

(God, the realisation he'd had, knowing that Beth had tried to make this all in spite of him.)

(That she'd paid for a lawyer to spite him by listing that medical procedure under something he'd always vocalised as being so insecure about.)

(He'd once told her that he was so worried that other doctors thought he was only good for the cosmetic procedures... that although he could see the value in them and enjoyed changing peoples lives and their self image, that doctors in other specialties would never take him seriously.)

(Beth had comforted him about it, but then there it was–– the evidence of an suspected abortion falsely filed under a boob job, just to make things hurt a little bit more.)

"Did you..."

Mark couldn't find it within himself to finish his question.

He felt so hot, as if his body was burning up from a virus. 

He knew that the weather was beyond freezing, and yet Mark felt as though he needed to remove his own jacket–– maybe it was the reality of this, that this was his life, that this was what he had to face: the knowledge that this wasn't the first time he'd had this exact conversation with a Montgomery. 

He'd had this with Addison too, watched Beth's older sister as she told him that she'd been pregnant with his kid. 

Mark figured that he really had to be a specific type of douchebag for this to happen more than twice. 

Maybe he shouldn't have–– Maybe it should just––

Beth's shoulders were shaking.

He couldn't hear her. 

He wasn't sure whether she even responded. 

All Mark knew was that her earlier words had come true–– she was crying, a rarity in itself, and she very clearly didn't know how to stop. 

He watched her, watched the messy woman with the messy life and felt his chest ache––

"Beth."

Mark said her name so delicately, as if he was worried even by saying it, her name would break.

His hand was subconscious, it almost moved on its own accord. 

It sat on her shoulder, a traitor in a space that had very gradually become a no-man's-land. He'd crossed into enemy territory, his fingers pressing against a body that was overcome by emotion. S

he was so small, so delicate–– she didn't even shy away from his touch. 

There was no boundary, suddenly, it was gone–– all it was, were two people so pained that the simplest touch was enough to send them both into a spiral.

And then Beth lifted herself upwards and he saw it... he saw the look on her face, the expression of a woman who had had to leave everything she knew and loved all behind, all while knowing exactly what that decision meant. 

She'd left that city alone, she'd gone through everything alone, and Mark didn't have enough words in the English language to possibly tell her how sorry he was that she'd gone through it.

She was crying as if she hadn't cried in years. 

It was an immersive earthquake that overtook her body. He knew, in that moment, that she wasn't just crying over an abortion or a breakup or fifty botched prescriptions–– 

It was everything, all at once, five years condensed into floods of tears.

He wrapped his arms around her and he pulled her into him, letting her fit again, so easily, into the empty hole in his chest.