Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟵𝟯 sign of the times

𝙓𝘾𝙄𝙄𝙑.
SIGN OF THE TIMES

──────

sign of the times, harry styles

SEATTLE

MARK DIDN'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT LEGAL STUFF.

What he did know, however, was how the ending of an action movie was supposed to go.

If he broke this down into it's elements, he almost recognised it. 

When it came to entertainment, he tended to only stick to the blockbusters. He liked the big explosions, the blows and the booms. He liked when things went up in flames, he liked the retribution of watching the dashing lead character kick ass and send everyone else flying to the curb. 

It was dramatic, it was cathartic; there was something so addictive about obscene and explicit violence (not gore, he saw too much of that in his career.) 

He knew how it went, how the bad guy faced his downfall and some people were lost on the way, but the good guys, ultimately, always pulled through.

This didn't feel like an action movie. 

He didn't remember an action movie that took place in a boardroom, watching an attorney pace thin lines across the carpet as he spoke with his hands. 

He didn't remember a blockbuster that involved heavy strategy, discussion and the coaching of exactly what he needed to say. 

He didn't remember a thriller that involved dotted lines and law infringements, patterned by the depth of Beth Montgomery's brow as she realised exactly how deeply she'd embedded herself into trouble.

Mark had always prided himself on the fact that he was fairly versatile. He could fit into any given social space, navigate any conversation with a smile and a good five-minute window of throwaway charm. He was, by all means, a man that was built to adapt. Mark hadn't walked into a room he couldn't win over–– Well, that was until now.

Sitting beside Amelia Shepherd as she tossed flirtatious one-liners over at an attorney, watching Dominic Fox draw out battle lines and Beth sink deeper and deeper in her chair, Mark knew he was brutally out of place.

The conversation was mainly led by Dominic. The lawyer hadn't lied when he said that he had a very firm grasp on the situation. He spoke passionately with hands about legal things and terms that Mark seldom understood. 

There were many big words, many pointers, all things that he hadn't been able to pick up in his education. His head turned between Amelia and Beth, admitting how lost he was in a very brief recess between case pitches. 

Amelia was the only person who looked at him, cracking a smile as Mark asked her how they understood any of this.

"Do you know how many of these I've been to?" was her only response. She jerked her head over in Beth's direction. "And do you know how many times she's seen Legally Blonde?"

The joke didn't fit the way that Beth was tensed perpetually, as if she hadn't relaxed in years.

 She was a permanent fixture in the corner of Mark's eye and, for a long time, he'd been scared to look at her. 

He tried to avoid her like he avoided the sun, terrified that a single glance at her would burn him permanently, scorching her into his retinas. He did, however, allow himself to stare at the hand extended on the table–– he watched her fingers on the other side of Amy, watched as they twitched along to Dom's every word. 

Throughout the whole meeting, Beth didn't speak once; she sat there, her jaw locked, shirt tucked and fingers tapping a silent beat against the tabletop. 

She was stoic to the eye, perfectly still and unbothered, all aside from those fingers.

A single manicured hand with a slightly chipped pointer finger.

Her nails were red. A red flag that consistently flew in his peripheral as Dominic discussed worst-case scenarios. As the attorney talked about Beth being stripped of her licence and being arrested and sent to sobriety programs, all Mark could do was watch her. 

He didn't think about Dominic's words, about how many things were on the line at this very moment, he just thought about how Beth had appeared last night.

He thought about how her shoulders had shaken against his chest. 

He thought about how brutally human she'd felt in these hands. 

Despite how perfectly calm she appeared, that one tapping hand felt like a reminder last night hadn't been a bad dream. 

It was the whistleblower, the one that assured Mark he hadn't just hallucinated–– Beth had burned out in her apartment last night, Mark was so sure that this was all just show.

But even so, she was so put together it almost terrified him. 

He'd seen this before, how easily Beth could brush herself down and act as if nothing had happened in the first place. Back then, of course, she'd used half of the narcotics in Manhattan to keep herself upright. 

But this... this wasn't... this couldn't... they weren't in New York. 

They were in this, in this conversation, in whatever this Monday morning was trying to do––

Mark didn't really know what was going on, but he managed to grasp the basics:

Dominic knew he could minimise all of this and save Beth's career, probably get her a few months in a rehabilitation program and then a precautionary regulation training course hosted by the DEA to keep a hold on her prescription license.

There was only one problem.

"Are you sure we can't just punch my brother?" Amy asked.

The consensus was that Derek was the one red herring of this whole operation.

 Dominic could make this go away just fine, but they all knew that Derek would not let this go. 

He was the sort of guy who'd fight for this until the end. They'd spent the past fifteen minutes discussing how Derek was a human spanner in a perfectly oiled machine. Mark had only been able to stew quietly in the background.

Amy's question interrupted a think-piece Mark was brewing on the single twitch of Beth's finger. His eyes flickered to her as he caught the crease of a laugh in the corner of Beth's lip. 

Amy was flicking through some sort of legal document, staring straight at Dominic as he leaned against the table. 

It appeared as though he'd asked for questions and this was all that he received: the expectant lift of Amy's brow as she proposed it as a very legitimate question.

Everyone watched Dominic's sigh as it travelled through his body. 

It started with a long inhale and ended with his lungs screaming for air. He seemed to wait a few moments before responding, cogs whirring in his brain as he tried to figure out whether it was worth responding to––

"It didn't get me very far last time," Beth spoke instead.

Her voice was like a jump scare. They'd all become so accustomed to her quiet. 

Again, Mark's eyes flashed towards her, but this time at her face. 

Her profile imprinted itself on the back of his eyelids: the slight smile on Beth's face as she looked downwards. Her hand clenched in a slight fist. From here Mark could see it, the traces of bruising from where she'd propelled her knuckle into Derek's nose.

He cleared his throat, trying to clean himself of the echoes of 'I'm sorry' as they ricocheted through his ears.

"It'd be easier than all this," Amy said, her brow creasing as she looked down at the papers scattered across the table. Inwardly, Mark agreed. It would've been so much easier. "All of this shit... I feel like he'd get the message too–"

"We're not assaulting the Chief of Surgery," Dominic said, almost as if he was a teacher and they were all his pupils. Amy's head tilted to the side as she stared at him, her face falling considerably. "The last thing I need right now is to save anyone else's ass."

Well, it was a good idea while it lasted.

Assault and battery were what Tom Cruise would've done. 

Mark knew that blueprint. He knew that in action movies things were seldom ever settled with the law but with obscene violence. 

It was something that Beth had once commented on (he glanced at the woman in question in the corner of his eye), the violence of everything. Nothing was ever solved logically or delicately, it was only ever brutal in every sense of the word. 

It was what she hadn't liked about it, what she hadn't been able to support even years before she'd passionately taken Nicole's side in the divorce. The concept of fighting ruthlessly instead of just solving things the way they were meant to be resolved.

(He'd taken that as a personal critique. It was the reason why he was sitting here in this very room. The past forty-eight hours had taken such a weight to him, but he'd chosen not to be brutal with his anger. He was going to be soft. He was going to be brutally soft in all matters. He was going to be lawful.)

Mark chewed on the inside of his cheek, watching as the attorney continued with his presentation. 

Amy huffed lightly to herself, returning to flipping endlessly through the pages in front of her. In the corner of his mind, the plastic surgeon was thinking about last year. 

He was thinking about how Derek had pounced at him and Mark had struck back; he'd drawn blood, thrown punches, kicked and scratched, all with a heartbeat in his mouth as he really processed what was happening–– this was Derek, this was his friend.

His friend. God, Mark stared at the paper in front of him and thought about the man he'd called his best friend for so many years. 

He knew Derek Shepherd like he knew the back of his hand; even when they'd been against each other, Mark had recognised him. His friend. His best friend. 

They'd been at their breaking point before when it had been Derek's fist in his face after a sudden flight to Seattle. They'd seen it before, but nothing quite felt like the feeling Mark got in his chest when he saw Derek's name written at the header of this paper.

At that thought, Mark's eyes flickered back over towards Beth. 

She'd raised in her chair, sitting with perfect posture and hands firmly receded under the table. It was like a dog on their hind legs, desperately parading for everyone to think that they were fine––

Yeah, A subtle grimace passed across his face, Nothing about any of this was fine.

He still couldn't describe the feeling in his chest when he thought about what had happened; about his last conversation with Derek, of his morning speech to Amelia, of the look in Beth's eyes as she realised what he knew... If he thought about it too long, he felt heavier. 

He felt as though he couldn't breathe without feeling the shift of every single organ in his body. His muscles were already stiff and uncooperative, moving, sometimes, felt like a failed political negotiation. 

All Mark knew for sure, was that he couldn't afford to think about it. In fact, he'd been doing perfectly fine this morning pretending as if it hadn't happened at all.

"I'm just saying," Amy began, her voice raising over Dominic's professional drawl as the lawyer fought to keep some sort of peace in this impromptu meeting. This time, Mark didn't look up. He just kept his eyes burning on Derek's name on that paper. "If we were to hire a truck maybe––"

"No," Dominic sighed, a split second away from pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Just to scare him," The neurosurgeon tried to reason.

 On Amy's other side, Beth chuckled. It was a low, odd sound, one that raised goosebumps on the back of Mark's neck. 

He tried not to think about how similar it sounded to her desperate cry. 

"Just to jostle him a little bit––"

"Amelia–"

"Isn't there literally any other way to do this?"

It was the question that everyone had been asking for the past twenty-four hours, although Mark, admittedly, was late to the party. 

His head did raise for that, just in time to see the dip of Dominic's chin as the lawyer dragged in a low, long breath. 

A very sudden silence eclipsed them all, one in which everyone seemed to hold onto the same hope that someone else would answer.

Mark, for the record, knew that there wasn't another way to handle this. He'd seen Derek the first time. He'd seen Derek up close, the clench of the neurosurgeon's jaw and the shift in his eyes as Mark had spoken candidly for the first time in years. 

(Shit, Mark cleared his throat and shuffled in his chair, momentarily stilled by the realisation that whenever he spoke honestly people got hurt.) 

He knew that Derek was the most destructive 'it's for the best person' he'd ever met. He was the sort of person who let someone bleed out if it meant the world would be a better place.

The plastic surgeon risked a glance at Beth. 

She was smiling down at the table. It was a disconcerting smile, the sort that a kid would draw on a piece of paper when asked to draw another human being. In a short glimpse, Mark saw it waver and her chest heave with a sigh.

"I mean, you're you," Amy broke the pause, eyes fixed on Dominic, "We all know how much you've already done for Beth... why not blackmail him? You've done it before, right?"

It alarmed Mark, briefly, at how Dominic didn't even jostle at what felt like an allegation. 

His brow furrowed as he watched the lawyer lean on the desk. Dominic didn't even blink, he didn't tell Amy about how wrong she was, about how Dominic was a distinguished lawyer who would never have a history of anything like that. 

Mark knew that he'd suggested it himself, but he hadn't expected to hear that it was something that Dominic was renowned for.

There was something startling about that, about the sudden realisation that Mark didn't know what he'd gotten himself involved in. He caught a brief exchange between two people; it was that instead of a denial. 

Dominic's eyes flickered to the brunette on the end of the table and a silent conversation played out between them. Beth, very subtly, shook her head, as if to answer a question that had been proposed to only them. Dominic looked away.

"We can try that Marsha lead," He said after a beat, seeming to internalise whatever it was that Beth had denied. Dominic inclined his chin in Mark's direction. "I've got my assistant chasing up the records in the state's licence office and we're going to see if we can pull anything before we get called into the hearing––"

"Blackmail is what got us here in the first place."

That was Beth. It was a sordid statement for such a sordid affair. 

This time, Mark did not look over at her. He was silently considering every situation in which Dominic Fox would have blackmailed someone on Beth's behalf in the past five years. It took him longer than he would've liked to admit, to actually register what had just been said–– when he did register what words she'd decided to contribute to the conversation, his skin rippled with a deep chill. 

His chin raised to stare at her, full-on and unwavering. 

Beth's attention did not move from Dominic. 

After a moment of hesitation, the attorney inclined his head towards her, as if to place emphasis on her point.

Blackmail.

Mark had a feeling he knew what it was over.

"So he's pissed?" Amy said, deducing everything from the clumsy overlapping of a hundred miniature glances between attorney and client. Her brow furrowed. "My brother's always pissed about something... He's just...? More pissed than usual?" She seemed to mentally run over every single time she'd felt the heat of her brother's anger. "Can't you use it against him––?"

"He's the Chief of Surgery," Dominic said lightly, "He has integrity."

"It's Derek," was the Shepherd's response, "Last time I heard, he was fucking one of his interns... we all know how that goes down with corporate."

Ah.

There was a brief pause in the room. 

Dominic didn't feel it, but the others did. 

Mark found himself suspended in an uncanny moment of deja vu. In his peripheral vision, he saw Beth shift in her chair as if her foot had fallen asleep–– but Mark could feel the sudden cold wind that enveloped the room, just like a breeze off of the Hudson.

Suddenly, he was mentally back in that hospital in New York, playing strangers with the woman two seats down. That was what Amelia was referring to, right? The urgency of keeping quiet, of prying eyes and attention. 

(Mark had never admitted it to Derek, but when he'd come across Meredith and the promising life they'd managed to build together, a part of him had resented it.)

"While that's an ethics concern to you and me, the board doesn't appear bothered by it," Dominic replied. He gave a small shrug as if to indicate that he had no idea why not. "I get the impression that Derek's pretty untouchable... from my research, he's always been neurosurgeries' Golden Boy... always getting the grants, the patients, the journal articles and interviews––"

"Don't forget the bullet to the chest."

For the third time in the last five minutes, Mark found himself silently willing Beth to warn them before she spoke. 

Her dry interjection was said while she looked down at her cuticles. It was drier than dry, a comment that was more startling in delivery, surprisingly, than it was in content. 

She said it so boredly, so borderline matter-of-factly, that for a moment, Mark forgot to breathe.

 It was so sudden, so jolting, that Mark had to blink away the image of Beth bleeding out on the boardroom floor––

Yeah, he needed to come up with a different haunting mental image. 

That one was getting a bit old.

She left silence behind her, one that was filled with everyone staring at her as if they couldn't believe what she'd just said. 

The only person who seemed capable of comprehending it was Amy; she faltered very slightly in her chair, revisited by the fact that she should have really gone to see her brother days ago, just out of the sentiment of checking that he was alive. 

Dominic, meanwhile, squinted over at his client as if the silence was causing him physical pain. Mark just swallowed a lump at the back of his throat.

"Sorry."

Beth said it after a prolonged beat, sensing that they were all too tired and stressed for something so startling. She wasn't sorry though, Mark could tell. 

Her eyes flickered between each of them, barely touching Mark as she collated her thoughts. No one spoke, no one accepted her apology. They all just stared.

"He's traumatised," Beth said, barely even batting an eyelash. "If you want to play dirty, play on that."

She said it so frankly, in the exact same tone as before. If Mark hadn't known any better, he would've thought that she'd just been a bystander to everything. She was talking as if she hadn't experienced the same thing. 

She'd gotten shot too. She'd bled out. She'd developed her own trauma, she must've, despite how hard she tried to hide it. 

If the whole point of this meeting was to build reasonable doubt in the concept of a morally corrupt psychiatrist, Beth had just reversed all of their work in a matter of seconds.

Attention moved to Dominic, the only person who was capable of making any sensible legal decision. He, too, was staring at Beth, his brow furrowed very slightly as he attempted to read her mind.

"He's been through a lot," Beth continued as if her professionalism didn't need any more questioning. Mark shuffled uncomfortably in his chair. She had been through a lot too. "Lean into it. Label him as oversensitive and looking for some... some cause to champion because he couldn't get closure. Get a psychiatrist up there to dress him down. I'm sure if you name drop me and the amount of shit I'm in right now, Andrew will supply one free of charge."

Dominic's face twisted.

"Beth–"

"It'll work," She said almost dismissively, "If you want to question his integrity as a Chief, highlight the fact that two months ago Derek Shepherd got shot and now he's on some crusade for peace like he's the resurrection of Richard the Lionheart. If we're looking for a vulnerability, it's the trauma. It'll hurt like a bitch."

Mark's staring resumed on her hand. 

Despite how composed her voice was, how stoic her face appeared, her fingers had resumed their twitch against the hardwood. 

He heaved a breath as she finished her proposition, chest aching as he found himself falling into a very familiar spiral of deja vu–– he'd been here before, not quite with Beth, but with Lexie.

 Hadn't he had to push for Lexie to be sectioned against her own will? Why was it that Mark was perpetually watching the people around him twist and turn under their own trauma without them even acknowledging that it was there in the first place?

When Beth said 'it'll hurt like a bitch', Mark had no doubt that she was speaking from personal experience.

Hell, he agreed with her from his own.

The thought of it, of airing this in spite of Derek, made Mark falter with the silent violence of it.

 For as long as he'd known her in Seattle, Beth had always been the advocate for people's wellbeing, for their mental health, for treating them gently and with kindness even when they'd done her wrong. 

Yet here she was, vouching for a mental execution, the weaponisation of something that Mark, personally, knew affected Derek deeply.

(In that moment, Beth received a text message. She drew out her cell phone, frowning down at the screen as she read the cluster of letters. She was surprised at the sender.)

Beth hadn't watched Derek's recovery. Mark had. 

He'd seen the light dwindle in the Chief of Surgery as he'd been stuck in that hospital room with the ghosts of what had passed. As he'd said a thousand times, Mark knew Derek all too well, he knew what Derek looked like when things were good and he knew when they were worst–– the Derek Shepherd that was out there (currently arriving at the hospital fresh out of the back of a cop car) was unlike any Derek he'd ever seen. 

It reminded Mark so vividly of the look he and Meredith had exchanged across Derek's hospital bed as he'd declared that he wanted to back to work as soon as possible.

This would destroy Derek, and from the brief silence that played out following Beth's words, all of them seemed to know that, too.

It took a while for the meeting to progress after that, with Dominic neither accepting nor denying the suggestion to brutally break Derek down into pieces. 

It was the closest thing they could get to violence without an assault charge, that was for sure. The final verdict on it was that they needed solid proof of erratic behaviour. ("Erratic?" Amy had questioned, eyebrows raised, "Have you met my brother? Even his fucking heartrate is erratic.") It wasn't a definitive yes or no, it was a maybe, a frustratingly inconsistent and shaky maybe.

Throughout the whole of the meeting, Mark felt like an observer watching from afar. 

He watched Dominic as he paced a thin line down the centre of the room and he watched as Amy made passionate vouches for explicit violence while flirting shamelessly with the legal representation. 

He watched Beth too, only in small dizzying doses, where her red fingernails always seemed two seconds away from burying themselves into the table. She hadn't touched the stack of papers in front of her and seemed stuck on the clock on the far wall. 

As Dominic got to the end of his proposal and cleared sheets from the desk, Beth seemed only concerned about one single thing––

She had the pack of cigarettes drawn out even before the clock struck the hour.

They all watched as she rose out of her seat, murmuring something about how she needed to get some air. 

There was no discussion about whether she could go or couldn't (although, from the look on Dominic's face, Mark got the impression that it was universally known nothing would stop her.) 

It was the end of the meeting and Beth could not be held back. Last in and first to leave.

A shiver ran down the plastic surgeon's spine as she passed behind him, a cocktail of perfume and cigarette smoke burning his nostrils as he felt her exit.

The only thing that struck Mark, in that moment, was the look on Dominic and Amy's faces. 

They both just watched her go, not a single word being exchanged between any of them but their faces speaking far more than it was intended–– Mark watched the light crease in Amy's brow and heard the long, drawn breath that Dominic took as he adjusted his collar. 

They barely even let the door swing shut before Dominic looked over at Amy. 

She'd already half risen out of her chair.

"Do you want to––"

"I've got it."

Mark had never gotten out of a chair so fast in his life.

Before either of them could dissuade him, Mark was clearing the head of the meeting table, skirting around chairs and heading for the door. 

He followed the trail Beth had left in her wake: repressed trauma and unresolved pain, all mixed with Malboro and Yves Saint Laurent. His hand was placed on the same doorknob she'd opened just a few seconds ago; his touch was kinder.

As he passed through the hospital, barely having the time or energy to be mystified over how Beth had seemingly dissipated into thin air, Mark thought about how this building had weathered him. 

He'd entered this place hopeful, originally hopeful that Addison would come back to New York with him, secretly hopeful that Beth would be here and that everything was just a bump in the road and he'd be able to start everything over again, outwardly hopeful that Derek would forgive him. He'd only achieved one of those things, and for what? To stand in the shadow of a man who was so disillusioned by the life he'd started picking at other people for entertainment?

What the fuck have you got yourself into, Shep?

It didn't take a genius to figure out where Beth had wandered to, although it might have taken a PhD. 

Mark wandered down to the ground floor, not particularly urgent and not particularly relaxed either. Beth was smart, she wasn't going to run, especially when she'd put herself in this situation by her own volition. Mark wasn't stressed. He knew where she'd be––

Archer, however, didn't.

He came across the eldest Montgomery sibling in the surgical reception, a grave look on his face and exhaustion caving his cheeks. 

Mark was fairly sure that Archer must've seen him coming through the walls or the floors; that was the urgency in which Archer descended on him, with a suddenness that had almost made Mark flinch, half-expecting Archer to beat the shit out of him.

"Is Beth okay?"

The question was abrupt. 

Mark's pace stuttered, caught off-guard by the very subtle but jilting desperation in Archer's voice–– this, this was what Mark had forgotten about. 

In amongst the hour-long conversation of discussing how to fake everything, there were still people who thought this was very real. 

Archer was one of those people. 

Mark blinked at the sight in front of him. It was the sight of someone who was completely in the dark, floundering as they struggled over what to do. It was then that Mark remembered the downside of Derek's presence in Beth's life: this was all new to Archer. 

Fake or not, Archer had not been there the first time. This was all very new territory.

The concern in Archer's face was what struck Mark first. 

There was an overwhelming amount of it, teeming behind eyes that Mark recognised as Beth's. The neurologist looked as though he'd barely slept, his eyes slightly bloodshot as he stared right into Mark's soul. 

His hair was tousled, usually in place clothes ruffled and he seemed incapable of standing still. He was constantly shifting, holding onto the surprise in Mark's face with every single part of him–– the words got caught at the back of Mark's throat, alarmed by the suddenness of Archer's appearance.

And then the novelty hit him: Archer was asking him if Beth was okay.

"Archer, I..."

Mark didn't know where to begin. 

He really had sat through that whole meeting, really had listened to Dominic Fox talk about how Beth wanted to protect Charlie. 

She still wanted to take the fall for it, carry all of this weight and Charlie's whole reputation too. Although Mark knew why, he didn't believe she should; if anyone were to ask him, he would've said to hunt the bastard. But Mark didn't have a voice in this... it wasn't his girl and it wasn't his life––

"I know that it's weird," Archer said hurriedly, cutting straight through Mark's thoughts.

The plastic surgeon just blinked at him again, silently asking which part of his day he was referring to. If Mark had the time, he would've listed it, put every single weird event of today into a neatly organised list–– 

But then his brain actually made some sort of coherent thought: oh, Archer's talking about this, about this conversation.

Yes, Mark agreed, it was very weird.

"But you're you, y'know?"

 Mark didn't. Mark didn't know. He didn't exactly follow Archer's words, but that wasn't particularly unusual for the kind of morning he'd been having. 

He wasn't sure whether Archer even expected an answer to his question. He really hoped it was rhetorical. 

"And Beth's... Beth's Beth."

"Arch..."

"You always know," Archer kept talking over Mark's very low and soft interjections. It was fruitless. Archer was determined and focused; he was a big brother that was on fire with concern that was so much bigger than him. "You always know what Beth's thinking and what Beth's feeling... You know how she is more than she says it. You can always just tell... and usually, I can too, but not with this... not with all this. You know her, you know when she's not okay... or when she is... so just tell me...."

Mark stared at him.

There was so much to process in something that had been said so quickly. Mark felt himself falter over and over on the concept Archer proposed to him: 

Mark was Mark and Beth was Beth and apparently they understood each other. 

Mark felt his mouth go dry as he stared at the burning effigy that had become Archer Montgomery, a man who was very clearly grappling onto very little to understand this situation.

"Just tell me if she's okay," He said tightly, looking far more uncomfortable than anything else. Archer cleared his throat, rubbing his jaw as he struggled to find the right words. "I'm trying to... I'm trying to be there for her this time but, but I just don't know how... how much I need to be... how bad... how bad it is."

Mark felt something in his chest squeeze. 

It was such a candidly tragic thing to watch. He knew that it must've taken so much of Archer to say this, and Mark knew that it was out of desperation, a desperation to understand, a desperation to know. So Mark held the gaze of eyes that he'd once loved so tragically on Archer's sister's face, and swallowed his indecision for an honest answer. His voice was strangled, tone low, shoulders hitched upwards as if Beth could be lurking anywhere. He felt like a child trying to tell a secret.

"I don't think she's okay," Mark said, "I think she thinks she is, but she's not."

He wanted to tell Archer not to worry too much, that Beth was struggling but not on the scale that people thought. Although she seemed to front, today, that she was fine, Mark could feel it in his gut that she wasn't. 

He knew what she looked like when she was fine, as much as he knew Derek, and this, frankly, was not it.

He held Archer's gaze longer than necessary, watching the Montgomery as he slowly internalised every word. 

Mark could see it behind his eyes, the process of realising that this situation was so complex that it almost felt like a chess game. 

The moves had to be strategic and thought-out, roles were strictly confined and time felt limited. As it played out in front of him, Mark could only wonder whether this is what he'd looked like too: completely out of his depth and fighting to stay afloat.

"Okay," Archer said after a few moments.

The same thing in Mark's chest that squeezed now deflated. 

He felt it shrivel very slightly as he saw the look that flashed across Archer's face. He seemed to overthink everything, his head turning away so he could stare at the floor and soak everything in. 

Mark stood awkwardly, his skin burning from the effort of not just saying it all outright, to tell Archer that they had a plan and that Beth was just covering for her fiancé (or ex-fiancé, or whatever the fuck they were to each other). But Mark didn't. 

He just watched.

He'd never seen Archer look so small. Not even when Archer had been sat in that hospital bed with a brain full of worms, had Mark ever seen Archer look so sickly and pale. He appeared gaunt, sleep-deprived, and heaved a breath. There was a chalkiness in him as if he was a standing corpse. He buried his hands deep within his pockets and nodded quickly.

"Okay." He repeated, "Does she... does she need anything?"

"Just for someone to understand," Mark said in a small voice.

He found it surprisingly hard to speak; it was harder to talk here, in the busy surgical reception, than it had been in a private meeting filled with moments that had felt intimate and scathing. 

His mouth was dry. Swallowing was uncomfortable. In fact, everything about this was uncomfortable. 

For a moment, Archer couldn't bear to meet his eye. Mark's brow furrowed.

Mark was still really incapable of getting his head around what was happening–– how had they gotten here? 

Just a few weeks ago, Archer stood across him in an OR, telling him how much better Beth's life was without him, how Mark was the man whose absence in her life had truly benefited her–– and here they were. 

Mark, very clearly out of his depth, and Archer awkward and out of place––

Oh.

He was ashamed.

Mark hadn't been able to place that expression on Archer's face, but now he saw it. 

Shame. A blistering look of shame that made the room feel so much smaller. 

He was ashamed that he didn't know what to do, a staple of the Montgomery ego, the pride in which each sibling knew how to weather all storms. 

Mark knew that expression well, but controversially more on Addison than he did Beth. 

He'd watched Addison for seven months in New York past the breaking of the affair, seeing the deep shame that she'd tried to swallow with chewing gum and Old Fashioneds.

It reminded him of what Amelia had said in that room. They were guilty. All of them.

"Right," Archer cleared his throat, eyes still stuck on the floor like gum on the bottom of Mark's shoe. 

He reminded Mark of a kid who was in a class too advanced for him, a newcomer in AP that had wildly underestimated the difficulty of the tasks. 

His shoulders hunched. "Uh, well... if, uh, if you see her–"

"Yeah," Mark said. It was awkward for him too. Seeing Archer like this was startling. "I'll tell her––"

"I'm keeping an eye out for her," Archer finished and then, as if it was physically painful, chanced a glance up at Mark's face. He nodded in the plastic surgeon's direction. "Alright, I've got a consult so I'll––"

"You're a good brother, Archer," And then another handful of clumsy, sporadic words: "You're... just, uh... You're good."

Archer had turned around to leave. 

Mark spoke to the back of his head. 

He wasn't sure why those words slipped out of his mouth, but in retrospect, Mark figured it was because it was true. It was true.

Beth's brother froze. He'd been halfway through a step and he just froze. 

It was as if the air had become solid and he was just stuck there, body still and time grounded to a halt. The world, however, kept moving around him. 

Nurses and patients and doctors all passed, but Archer didn't move an inch–– the only movement in the span of half a second, as Mark stood there, watching with his heart in his mouth, was the slight rotation of his head. 

His cheek turned and Archer looked to the side as if to hold onto to those words for a little bit longer.

Archer was a good brother.

Mark was sure of it.

He didn't know much about being a good older brother, but he was fairly sure that Archer was it. Mark had always been a single kid, always holding his own and trying to find solace over the loneliness that came with it. 

The only comparison he could make was Derek, Derek and how he'd treated Amelia in particular. Archer was patient and he was passionate and never once had Beth ever had a bad word to say about him. The only problem he'd ever had was the fact that he'd been out of state when everything had gone down, but even then, it hadn't been his fault.

If Mark compared Archer and Beth to Derek and Amy? Well, that was a no-brainer.

He was good. Dare he say, he was the best, and Mark didn't have a doubt that Beth would agree with him.

(In further retrospect, that's what Mark would guess this had been. He said what Beth would've said. He knew her as well as Archer thought he did.)

Archer didn't say anything, but Mark could see the slight tension in his jaw as he pressed his lips together. 

In fact, his whole body trembled slightly, just like something that had been too tense for too long, like a rubber band on the verge of snapping or a rubber ball pressed hard into the ground with the palm of a hand. 

And then, just like it had begun, it had ended.

Mark watched as Archer walked away, not once looking back.

***

────── There was peaceful violence about the outside world today.

Pathetic fallacy? Wasn't that what they called it?

 Mark wasn't too sure, but all he knew was that he'd wished he'd packed an umbrella. The storm had truly broken over downtown Seattle. 

It rumbled window panes, soiled the air and made the sidewalk glow as if it had been glazed like the top of a doughnut. He found himself lingering in the doorway watching it: the large, fat raindrops and the howling wind–– goosebumps raised on the back of his neck. 

In amongst all the chaos, Mark supposed that there was something blissful about it.

As a kid, he'd once stood in the centre of Central Park and held his arms out in the rain. 

It'd been on the verge of a hail storm, almost painful, and he'd stood there for ten minutes until his childminder had realised that he'd wandered off. 

As he stood there, looking across the empty parking lot and the single person sitting underneath the smoking shelter, Mark could only reminisce on how good it had felt–– standing in the rain, chin tilted back and the cold chill of the clouds bearing down on his face.

"Need a lighter?"

It was said in the place of a greeting as he approached her. 

Stooped against the rain in nothing but his scrubs, hands buried in his pockets and brow furrowed very slightly. He was surprised that his words carried on the wind, but her head turned towards him in response. 

She heard him, but he couldn't see whether she was surprised or even annoyed at the sight of him; he found himself staring at a pair of dark sunglasses, the faint outline of him lingering on the shadowed lens.

Beth was barely bothered by the rain, although her shoulders were hunched slightly as if she was attempting to carry a very large weight. 

She'd drawn her blazer closer to her body, a cigarette hanging out from between her lips as she halted, halfway through searching through her pockets. 

He watched the crease of her brow, just behind those glasses, and the way that her lips shifted with the reveal of the lighter from his pocket–– he held it out, his thumb on the trigger.

"You carry a lighter now?"

Her voice was slightly hoarser than it had been upstairs in the meeting room, although Mark wasn't sure whether that was just the wind. It might have been the cigarette that still wobbled in between her lips with every word, not yet droopy from the onslaught of rain. 

He joined her underneath the shelter, smiling faintly as she seemed completely off-guard by the offer. It was only a cheap lighter, the sort that you'd get from a gas station and would barely work half the time.

"It's a good pick up line," Mark said. 

He didn't have the heart to tell her that the lighter was actually Lexie's, specifically purchased to light the scented candles she'd bought for his apartment when they'd lived together.

 Nevertheless, Beth didn't seem to doubt his answer one bit.

She chuckled, "Are you trying to pick me up, Mark Sloan?"

Not if I can help it.

Beth's chuckle felt oddly displaced. 

It didn't fit the day nor the weather and the war that was raging around them. 

Mark sparked the lighter, cupping his hand and allowing Beth to lean forwards towards him. 

It felt like a moment of deja vu, an imprint of the night before, Beth catching the end of her cigarette alight as Mark tried his best to qualm the slight tremble of his hand. It was brutal, he held his breath–– when she drew back, she took a long drag, coughing very slightly as the smoke came funnelling out of her nostrils.

The smoking shelter was old and worn, cracked plastic that had withstood too many Seattle storms to consider itself particularly safe. 

Mark stooped under it, stowing his lighter back into his pocket and watching as Beth leant back, unceremoniously slumping with her deep exhale. 

They stood there in silence, listening to the sound of rain against the thin cover overhead. 

She asked whether he wanted to sit beside her, Mark shook his head.

That feeling returned, of travelling familiar roads that had been trodden a few too many times. 

If he sat down, he'd think about last night. If he thought about last night, he'd think about yesterday. If he thought about yesterday, it'd be hard for him to stop.

Instead, Mark just lingered on the edge, mystified at how eagerly he'd left the room and yet, now, with Beth in front of him, fully realised and present, he had no idea how to handle himself–– what exactly could he say? Did he mention the hearing? Did he talk about Dominic and Amelia? Did he bring up Charlie's very obvious absence? Did he start a conversation about Derek? About what Derek had said to him? Mark really wanted to talk about it, ask about it, but he had no idea where to start. What exactly had happened? What exactly did Beth need to apologise about–?

"I fucking hate the rain."

Beth optioned to talk about the weather. 

Mark hummed slightly. 

He'd been staring at the floor, trying to stop himself from jumping into a conversation without thinking, that was his usual crime. 

He couldn't describe the relief that overcame him as Beth spoke first. It was so menial, so casual, that for a moment, Mark almost forgot that her whole world was crumbling around them.

I know, Mark wanted to say. I know you hate the rain.

"Dunno why you keep coming to these places," He said, his voice low. He nodded up at the sky as she let out a breath, a cloud of white dancing across their vision. "New York... Seattle... Doesn't it rain in Indonesia, too? "

He looked over at her, watched her choppy shrug.

"Beats me," Beth said, and then she squinted up at the sky too. He watched the stormy sky reflect in the lenses of her glasses and only paused, momentarily, to quietly remark how bizarre it was to wear something like that on a gloomy day. "I read a study once that said miserable people do better in miserable climates... or maybe I'm just stupid."

"Yeah," Mark said, "Maybe that's it."

She looked over at him, only briefly, trying a small smile on her face that didn't quite fit. 

It was like watching someone fit a puzzle piece into a hole that was too small. It didn't last too long either, before it had run its course, Beth was coughing into her elbow again, gasping for air as her lungs shuddered. 

Mark just averted his eyes, taking his own deep breath and burying his hands into the pockets of his scrubs. He leant against the shelter, trying to not think of anything in particular–– definitely not the overwhelming sense of concern he felt at the idea of Beth putting her pulmonary system under more stress than––

No, Mark thought to himself, I can't do this again.

"They send you down here to babysit me?" Beth asked, her voice husky from the rawness of her lungs. 

He was reminded of the sort of heavy smokers he'd sometimes get as patients; people ravaged by throat or mouth cancer to the point of complete vocal decimation. He stared off into the sky, second-guessing how this was a good idea. 

When Mark didn't respond, Beth shook her head, "I would've thought it'd be Amy––"

"No," Mark said absently before she was able to read much into it. He felt his stomach curdle. "Just me."

Just me.

Beth seemed to take that and sit with it.

 Another pause that left Mark re-evaluating his life choices. This felt like it had last night, like a conversation that was far more precarious than it seemed; although Mark had swallowed his anguish, it was still there, a blade pressed against his throat. 

So he tried to distract himself. He looked aside, looking at Beth as she pressed that cigarette to her lips and patterned the air silver. She pushed her hair out of her face, pulling the blazer tighter to her as she bristled slightly in the wind. 

Surprisingly, the silence wasn't uncomfortable but it was scathing as if not a single stretch of him would be left unclean.

Don't think about it, Mark silently willed himself as Beth cleared her throat, Don't fucking think about any of it, Sloan.

It was just them. The usually bustling smoking area had been reduced to a wet bench that Mark was sure would make her pantsuit a nightmare to launder. 

She seemed completely unbothered, her silk shirt shifting and rippling with the grey of the sky. Her fingertips were slightly red from the cold, matching the wilt of her grimace as she gestured to the sky.

"I thought the weather would brighten up," She commented offhandedly. It felt like a stock conversation, meaningless words used to pad out the silence for the hell of it. "I watched this storm break all night and I think it's not going to go away any time soon..."

"News said it'll be gone by tomorrow," Mark said. He saw Beth's head tilt to the side. He wiped his clammy palms on his pant leg. "It'll be like it never happened."

Beth paused.

She tapped ash against the seat.

"Yeah," was her dry response, "We can only be so lucky."

The elephant in the room was still big. 

Mark could feel it and could only idly wonder whether she felt it too. He really was trying his best not to think about it. 

He was trying so hard. When he looked at Beth and the cigarette smoke, all he could do was think about how the evening had ended–– shaking shoulders pressed against him, a woman who seemed to have enough tears to cry for years. She looked so different now, there wasn't any sense of vulnerability now. She was dry and sharp as if she'd desiccated herself. It was almost unnerving.

She was so... so unfeeling and it wasn't just the glasses. They added this inhuman quality to her, something so ominous and soulless. But it also was the way she held herself, perfectly upright as if the cold didn't affect her. It was detached, it was unsettling–– Mark glanced at her and then looked away.

"Are you..."

He tried to ask it. He looked at the sunglasses and the odd manner she'd pieced herself together and dared to ask. His body shivered with the force of it, of trailing his question off into explicit territory. He felt unexpectedly dirty saying it, as if the connotations and the train of thought elicited the same shame from deep within him that he'd seen plastered across Archer's face. She seemed to recognise what he was asking; he watched her shoulders hitch and her chin tilt downwards as she watched her cigarette ash tumble in the wind.

She knew without him even having to finish his question.

Maybe she recognised his tone: a ghost of long, exhausting accusations that had left Beth flustered and red in the face. Once she'd avoided it, refused to answer and ridiculed him for even suggesting it. But now–

"No," Beth said, her voice strained, "I'm not hungover. I'm not high. Amy sat up all night with me to make sure I didn't do anything I'd regret." 

He nodded slowly, both relieved and displaced. She gestured to her sunglasses, adjusting them on the bridge of her nose. 

"This withdrawals a bitch though," Beth sighed, "I don't think I've ever had a headache like this before."

It was the gloomiest day they'd had in a while, Mark could only imagine. 

Seeing her sitting there, her back pressed against the wall and knees tightly placed together, Mark was almost reminded of Charlie. 

He was sure that he'd seen Charlie like this, maybe even in the exact same sunglasses, chin tilted back as light flurries of snow patterned the sun. 

Looking back, he wondered whether that was why Charlie would wear those glasses so often, hiding the bloodshot tint of his eyes from a high or sleepless withdrawal. It felt like a very crooked legacy for Beth to fill–– He was just faced with its parallel, Beth in the overcast gloom with her head lower than he'd ever seen it.

Something twinged in his chest, "Do you need anything?"

She shook her head but seemed to regret it, her face contorting. 

He thought about the mug she'd given him while he was hungover, about the green mug filled with hot lemon and honey. 

He fumbled with the key to his office in his pocket, his thumb running over and over the rough jagged outline.

"Actually," Beth remarked after a beat. She looked up at him and he could imagine those brown eyes squinting over at him, pained by the single tease of daytime. "Do you have any Fentanyl on you?"

Mark just looked at her. His thumb paused, the pad of it pressed tightly against the largest peak of the key. The blood chilled in his veins. It was the symptom of the day, a tight feeling that collected at the back of his throat like dust. The pain was dull but his hand throbbed with the weight of it –– he stared at her until her face cracked into another hasty smile.

"Relax," She said, her voice dipping into something softer.

If Mark hadn't convinced himself that it was just the weather and the temperature, he would've thought that her soft admission was the reason for the goosebumps rising on the back of his neck. There was a warmth there, in the grin she gave him in between an inhale of smoke and a breathy laugh.

"It was just a joke."

It wasn't very funny.

He continued to stare at her until she was imprinted in the back of his eyelids. He was in her nostrils, too, a sick taste of nicotine that infected every inch of him.

Mark felt like this was the time to admit that he hated cigarettes. 

He'd seen too many patients with rotted throats to not think about the consequences of it. It was the smell too, it reminded of how many cigarettes he'd watched his father chain-smoke in that Manhattan house. 

It reminded him of the few times his father had dragged him to work with him, to Wall Street, insistent that Mark would join the elusive Sloan family legacy of finance men. 

Everyone had smoked then, a hazy office filled with cigarette smoke and stockbrokers yelling at that day's numbers. 

If he strained long enough, just from the taste of it, he could see it again–– the sight of his father, half in the dark, holding a single cigarette in between his lips as he read the evening news and nursed a glass of scotch.

He knew that Beth hated it too. 

She didn't like how the nicotine and the coffee tended to stain your teeth and your fingertips. She'd once told him, while drunk outside a nightclub in Greenwich, that she hated the taste of it too–– it was the buzz, she'd said, it was the cutting of an edge when there was nothing else to help it.

There must've been in now, Mark reasoned, another thing indicative of the fact she wasn't as okay as she pretended to be. The sunglasses, the cigarette and the storm that was permanently fixed over their heads.

"You don't have to do this, you know that right?"

He'd been so deep in thought that Mark had been completely caught off-guard by her words.

 She said it after a cough had cleared her aching lungs and now looked straight at him, so intently that Mark could almost see his own reflection in her sunglasses. He appeared there, a smudged outline on lenses that needed a thorough clean. He wondered if he appeared as pale and cold as he felt.

It was so different to how he'd felt last night. For hours, Mark had felt like he was on fire.

"I don't mind," His voice caught at the back of his throat. He coughed shortly to clear it, feeling his throat shudder from the tension of every single muscle in his body. His gaze flickered down to his shoe, watching rain pattern the fabric above his toes. "I needed to get some air––"

"I meant the hearing."

Oh.

Oh. Mark held onto that for a second.

He wasn't going to lie and say that it wasn't a thought that had struck him, specifically, while he'd stood on the doorstep of his apartment building and watched the rain. 

He'd thought about it too as he'd held Dominic Fox's business card at three am this morning, still holding the imprint of Beth's tears on his shirt. 

In fact, he hadn't stopped thinking about it–– it was the thing that thrummed underneath everything else, all the other thoughts that he was trying to avoid. Why was he doing this? Why was he going through all of this? Standing out in the rain––

Mark didn't respond. 

He just tilted his head back in the light that evaded the cover of the shelter. He closed his eyes, just as he had when he'd swayed beside the Bethesda Fountain. It felt frighteningly similar as if he was still there, still lost to the world and so fragile and pale.

"I appreciate it, but the thought was fine enough," Beth said and Mark couldn't describe this feeling in his chest. If his eyes were opened, he would've seen her bitter smile and the way she shook her head. "I know you hate me–"

That statement made his eyes open so suddenly he would google later if it was possible to strain an eyelid. 

He looked over at her, at the woman whose whole life had fallen apart over the past twenty-four hours, and just stared at her. The word hate flew across his mind and before he knew it, he was speaking without any degree of hesitation:

"I don't hate you."

He could tell that Beth was looking him right in the eye as he said it. 

She caught the full effect of that admittance, the way his face twitched as he realised that, despite everything that had been uncovered, he did not hate her. 

The words wobbled slightly, his brow furrowed, he found himself thinking about what Derek had said to him in full force. It was like a cloud revealing the sun, a startling clarity–– he thought about Beth's medical records, her cover-up, her caution––

He didn't hate her.

Maybe he had for a few moments? Maybe he had as he'd sat there beside her, listening to her run circles around excuses and little explanations? 

He didn't know how he felt about the whole situation, but he didn't hate her. Maybe he had in New York, but not now. Not now.

Beth searched his face. 

Behind those soulless lenses, her eyes roamed his face. 

He couldn't remember the last time she'd looked at him for such a long time. 

His stomach twisted and his cheeks flushed; he looked away quickly, just in time for a raindrop to hit him right on the nose. 

Over his shoulder, he heard her light chuckle.

"Hm," seemed to Beth's conclusion. She sounded both miffed and amused, "You should."

He didn't know what to say to that. Maybe it would've been sensible to hate her? It was sensible in the same way that it would've been the better decision for Beth to avoid smoking. It was best for his health to regard her with anger, to feel so much fury and hate that he didn't know what to do with it. That was what he was used to, but that wasn't how it was.

Beth cleared her throat.

"If this is..." She seemed, very suddenly, hesitant to speak. She tested each word on her tongue. He could imagine the way she squinted over into the parking lot, wracking her brain for the right way to say something. Her usual composure fell away into something clumsy. "If this is because you feel guilty about the... about the... the baby–"

"No."

Mark looked back at her, heart racing in his mouth as he saw the tension within her. It was the first time she'd said it out loud: the baby. 

They'd spent the whole of last night skirting around it like actors would avoid saying Macbeth in a theatre. There was something so startling about it. 

The baby. It was realised, it was present and so was the pressure Mark felt on his skin. 

He shook his head over and over, feeling light-headed and sick to his stomach. 

He couldn't feel his fingers or his toes. He had to strain to swallow his heart, just to force it back in his chest.

"I don't need your pity, Mark."

"I know."

Beth's head tilted to the side, but she was no longer looking at him. 

She was avoiding his eye (as if Mark had the power to stare through the lenses of her sunglasses and could see the soul bared at the bottom of her irises). 

He had to fill the gap in with the memory of Archer's desperate gaze, painstaking and silently begging, a memory that made his chest swell with anguish.

For the record, Mark knew that she didn't need anything from him. She never had, that was how Beth worked. She was independent, she was brutally unapologetic and she was human. She hadn't needed him in this whole situation, with the baby. She was fine without him. She didn't need his pity and, from what Mark was sure she was about to tell him, she didn't need his help either. But, he wanted to help.

Mark hadn't had enough insight or soul-searching to decipher whether he was doing this out of guilt or pity. 

He hadn't allowed himself to dwell on it that long. 

Maybe it was guilt? 

Maybe it was the same feeling he'd felt when Sloan had appeared in the hospital ER and he'd been assigned a character role he'd never envisioned for himself: the deadbeat Dad. 

Maybe it was born off of the realisation that Beth had had to deal with this all alone–– Beth had had to deal with so many things alone, all because he'd been too preoccupied fucking his sister and hating her to notice.

There was so much destruction in hate, Mark could see that now.

She let in a long breath, running a hand through her hair.

"You don't have to feel guilty either."

Mark's numb lips spoke those words straight to her. He watched Beth tremble from the cold, smoke getting caught in the back of her throat as she realised what he'd just said–– she seemed to choke on it, a hand rising to her chest as she tried to clear the clutter from her lungs.

(They were all guilty, every single one of them.) 

(They were all riddled with it like a disease–– Dominic Fox felt unsurmountable guilt about how things had ended with Charlie. It had been avoidable, all he'd had to do was step in, say something, an intervention in love to break Charlie's rose-coloured glasses and let the world catch up.)

 (Amelia Shepherd felt an intense burning regret about how New York had played out. Mark too. But Beth...)

God, Beth was guilty too.)

He could see it in her. He'd been able to hear it–– she felt bad that she couldn't do it, be the person that Charlie needed. 

There was a boundary between it, between the person that Charlie needed and the person who Beth needed to be. She had to build a wall there and Mark had watched it tremble. He knew that was why she was doing all of this. She wanted to give Charlie something, she felt like she needed to do something. 

(The impulse in her chest and in Mark's was the same by design. They were two people who were backed into a corner, acting out of necessity and not necessarily by logic.)

That, to some people, was an act of love.

"I'm not," Her denial made Mark smile slightly. 

It was a sad smile, a characteristic of something tired and dormant within him. He shook his head. Beth pulled her arms tightly around her chest. 

"I'm not... I just... I'm trying to... to do something––"

"You don't have to do this, either."

He found it ironic, really, how every word she'd said to him could be played right back to her.

 She didn't have to do this either. Charlie didn't need her guilt and he didn't need her pity–– in all honesty, all Mark thought Charlie needed was a knuckle to the face. He couldn't put in words how much resentment he had for that man, but he understood why everything had to play out like this. 

If he ever saw Charlie again... well, Mark would have some select words to say, that was for sure. If Mark could speak candidly to Beth and without changing her mind, he would've told her to put herself first, to forget about that man and keep her career perfectly intact.

But this was Beth.

"Do you ever think about how I made you quit your job back in New York?"

That was sudden. 

She said it so plainly, unperturbed by the way that Mark stared at her, jaw slack. 

She was inviting New York back to them, digging up a grave that they seemed to repeatedly desecrate every time they looked at each other. He felt it open, the drag of a coffin through the dirt and the creak of its lid as the bones and the dust were exposed in the overcast daylight.

Yes, Mark wanted to say. It was short for a longer answer: Yes, I remember everything.

He could remember it in horrific detail: everything from the way her jaw had clenched to the joy that had died inside of him as she dropped his hand. 

He could remember the decision she'd proposed to him, the wretched feeling that had been birthed between them and the conflict that it had cracked open. 

He could remember being given the choice to choose: her or the hospital? And he'd chosen her because there were a thousand hospitals in the continental States but there was only one woman in the whole world that made him feel like that.

She seemed to swallow a lump at the back of her throat.

"Remember when you turned down your dream job and hated me for it?"

Mark shook his head. His voice was low.

"I didn't..."

He trailed off as she looked at him, her chin raising so abruptly that the words got caught at the back of her throat. 

His lie got stuck between his teeth. 

He made the mental note to floss before he slept tonight.

"You hated me because I took surgery away from you," Beth repeated, not accepting any insistence otherwise. 

Mark, who let her speak with a weight on his shoulders, averted his gaze to the ground at her feet. She was wearing cherry red heels, matching the warpaint on her fingernails and her lips.

 "You never forgave me for it... just like I never... I never forgave you for what I thought you did with mine," Beth said, "You can't honestly tell me, right now, that if you could change one thing about what happened in New York, you'd choose Head of Plastic Surgery instead of me."

His brow furrowed.

The floor was littered with cigarettes, old butts that had burnt out a long time ago. It was dirty too, hadn't been swept in what felt like a very long time period. 

There was a flier down there, a crumpled piece of paper that was soggy and wet; if Mark squinted at it, he could vaguely make out the printed letters and the faded emoji. 

It was one of Andrew Perkins' old Psychiatry pamphlets, peacefully decomposing on the hard concrete.

Somehow, Mark would've rather watched it decompose than answer Beth's proposition.

He ran it through his head over and over: if he could change one single thing about New York, what would it be?

Beth thought it would be choosing her. 

She'd said it with such definitiveness, with such surety as if there wasn't a doubt in her mind. He'd make the other call, choose the position as Head of Plastic Surgery over her. He'd say fuck you to his relationship and do everything he'd fantasised about accomplishing, building a respectable institution within Manhattan West Hospital and become the prolific surgeon with skills and resources that no one could ever second guess again. 

He'd pass on everything that had come after that, all of the pain and hardship, all of the misplaced love, the drugs, the screaming and the shouting, the affairs, the betrayal, the drinking, the hatred and the image of Beth behind a splintered bathroom door as it all just gave way under his fists-–

Mark blinked.

...

.

And wasn't it so fucking stupid––

Wasn't it so stupid that he was pretty sure he would've still chosen her.

(It was stupid, but he would've. He really would've. Mark was sure that he would've chosen Beth a hundred times over, a thousand. If he could go back to New York and change one single thing, it would not be that.)

But, he didn't say that to her.

He didn't know how to.

"We know how it feels," Beth said, while Mark's inner turmoil raged on. 

She was looking at her nails now, rubbing her thumb a stretch of slightly chipped paint as her cigarette crumbled. 

"If I could... if I could do myself a favour and just... just save something... it would've been my job..." Beth said, "Everything that I'd worked for... all of that effort, all of that pain... all of the addiction I'd gone through for it––"

"Charlie isn't you."

It was Beth's turn to freeze. 

It was another subconscious statement, the sort that Mark was bewildered by for a few seconds after he'd said it. It had the same effect on her as New York had on him; her cigarette was against her lips and it stayed there, her hand still and ice cold. 

She was fixed to the bench, her chest even barely moving with her breaths. Trapped in time, trapped in the echo of the night before:

He's not my Charlie. He's my Beth.

"You're not Charlie," Mark said after a beat.

She wasn't.

He hadn't agreed with Beth's assertion that Charlie was her Beth. 

To him, a Beth did not mean total and complete destruction, not like this. Sure, Mark had chosen her over his career (and would over and over and over and over) but it hadn't been in forfeit of everything. He hadn't gone down with the ship, no, he'd just moved onto another one. 

He hadn't lost his career, he'd diverted it. While Beth was plotting her course to sink deep beyond the possibility of ever working in the medical field ever again, Mark's journey had been a precautionary movement to save them both from drowning

He couldn't understand that at the time, but now, he could.

(Of course, he didn't agree with the way Beth had handled it, but he liked to think that he'd grown to understand why she'd made him choose in the first place.)

Charlie was not Beth's equivalent of Mark's Beth. He was darker, more complex, he'd hidden and he'd left her to pick up the pieces. 

Mark's Beth had fought so hard for everything and anything she could get. 

He knew that she saw herself in him, more than likely, his bad qualities. She considered him a reflection, a wake-up call, a realisation that she was feeling all of the things Mark had had to feel. She thought that Charlie was her, but he wasn't... Mark knew that whatever Beth saw in her ex was nothing like what he'd seen in her back in New York.

He didn't like it.

He didn't think the comparison was fair.

After a long, drawn pause, Beth just took a long drag on her cigarette. 

She moved slowly, but then, normally, as if he'd never said anything in the first place. Mark just watched her, standing with his hands still buried in his pockets and his heart sinking in his chest. He held his breath through the cloud of smoke and watched as Beth recovered from whatever thought process it was that played out behind those sunglasses. 

He wished that she'd say something, that she'd agree with him or she'd given him the opportunity to explain what he meant.

But, then the cigarette burnt out in her fingers and she dropped it to the floor. 

He watched it hit the ground just beside the pamphlet. She squashed it into the ground with the toe of her heel.

Beth spoke:

"He might not be me," She said and Mark felt his whole body burn, "But he's pretty fucking close."

The cigarette still smouldered as she withdrew her foot. Mark stared at its remnants on the concrete. He figured there was a metaphor there somewhere; despite how badly you tried to crush something, sometimes it just kept burning.

"What are you going to do?" He asked, trying to distract himself from the thoughts that suddenly appeared at the back of his head. He was filled with this sick realisation, one that he found very hard to will away.

"Whatever we can," Beth responded. Her nose scrunched, "I don't really want to become a secretary. I'm shit at talking to people on the phone."

"What if Derek doesn't...?"

"We have nothing on him," She said, stuffing the cigarettes back into her blazer pocket and crossing her ankles. Her head leant back against the wall. From this angle, he could just see the flicker of her eyelashes, her eyes squeezing shut as she attempted to relax. "Derek's not going to let this go. I don't think there's a what if, I think there's just... just whatever he wants to happen."

A dent appeared between Mark's eyebrows.

"Are you really gonna use... use it all against him?"

He sounded so unsure, so hesitant about whether using Derek's trauma from the shooting against him was the right call. A light smile appeared on her lips. It was so vague that he had to squint to see it. It was mischievous, devious and caused a shiver to go down his spine.

"He doesn't care about ethics," Beth said, her voice hoarse as she seemed to ache for a second cigarette. 

He watched her fingers play with the edge of her blazer pocket. It was so tempting; he recognised it, it was the twitch of need, of the foundation of addiction. When he blinked, the pack of cigarettes was a pill bottle. 

She coughed into the crook of her elbow, "Derek doesn't give a damn... I doubt the cannabis farm thing is going to stick and I just..."

She paused. He felt it.

"Dominic was right," Mark said, he cleared his throat. "It's kinda stupid when you think about how much Derek gets away with."

"Not kinda, it's very," Beth breathed, "What made him and Meredith so different from you and me?"

He stood with that for a while. 

He stood with it in the silence and the sound of rainfall on the shelter above their heads. He stood with it until he couldn't anymore–– his chin dropped to watch the sidewalk gleam with a passing car light, the traffic moving around in the parking lot as the day continued on. 

He pressed the key into his forefinger, wondering how hard it would be to draw blood.

Derek and Meredith loved each other, but he and Beth had loved each other too. 

There was no doubt in that. Maybe it was the time period? Maybe ten years had changed a lot in the universe? Or maybe it was just how things worked for Derek–– maybe he just got away with everything? 

Mark couldn't remember Meredith being ridiculed for the relationship either, maybe in secret but never in the open. 

Maybe they'd just looked at her name? Looked at the love they had for each other and just––

Mark cleared his throat.

"I don't know."

Beth shrugged.

"Yeah," She said, "Me neither."

He wasn't sure whether there was a fair way to say whether one love was more valuable than the other, but whatever qualifier Meredith and Derek hit, he was so sure they'd had it.

(But in retaliation, Mark wanted to ask what made Charlie worth it? What made Charlie so different to him–– why was Charlie worth throwing your career away for when he wasn't? What had changed––?)

"You were right as well," Beth said next and Mark was dumbfounded by just that concept. She gave him a gentle but strained smile. "When it was good, it was good. We were something, don't you think so?"

Something in his chest trembled.

(Everything, Mark thought, Everything had changed.)

"I didn't hate you for it," It felt like a cop out to say it. He knew he had hated her, but he just wanted to say something... lie for a second, make things feel okay––

She chuckled.

"You did," Beth saw straight through, "But, that's okay. I hated myself too."

It reminded Mark so strongly of his dinner with Bethenny Ballard, of how she'd made him reflect on his perception of himself. 

The hot shit, the man who could never do anything right, the one who just let everything fall apart around him with a single touch. 

He could see it in Beth, how she was currently only seeing the worst of herself, the same parts of herself that Mark had been focused on for years. He wanted to say something, but she was the therapist here, not him.

God, Mark really did have no idea what he was doing.

"I hope Charlie doesn't hate me for this," It was an off-handed comment that made Mark frown. She sighed to herself, shaking her head. "He looked at me like he hated me... just for a second... just for–"

"You're saving his life."

She looked over at him as he said it. Her lips twitched into a smile.

"Yeah," Mark watched the smile fade as she thought about it, "From experience, I can say that he's not going to look at it like that."

He didn't want to think too much about that, about how Beth had seen things. He cleared his throat.

"Archer wants to talk to you."

She nodded.

"Yeah," Beth said, "I've got a lot of explaining to do, haven't I?"

She appeared sad, her lips downturned and she looked away. 

She fit the weather. He turned his head to look through the rain, across the storm that was still making Seattle seem so intense and almost claustrophobic. Everything was hazy as if half caught in a dream. 

If Mark hadn't thought better, he would've thought it was dusk. It was such a sad, almost sleepy moment that Mark had to clear his throat to stop himself from falling into it–– when he caught sight of her again, she was pinching the bridge of her nose and inhaling sharply.

He knew that she'd told him not to say it, but he couldn't resist:

"You okay?"

Beth's lips twitched.

"Oh fuck you."

He allowed himself to smile into the rain. A long breath rushed out another question.

"You gonna be okay?"

He didn't miss how her face contorted.

She sighed, "Hopefully."

"Need a hug?"

He said it teasingly, but in reality, he was thinking about how he'd reached for her the evening before, and she'd fallen into him like a house of cards. 

The winds were wild on the outside, maybe it'd happen again–– she chuckled at it, but it was a serious offer. If she needed a hug, he'd oblige.

"I'm a big girl," Beth said in response and Mark could only wonder whether Charlie had been good at hugs. Mark didn't know if he was good at hugs, he rarely ever gave them. The last person he'd hugged, before Beth, had been Lexie, but that had been when they'd been trembling and running from the onslaught of bullets. "I'll persist, I always do."

Mark didn't disagree.

He nodded to himself, following her gaze over at the sky. 

She was watching it all, barely bristling as a distant roll of thunder and a flash of lightning illuminated the tops of cars. They sat in the quiet, listening to the faint sound of an ambulance as it rocketed into the ER bay. A short burst of polite conversation; Beth asked whether he had any patients he needed to see, Mark admitted that he'd taken the morning off. 

She glanced at him in a very light, subtle surprise, but didn't comment on it. Mark just reassured her that he had his best intern and residents on the case. She didn't comment on that either, she just changed the conversation topic to Dominic and how his suits seemed to improve every time she saw him. She didn't know where he managed to find them all.

He just watched her face as she spoke, a smile that was performative. He could feel it in his bones. A little itch at the back of his head, a voice that had been long silent since New York, told him that there was a little more beneath her. She wasn't as okay as she appeared–

"You sure you don't need anything?"

His determined question interjected a long think piece on how Dominic always seemed impeccably presented. 

It was the traitor that gave away that Mark hadn't been listening to a single word she'd said, just completely wrapped up in the performance of her. The performance of being fine. The show came to a halt, Beth seemed to pause in her monologue and seriously considered it–– good, he was serious.

"Mark," She sighed.

"A coffee?"

"No."

"Hot water and... and whatever that stuff was."

"Lemon and honey, but no."

"C'mon, look, I just want to––"

He knew that behind those sunglasses, behind the makeup and the pantsuit, she was sad.

Suddenly, this felt like a funeral.

"You don't have to feel bad, Mark," Her voice was so small and he was struck by it. She sounded so soft, so tender. It was the sort of voice he'd forgotten existed. He held her gaze through those lenses and felt her every syllable. "This isn't Sloan. You don't have to... I don't need... You didn't know."

You didn't know.

He hadn't known, and now, he didn't know how to tell that if he had known it would've changed everything.

The mood shifted before he could linger on it longer (but following this, this day, he'd think about it for weeks). Beth coughed again, clearing the lingering smoke from her body as Mark felt her prepare for a joke.

"The only thing I need right now is a one way ticket out of here," by her standard, it was a weak joke but a standard diversion. He was too familiar with it, the two of them skirting around the serious with light smiles. "Now... that's something I could do with."

"To Boston?"

Visibly, Beth faltered. A choppy shrug made him think that Boston was the last destination on her mind.

"To anywhere."

He wondered whether that's what she'd said last time. Had that been what she'd said to the person at the flight desk at JFK: a ticket to anywhere? I don't care where. Just to somewhere where no one knows my name.

"I was thinking about taking a vacation somewhere," Mark said, trying to manoeuvre the weight on his chest. "I booked a weekend off in a couple of weeks. I'm going to drive down to a fishing lake. You're welcome to join––"

"Fishing?"

"It's peaceful."

"I'm sorry, Mark, but it's boring."

"Boring?"

"Mm," Beth hummed, "You remember that trip we took, right?"

Mark sighed, "You hated it."

"I did."

She had. He remembered it well. 

It was one of the last things they'd ever done together that had felt functional, and even then they'd argued through the most of it. 

She'd been discontented with the whole trip and he'd yelled at her in the middle of Upstate New York, demanding to know what she wanted from him if he no matter what he did, he just couldn't please her.

Mark kissed his teeth, trying to rid himself of bad memories. He shook them out, trying to concentrate on the ground beneath his feet and the perfume in his nose.

"Seattle not doing it for you?" was what he enquired instead.

"No, I'm done with this place," Beth said, "I think it's the end of my time in Seattle and... well, between you and me... when I leave this time, I don't think I'm coming back."

He stared at her. 

Hadn't that been what Addison had said to Archer? The conversation he'd overheard? Hadn't that been her fear? Beth leaving and never coming back, losing Beth to an aeroplane and a changed phone number and the rest was history. 

"If you need a flying partner, let me know."

She didn't feel the way that his skin heated at the proposition. 

She didn't take his words for the slight seriousness that was underneath it. Mark was, for the record, serious. 

He almost said 'take me with you,' but he didn't. 

If Beth thought she was done with Seattle, Mark knew that he was far from content with it either.

"I'm good," Beth said, and Mark had to swallow the words that threatened to spill from a very specific area in his chest. Her smile was hazy, small as if she'd received it all as a joke. He knew she had. "I just need to get out of here, I think. When this is all finished... Just find a city of my own, y'know?"

He did.

Mark supposed he would've said something about that if the moment had continued. 

Maybe he would've told Beth that he would, actually, be sad to see her go. 

He'd grown acclimatised to having her in Seattle and he wasn't sure what the city would be without her; it was like watching a character leave a television show and the obscure absence it would leave in its wake. 

He wasn't entirely sure whether he wanted to know what that felt like.

Once upon a time, he would've been delighted to see her go.

Now, Mark didn't know what to think.

So he stood there in silence until it ran its course. 

At some point, in between Beth admitting she wanted to disappear into oblivion and leave no trace of her behind, and Mark returning to the hospital, a newcomer approached them through the rain. 

Beth saw it first: the outline of an umbrella as someone rounded the corner and sought them out through the storm. She seemed to recognise them before he did–– his brow furrowed and he shifted as if expecting something wicked to be blown in with the wind. 

The umbrella was from the hospital, the Seattle Mercy West logo shining through the hazy rainfall. The brim was large and even as they got closer, Mark could still not tell who was lurking beneath.

"You should go," Beth said to him.

He looked at her. She nodded towards the door and he understood. 

She hadn't come out here to be alone, she'd been waiting for someone. 

There was a pause between them, a ticking time bomb of a question that passed by with every footstep as the person approached. He could hear it as Beth stared at him, waiting for him to move.

Do you trust me?

If this had been New York, maybe Mark would've had more conspiracy theories. 

His head would've been full of what-ifs: what if this is a drug handoff? What if this is something conniving and deceitful? But this wasn't New York. Seattle was tired and Mark was exhausted. He looked between the approaching person and Beth Montgomery and silently made the decision on whether to leave a relapsing addict with a stranger in the rain.

After a beat of deliberation, Mark nodded too. He inclined his head at her, told her they'd wait for her, and turned away. It took him twenty steps to reach the door. He didn't look back, just out of the sentiment that looking back at things had never fared him well, and willed himself to not dwell on it.

But, even as he started the familiar trek back up to the boardroom, Mark couldn't help but let one thought stay with him.

Trusting Beth had never been a good idea.

***

────── Beth didn't return when she was supposed to.

Amelia and Mark had been sat in the corridor just down from the hearing, waiting for Dominic Fox and his client to sweep in and get things started. 

It'd been an hour since Mark had left Beth in the rain. In that time, they'd watched the board get assembled, they'd watched everyone get set in place, but stumbled when Beth never showed.

Everything about the day had been planned so meticulously, everything had needed to run like clockwork; that's exactly what Dominic had said to them as he'd finished his speech. Law, sometimes, was like a very precarious machine. 

Everything had to be in it's allotted slot, everyone needed to be moving in the same direction, and everything had to be perfectly timed. It was the secret to success: full synchrony. Dominic had stressed it with every part of him.

"Huh," Amy said, glancing down at her cell phone, "Maybe they're just running late?"

Late, Dominic was never late.

As Mark sat there in that corridor, watching the meeting congeal behind that boardroom door, Mark couldn't help but think about how he'd just walked away. He'd taken Beth for her value and he'd trusted it. He'd turned away and left he to just... god, what had he been thinking? He hadn't even hesitated.

 What if her joke hadn't even been a joke and it had just been––

Amy got to her feet and Mark almost jumped in his seat. 

She'd seen Dominic walking up the hallway. Mark's eyes flew to him, searching the space around him for any trace of the familiar brunette. Beth, notably, was not with him.

Oh crap, Mark thought to himself.

He wasn't stupid, he knew why Dominic had asked Amy to follow Beth down for her cigarette. The lawyer didn't trust her. Mark really had been sent to babysit out of the simple precaution that Beth would slip away from them, get herself in further trouble or just disappear completely. He wasn't stupid but he'd definitely done something stupid–– He'd left Beth sat there in the rain and now... and now where was she?

"Where's Beth?" Amy asked before he could.

Mark glanced at her in the corner of his eye. 

Much like him, Amy looked very vaguely stressed. 

Her forehead was furrowed as Dominic came to a halt in front of them, a cell phone stuck to the side of his head as he murmured into the receiver. He held up a finger between them, momentarily appearing annoyed as he sharply retorted back to whoever was on the other side of the line ("I don't give a damn, Cal, it's her call, not yours.") and proceeded to hang up. 

Mark just stood there, his hands buried in his pockets and hoped, to high heavens, that Dominic wasn't about to tell them Beth had disappeared off the face of the earth.

Despite the circumstances and the brief indiscretion on the phone, Dominic seemed a fraction of the bothered that they did.

"It doesn't matter," He said in answer to the question, "There's been a change of plans."

A change of plans?

"Is she okay?" Mark asked.

"Beth's fine," Dominic said, "But we no longer need either of you. Doctor Sloan, you can go back to your patients... Amelia, enjoy Seattle. Thank you both for your time but that's all."

Hang on a second––

"What about the...?"

Dominic was talking quickly, he was walking too. 

As soon as he'd hung up the phone, he'd started speed-walking down the hallway, with no regard for the people who were desperate for answers. 

As they both struggled to keep up, Mark floundered over the very sudden dismissal. 

They'd spent all morning in that meeting and now what? Just for him to be shooed away?

Was this it?

What about all of those things they'd had to read, all the conversations they'd had? This was all too sudden. 

Their whole world had been focused on this hearing for the past twenty four hours, between Beth and Amy watching the sunrise and Dominic pacing lines in his hotel room. 

It'd been all they'd cared about... and... and now?

It seemed as though Dominic was incapable of a straightforward explanation, too. 

They followed him to the doorway of the hearing and watched as he held the door open, just in time to accommodate a long, winding stream of board members as they filed out of the room. Mark stood behind Dominic, watching with wide eyes as he searched the very sudden crowd–– he noted that Derek, somehow, was not included.

"There was a meeting," Dominic said over his shoulder, giving cordial smiles to each and every person as they exited the room. He appeared like a host, thanking every guest for coming to his party. It didn't particularly look like a party though. Everything was grey. "New evidence has come up."

He stood there until the room was empty and then swung to them with a wilder, longer grin on his face.

Both Mark and Amy were bewildered, standing there with their heads pounding with the suddenness of what had just occurred. 

It felt like a bad hangover, a further mind fuck that Mark couldn't comprehend. He squinted over at the attorney, feeling motion sickness from the sudden derailment of everything. One moment, he'd been silently going over what he'd been coached to say to the whole board and then before he knew it, he was watching the gleam of celebration in Dominic's eyes as the lawyer clapped his hands together.

"What is..." Amy spoke first again, blinking slowly. She seemed faster than Mark, able to process the sudden swerves and detours in the road. "What happened?"

"We're in the process of sorting things out," He answered, his sudden lift in mood appearing as a welcome change of pace from the gloomy morning. "The board was dismissed ten minutes ago, I'm guessing they just got the memo–"

"What with the––"

"We're working it out," Dominic said again, "It's taking some time, but we're getting there––"

"And Beth?"

That was Mark this time. 

The lawyer looked over at him. 

Mark didn't like Beth's absence, it unsettled him. 

With the full force of Dominic's attention, Mark wondered whether he could see it, the concern, the lump at the back of Mark's throat as he thought about how scared Beth truly was about losing everything. 

She knew she was communicating it, but it was there in the small things: in the tap of her fingers, in the red-lipstick stained cigarette, in the way that she seemed incapable of holding a genuine smile––

This didn't happen in the movies. This didn't happen to Tom Cruise. There wasn't a mediation at the end of an action movie–– everything went up in flames.

"She's fine," Dominic said and he seemed to actually believe it. He met Mark's eye and his gaze gleamed. "I left her in a room with Chief Shepherd–"

"Jesus Christ," Amy mumbled in the background.

"–So," He continued, eyes only briefly flickering towards the neurosurgeon as she seemed to make it very clear how much of a bad idea that truly was. His Cheshire cat smile persisted. "Out of the two people in that room, I think you should be worried about the other guy."

Yeah, Mark thought to himself as Dominic turned on his heel. The concept of Derek and Beth in a room together. Gunpowder and the flame. He met the eye of Amy as she rounded on him, clearly thinking the exact same thing: There it was, there was the explosion.

***

A CONTINUATION OF BETH AND THE 'STRANGER'...

[ AN HOUR BEFORE ]

Beth didn't breathe until she heard the door close behind him.

She'd been holding her breath for a long time now, like a kid swimming underwater. 

She'd been keeping her head down for as long as she could, kicking wildly with her legs and watching the world as it was fractured by the water above. 

That's what the world felt like today: like everything was warped and unfamiliar. Even Mark's face had looked different to her today, even the sky and even her peeling, aching hands.

She caught her breath as she saw the familiar face appear from beneath the umbrella. It was a pale moon amongst an overshadowed and skewed world. She squinted through Charlie's old Ray-Bans and wondered whether it was just the sunglasses that made everything so dark today.

"I thought you were going to leave me with blue balls."

It was a chipper greeting that didn't quite fit the setting. 

Beth could feel her smile tremble, her muscles threatening to fall through on her as a symptom of the exhaustion that was still locked in her bones. 

She had to clasp her hands to stop them from shaking–– her conversation with Mark had bitten straight down to the bone. The eyes behind these glasses were sore and had flushed with tears too many times in the past twenty-four hours.

"Sorry," said the newcomer, "I got paged."

Beth tried to tell her that it was okay, that she understood, but she became rigid with a cough that threatened to tear the sunglasses straight off of her nose. 

Her whole mouth was numb from nicotine, blood-tingling very slightly as the cigarette drew a battlefront against the methadone and the lingering bite of the painkillers. 

The stranger stepped under the shelter, brow creasing at the sound of Beth's lungs threatening to collapse in her own chest––

"Are you–"

"No," She waved her away, "No, don't worry, I'm fine."

"Don't you––"

"Meredith."

The eldest Grey gave her a look that told her she severely doubted that Beth was fine in the slightest. 

It was a side-eye, executed as she shook out her umbrella and gestured for the Montgomery to move over, clearing space for her to sit. Beth did so with a hazy smile, feeling the energy in her burn into a very slight smoulder.

"I like the suit."

Beth looked down at her dress pants, smoothing out the fabric.

 The navy was slightly dotted with the rain, her heels already slight from the damp and dirt that had been brought in by the storm. It was the sort of thing she'd thought she'd save for a nice conference, maybe a fancy work dinner–– and yet there she'd been this morning, spending three very long and exhaustive hours, attempting to get in the mind of a human resources executive and piecing together an outfit for her hearing.

"Thanks," She said, gently brushing ash away, "I figured I needed to look more put together today."

"You do," Meredith said genuinely. She nodded towards the shoes too. "Those look uncomfortable."

"I can't feel my toes," was Beth's response, a slight smile picking at the corner of her mouth. She looked down at them, twisting her feet around so she could stare down at the glossy red heels. Then a realisation hit her and she snorted to herself. "I stole these from one of Mark's affairs in the early 2000s... she escaped through the window and we happen to have the same shoe size."

"I bet they make your calves look great."

"They do," The psychiatrist remarked with a dizzy grin, but then the air came rushing out of her with a slight sigh. She deflated. Her smile faded. "I mean, not quite what I imagined I'd be wearing today but... I guess nothing has really... y'know... turned out how I thought it would with the whole..."

Beth trailed off, making a dismissive noise that didn't really mean anything.

"Oh," Meredith watched as Beth fidgeted with the bottom of sleeve, her brow furrowing as she remembered what she'd been told over a very short message. Her fingers were still shaking very slightly; Meredith stared at the tiny, giveaway "Do you... do you want to talk about it?"

Beth just shook her head, knowing that if she had to explain it to another person, she might just lose her damn mind. Her foot twitched, whole body aching as she forced herself to sit upwards.

 Everything in her was itching to subside, bones begging to break and muscles eager to tear. 

She buried her teeth into her bottom lip and stilled completely, concentrating on the feeling of her heart pounding against her chest.

No, she didn't want to talk about it.

"Okay," Meredith said, not pushing any further. She understood, "Uh, was that Mark? Was that Mark who was just..."

The surgeon absently glanced in the direction she'd seen him leave in. 

(She'd been able to recognise him from a mile away, even through the gloom and the rain. It was the whole image in front of her that had given him away: the navy scrubs, the slightly stooped posture that was angled towards the psychiatrist and the awkward distance between them. It was as if he'd been constantly intending to leave but had never been able to bring himself to. Meredith had been surprised at the sight of him, far more accustomed to seeing her in spaces with her sister than with Beth.) 

The brunette beside her nodded, crossing one leg over the other in a bid to let herself feel something other than the cold.

"He was just checking on me," Beth said, and then realised how fucked it sounded once it was out there. She didn't need the glance that Meredith shot her out of the corner of her eye, to know that it wasn't a normal thing to say. A long, sordid chuckle fell through her lips, "And if you think that's the weirdest thing that's ever happened, you should've really seen the day I had yesterday––"

She wished she could stop joking. She really fucking wished she could stop joking. It would've made her life so much easier. Every time she felt a laugh fall through these chapped, bloodied lips, Beth felt a part of her die inside.

"It's Derek, isn't it?"

Meredith's mention of her own husband made Beth's jaw clench. 

She couldn't remember when the reaction to Derek's name had become that: the feeling of reproach that bubbled at the back of her throat like acid reflux. 

It was actively uncomfortable. It made Beth want to plug her ears and plead the fifth–– but she turned her head towards the woman she supposed, in a wretched way, was her sister-in-law. The bloodlines had always gotten blurry when the family felt like this.

"He came home late last night," Meredith said. 

She didn't seem to need an answer from Beth, just faced the storm and spoke to the side. The Montgomery listened to her, feeling less of a need to perform in front of a woman who seemed as dark as her. Beth leant against the back of the shelter, letting her lungs throb with the pain she'd been denying them all morning. 

  "He was drunk..." She said, "I figured that something must've happened at work..."

Bitterly, the psychiatrist smiled.

"I happened."

Meredith squinted up at the sky, "Did you punch him again?"

"Hm," Beth mused, "I'm working on it."

She couldn't exactly put into words what she'd do to Derek right now if she saw him. 

"What did he do?" Meredith asked although Beth could tell that she didn't particularly want to know the answer. The Grey woman looked over at her and Beth could feel her studying her profile, taking account of every detail and every emotion that flickered across the psychiatrist's face. "Was it–"

"A few things," Beth said, although saying 'a few' felt like an understatement. Then she felt the weight as it threatened to crush her chest. She looked over and met Meredith's eye. "I think he told Mark."

Something shifted behind Meredith's eyes. Beth watched it move. 

Those eyes flickered from one of hers to the other, studying the implication behind those words: I think he told Mark.

 Beth didn't have to say it. Meredith knew exactly what she meant.

"I know when Mark lies," Beth murmured, the reality of everything hitting her as she sat on a rain speckled bench in downtown Seattle. Behind these sunglasses, her eyes were glassy again, the impulse to speak becoming harder as Meredith, very tenderly, reached out and placed a hand on her knee. "He said that he didn't tell him but... but I can tell. I mean," Beth gestured to her feet, "Look at these fucking shoes, of course, I fucking know what it looks like when Mark lies––"

He was a good liar. They had that in common. She knew what it looked like when he hated her and she knew what it looked like when he lied. 

Everything in between was blurry. It was the only definitive thing Beth had been able to establish about the past weekend.

"Do you think he...?"

"It's Derek," Beth said between her teeth, feeling sorry for a woman who had gotten caught up in Derek Shepherd's storm. "It's what he does. It's what he always does."

Meredith seemed to digest that. It must've been bitter to taste. 

It pained Beth to say it, to bring forwards this part of the man she loved that Meredith clearly hadn't anticipated. 

She was sure that Derek's proclivity to hurting the people he cherished for the greater good, had never come up in his dating profile.

"I'm sorry, Beth."

The apology was faint and Beth refused it. 

It was so soft and genuine and made her heart skip in her chest while simultaneously breaking. 

She shook her head and reminded Meredith that Derek was a grown-ass adult who could make grown-ass decisions, callously cruel or not–– It was with that thought that Beth was reminded of why Meredith had messaged her.

"You said you want to talk?" Beth said, changing the subject away from the elusive man and towards something that didn't make her want to tear her hair out. Her whole body was already itching for a cigarette so she dug her fingernails into her thighs, pressing beyond the fabric. "You said you, uh, you said you needed some help with something––"

A dry laugh fell past Meredith's lips.

"It seems stupid now."

Beth's brow furrowed.

"No," She said and willed herself into some sense of professionalism. Beth shook her head over and over, attempting to manoeuvre herself into the position of the mediator, of the fixer. She cleared her throat. "No, don't... it's uh, pretend I didn't say anything–"

"What else did Derek do?" Meredith asked, and Beth held her eye through those dark sunglasses lenses. The woman looked tired as if she'd already had a full workday despite the hour. "That wasn't the worst thing, was it?"

"Meredith, I don't think–"

"He was really drunk," was all that Meredith said, "He was really, really drunk–"

Beth pressed her lips together.

She didn't want to say it. 

As much as she hated Derek, she didn't hate his marriage. 

He'd built something good for himself, something that she'd failed to build three times over. Meredith had been nothing but kind and accommodating to her. She was not the type to emotionally burden the wife and expect her to fight all of her battles. 

Yet, there it was, that edge in Meredith's gaze; it was a challenge, it was a silent invitation to let her know, to let her carry it, and Beth felt her tongue unravel from the back of her throat and sighed.

"He may have..." 

She didn't know how to word this. She looked away, back over the parking lot and rolled her eyes, shaking her head as if she didn't know how to hold still. 

"He may have..." Beth grimaced, "Jeez, okay... he might have called the board on me."

"Jesus."

"He thinks it's for the best," Beth continued, slightly sickened by the fact that she was defending his judgement call. "He thinks that he's... he thinks that I'm not okay and, in all fairness, I'm not exactly chipper this morning–"

"He did it, again, didn't he?"

Beth sighed.

"Yeah," She said, in reference to how, without fail, Derek seemed to take her career from her every time. "Yeah, he did." But then she thought of Charlie and grimaced. "Although he can't really take all the credit for it this time."

"What do you need?"

That was all Meredith said. 

It was exactly as Mark had packaged it, an open hand, an open question for whatever Beth needed. 

She blinked at it, slightly surprised at how many times she'd been asked it today–– Amy had said it as they'd sat there in the early hours of the morning watching the sunrise. She'd looked over at Beth and she'd asked if Beth needed anything, whether it was a getaway car, a glass of water or complete and utter oblivion. 

Two out of three times, Beth had responded with a cracked smile and an insistence that everything was fine, that she couldn't think of everything and that she was content the way she was.

This time, however, this time felt different.

"Meredith," Beth said, a dent appearing between her eyes, "You're the one who asked me for help–"

"I know," The surgeon interjected almost dismissively, "I thought I was having a crappy morning but clearly you weren't lying about your weekend."

Sluggishly, Beth shrugged, "Well, yeah, it's been a long few days, but–"

"So, what do you need?"

"I don't need anything––"

"Oh, don't give me that crap," Meredith retorted.

Beth's eyebrows twitched above the sunglasses, head turning to stare at the eldest Grey sibling with a complete surprise at her tone. 

It was sharp, precise, just like a scalpel against the skin stretched underneath a lit gurney in the OR. For a moment, when Beth blinked, she saw Lexie standing before her. 

The Greys and Montgomery's were more alike than she'd realised–– the women all had fire in their blood.

"Are you high?" was Meredith's next question.

The brunette just stared at her, her heart in her mouth.

"Are you high?" She repeated.

Beth shook her head. It was a tiny gesture as if she was worried that her head would fall off.

God, she wished.

"Then what do you need?"

"Meredith–"

"When you came to Seattle, I told you that you were family," The words felt genuine but well-paced as if Meredith had rehearsed them over and over in case of an emergency. All Beth could do was sit there and listen to her recite it. "I'm sorry that Derek is being a crappy brother. If I could change that I would... but I can't, so all I can do is kick his ass for you... if you need it. But I don't think that's what you need because you're perfectly capable of doing it on your own. So what do you need? Tell me. Tell me because if you're not high then I can't think of a single valid reason for you to lose your career."

Their fire was the same. It really was, Beth could see it now... what had attracted Derek to Meredith like a moth to a flame. He had a type. Meredith could be one hell of an Addison when she needed to be. The sentiment behind all of that... yeah... yeah, it felt almost sisterly.

They stared at each other for a long time, longer than Beth probably even had time for. 

She knew that, by now, she should've been back in that stuffy boardroom with people who just felt bad for her. The thought of it made a sick taste burn at the back of her mouth. No, somehow she'd much rather be in this moment, locking eyes with Meredith Grey as the woman offered to go to war in her own marriage for her.

"Well," Beth's voice was small. How could she follow a speech like that? She didn't know what to do with herself, what to say. Her face struggled to pinpoint the appropriate emotion when all she felt was 'spread very thin'. Her wisecrack was instinctual: "Homicide would be great."

Meredith rolled her eyes, the moment officially dying.

"I'll see what I can do."

The Grey was offered a very small, precarious smile; but when Beth looked at her, she saw Mark as he'd been just moments before. 

The images of the two people crossing and overlapping like photograph negatives stacked in a pile. Beth blinked hastily, struck by the realisation that she'd started to see Mark in everything. Maybe it was just the remnants of their conversation from the night before or insomnia that had whittled her sanity down into its most arcane form.

"If you really want to help," Beth said, finding a serious answer in a chest that had been incapable of anything but a deep, gnawing ache. "I don't know, we just..." She sighed through her nostrils and looked away, "We need something that's going to make the board question Derek's authority. Something that's really just... really going to make them second guess why he wants to keep pushing on this. My lawyer knows that he can sink this and get it to go away... it's just Derek, just like it was in New York. He's not going to let it go."

It was. It was the final hurdle.

"You need something messy?" Meredith asked.

Beth chuckled to herself.

"Something really McMessy," She confirmed in response.

With memories of Seattle feeling like home and the air tasting sweet, Beth missed the way that Meredith seemed to stare at the floor, finding a little thought at the back of her head. It was only when Beth turned to look around at her that she realised that Meredith seemed to have something–– there was this little look in her eye, one that told Beth she'd have exactly what they needed.

The psychiatrist felt her heart almost stop in her chest for the second time.

"What is it?"

Meredith didn't smile as she looked over at her, but she did nod. 

It was slow, solemn and yet there was some hope there. It was dangerously infectious. 

Beth felt a tiny piece of it embed itself in her chest as if to block an artery that had been bleeding constantly for the past day and a half. 

She held her breath as Meredith opened her mouth and spoke, a hesitation within her as a plan very slowly began to form:

"I think we can help each other."