𝙓𝘾𝙄𝙑.
IF I CAN'T HAVE LOVE, I WANT POWER
ALTERNATIVE TITLE: BETH AND DEREK (REPRISE)
──────
TIME FOR DEREK TO GET HIS ASS BEAT! ❤️
as always, derek slander is encouraged in the comments!
rip him to shreds pals x
AS AMELIA WATCHED Dominic Fox leave, destined to accomplish what he hadn't with Beth's surgical career back in New York, she couldn't help but look over towards the plastic surgeon beside her.
She watched him internalise the news that they were no longer needed, that they weren't necessary to whatever intricate plan Dom had pieced together off the back of this new evidence. Her eyes ran across every inch of him, from the jaw that had not unclenched in the past twenty-four hours, to the fists that were balled and stuffed at the bottom of his scrub-pant pockets.
Amy observed him, tongue between her teeth and brow slightly furrowed, realising that out of the two of them, Mark seemed the least relieved about how everything had ended up.
Amy had a personal investment.
She wanted Beth to be okay both out of friendship and a personal interest in thwarting her brother in any other life he ever set out to ruin-- she knew first hand how much of an asshole he could be and the sort of damage he could really inflict on someone.
She didn't want it to happen to Beth, not when she'd just gotten the psychiatrist back into her life. They'd both been doing good, they'd been great. Amy had an interest in getting it back to that point.
But Mark...
He seemed to feel her stare. It was as if she'd already spoken.
She watched his shoulders lower, his face turned away and the cogs in his brain whirr as he looked down at the floor as if to compose himself.
She watched every single little thought as it crossed his mind, every muscle as it ironed itself out and folded in half like newly stacked laundry. She just stood there silently and observed him.
Had he wanted to walk into that room? She couldn't tell.
Had Derek's need to be the hero of every story rubbed off on the man standing beside her? Had Mark wanted to be needed for five goddamn seconds in Beth's life--
Ah.
Oh.
Amy couldn't stop the chuckle from falling past her lips.
Furthermore, she couldn't stop the look of intense joy that overcame her as she watched Mark tense, as if knowing exactly what she was thinking.
She hadn't realised it was possible for his jaw to clench further, but it did; he braced himself as if he was in physical pain.
She wasn't sure whether it was shame, but something was building behind those baby blue eyes that refused to look over at her.
Fuck, she didn't know why she was surprised every time she noticed it.
"Amy..."
"No," She said, shaking her head. She continued to laugh until her lungs were dry. "Don't Amy me. No, Mark. You're so screwed."
This time, he didn't argue.
***
─── The last time she'd been in this office, she'd made him bleed.
Beth didn't consider herself a particularly violent person.
On the contrary, she'd once been peaceful.
She'd grown up with her head full of flowers and idyllic little dreams that she'd kept in keepsake boxes.
She'd once looked at life with such kindness, with optimism, with the sort of feeling in her chest that had brought her to a big city like New York. She'd loved and she'd held people so candidly and tenderly in the palm of her hand--
Now, these hands bled and peeled just like everything else.
She cracked her knuckles as she sat there, lying low in a seat that she was sure had been intended for professional meetings for a professional Chief.
She was alone in the room, eyes wandering over accolades and framed medical journal covers and a shiny nameplate that made him seem proud. What a pretty display it all was.
She had to bury her teeth into her bottom lip to restrain herself from smashing it all.
If she squinted at everything, it almost seemed like a funeral pyre.
A whole life solidified behind sheets of glass. Here lies the life and legacy of Derek Christopher Shepherd, a series of professional achievements and praises. What a self-righteous fucking basta-
The door opened behind her and she couldn't find it within herself to look over her shoulder.
No, she wouldn't turn for him.
As she listened to the click of the office door, the dull thud as he sealed his fate, all Beth could think about was her sister's wedding-- she blinked and she saw Derek as he had stood there, turning back to look over at Addison as she walked down the aisle.
One-step and then another. Beth knew that if she turned to look back at Derek right at this moment, the expression from his face would be far from a blushing bride.
In the short time that it took Derek to cross from the door to his desk, Beth tried to build his face in her mind from memory.
Her mouth went dry when she realised that, no matter how hard she tried, she could only remember it suspended in a grimace of disdain.
Disappointment, by all means, was Derek Shepherd's favourite outfit.
Her fists bunched against the hem of her jacket.
He took his time, of course he did, he had all the time in the world.
The whole world bowed for Derek, the golden boy of a whole universe that seemed built specifically for him. While Beth felt every second of a clock that perpetually seemed to be ticking down towards something, Derek wasn't running out of time.
He made that clear. It seemed to take him a lifetime to stand in front of her.
Beth was all too happy to meet his eye.
She looked directly at him as he held the back of his desk chair.
His hand clenched tightly and she got the memo without even speaking: Oh, he was angry.
About fucking time.
A delicious sense of retribution bloomed throughout her.
Good, be angry.
She wanted Derek pissed off, she wanted his blood boiling to meet her temperature.
She wanted his face to flush, his heartbeat to rise and his whole body to melt under the flame of his temper-- yeah, maybe then maybe he'd feel a fraction of how her day had been going.
"You look like shit."
She chose the subtle strategy to work her way under his skin.
His knuckles were white, grasping the back of his chair as if the floor was unsteady.
She wasn't sure why he was choosing to hold onto it, but she took great delight in realising that he must've really felt unbalanced.
Her brow furrowed slightly as she studied his face, observing the tight lips, the blazing eyes and the gaunt shadow in his cheeks. In all fairness, she hadn't lied.
Derek did look like shit, in fact, he looked worse than shit.
He was a phantom, standing in the centre of his own office, looking as though he was about to jump into one of the surrounding pictures and haunt it.
When he looked at her, he stared right through her too, as if she was a trick of the light.
Her lips twitched.
"Rough morning?"
C'mon Shep, she thought to herself, Burn with me.
The Chief of Surgery didn't speak, he just stared at her until his stare become a glare.
She enjoyed watching it change, although it wasn't quite as graceful as summer into fall. No, it was the darkening of the muscles in his face as she appeared so nonchalant and almost go-lucky.
"I, personally, have had a really crap morning," Beth said, speaking frankly as she subconsciously fiddled with the engagement ring on her finger.
Her head inclined at his slightly dishevelled appearance, the creases in his shirt and the bloodshot blur to his eyes.
"If you really want to compare, you should've seen the last twenty-four hours of my life--"
"What did you do?"
From the way Derek said it, Beth knew that he'd been waiting a while to say it.
If she had to give a ballpark estimate, she would've said twenty minutes or so, the exact amount of time it'd been since Dominic Fox had exploded into a room and made the universe nebulise in response.
He chipped it out between teeth that, if she hadn't known better, she would've thought were broken.
She watched his face twist and his shoulders tense.
His grasp on the chair grew harder.
Giving him a sweet smile, Beth just continued, "I didn't really sleep last night," She said, completely surpassing his question. "You know how it is, right? Just... head full of thoughts and the crushing reality of life just... just all on top of you--"
"What the fuck did you do, Beth?"
Oh, that was a nice surprise.
She couldn't remember the last time she'd heard Derek swear.
Sometimes, Beth forgot that it was even something he was capable of-- just like this, like the heat of his anger, his frustration and everything that came with it.
She couldn't help the smile that began to linger, her head tilting the side as she looked at him, really looked at him.
Those narrowed eyes, the slight curl to his lip and the body-wide tension that showed her he was really trying his best to stay calm.
"What do you mean?"
Her head tilted to the side.
If Derek thought that Beth was going to play nice, she would've severely questioned his sanity.
She couldn't believe that he was asking so many questions, as if she'd answer them in the first place. Her eyebrows raised as she saw him scoff to himself.
Of course she knew exactly what he meant, but she wasn't going to play nice when she felt like she had a mouthful of hot oil.
Beth knew that if she were to break skin, she didn't feel like she'd bleed.
She was made of something different today, not flesh or bones or muscle or tissue-- not any of that biological shit that a surgeon like Derek could break down into.
She was fashioned of something stronger, of something harder-- she was fashioned by the fury that sat inside her chest,.
It elicited a spark in her eye, one that he very clearly did not like.
"What did you say?"
Oh, she really liked that.
She liked the hot flush in his cheeks, the heat in his voice and the way that his gaze burned. She could feel it. It burned.
He was angrier than angry, he was pissed, teeming with it--
God, he didn't know what to do with himself--
He didn't know what to do with all this rage--
"I don't know what you're talking about."
She shrugged.
Beth knew what to do with her anger.
She'd taught herself how to fashion things out of it, let it sit on the bottom of her stomach and make beautiful things.
Her gaze flickered to move a pen on the edge of Derek's desk and she felt the air shift as he moved his jaw. She felt it.
While the heat in her felt like an old, well accomplished and familiar friend, she watched the fire in Derek burn out of control.
"Beth."
He said her name and it reminded her of standing out in the suburbs on the edge of Derek's property as he sulked in the woods.
When she blinked, she saw it: Derek drunk and bloodshot, eyes sluggishly watching her as he held out that beer-- How things had changed.
Now he was drunk and bloodshot, eyes watching her with withheld rage as he grasped the back of his chair.
She could smell the alcohol on him just as she could smell his distaste.
It lingered in the air, clinging to his crumpled suit and even more crumpled disposition.
"Derek," Beth said back, and then she smiled, "You've been misbehaving, haven't you?"
A breathy laugh fell through his lips. She supposed it was supposed to be a warning, the sort of tired exhale that came before hellfire-- Beth saw the ash that came from the flames in his lungs. She got the message.
But she also got the impression that Derek hadn't seen the warning signs either. She'd been flashing red for months now, and she could feel the breaking point on the tip of her tongue.
"Don't--"
"Don't what?"
"Don't do that."
"Do what?"
She raised an eyebrow.
You know better than to provoke me, Beth thought to him, I didn't win the title of Mark's bitchiest ex all for nothing.
She watched his jaw clench, teeth grind and head bob as he looked down at the floor.
He was holding onto his composure.
She watched him grasp it, just as Lexie had held that bloody sheet between shaking fingers. As Beth adjusted her posture in her chair, delicately folding one leg over the other, she took the liberty to give Derek his time to grapple with his sanity.
She adjusted the bottom of her blazer and admired the sheen of her shoes.
"Don't play dumb."
Dumb? Her eyebrow raised.
"I just don't know what you're talking about," She said, and she willed a dent to appear between her eyebrows. A choppy shrug. "I don't know if you notice but my life is a little bit all over the place right now. I can't possibly keep up--"
"Elizabeth."
(For a moment, she was a little girl standing in the foyer of her childhood home. Her father was bellowing across an empty kitchen, Elizabeth, and her bones were shaking.)
Maybe once upon a time she'd been swayed by that tone.
Maybe once she'd paused, a lump at the back of her throat as Derek hunched over his chair and said her name, her full name, like a parent reprimanding their child.
It was said as if it was supposed to accomplish something, as if he thought she cared enough to shy under his brotherly gaze.
Beth just bristled-- her breath did catch at the back of her throat. Her body stilled. But she raised her chin and stared straight at him.
His voice was almost twisted beyond recognition, and she saw it, that dark mirth in his eyes.
He was the man from the woods again, driven to the point of estrangement.
Unlike she had in that forest, she did not hesitate, she did not tremble-- her cheeks hardened and a storm brewed in her brow and she let the niceties melt from the pressure of the last twenty-four hours.
"You're going to have to be more specific," She said, her voice a little sharper this time. Her eyes glimmered with a silent war cry. "Use your big boy words, Derek. I know you have them."
Watching the distaste roll across her face was like watching a storm break.
It started in her mouth, in the scrunch of her lips into a merciless smile, the sort that killed for sport.
Then it rushed through her veins, catching every little muscle like the sky darkening. A finger clenched and then another and another, all into a fist.
Her foot twitched, the temptation of a trigger, and she cleared her throat, the rumble of thunder. Eyes regarded the man across the desk, conniving, venomous, almost a clone of the clouds broiling outside Derek's window.
Two really could play this game.
Beth watched the realisation dawn in that fat head of his.
"You spoke to Meredith," He said, speaking as if the words were sour.
She neither confirmed nor denied.
"You spoke to Mark," was Beth's counter.
She barely even blinked.
He met her eye, the tension in his jaw caused his whole body to strain. Derek was a rubber band, stretched out of shape and to the point of a break-- he was half cast in shadow, a blood vessel trembling in his forehead.
For the third time in the last thirty seconds, Beth almost didn't recognise him.
This was by Derek's design. Wasn't this what he did?
When faced with accusations and the reality of what he'd done, he always took the cheap shots. The delicious thrill seeped into Beth's bones.
Maybe this was fun. Hiding from what you had done, throwing everything back into someone's face... it had a certain panache to it.
"You spoke to the hospital board."
"And you spoke to them too," It was too easy, she found.
This verbal tennis match was evenly squared. He wasn't a particularly intimidating man, but Beth, admittedly, had forgotten how intense he could be. A slightly tired sigh fell past her lips, designed to crawl under his skin and condense there, like a light precipitation. She studied her cuticles.
"What a fun little memory game we're having-"
"You shouldn't have--" Derek began.
"Yeah well," She cut him short, eyes flashing up to shoot him an accusing glare, "We're not going to go into that, are we? Talking about who we shouldn't be speaking to... and what we shouldn't be saying-?"
"You're trying to get out of the mess you've made--"
Beth let out an exasperated breath.
"Jesus! Do you hear yourself? Haven't you got anything better to say?"
(Like an apology?)
No, he wouldn't apologise, that wasn't how he was made.
He was like Amelia, pig-headed and stubborn to a fault. It was their DNA, a genetic path that made him stand his ground.
She wasn't expecting an apology in the same way she hadn't ever brought up Mark and Amy's affair to the youngest Shepherd. It wasn't worth it.
It wasn't going to happen. It was more likely the world would explode in flames or Mark Sloan would candidly say that, if he had to go back to New York and do everything over again, it would have always been her.
Derek didn't respond immediately, he just scowled.
He looked so much like Amelia when he scowled.
Beth had to bite the tip of her tongue to avoid telling him that his sister was in this hospital too, just somewhere out there in this building, and that she just hated him like the rest of them did. How would he feel if he knew that his sister couldn't bear to look him in the eye?
"I can't believe you," Derek said under his breath, and then he shook his head. He let out a miffed laugh, Beth's eyes just narrowed. She watched him pinch the bridge of his nose. "I can't fucking believe you-"
"Believe what?" Beth asked loudly, tilting her head to the side, "That I would report the Chief of Surgery drunk driving this morning to the surgical governing board? That my lawyer would call a very last minute and out of the blue board meeting to reflect on the integrity of their Chief? Shared private information to people of higher professional power-?"
"Elizabeth."
"No," She interjected, her voice thin and serrated like the end of a scalpel, "Don't Elizabeth me."
"You went to--"
"I went to the surgical board ready to get your ass fired," Beth laid it out for him, every syllable, every word. She took great delight in doing it, and even smiled as she continued. Her rhetorical question made stars shine in her eyes. "Sounds familiar, doesn't it?"
He didn't speak, just smoldered.
Like the burning carcass of a village plundered by thieves, Derek Shepherd stood in an office that was built by blood. Surgical blood, spilt blood, the blood of Beth's long dead surgical career.
She wondered how much he'd taken from Mark too.
"Are you crazy?"
Her lip twitched.
"I don't know," She said, and for the first time in a long time, she didn't feel it, "Why don't you tell me? You usually do anyway, right?"
Oh this was so much fun.
She liked watching Derek get agitated.
She really had forgotten how much fun it was to be the problem child. Maybe that's what this was... maybe this was a argue between siblings, the sort that took blood and sweat and inevitable forgiveness-- fuck, what were they kidding, this was Beth.
She was not capable of forgiveness just as Derek wasn't capable of apologising.
It was the flaw in her code and the bitterness between her teeth.
(But she forgave Mark, didn't she?)
"You don't know what you've--"
"What I've done?"
Silly Derek, didn't he remember? Beth had always been good at cutting off lines.
"You don't--"
"I think, from memory," She faked a look of deep introspection, nails digging into her thighs, "I think I... and I might be mistaken... that I've carried through on my threat that things would get very difficult if you told Mark about my pregnancy."
Beth enjoyed the way he paused.
She enjoyed the way that he looked at her, chest heaving as if he were out of breath.
She revelled in the way that he seemed to buffered in a single moment, trapped there like the air in her lungs as she held her breath.
She counted the seconds it took, indulged in the calculation in his eyes and then the realisation. The reckoning.
Oh how it played out a sweet symphony that she wished she could inhale straight into her bloodstream.
"Whatever Mark said--"
"Oh no," Beth shook her head and tutted, taking the time to even chuckle, "Mark covered for you, you know that?"
Derek just stared.
"After years of doing it back in New York, taking the fall for my unemployment, for the shitshow that became my surgical career... he looked me dead in the eye and told me that he'd figured it out," Beth shrugged, "He acted as if he was the world's next Sherlock Holmes and he'd told me that you hadn't said a word--"
"Beth-"
"You've got a very loyal friend there, Derek," The word loyal burned in her mouth like hot candle wax. It dripped out between her lips and stained her clothes, "But, I watched that man fuck his way through Manhattan and tell me he loved me for months." Then she paused and shook her head. "The son of a bitch is terrible at Clue, too."
(It's always been Mark and Derek. They were the sort of powerhouse that had unshakable foundations. They went deeper than just flesh and bone and, no matter how many years she'd been a bystander, Beth failed to understand why.)
(She'd watched Derek take everything from Mark; his peace, his integrity, even, in some way, her. She'd watched Derek raize this house to the ground and for what? For Mark to defend Derek's honour? Protect him?)
(In retrospect, Beth would figure that it was because Derek was the only thing Mark had left. Everything and everyone else had left. Derek's foundations were, indeed, incapable of splintering.)
"What are you saying?" Derek chipped it out between his teeth.
She hoped those molars splintered. For a moment she could imagine herself burying her knuckle in that jaw bone; she reckoned this engagement ring could draw blood.
"What are you--"
"I'm saying fuck you," Beth said, and she said it with a smile, "I'm say fuck your dumb fucking face and dumb fucking hair."
She watched him recoil very slightly.
It was a movement in his neck, a slight flinch that told her that he hadn't expected it-- really? Really? As far as Beth was concerned, that was the nicest thing she could have said.
Her eyebrows raised and she chuckled to herself; oh this was going to get very messy very quickly.
"Beth, you can't just--"
"No, you don't get it!"
She didn't have time for whatever self-righteous bullshit he was about to throw at her. She leant forwards in her chair, hunching over and clasping her hands in front of her as if she were talking to a small child.
"I don't give a rats ass about anything you're going to say. As of twenty-four hours ago, you, Derek Shepherd, were pronounced dead to me," She couldn't have said it more plainly, "Time of death? The exact fucking moment you decided to involve yourself in my life. Again."
"Don't you dare--"
"No, don't you dare," She liked saying no. It was fun. "What gives you the right to--"
"I was concerned, Beth."
"Then you should have come to me, Derek," The tension in her made her voice raise. Frustration was all she could feel. A shit tonne of it, in every pore, in every muscle, in every strand of hair. "The first thing that you should have done was come to me and ask, Derek. Ask me what's going on. I mean-- god knows why you're even involved in this... you're not my boss--"
"Doctor Ballard asked for guidance--"
"Of course," Beth scoffed, the sound choppy and incredulous, "Of course! Hero for hire, aren't you? Some sick fantastical man with a plan who is always saving the day-"
"She wanted help," He said, and he scoffed as if she was acting out of line. She could see it in him, the way that he thought so deeply he was in the right. It made her stomach curdle. "She wanted me to help her. She needed the help-"
"Yeah well," Beth said, her lip curled, "Maybe I needed help too, you ever think of that?"
(It was something that would have a hold on her for a long time.)
(The fact that whenever things had gone wrong back in New York, Addison and Derek had always been her people.)
(Amy, most times, had been too intoxicated to be of any use, but her sister and brother-in-law had appeared so dependable. But they had. Derek had. He'd been the only person who had stuck around, sat with her in her darkest moments and helped. He'd proved himself a good friend and it had instilled a fake sense of security, a belief that he would always be there, always be around to help pick her off the ground and dust her down--)
Beth cleared her throat.
(She'd been wrong.)
"I don't think that's-"
"Of course you don't," Beth said, and her chuckle was bitter, "You never do."
It'd taken her a while to get used to the way Derek Shepherd thought, but now she knew it like the back of her hand.
She knew that when he looked at her and it wasn't kind. She could imagine his idea of who she was, some brutally selfish woman who had thrown two whole careers away, and for what? For this moment? To sit in his office and candidly pretend as if she didn't have hell on her heels? As if.
His gaze wasn't warm. It was cold and wretched, the sort that Beth had once predicted to hide behind Addison's smile.
The youngest Montgomery child watched as Derek seemed to shake his head at the thought of her actually needing help, of things actually being out of her control--
It was funny, really. Wasn't that what addiction was anyway? Behaviour spiralling out of control to the point of destruction and chaos.
"I didn't do this because I enjoy it," He said, and it wasn't said softly. It was sharp and made her muscles ache. "I know it's hard for you to understand, Beth. Believe me when I say that I didn't want it to go like this--"
"And yet it did," was Beth's response, face twisted into a sardonic smile, "Again."
"I am not in the wrong for what I did," Derek believed what he was saying. She could tell. She averted her eyes to the floor and shook her head. "I had to make the hard call--" ("Oh fuck off with all these calls.") "--No, but I did. You forged prescriptions, Beth. Do you know how bad that is?"
She didn't respond.
"Do you know how bad looks for the hospital? For my hospital?" He was irked by her silence, "You forged prescriptions for patients that are now having to go through hell with all of their insurance companies. People have been hurt. Their records have been permanently affected-- You should see all of the paperwork they have over in legal, all of the legal cases that we're being threatened with--"
(A part of her twisted beyond recognition. He said every word with such scathing disappointment and anger, and for a second, Beth wanted more than to correct him. She hadn't done any of those things. She hadn't put all of these patients in jeopardy, she hadn't, actually, caused anyone any harm.)
A muscle jumped in her jaw.
"Ballard needed help," Derek repeated. Beth just wished he'd shut up, "She came to me because you put her in a very difficult position, a very difficult position that's a lot for a new interim Head of Psychiatry. So, I did my job--"
"I didn't realise your job is to share confidential medical information, my bad."
Her interjection went ignored.
"I made the hard call because I'm the Chief," He said, "I made the hard call because this is my hospital and I can't just think about you, Beth. I have staff that I have to think about. I have patients, I have regulations and the press and lawyers breathing down my neck. I had to approach the board because this would not have ended well, Beth. This would not have played out like it did last time. There would have been so much more damage."
It was the sort of speech that Beth could imagine him pre-writing and practising in the mirror. It must've felt good, she could tell from his righteousness.
He said it as if he was some wind-swept hero staring off into the distance, cape flying out behind him and the breeze tousling his hair-- the reality was the sunken eyes staring at her from across a desk and an angry tremble in his hand as he curled his fingers into a fist.
Superiority complex, huh? Beth's head tilted to the side. Consider it my superpower.
But, then she watched Derek's face twist into something spiteful, something agitated.
"You, on the other hand," He said with very clear disgust. Her eyebrows raised. "You had no right to go to the board--"
"I made the hard call," Beth drawled, sitting low in her seat and a smile ruminating in the corner of her lip. Her mocking echo made his mouth pull into a very thin line. She watched the tips of his ears burn and his jaw go slack. "C'mon... you get it... I made the hard call, Chief--"
"It's not your call to make."
"Says who?'
"I do."
"Oh, the Chief," Beth waved her hand in a very insincere bow and stooped her head, "My apologies, your grace--"
"You have broken so many rules--"
"And you have been chatting shit for about a minute and a half now," She remarked, nose scrunching, "Everything you say is just a load of crap--"
"You should never have gotten involved," Derek interjected, the fire in his tone burning over. She could see the flames behind his eyes now-- a wicker effigy burning itself hollow. "It is completely unprofessional for you to have--"
"Oh?" A delicate eyebrow raised alongside her voice.
She found herself getting louder to talk over him, her vocal chords straining with the impulse to fully yell to make him realise what he was saying.
"You want to talk about professionalism?" Beth echoed, "Yeah, let's fucking talk about how unprofessional we are for a fucking second--!"
"It was my personal life--"
"You asshole--"
"I have everything under control--"
"You think getting a DUI is 'under control'?" Beth bit back, a miffed laugh falling past her lips.
It was slightly choked and slightly hysterical, her face flushing red as she struggled to comprehend what he'd just said. A mocking dent appeared between her eyebrows and she feigned thoughtfulness.
"Let's ask Amelia how she feels about that, huh--?"
"That was different--"
"No!" Beth shook her head, "This feels pretty fucking familiar to me--"
"Amelia was--"
"An addict, right?" Her eyes gleamed with hellfire, "Let's think about it-- Set the scene: New York, two years before I arrived. She was drunk and high and crashed your Dads car."
"Beth--"
"Arrested right there, no injuries, no one harmed, just a fender bender in downtown Manhattan. She broke a fire hydrant and backed up traffic all around the World Trade Centre," Beth kept going despite his attempt to interuppt her, "She used her one phone call to call you, Derek. You. You refused to pick her up from the precinct, let her rot in jail for a few days to get sober. She was an addict. Apparently, when people have those words associated with them, they don't deserve respect... or dignity... or any sort of care. But with you..."
An interval to shake her head before she continued. A cathartic laugh.
"With you, Derek Shepherd," She balanced his name on her tongue like a marksman balancing their sword. "With you, it's different."
"It is," He said, and she could see the discomfort rise in him. It was as if he couldn't stay still, his muscles clenching and his skin broiling as she inched closer and closer to his extracurricular activities. "Don't say this is the same. It's not the same. Amelia needed help. She needed the wake-up call. She put people in danger--"
(Oh, what a death sentence it was to be compared to an addict.)
"Of course it's different," Beth mocked with a scoff, "How could I forget the whole world bows for Derek Shepherd? For the centre of the fucking universe. The one man who can do nothing wrong-- Totally not drunk on a Monday morning after a pre-work joyride with the police--"
"I am fine, Beth."
"Derek, fucking look at yourself," Beth chipped back, her lip curling, "It's not even 1pm and you're drunk. I can smell the liquor from here."
She could. For a woman like her, the smell of alcohol was unmistakable. It was a poison, the sort that she could smell a mile away-- her poison might have been wine, shiraz in particular, but Derek? Just from the smell of him alone, she could tell that whiskey was his one and only paramour.
He wasn't fine.
Beth took her bottom lip between her teeth, drawing mental parallels between herself and the man sitting across from her.
He really did look like shit. Crappy shit, the sort of shit that Beth had watched past through rehabilitation clinics like wanton spirits, looking for vengeance after death (that'd been the sort of stuff Mark had insisted on watching on their movie nights back in New York, Beth wasn't entirely sure why it came to her now.)
When she inhaled, she truly could smell the dirt and the leaves and the petrichor of a forest, all alongside that pungent odour of whisky. When she blinked, she could see him, a hand outstretched with a beer bottle clutched in his hands. An invitation.
(Derek wasn't fine. Not one bit. None of them were.)
"Was the cop nice?"
"What?"
Derek glowered at her, caught off-guard by the change in subject. Beth's gaze dropped to her hands, thumb running over the diamond in her engagement ring.
"I mean he must've been nice, right?" She said, shrugging. The rock was hard to the touch. She wondered if it would cut her if she applied enough pressure. "I can imagine you picked up quite a lot of speed. What... like...? 90? 100? Burning rubber up Route 99, right?"
"Beth..."
His voice was low again, like a warning. It was a red flag. Luckily, red had always been Beth's favourite colour. (How could it have not been? She, herself, was a walking red flag too.)
"Answer me this, Chief," She dictated every word so succinctly, taking ample time to make out every letter, every syllable. "What differs a man from a woman?"
"Beth, I'm not going to play your game--"
Her head raised and she shrugged a second time, "Not a game, just an honest question--"
"I don't have time for your stupid questions--"
"I'm just thinking out loud," Beth said, and her slow, easy tone seemed to irk him. She'd mastered it over the years, the ability to fluctuate in her anger, use it as a force rather than a nuisance. Montgomery rage was cute like that. "Just trying to come up with an answer... just trying to... I don't know? Figure out where this difference between you and Amy is."
She watched his jaw slacken.
"Don't you dare--"
Beth tsked through her teeth, "Whoops, I think I just did."
"You're out of line--"
"Oh, shit, sorry," She didn't sound sorry, "I forgot... you don't have a drinking problem right now, do you?"
"Beth--"
"You're totally not currently addicted to alcohol, right?" The sarcasm was leached out of her pores by the thunder on his brow. A flash of lightning raced past the window to their left. "Because you don't return home every night drunk off of your ass to the point where this morning your wife... Your wife, approached me asking if I could recommend any decent rehabilitation clinics for short term habitual alcoholism--"
"You have no idea what's happening in my personal life--"
"I can make a very vague guess," She said dryly, "I can make a ballpark estimate and say that you're suffering from a post-traumatic stress disorder and... Oh, I don't know... reliving the moment where Gary Clark raised his gun and pointed it directly in your face and reeled off some... god-awful... villain monologue? And then shot you... shot you point blank--"
She didn't take delight in watching his whole body clench. It didn't take the years of psychiatry training for her to tell when he was gripped by it-- she could tell, as she spoke, that the image visited him with her description. His eyes glazed over slightly and he went stiff, his shoulders raising, his pupils dilating. Beth just sunk in her chair, watching him tepidly, guilt in her chest as she thought about all the damage he was filled with.
(Despite her rage, she was never cruel. Her compassion had a heartbeat, and it slammed against her ribcage with a deafening beat.)
Derek's fingers went white as they grasped the edge of his desk.
"Trauma is a funny thing," Beth said. Her mouth was dry. "It does a lot of shit to a person. A lot more than just an aortic tear or... or a collapsed lung... a lot that the eye can't see." Derek couldn't meet her gaze. "But you can still feel it, right? Feel it right there... like the gun is still right in front of you..."
"Don't."
His voice was hushed. He looked pale, paler than before. He was staring over her shoulder, his jaw set in what she could only assume was a very uncomfortable position. Those blue eyes swum with a lot more than just rage; there was a fight or flight there too. She recognised it just as she recognised her own.
"I won't," She was telling the truth. Although, she was more sure that she couldn't. (It wasn't just his trauma.) "Just like you won't... just like the bottom of that whisky bottle. It's pretty nice down there, isn't it? Warm, drowsy, you stop thinking about things and... and life just gets so much easier--"
Her dry mouth was beginning to feel a whole lot more like thirst. She swallowed, but her body ached in response.
"Beth."
"And then the adrenalin," Beth forced herself to keep speaking, to will her eyes to light up, "The upper. It's the feeling of it... it cancels out all the bad... that rush... the feeling of all that speed as you press the accelerator... 80mph, 90mph... the drinking... the coke... the urge to do it all over and over and over so you feel different and shiny and better--"
"Elizabeth."
He chipped her name out in the same way that someone would spit out broken teeth. She imagined the blood between his lips, the reel from a blow, the knockout, the sweat. This time, Beth didn't need to use physical violence.
"We're not different..."
If she had to assign herself a colour, in that moment, she would have been colourless. She would have been void. If she was red by design, in this moment she was crystal clear. Her voice was just sharp, her manner was cold.
"You, Amy, me," She listed them one by one, "We all have these things that we carry with us. Amy's trauma was watching her Dad die when she was a kid. Her coping mechanism was drugs. It sucks ass and there's no correct way to deal with it... but, take it from me, the high is great, but you're gonna crash."
He finally looked at her. When he did, a roll of thunder shook the room in a way that was almost cinematic. It wasn't planned, nor was it divinely timed, but either way, Beth knew she would remember Derek's gaze for a while-- it was the sort that would burn into her retinas. Leave a lasting scar. It was the hate in it. The undeniable potency of his resentment.
Wow, Beth's lip twitched. She finally knew how it felt to be Amy.
The problem was, she wasn't wrong.
In fact, in her purse by her feet, she had a series of brochures from rehabilitation clinics in the area. Meredith, too, had agreed to help Beth on the condition that Beth would recommend some places. Beth intended on giving those recommendations personally. She'd just gotten sidetracked, caught up in the way that her blood boiled like the scathing douse of napalm.
"Derek, you could've killed someone," She was awfully composed for a woman who felt like she was on fire, "Amy got lucky that she just hit a fire hydrant. With you, it could have got really messy."
(She paused. The mental image of Charlie crashing their car flashed across her mind, resonating with the coarseness in her throat.)
"This isn't about me."
Of course, it wasn't. It never was.
That was Derek's whole strategy; dragging the rug out from under their feet, throwing them under the bus without ever admitting what was happening. Beth had watched it play out, live, in front of her-- how he'd spun him telling Mark her secrets into a long dark passage in which her body had flushed with a feral urge to rip him into ribbons with her fingernails.
It wasn't about Derek. It was never about Derek. It was only about their failures, and their failures alone.
"I am not Amelia," He said it so feverishly and she hoped he felt like he was burning, "I am not you. This isn't about me--"
"It never is," Beth said, appearing so tired so suddenly, "You're just perfect, aren't you?"
"This isn't about me," Derek repeated (as if Beth hadn't got the memo the first or second time.) "This is about you--"
"Are you not tired?" She asked, gesturing to his hunched form, "Is this not exhausting? This feels exhausting."
"It's about you going to the board to divert the attention from what you've done wrong--"
"It's a smart strategy, right?" The most beautifully condescending smile bloomed across her face. Light danced in her eyes. She shot him a wink. "I learnt from the best. Thanks for the tip, Shep."
"You won't get out of this--"
"I don't think you have a lot of say on that anymore," was what she drawled in return. Her smile didn't waver. "If I'm not mistaken... you're no longer a deciding factor in my hearing. They said that I can have it in a few months and my lawyer actually says he thinks we're in with a good chance of getting a fairly decent outcome--"
"So you've used me as what?" Derek spat, his voice thick with distaste, "A pawn?"
"Pretty much," Beth shrugged, "Sucks, doesn't it?"
He just glowered at her.
"Don't look so down, Derek," was what she said next, "I just returned the favour you did for me. You reported me to the hospital board, to the DEA, so I did the same. I figured that they wouldn't be happy to hear that their golden boy has been having sleepovers with the cops. I just did exactly what you did to me. We're the same, Derek. We've always been the same--"
"You had no right."
"Because I don't have a big office?" She asked, an eyebrow raising as she gestured around to this room. "Because I don't have some big scary job title to hide behind-- are you forgetting you weren't important last time? That you just inserted yourself in? That you went out of your way to ruin my fucking life. What was you excuse then?"
"It's different this time."
"Yeah," Beth said, her lip curling, "You should have come to me. You should have spoken to me, Derek. You shouldn't have just organised my public execution-- Believe me, if you'd spoken to me first, this would all be different."
It would have been.
If he'd just phoned her, if he'd just had a moment of hesitation, if he'd given her the benefit of the doubt... Beth hadn't been able to wrap her head around it, the thought that if he'd just communicated it, she might have been able to handle this.
She might have organised something better, been able to think clearly and methodically about Charlie. Imagine it: Derek, for once, being on Beth's side instead of against her.
(If only she'd been given the heads up... if only she'd had time to think everything through... maybe this wouldn't hurt so bad.)
"Don't do that," Derek said, and he appeared so cruel in his anger. A scoff fell past his lips. He shook his head. "You can't do that Beth. Don't pin this on me. This is the consequences of your actions. You chose to write those prescriptions. There was no other way this was going to go--"
"I'm an adult, Derek," She said back, with far more desperation for him just to listen than anger, "I can handle this shit myself--"
"Can you?" He asked, "Because it sure as hell doesn't look like it. You've caused nothing but pain and destruction. You've ruined lives--"
Her heart throbbed.
"Let's not talk about ruining lives, Chief."
Beth held his gaze. She held it long enough for him to see the thousands of meanings behind it-- one stuck out amongst the others. Gary Clark.
She broadcasted his name loud and clear in every pore and every thought-- She hoped he could hear it. Did he not feel guilty? He'd pulled the plug and so many people had died--
So many-- His staff-- His hospital-- Friends.
That seemed to push him over the edge.
"Look at you," Derek scoffed, "This is what you do. You run away, every time."
Beth did not look away, despite how much his words reminded her of a conversation she'd had so long ago. Mentally, she was standing in that elevator again, fresh in Seattle, feeling out of place as Mark Sloan's lip curled at her.
"You're just a scared little girl," Derek said, "You're just a kid, Beth. Some reckless addict running away from the consequences of your own actions... and to hell with everyone else, right?"
She couldn't swallow the lump at the base of her throat.
"--and the thing is, you never learn," Derek's continuation felt like the repetitive swing of an executioner's axe. "You never learn. All you do is hurt people over and over, and then you have the audacity to be mad at me for doing something about it--"
Beth's heart was beating erratically in her chest.
She felt sick.
Her head echoed with it, with the sentiment of a kid, a scared kid, a kid who would do anything to survive. Kicking and screaming. Maybe she was that kid. Maybe he was right.
Maybe Beth was stuck in this headspace, of a kid who had been pushed aside and walked over too many fucking times to even... God, she hated that he killed a little part of her with every word.
"What about you?" She asked, her voicec strained, "What about you hurting me-?"
"Don't change the subject--"
Wasn't that what they'd been doing back and forth for the past few minutes?
"You had no fucking right to tell Mark," Beth sounded angry again, but she sounded more than that. She sounded hurt. So deeply, so fatally. "You had no right to go through my private medical records-- to tell him about the bab--"
"I did what was best."
She could barely hold in her scoff: "Best? Best my ass."
"It's Mark, Beth," And his voice dropped to something more attentive, as if he was the soft and gentle one. There was this look in his eye too, a slightly condensing glimmer that did not settle well with her. "You know him. You know what it meant to him-- You must've known what it would do to him--"
(A pressure built in her chest. It was halfway between heartbreak and divine misery. If she had to describe the affect of Derek's words, she would've said that he, for a fleeting moment, had her in an invisible chokehold. She was rendered breathless, throat tight and eyes slightly bugged. It was a jaw-breaker moment, the sort that reduced her whole body to tiny fractures--)
Beth cleared her throat.
(Fuck, maybe she was choking. Maybe she'd been choking for so many years that she'd mistaken it for breathing. Maybe this feeling, this crunch of her bones and the tremble of her heart-- Maybe this was all just a slow death. A long, prolonged, death where her throat was bloody and bruised and Beth figured she had nothing left to bleed. She held Derek's eye until she couldn't, until she had to rip herself from his hold to breathe.)
For the record, Beth did know. She knew Mark, she knew him like she knew the back of her hand.
She'd carried this weight for five years.
"I did," She said it quietly. Tenderly. Subdued. Her cheeks ached. She kept her eyes caught on the table, stuck on Derek's name emblazoned on a plaque. "I knew exactly what it would do to him. I knew exactly what it would..."
Derek was staring at her, peeling her skin back to the bone. Beth wondered if she looked pretty distressed-- was it a good colour for her?
No, this was too much. This was far too fucking much. She didn't want to... No.
God, she really had known what it would do to him.
She really had-- There was a reason behind her silence, behind the money she'd thrown at Dom and the lengths she'd gone for it to be buried. She wasn't senseless. She might have been petty but she wasn't callously cruel.
"You should have told him yourself."
She didn't like how casually he said it, as if it was that easy.
Beth was trying not to let her despair breakthrough-- she was fighting so hard to be stoic, to be emotionless and cold. But, her eyelids chased the ceiling, blinking as she tried not to cry for the second time in twenty-four hours.
"I'm not stupid," Beth said, and her saliva was thick, making her voice clog her airways and almost, physically this time, choke her. She sounded scathing. She sounded hurt. "I knew what you both thought of me--"
"Beth--"
"I know who I was in New York," Beth continued despite the interruption, "It wasn't that easy. I couldn't just say it... I wouldn't... I couldn't just..." Her voice faltered and a grimace creased in the most painful corners of her face, "I didn't want to hurt him, Derek. I didn't want... I didn't want to use that to hurt him. No matter how I'd said it, it would've come across that I was spiteful. I couldn't do that."
It was true. No matter whether or not Derek believed her, it was true. She hadn't wanted to hurt him.
(She had used many things against Mark Sloan, but that? That was one thing she had refused to weaponise.)
She didn't want to cause anyone pain. She didn't... She couldn't-- She just-- No, this had all gone to shit.
She cleared her throat again.
"You had no right to tell him," It was as if it was the one sentence on loop in her brain, the bait that dragged her out of a tiny space at the back of her head. Suddenly, she was breathing back her emotions and leaning forwards, tears being traded for the bitterness at the back of her throat. "You should not have been in my personal records--"
"He had a right to know--"
"It really should be your ass on the line in there, not mine--"
"This isn't--"
"I had my reasons," Something seared through her chest, she couldn't name the emotion. "Did you not stop for a second and think that maybe I had a fucking reason?"
At this point, Beth wasn't sure whether Derek thought about anything at all.
"You should have never opened that medical file," Reusing his old rhetoric against him felt right. "You have no reason to get involved in my personal life... it was unprofessional and unacceptable. You have no place in my private life--"
"I'm your family."
"Oh, I'm sorry," Beth said, her tone cracked and eyes blazed with fire. Her sarcasm "I thought you were the Chief."
Once upon a time, Derek had been the only person in the world she'd thought cared about her.
His familial love had been another drug, another addiction that had kept Beth in place, kept her docile and oblivious to what was going on behind the scenes.
She could feel it turning rotten inside of her, the core of an apple blackening through-- when she scoffed and shook her head, Beth knew that whatever friendship they'd had, whatever codependent bullshit that Derek had built around them, was long in the dust.
He seemed to exist only within those two passing seconds following those words.
A brutal beat of silence that made Beth's hairs raise as if from an static current.
She held his gaze, jaw set and face slightly twisted, beyond calm and beyond petulant. She wondered if, when Derek looked at her, he even recognised her for what she was.
(A woman who was so close to the edge that she was holding on with the tips of her fingers.)
"You divorced my sister," Beth said, and she cleared her throat as if to clear debris and damage, "You ruined my surgical career. You cut every single tie with my family... you have no right to say it... you have no right..."
How fucking dare he.
"I was there for you," Derek said, and it was the verbal equivalent of holding onto floating debris with his finger tips. (Beth was momentarily caught up in the fantasy of watching him drown.) "When Archer wasn't... when Mark wasn't. I have always been there for you, Beth. I'm only doing what's best for you--"
"You were only there so you could satisfy your sick need to be the hero," Beth replied, her lip curling in spite, "Don't kid yourself, Derek, you're only doing this for yourself. If you only knew what was going on right now, you would know that this isn't the best--"
"Stop making excuses!" He all but yelled it.
She wondered what people heard outside of this room.
Did Tanya, his secretary, feel it? Did passing doctors? Patients? Were they aware of the massacre that was currently happening between twice-broken siblings? Or was it only loud in this single office.
"What if I said it was Charlie?"
It was impulse that made her say it. Her voice raised with rage and hellfire, so much that the brown in her eyes smouldered and boiled over into the whites.
"What if I looked you in the dead in the eye and told you that this is all one big cover up--" She said, before she could stop herself," That as we speak, Charlie is being admitted to rehab-- that for months he's been forging my signature, that he's been taking all of this shit and he broke all these laws--"
Crap.
Beth cut herself short. This wasn't what she'd--
No, this was Mark all over again. She didn't want to expose Charlie. This was all to protect him. All of this. Every decision she'd made over the past twenty-four hours was specifically to stop Charlie from getting tied up in all of this. And all for what? For Beth to shout it out in a moment of fury and rage and--
Question: She didn't know what was worse. What would be worse? Derek not believing her or him taking her for her word and all of this falling directly on Charlie's lap--
"You're fucking unbelievable."
Answer: Derek Shepherd not believing her one bit.
(The flame within her was snuffed out.)
There was no hesitation.
There was no whimsical game show music to fill in a silence-- he didn't even take a breath or a moment to think about it.
She watched the scoff, the venom fill his cheeks and the way his head jerked back as if he couldn't have expected anything less. He was so outlandishly hateful, just in that one movement.
He was cruel and he was unkind and the thought of it almost bought tears to her eyes.
It reminded her of how Mark had shook his head, disappointment and contempt written across his face: You can't do this, Beth, Not Now. Your relapse isn't his fault.
(Beth was surprised at how much it hurt her. Both of them. She stood there, feeling so heavy and barren. She'd just told the truth with blood rushing in her ears, and Derek hadn't even taken a second to consider whether it was true. At least Mark had thought about it, at least he'd taken a moment to--)
She shook her head.
"No," Beth said, and her voice was hoarse as if it was a match that had burned all the way through, "No, you're the... Fuck, Derek, what the fuck are we doing to each other?"
It was crazy. This was crazy. This wasn't--
"You're doing what you always did back in New York," He was still enraged, still full of this feeling that Beth didn't have the energy to be intimidated by. "You're letting people down and you're still hurting people--"
She closed her eyes fleetingly, tempted to massage her head, "And that still didn't mean that I should have lost everything, Derek. It's called having a bad fucking year, it's not enough to get someone's whole life stripped away from them--"
"You could have killed a patient," Derek said, "Both then and now. You could have killed someone--"
"You're doing what you did in New York, too," She interjected with no particular emotion, "You're setting all of your personal relationships up in flames. You ruined your marriage, your relationship with Amelia, wrecked it with Mark and god..."
A slight laugh as Beth shook her head and finally pressed than palm to her forehead.
"You've lost me, Derek," She said, "You lost me like I lost my surgical career-- and just like you with that whole shitshow... I'm not going to fucking apologise for it. Not for going to the board... Not for giving you a wakeup call--"
"I don't need a--"
"No, no you do," It was almost comedic, "Look at yourself, Derek. Really, look at yourself. You've lost everyone you care about... You fucking take Mark for granted. I don't think he even fucking hesitated before taking the fall for you... He deserves so much better than whatever crappy friendship you give him now. He deserves more than being the whatever-Destiny's-Child-to-your-Beyonce. Mark Sloan isn't second best to you, not by a long shot."
Derek didn't speak. He just stood in rage and in silence.
Well, if he insisted she continued, it would be certainly rude not to.
"You're going to lose this career too," Beth gestured around to this stupid office, this stupid monument to his ego, "This flashy office... the Chief nametag that you flash like some fucking platinum card... You're gonna lose it all if you keep drinking. I don't think you're gonna get affected by me reporting you to the board... You're not stupid, you know it too. You're like a goddamn cockroach, you would survive a nuclear fallout."
She'd given this a little too much thought.
"You'll lose your wife," She said it so surely, barely even blinking as she watched his grasp tighten, once again, on the back of his chair. She shrugged. It was true. "Give it a year maybe? Meredith's strong, but she's not stupid. You'll be the demise of a second marriage and then what... you'll be like Mark? A bachelor? Meredith won't want anything to do with you... take it from me... a drinking problem is not attractive. It's not cute. Maybe she'll do you a favour like Addison did and have an affair... make walking away easier--"
"Don't."
"I'm just giving you advice," Beth sighed, "Doing my job. I might be suspended as of thirty minutes ago... but the one thing anyone can't take away from me... is that I'm damn fucking good at my job."
And to that, she almost cried.
Her jaw trembled very slightly as she dropped her gaze down to the sleeve of her blazer. Her hands had shaking this whole time, retracted behind fabric as she tried so hard to contain her grief.
(Grief for what? For the life she'd wanted. For the peace that Charlie and his love and his security had offered her-- for her career, for her family, for the people she'd once considered friends.)
She inhaled, silently swearing to herself as her airways clogged, betraying the emotion that overcame her. For a psychiatrist, she sure hated emotions.
She enjoyed the peace that Derek granted her; although, she supposed that it was more like the eye of the storm. Much like the weather gripping Seattle, Derek took a moment to collect himself before the rain began again--
"A good psychiatrist doesn't lie."
Ah. A watery chuckle fell past her lips. An amused smile. It was a good line, Beth had to give him that. She was busy picking at the hem of her blazer to see the expression on his face. Oh, was he angry? Was poor Derek Shepherd pissed? Join the fucking club, Chief.
"A good psychiatrist would stand up and admit what they've done," His voice was perfectly calm. It'd taken him long enough. It was the sort of clandestine waters that happened before a tsunami, when everything was level and yet underneath everything was drawing out for a masterful attack. Beth's eye twitched. "If you had any professionalism, if you were truly good at your job, you would admit it to yourself. You would walk into that boardroom and you would ask them to give you a fair punishment."
(Another twitch.)
"If you cared about your patients, you would do that," God, she was beginning to really hate the sound of his voice. "If you were professional in the slightest--"
"You don't think I'm professional?"
Her question caught him off-guard. It was sudden.
One moment she was silent and staring downwards, and the next she was staring right into his soul-- it was dramatic and it made him halt. Whatever rhythm he'd swinging into, no doubt gussying himself up to call her a kid or immature or crazy (Hey! She was surprised he hadn't overtly called her crazy this time, that was a nice surprise!), was thrown off kilter.
The words got tangled up at the back of his throat and he had to pause for a few seconds to answer.
"I don't," He confirmed, "I don't think you're professional."
He sounded so fucking smug.
"Okay," Beth replied simply, "Fire me then."
This time, his stare wasn't scathing.
Those blue eyes that had caused her nothing but so much pain now just gazed at her, visibly bewildered.
(Yeah, I know right? Beth thought to herself, Elizabeth Forbes Montgomery just asked the Chief of Surgery to fire her. Who would have thought.)
He seemed to question, silently, if she was serious-- his brow furrowed and the mood in the room changed-- Beth just smiled. It was a wide, shallow and meaningless smile.
"I mean it," She did. She was very serious. It was not the sort of proposition a workaholic would just throw around without being very, very serious. "If you don't think I'm professional if you think I'm a danger to this hospital and the patients, fire me."
Beth figured it was a fair thing to ask. Hadn't he just spent this whole time defaming her character? Calling her things that she never thought she would hear from Derek Shepherd's mouth? It was fair to say that she thought, through his assessment, that she was poorly equipped to be here, to have this job, hell, to even work in this hospital at all! If Beth was so bad at her job, wasn't that the logical assumption, wasn't that the easiest call to make?
"Fire me," Beth repeated.
It was as simple as that.
The expression on Derek's face didn't appear often.
It was calculation in it's more primal form-- a dent in between his eyebrows and his mouth in a thin line as he stared straight through her. It was as if, just looking at her, he figured he could read her mind.
After all, Beth was pretty sure she could read his; was he thinking about what she thought he was thinking? About how desperately she'd wanted this job, this retribution? A chance to redeem herself and prove to herself, alongside everyone else, that she was worth something?
This time, he did deliberate.
"No," Derek said, and it surprised her. Her eyebrows raised. "I'm not firing you, Beth."
What was stopping him?
She didn't understand it. If she was such a terrible human being, why wouldn't he just...?
"I'm guessing as Ballard is interim you have the power to--"
"No."
"But I'm dangerous," Beth said, emphasising the word, "I don't think of anyone but myself--"
"I won't fire you."
"I'm a little kid, Derek."
"Beth--"
"Probably shouldn't be allowed around other people--"
"I won't do it," He said sharply and with a sense of finality. Beth couldn't exactly tell whether she should be flattered or not. She just stared at him, one hand in her pocket and the other thudding with the sensation of her heartbeat in her fingertips. Derek's eyes very slowly sunk away from hers. "I won't fire you. Don't ask me to--"
"Fine," was Beth's response.
By the way his shoulders fell, she could tell he thought it was the end of it.
She attempted to study his every moment, try some sense out of this fucking puzzle of a man. It didn't make sense, any of it-- and here, she'd thought that Mark had been the difficult one to understand.
Derek let go of his chair and Beth could only assume that it was to get his blood flow back in those insured fingers of his. She watched with a dry mouth as he rounded his chair and sat down.
She watched him get comfortable. She watched reality settle in very slowly. Was he realising everything? Was he registering everything that was going on? Did it feel good? Beth wasn't sure whether it would ever feel good, being him, treating people like he did-- She watched Derek Shepherd have a moment of peace and then she cleared her throat.
"Fine," Beth repeated, and then said the words that would ring in Derek's ears for months to come: "Then I quit."
His head raised just in time to see the psychiatrist as she pulled a neatly written resignation letter, once destined for Bethenny Ballard on the morning of her wedding, and tossed it down onto his mahogany wood desk.
And quit she did.
***
─── "Where are you going?"
Mark raised his head to watch Amelia Shepherd as she began to wander away. It'd been five minutes of watching the smile in the corner of her lips, five minutes of chastising him over feelings that he hadn't said out loud-- and then she turned to him and gave him a wicked smile.
"You heard the hot lawyer," Amy chipped her head in the direct that Dom had left, something so mischievious about the way her eyes sparkled. "Beth's alone in a room with Derek with so much to say. She's always been so skillful with her shit, y'know? I'm expecting a show and a real spectacle..."
And then she paused.
She shrugged.
"I think it's about time I said hello to my big brother."