Vanessa and Mark had the day to themselves. They had no work and Vanessa's mother had requested the kids for a day and they adored their grandmother so Vanessa and Mark had no problem in letting them be with her for the day.
They were laying on the couch, a blanket covering them as Mark had his arms wrapped around her, occasionally pressing kisses to her neck and shoulders as he brought her closer to his bare chest.
Vanessa smiled to herself as she turned around in his arms and pressed her lips to his in a passionate kiss, moving her arms around his neck and playing with the ends of his hair as he brought her closer to him, if that was even possible.
They were interrupted by Vanessa's phone ringing loudly and Mark groaned against her lips as she desperately tried to silence it without moving her lips from Mark's but as soon as she ended it, another call ran through and she sighed, pressing the blanket to her chest as she sat up and held the phone up to her ear.
"Hello?" She called into the phone and Mark could vaguely hear someone else on the other end of the phone.
"What?" Vanessa sat up more, putting a shaky hand on her heart.
"T-that's not funny." She shook her head, tears welling in her eyes.
"That's not funny." She repeated, her voice weaker as she brought the hand on her chest to her mouth and Mark furrowed his eyebrows and sat up next to her, getting slightly worried.
"Oh, my God." The phone dropped out of her hand and Mark picked it up, putting it to his ear as he thanked whoever the person was before ending the call and facing Vanessa again as she started to breathe heavily and tears streamed down her face.
He pulled her into his chest, furrowing his eyebrows as she clung to him and sobbed.
"What? What's going on?" He asked, rocking her slightly to calm her down and running his fingers through the ends of her hair.
"Th-they found M-Megan," She stuttered, pulling away from Mark and looking at him, "She's alive."
***
Vanessa was standing with Owen on one side of her with Cristina next to him and Mark on the other side. She was clutching both of their hands, looking forward as a helicopter landed and a few people jumped out.
Her breath caught in her throat as a stretcher was brought out and she walked forward, dropping Mark's hand as her and Owen walked either side of Megan who was laying on the stretcher with an oxygen mask on her face and her eyes closed.
"Megan..." Owen breathed, stroking her hair gently as he hesitantly took the oxygen mask off of her face.
"Megan." Vanessa smiled, grabbing her hand in hers as Megan looked between the two of them with her eyebrows furrowed.
"Who... who are you guys?" She asked and Owen and Vanessa looked up at each other worriedly.
Vanessa's heart dropped as she thought that Megan had forgotten her - although she was over the moon that her sister was alive, it would break her heart if she didn't remember them.
Until a bright smile came across Megan's face and she chuckled slightly.
"Sorry, I had to do it." She smiled and Vanessa breathed out a sigh of relief as she continued looking down at her sister, unable to fully comprehend the sight of her being alive.
"Now, will you unstrap me from this thing so I can hug your ridiculously pale bodies?"
"Yeah." Owen breathed as he began working on unstrapping the ties holding Megan to the stretcher.
He helped Megan up and she held both of her arms out and the three siblings joined together in a hug, relishing in the feeling of finally being together again. Mark crossed his arms across his chest as he watched the trio talk together. He was so happy that Vanessa had her sister back and he never would have believed that she was alive if they hadn't have found her.
"Oh, I can't believe you're here." Vanessa breathed, tears rolling down her face.
"I'm here." Megan breathed, holding her sister tighter.
***
"I was not kept in that hole, I was tossed in the hole when the bombing started, they were trying to protect me. Trauma surgeons aren't too easy to come by in Iraq." Megan explained as she laid in the hospital bed.
"So, all these years you..." Owen looked over his shoulder at Vanessa.
"I was treated really well. They'd just, you know, kill me if I left," Megan turned her attention to where Mark was stood behind Vanessa, "You're husband is really handsome."
"I'm really happy to meet you." He nodded his head at her.
"Me too."
Vanessa turned her attention to the door where Nathan had appeared and she cleared her throat slightly, making everyone look at him as well.
"Hey, stranger." Megan smiled at him. Nathan started crying as he walked over to Megan and sat on the edge of her bed.
"I'm so sorry." He breathed, burying his face in her stomach.
"Shh, hey, it's okay. I'm okay. I'm... okay, ow. You're gonna have to- ow."
"What hurts?" Owen asked as Nathan quickly moved off of Megan.
"What's wrong?" Nathan questioned.
"There was a bombing. Six months ago. I... took some shrapnel, there were post-op complications that didn't really heal so well." Megan lifted a bandage off of her stomach to reveal a nasty wound on her abdomen.
Everyone shared glances with each other as they tried to figure out what they were going to do.
***
Vanessa was sitting on Megan's bed, everyone had left them to have some time alone together and so Vanessa was talking about her life in Seattle.
"Three kids? With someone not called Jamie?" Megan asked, slightly teasing.
"Three kids, with someone called Mark." Vanessa nodded her head, laughing slightly.
"And?"
"We had twins first, Charlie Derek Sloan - named after two of our closest friends, Amelia Megan Sloan - named after you and another one of Mark's friends, they're both three-and-a-half and then we have Caroline Alex Sloan - named after two of my best friends and she's almost two."
"Where are they?"
"They're with mom. But we'll bring them to meet you at some point. They're a bit of a handful so we'll wait until you're more healed."
"Ugh, I love them already." Megan leaned her head back on her pillow and Vanessa smiled down at her.
"They love you already as well, they always ask about when they're going to meet Aunt Megan."
"Aunt Megan," Megan tried out the name, "I could get behind that." The sisters laughed together as Mark walked into the room and stood in the doorway.
"Your mom says the kids are wanting to be picked up. Should I-"
"Ooh, can you bring them here?" Megan asked, looking between Mark and Vanessa, "Please?"
The couple looked at each other and after realising the other had no objections, they both smiled and nodded their heads as Vanessa chucked the keys at Mark and he caught them with one hand, promising to be back soon.
***
When the door opened again, Vanessa looked toward it and a smile spread across her face when she saw the twins walking through it with Caroline on Mark's hip. The twins stopped when they saw Megan looking at them and they looked to their mother, slightly nervous to meet new people.
"Do you remember when I told you about your aunt Megan?" Vanessa bent down slightly to be closer to their height. The twins nodded and Vanessa looked up at where Megan was.
"Okay, so she's very tired and she's got a bit of a sore tummy but... this is your aunt Megan." The twins faces lit up and the practically ran at Vanessa for her to lift them up so that they could see Megan better.
"Hiya." Megan smiled at them and they both giggled slightly.
"Hi, my name is Amelia." Amelia introduced, waving as Vanessa sat her in one of the chairs and Charlie in another one.
"And I'm Charlie." Charlie added and Megan laughed gently, her eyes watering slightly at her newfound family.
"Cawoline." Caroline tried from where Mark was holding her and everyone laughed at her mispronunciation.
The afternoon was spent getting to know everyone, Megan told stories about her time in the war and the kids laughed along and told stories of their own - much more tame ones though - and Vanessa and Mark stood back and watched, occasionally speaking but mostly just relishing the sight of Megan and the kids, something Vanessa never thought she would see.
***
The kids had gotten tired and so Mark and Vanessa had taken them home, leaving Megan with Nathan for the night.
"Night night." Vanessa cooed as she closed the twins' bedroom door after reading them a story and putting them to sleep. She walked into the nursery where Mark was rocking Caroline while speaking to her softly and she watched as he gently set her down in her crib, covering her over with the blanket and pressing a soft kiss to her forehead.
She backed away from the door as he turned to it so that he wouldn't know she was watching him and she made her way to the bedroom, Mark close after her as he closed the door behind the both of them.
Vanessa started getting ready for bed, brushing her hair out and putting her pyjamas on, while Mark did the same thing except he just took his clothes off and put some sweatpants on. They both crawled into bed and Mark turned the lights off before turning back to Vanessa as she put her head on his chest and he wrapped his arms around her.
"I can't believe she's back." Vanessa breathed.
"I know, I'm happy for you," Mark kissed the top of her head, "You got any more siblings I should know about?"
"Not that I know of." Vanessa chuckled softly and Mark wrapped his arms around her tighter.
"I love you, so much. You know that, right?" He said and Vanessa furrowed her eyebrows slightly.
"Yes, and I love you too."
"Okay, so I got a job offer, back in New York and-"
"And?"
"And," He breathed in deeply, "I said I would consider it."
"I can't move to New York." Vanessa sat up, looking down at Mark who sighed as he sat up as well, obviously he was hoping that it would be an easy conversation.
"You can, it's nice there. It's where I grew up - I think you'd love it there."
"I love it here," She corrected, "In Seattle where all of my family is, I just got my sister back - I can't move to New York."
"It's a great job opportunity and I'm sure they'll have one for you as well - your like a ten-time board certified surgeon."
"The kids," Vanessa stated and Mark sighed again, "They have friends here, their family is here - it would be horrible to pull them out of that."
"The kids would learn to love New York." Mark reasoned.
"Yeah, well, maybe they can. But I can't. What if something happens to Megan or Owen or Alex or Jackson, Cristina, Mer, Derek - do you see where I'm going with this? It does not make any logical sense for me to move to New York."
"Why do you keep saying 'me' as if it's you by yourself? We are a family, Vanessa. A family moves, together. They deal with things, together. It's a short flight back to Seattle I'm sure if anything happened we could get here in time."
"I'm sorry, Mark, I know you want this, I do. And I wish I wanted it as well but I just can't. I- I just don't want to work without my family with me."
"You'll find a new family."
"A n- are you kidding me?" Vanessa stood up from the bed and looked at him, "A new family? Ignoring the fact that my literal family is in Seattle, I cannot just replace my friends - maybe you can but I can't."
"Vanessa, that's not what I meant-"
"I'm done with this conversation, Mark. We're not moving to New York. You can call them and tell them that your sorry, but you can't take the job and we'll stay in Seattle where our life is." Her voice was calmer now as she looked at Mark.
"We haven't even had a proper discussion-"
"I said, I'm done." Vanessa walked out of the bedroom door and instead walked downstairs to the couch where she laid down and covered herself over with a blanket, falling into a deep but troubled sleep.
***************************************************
A/N: OOP
anyways so...
i did use some scenes from the show in this which is v unusual but i though they added more than my terrible writing ever could :)
I did not prOOfread and so there's probably a lot of mistakes
Thanks for reading :)