𝙇𝙑𝙄.
TWO GHOSTS / 𝘞𝘌 '𝘙𝘌 𝘕𝘖𝘛 𝘞𝘏𝘖 𝘞𝘌 𝘜𝘚𝘌𝘋 𝘛𝘖 𝘉𝘌

──────

IF YOU ASKED Mark Sloan what he was thinking about during therapy, he would've said one of two things:

1. Something that Andrew liked to call survivors guilt, in which he struggled to comprehend that he, out of the 18 people that died that day, had survived after being so close to what had happened.

2. The day he dumped Elizabeth Montgomery, simply because she told him that she loved him.

Apparently, Beth bringing it up while they were in that boardroom, while she was hanging on for dear life, was enough to make his head spin with the memory of it. It wasn't one of his proudest moments. It made him feel bad again, it made his skin crawl and his heart squeeze very slightly.

He could still remember the look of hope in her eyes, the way she'd been completely caught off-guard by it too-- she'd said it so indifferently, so matter-of-fact that they'd both faltered.

She'd paused. He'd paused.

Mark would be lying if he said he hadn't heard that before. He'd had it said to him by infatuated lovers, by high school sweethearts who had last longer than a month-- but he'd never heard it from Beth. Not from the alarmed looking girl that stood across from him, looking as if she definitely hadn't planned on letting that slip.

But then she'd look at him, her eyes round and full of a very vulnerable, shaking emotion. She'd held her breath, opened her mouth as if to correct herself-- he'd stared back at her. Mark had watched as her head wheeled.

She'd looked so disorientated in that moment, as if she hadn't even thought about it before and then, he watched 'oh crap' expression dawn across her face.

"I-" Beth had cut herself off, as if completely baffled.

He hadn't been able to move. She hadn't been even able to breathe properly. Beth seemed to balance herself and then give up, closing her mouth and then running a hand through her hair. They'd been on the street in New York, they'd been five minutes from her apartment and they'd both stopped dead in their tracks.

The world paused and Beth seemed to reanimate very softly.

"Well, fuck," She'd said, clearing her throat. Beth shrugged, her shoulders rose and fell and she exhaled loudly, as if she didn't have the energy to deny it. "I guess I'm in love with you."

He didn't tell this to Andrew. He hadn't even told it to Beth.

But, even so, he was thinking about it a lot. He was thinking about how startled and uncomfortable he'd been. How his chest had tightened and his mouth had gone dry and he'd been able to speak to her.

How he'd cut their evening short and gotten into his car and spent half an hour wondering if this was something he wanted.

His skin had itched. His skin had crawled and he'd tapped out a text message that he'd figured was the best-- he only had a small amount of time before Beth came to her senses before she realised that he wasn't worth that.

He couldn't-- he wouldn't-- she's Addisons sister. It'd been a mistake to even think--

He'd let her go.

***

Who is this girl?

That was the first question Mark Sloan had ever asked himself about Elizabeth Montgomery.

It was while he was tangled up in the sheets, skin still slick with Miami sweat and body still pulsing with the sweet nectar of adrenalin. Beside him, a woman seemed to collapse into herself, a small bird-like skeleton folding into different shapes as her tear ducts split and tears streamed down her cheeks.

She'd cried for a long time until she'd lulled herself to sleep— and he'd wondered, for the first time, what was going on inside her pretty little head.

She was his best friend's girlfriends sister, was his first assessment.

A wary face, curious eyes and stunning smile behind the door Archer Montgomery's Manhattan clinic, letting him kiss her hand and saying her name with indifference.

A pair of bright eyes across the room at college mixers, the quiet college student who could carry herself in witty, intelligent repartee. She'd rejected his advances, she'd been a welcome friend. The arm wrapped around his as they lead a wedding procession down the aisle, the sister of the bride, the maid-of-honour to his best man and the name card next to his on the wedding reception planner.

In Miami, she'd been a maid of honour with a reprise that seemed to clog her airways and make her feel heavy, but a gorgeous one at that. He hadn't taken his eyes off of her, not even once— not even as the wedding video played and her lips turned downwards and her tear ducts swelled.

Then she'd become the fixture at the bar, the flurry of drinks— and then the fire in her eyes as she looked him up and down, downed a drink and challenged him to make her evening a little brighter.

He was sure that neither of them remembered what happened that night.

From an occasional lover, she'd become a woman on a mission. An Addison label stuck to her breast and a far-from-exhausted determination in her eye. She was never made dizzy by the revolving doors of companions.

He'd never admitted it to her but he loved the practicality of her. She'd always been so practical, she'd seen her whole life as a series of boxes that were to be checked off one by one. He supposed that he'd once hated that but he'd warmed to it over time.

She viewed everything as a chance for her to succeed and weighed things against what her siblings had done. What determination he'd had to tell her that she wasn't Addison and he wasn't Derek: she was Beth and he, Mark, experiencing what he feared, at the time, was a crush.

They never saw each other over that next few years.

She became fleeting glances, a rogue touch at a New Years Eve party or a knowing smile over the shoulder of a lady he would never want. How badly it'd confounded him: how Beth could be there and be out of reach at the same time. It'd bewildered him too: how strongly he'd wished to tell her that while he held Petunia Vanderbilt against him, he'd wished that it was Beth in her place. And yet they'd barely spoken in years— only through gentle smiles and gazes and the feeling of fire in his chest.

He'd never felt like that before. Or at least, he couldn't remember feeling like that. What Mark could remember, however, with extreme clarity, was the moment he found out that Beth was in Seattle.

Seattle. Seattle. Right there. Right here.

The same building, the very same hospital. It'd taken him completely off-guard.

No one, apparently, thought to tell him that his ex-girlfriend had decided to pop out of nowhere. No one had thought that he needed to know that Beth had turned up after five years of radio silence. She'd waltzed into the hospital, right into his place of work and no one, No One, had thought to tell him.

He had to find out from Lexie, of all people. Lexie; His girlfriend at the time and the last person on the earth he'd expected to ever say Beth's name. She'd found him in a supply cupboard as he rooted through the supplies, crossed her arms over her chest and chewed on her bottom lip.

"Where've you been?" Mark had asked with his arm deep in a basket full of suture kits.

He was trying to find some specific gauze and had just given up on asking the ER techs to help him. He'd also noticed Lexie's absence, frowning when he'd realised that she'd practically disappeared right in front of him.

"Oh," Lexie had shrugged, "Derek needed some help." He'd shot her a inquisitive look, still distracted by his search. "He needed someone to go and pick someone up from the airport—"

Mark had raised his eyebrows. "He sent you to the airport?"

Admittedly, it wasn't as if Mark was a saint when it came to his use of interns.

He'd been known to make them do stupid scut. He'd had interns go get his laundry, pick up his lunch— he'd once even got a intern to book him Mets tickets back in New York. An airport pick up, that was something new. It was ingenious, Mark almost admired Derek for it, but this was his girlfriend.

This was Lexie doing all of Derek's dirty work.

If they weren't still a secret couple at that time, Mark would've mentioned something about it to him.

Lexie, meanwhile, had been in the process of grabbing her own supplies, searching through a box of sanitation wipes. She'd spoken into the empty cardboard packaging, her voice almost completely missing Mark's attention.

"Yeah," Another shrug. "Someone for his patient... I don't mind it really."

He'd shot her a glance through the shelving unit. "Make sure he's actually letting you do surgical stuff though, yeah?"

"Of course," Lexie's reply had been a crystalline smile. "I'm hoping he lets me assist on his big surgery— the one on Addison's brother." Then she had paused, standing up from the box and letting out a big breath. "It must be nice for you to see all of your old friends."

She'd completely missed the brief grimace that passed over Mark's face.

"Yeah."

"It must be weird, too..." Lexie had been caught in her thoughts, face dropped into a pensive expression as she clutched sanitation wipes to her chest. Behind them, the door had opened and closed, a technician quickly grabbing some IV fluid bags from the shelf. "I mean, I remember what it was like when I went to my five-year high school reunion—"

Mark had just hummed lightly in response. He wasn't particularly paying attention. He'd found what he needed from one box and was in the process of deciding which needle he was going to use. He'd tilted his head to the side and stared at them thoughtfully as Lexie continued to ramble in the background.

"- Polly looked completely different and this guy... Michael... he was completely unrecognisable..."

Her voice had ground to a halt and she'd latched onto a different thought as it floated around her head. Her nose had scrunched.

"I didn't know that Addison had a sister."

It was said so casually, so offhandedly and yet it had ground the world to a halt. It had caught Mark completely off-guard. He'd paid attention to that. His head had raised from the basket and he'd frowned at her, trying to process what she'd just said.

He tried his best to conceal how his breathing hitched and his heart started knocking restlessly against his ribcage.

"What?"

"Addison's sister," Lexie had said to him with nonchalance and little regard for the slowly unfolding expression on his face. Suddenly, Mark had forgotten all about the needle. "To be fair I didn't even know she had a brother until he turned up in that ambulance— but Derek didn't even tell me it was Addison's sister that I had to pick up until he forwarded the text messages with Addison to me—"

"Addison's sister?" He'd been slow, unable to digest each syllable, each letter, each word. "She's here? In Seattle?"

"Yeah," Lexie had been oblivious. Her head bounced up and down in a nod. "Were you guys close?"

Mark had cleared his throat. He'd thought it over in his head. Amongst the bells that were ringing and the voice at the back of his head that chanted: Beth's back, Beth's back, Beth's back, Beth's back, he'd made the conscious decision to play it cool.

He'd pressed his lips together, briefly massaged the back of his neck and swallowed the short burst of panic that raced through him.

"Not particularly."

It wasn't an easy conversation to bring up to Addison, but he did it somehow. He felt bad bringing it up in the midst of everything that she was going through. He could see the stress in her face as she paced a thin line outside of her brother's hospital room.

Mark risked a glance inside, wondering whether he was going to just stumble across Beth for the first time in half a decade. His brief search had not gone unnoticed— the eldest Montgomery sister had caught the move out of the corner of her eye.

"She's not here."

The hospital room had been completely empty.

Archer must've been in some sort of scan. The only trace of anyone was a poncho that had been thrown over the back of one of the guest chairs and a suitcase. He'd been taken aback by the thought of Beth being inside this hospital, sitting in one of those chairs— it'd taken him a few moments to adjust himself.

His first reaction had been anger. He'd spun on his heel and fixed Addison with an incredulous stare.

"You didn't think to warn me that she'd be turning up?"

Addison had recoiled at his tone. He sounded distraught. He walked with a very heavy pace that made Addison turn and glare at him. The expression on his face was caught between anger and panic, she watched unfamiliar sheen glaze over his eyes and settle in the fine lines in his skin.

"Mark, I really don't think—"

"You didn't even give me a heads up— You didn't even think to just maybe mention it to me?" He wasn't happy. He'd spent the last five years tiptoeing around the subject of Elizabeth Montgomery like a band-aid that he couldn't bring himself to rip off. "I had to find out from someone else— that's not okay."

Not just someone else.

Lexie.

Hearing Beth's name from her lips had felt like a sudden clash of his past and present. He'd been unable to grasp it. He'd been unable to picture them in a car together. His new girlfriend was so oblivious to the neurotransmitters that had wreaked havoc through his head.

"What do you want me to say?" Addison had thrown up her hands at that. She'd turned towards him with Montgomery fire in her eyes and shot him daggers. "That I messed up? That I completely forgot that the world exclusively revolves around Mark Sloan?"

He'd scoffed. "Not okay."

"Do you want me to tell you that... I'm so convinced that Archer's going to die that I felt like I had to invite her to say her last goodbye?" Her voice was pitchy and he'd bit into his cheek, closing his eyes and trying to imagine that he was far, far away from this. "I don't know what the hell is going to happen-- I don't even know whether Beth's going to even talk to me--"

"Okay," Mark muttered, jostled by her tone. "Okay--"

"It's not okay," Addison shook her head. She blinked, her eyes glazing with tears slightly. Her head turned away. "She hates me-- and I hate myself for what I..." There was a brief pause, she kissed her teeth and shot him a look out of the corner of her eye. "...What we did."

We. Mark had forgotten the last time he'd considered himself a collective with a Montgomery.

It must've been back when he'd first visited Addison in Seattle when he'd chased after her from New York in a grand romantic gesture-- It'd mostly been born out of frustration. The realisation that they were now all they had. But then Addison had rejected him and Mark had been left empty-handed.

We. He didn't like associating himself with Addison anymore. Sure, she was a great girl... but she wasn't any better than he was.

"I'm sorry we didn't tell you," She'd said it because she knew that he wouldn't leave until she did.

The new collective made a reappearance, the same one that had grown when Addison had slipped into place in Derek's new life, restarted their relationship and then got shoved out again. When she said 'we', Mark figured that she meant Derek, Archer and herself.

"I find it hard to talk about it," Addison admitted.

It. He'd been condensed into an it.

"I only managed to get in contact with her a few days ago and even then I wasn't even sure whether she'd show. She's not exactly reliable these days." Addison spoke with her hands tiredly. Mark had been able to accept her explanation, but then Addison had pinched the bridge of her nose and exhaled loudly. "I don't even think I gave myself a heads up."

Wow.

They'd all suddenly been thrown into a high tension situation. He could tell that Addison had been barely keeping herself afloat. She'd squeezed her eyes shut tightly and wrapped her arms around herself as if she was trying very hard to keep herself together.

When her eyes had opened and she'd looked at him, Mark had had to look away— it was like staring into the sun. She was carrying such a weight on her back, hunched much like him, probably breaking out into hives at the thought of meeting Beth's gaze.

"I haven't spoken to her," Her voice had been low, a raw drawl that made Mark's throat itch. "I haven't even seen her since she left New York."

His reply had been a very silent but choppy nod.

"She blocked my number." Addison continued onwards, not noticing the contortion of Mark's face as she dragged the both of them back to that faithful (or not so faithful) night all those years ago. "I had to track her down to some island in Indonesia. Apparently she's doing non-profit work now... I had no idea that she was..." She paused. "I didn't know whether she'd even come."

Mark had shifted from one foot to the other. He'd blinked at the ceiling and frowned.

"Is she...?" He hadn't been able to finish his sentence. Out of the corner of his eye, he'd been able to catch Addison's shrug.

"Sober?" Another nod. "I have no idea. Archer says she is but I don't... I don't know... I don't if I..." Addison's face had folded into a thousand little pieces like an elaborate origami piece. She'd lifted a hand to her mouth, tapped it once and then blinked as if she was trying really hard not to cry. "I don't trust her- that sounds awful."

It did sound awful.

Mark had had half a mind to end the conversation there.

He was supposed to be prepping for surgery right then, but instead he was watching his ex-girlfriend try not to cry over his other ex-girlfriend and it was making him seriously reflect back on how many ex-girlfriends he'd had over the years. But then, Addison had composed herself. It'd been a surprisingly quick and efficient process: the release of a breath, the fall of her shoulders, the lifting of her chin.

She turned to look at him, swallowing and averting her gaze to the space below his feet.

"I'm a hypocrite."

Mark had just shrugged. "I'm not much better."

They'd made long eye contact. It'd been too intense for either of them to fully comprehend— but then Addison had looked away. She'd buried her hands deep into the pockets of her pants and exhaled a breath that seemed to last a thousand years— meanwhile, Mark checked his pager, noticing how time ticked along so casually as if his earth hadn't just been completely knocked off of its orbit.

"I'm going to try and get her to come to the bar later," Addison's words had surprised him. He'd glanced up at her and she'd been able to anticipate his answer before he'd even said it. "I'm hoping she'll talk to me. You know what she's like... she's stubborn."

"She's worse than stubborn," Mark had almost chuckled, but the sound couldn't leave his throat. It stuck there, creating a lump that he couldn't remove. He wasn't sure whether he sounded fond or frustrated.

"She is," Addison had agreed after a brief pause. "She's Beth."

***

None of them had expected Beth to actually turn up.

They'd all looked up when Derek had arrived and there'd been a vague disappointment in Addison's face. Naomi and Sam had been delighted but Addison had been quiet. She'd been unable to meet Mark's eye over Derek's shoulder as she hugged the man who had saved her brother's life two hours previously.

Her smile was plastic and didn't meet her eyes, despite the fact that her excessive thank-yous were genuine. As soon as Derek was settled and things seemed to die back down into small talk, she'd resolved to sitting in the centre of the room and holding her wine glass tightly in her hand.

He'd heard that she'd tried to talk to Beth a few hours ago. He'd also heard that it hadn't gone very well— with that in mind, Mark decided to take up a permanent residence at the bar. He'd raised his head up at Joe, the bartender and ordered his usual without even having to speak.

It was in between receiving the drink and handing Joe the cash that Beth decided to make her grand entrance.

She'd always had a flair for dramatics.

In all honesty, Mark had found it just a tiny bit amusing. Over the years, over the ups and downs, he'd managed to pick up a knack for telling whenever Beth was in a room.

He could tell when she arrived, he could also tell when she was trying not to look at him. He didn't bother to glance over at the door, he just listened to people greet her warmly, as if she'd never left New York in the first place.

But then Mark couldn't stop watching her. It was weird, knowing someone yet not knowing them all at the same time. The woman across the room looked like Beth but didn't. She spoke like Beth but she didn't. She smiled like Beth but she didn't. She ordered a drink but it wasn't alcoholic— Mark hadn't realised that he was staring.

She was a New Beth. Completely recognisable but not at the same time. Not Beth but New. Not His Beth, but Other.

Five years was a long time.

Then she was beside him. It was as if she'd never left New York.

She was stood a couple of bar stools down, credit card in her hand and a polite smile on her face as she ordered a lemonade from Joe. Mark almost did a double-take.

Five years was a long, long time.

He hadn't known how to approach the last five years.

Addison had given it a shot and she'd crashed and burned. With a scotch in his hand, Mark had just glanced at Beth, watching how she seemed to tense under his gaze, finally allowing herself to acknowledge him, react to him— or maybe she hadn't made the conscious decision to react at all. Sometimes your body betrays you without even knowing it.

She'd gone back and she'd sat in a chair. Then Naomi had left the armchair beside her empty. Without even thinking, he'd taken a bait that no one had set.

"You look good."

It was a shitty thing to say to her after five years (Get yourself together Sloan. You look good? Out of all of the three-word sentences in the world, You look good?) but he figured that just flat out saying 'Let's talk about how I fucked your sister', was not the way to go.

She was actively trying to ignore him, so he repeated it with a little more conviction.

"I mean it, Beth," To be honest, Mark had known what he meant. His world felt a bit unbalanced and he was slightly regretting the number of drinks he'd already had. "It's really good to see you."

He didn't expect her to reply, but she did.

She'd turned to look straight at him and, for the second time that day, Mark had felt as though he was staring straight into the sun. Her dark eyes burned with the fire of a family that he'd torn his way through and left in two halves.

She'd actually smiled at him too— he'd blinked and there had been New Beth shaped sun-spots scattered across his vision.

"Really?" New Beth had questioned, the words dripping like poison from her lips. She'd raised her eyebrows, she'd cocked her head to the side and looked at him as if five years, in fact, wasn't enough. Mark had felt her tear him in two and throw him aside. "That smooth crap isn't going to work on me anymore."

Then she turned away and carried on with her night unbothered.

Mark had sat there, stared at the back of her head. He didn't know whether to be frazzled or in awe: After all, that was a lot cooler than what he'd said. She'd said it so firmly.

He hadn't seen it coming. He'd watched as she shrugged him off so elegantly and wondered whether he'd hallucinated everything that had happened back in Manhattan—

It angered and frustrated him and filled him with things he hadn't felt since that night in New York. It made him think about what had happened. It made him sigh into his glass and realise that New Beth wasn't just a bad omen-- she was a storm.

***

If Mark hadn't seen New Beth coming to Seattle, he certainly hadn't seen her staying.

It was something he couldn't have forecasted. He'd come so accustomed to Beth leaving things, turning on her heel and fleeing without any regard for the people around her, that he'd been far more surprised when she'd stayed.

She got a job at the hospital, something that Derek actually took the liberty to tell him this time. He asked whether Mark had spoken to her.

"No," He'd cleared his throat and signed off whatever form was in front of him. "She doesn't want to."

She very clearly didn't want anything to do with him and Mark thought it was a little bit shit. After everything that had happened between them there she was: dipping out of corridors, hiding behind walls and blatantly turning on her heel as soon as she saw him.

The thought of her in Seattle, talking to the people he'd surrounded himself with, the people he'd grown to befriend and work alongside-- it was enough to make him something far beyond uncomfortable.

He'd tried his best to distance himself from everything, to try to disassociate as best as he could but Beth was Beth.

She was the sort of person who could burn down a whole empire with a single match. He didn't particularly feel like becoming his own burn unit victim.

What little conversation that did have seemed to, indeed, crash and burn. Mark found himself constantly watching Beth walk away from him, always letting her get the last word— he'd actually had to seethe in an empty stairwell. He'd seriously considered kicking a wall.

But then he'd taken a deep breath and realigned his posture and remembered that he was Mark fucking Sloan and Beth was... well... Beth.

He found himself gripped by stress. It was the constant fear that she was going to remind everyone of how much of a asshole he was and he was going to lose the good things he'd made for himself. He'd finally gotten Derek to forgive him, finally gotten into a relationship that he was actually enjoying.

He was finally happy— until Beth had waltzed through the hospital doors, dug her heels in deep and stayed.

Beth turning up, to put it simply, was a detonation that was waiting to happen.

"Did you know that Beth's my neighbour now?"

He was speaking across a patient as they assessed the incoming trauma.

Derek raised an eyebrow, flashing light across the patients eyes and pausing their conversation to report his findings back to the trauma nurse. There's delayed activity, book a scan.

Eventually, he turned to face his best friend as he sat at the foot of the gurney, taking a very close look at the lacerations on the patient's legs. Mark glanced up and read the expression on Derek's face as he finally realised what the plastic surgeon had said.

"Neighbour?" Derek's eyebrows rose. "How did that happen?"

He exhaled loudly through his nose, shaking his head as he looked down at the deep gashes in the patient's skin.

"Beats me."

Last he'd heard, New Beth had been under Meredith's roof. He'd had to sit there, shirtless in the middle fo Meredith's kitchen, eating cereal with Lexie, and listen to New Beth just juggle small talk with his girlfriend. It hadn't been fun and it definitely hadn't been conventional.

Sleeping in the same house as his ex-girlfriend was not the situation he'd been after. He'd bought an apartment to reinstate the comfort that he'd felt for the past year... and then she'd moved in next door.

"There I am, taking a shower and Lexie comes in with some boxes with Beth and I'm..." (Derek couldn't hide muffle his laugh: "Naked?") In reply, Mark scoffed, "Might as well been— Would not like to be in that situation again." he paused. "And I thought college was rough when I used to hook up with girls who shared a dorm room... Remember that time I went— that whole sorority—"

"Too awkward?"

It was as if Derek couldn't even bear the end of his sentence. He caught the look of a nurse as she hustled out of the room to book the scan: she was grateful he'd cut Mark short as well. Meanwhile, the man of the hour was distracted, trying to gather supplies to start his sanitisation of the wounds.

Mark grimaced. "Terrifying."

"You're scared?" Again, Derek's eyebrows rose. "What's so scary about—"

Then he paused, realisation filling him. There was a certain look in Derek's eye that made Mark sigh. Derek very clearly knew Mark too well. He slapped on his trauma gloves and avoided his best friends eye, pausing as if he had to choose his words carefully.

"Look— I'm not proud of it..."

"You haven't told Lexie about Beth?"

Mark's face twisted. "No."

"Oh you're in trouble," The neurosurgeon took a little too much joy out of the daunted look on Mark's face. There was a grumble and Derek couldn't help but laugh. He laughed loudly, shaking his head side to side. "You're in big trouble."

Trouble. Mark had always been the troublesome type, not always by choice.

He'd been a bit of a class clown through elementary school and then promoted to a heartbreaker through high school. But he'd never been too out of line, he'd always been able to everything at once. He'd taken the elevator to the floor above and graduated to scumbag in a heartbeat— he liked that Lexie seemed to be the last person in the universe that was determined to prove him otherwise.

Telling Lexie had been his idea of avoiding the problem. He'd been naive enough to think that New Beth would be easy to pacify.

Both he and Addison had managed to get Derek to forgive them. It had taken time but it had happened. He'd figured that New Beth would be willing for conversation-- but he'd misjudged it completely.

He wasn't in trouble. Well, not until New Beth became a bit more persistent. Suddenly she was talking to him. Bitter smiles and the constant reminder that he'd left her for Addison (the thought made him quiet and angry, as if she'd just ripped a band-aid straight off of his skin). Comments about how she'd love to break his nose and watch him fix it— Mark had enjoyed those particular comments actually, but he hadn't been able to serve his own.

She unknowingly left him emotionally exhausted with every little jab— or maybe she did it knowingly? He'd once fondly called her a sadistic bitch, after all.

Mark didn't want to talk about things anymore. He wanted just to forget everything. Addison was calling him constantly, asking for information about her sister, how she was, what she was doing and Mark couldn't really afford to think about Beth's life constantly.

It was exhausting. He was exhausted. He was left wishing that he was the one who could just leave and return and have everyone care like Beth could.

New Beth moving in beside him seemed to be some sort of omen. An ominous storm that brewed and spelt out very rough seas. It hung over his head every time he left his apartment. The constant reminder that Beth seemed to be better than ever. The constant reminder that his past and present were overlapping.

Lexie and New Beth slept literally metres apart on either side of a wall. Mark had never had to be paranoid about his ex-girlfriends before. But then he'd actually had to worry about Lexie; there she was, pulling him through the door of New Beth's apartment with a bright smile and a store-bought pie.

A dinner table and her boyfriend, that guy who seemed a bit too nice and a bit too perky.

God, the look on his face when he'd found out about Charlie. He felt like an asshole for being surprised that New Beth was with someone.

Mark had watched the two of them. He'd noticed how Charlie, that guy, was a saint.

He'd grown a bit sceptical about that: Beth had always been into sinners.

She'd talked at length how she always seemed to go for guys that eventually turn out to be completely emotionally unavailable— that had been the nice part of Mark, Beth had said once, she'd gone into it knowing that she was fucking herself over, knowing that he wouldn't be able to love her back as she loved him--In retrospect, Mark found that hilarious.

Of course, he'd fucking loved her.

But here Charlie was, squeaky clean and courteous. He'd expected animosity as he did with every person who only knew the basics of his history with New Beth.

Instead, Charlie had barely batted an eyelid and Mark had had to navigate that without raising an eyebrow.

He didn't like Charlie.

This Charlie guy now existed alongside this New Beth. Sometimes, he regarded her like an alien species. A New Beth who had a tattoo that said Baby on her ribcage and barely hesitated before agreeing to a truce.

A New Beth who didn't shy away from the way he toed the line.

A New Beth that wanted to put the past behind them as much as he did.

A New Beth that worked in psychiatry, befriended nurses and didn't glower at him so intensely any more.

They'd both been so tired of New York. Mark was beginning to hate his own hometown.

The truce had been Addison's idea of helping the two of them move along. It'd worked-- but then Mark had watched his own relationship slipping, he'd watched his life subside. Sloan. The grandkid. Lexie's refusal to be involved with the latter. Addison couldn't have helped him gain control over that part of his life.

He found himself watching Lexie tell him that she loves him, pressing a hand to her arm and shaking her head. She'd been so sorry, she'd been so honest-- she'd told him that she loved him and further told him that she couldn't stay.

Admittedly, Mark didn't have a good track record when it came to love. Historically, people telling him that four-letter word was not a good sign. It usually indicated a decline in events, a very sharp turn in his fortune.

With Beth, it had been of his own volition; he'd tapped out that message and sent it to her and tried to shove it in the past. With Lexie, she was staring at him with sad eyes and there was a 'but' lingering at the end of her sentence.

"I love you..." She'd said, "But I can't..."

He hadn't wanted her to leave.

She did. He'd watched her go.

But not before being honest-- in a last-minute moment of vulnerability (one which, for him, was far and few between), he'd confessed everything. The pressure of hiding so many things from the girl that he'd fallen in love with had split him in two. He'd told her about Beth, he'd told her about Addison, he'd told her everything in the world that he'd never vocalised. He'd paced around, he waved his hands and he relived some very real anxieties that he'd gotten so good at repressing.

It was like he was in some fucked up church talking to a priest who couldn't hide the emotions that passed across her face. It had been a cheap shrink that had been unable to stay in the room. He'd asked her to stay. She'd left anyway, even when Mark told her that he loved her back.

Fuck, he'd thought after that, Now I know how it feels.

***

Slowly, he realised that New Beth was the same.

Well, not the same, but similar. She felt things the same. She'd always felt everything so strongly. Her emotions had always been so vivid. She'd always been able to vocalise every single thought in the back of her head. New Beth did that still.

She still looked at him and said things with her gaze and let out a sigh that carried a lot more words that it spoke. He'd catch her sometimes, chewing on her lip and staring and just feeling.

New Beth was just Beth, but sober. New Beth was just Beth. She was no ones, she was her own. She was sober. He'd almost forgotten what Beth looked like, that's why it had taken him too long to recognise it.

Her eyes were brighter, her smile was wider and she approached things with reckless abandon-- She had nothing to lose.

"We're going to talk about New York." She'd said, sat beside him in an ambush therapy session. It'd caught him off-guard. Everything about Beth was taking him off-guard. There'd been a fire in her eyes.

He'd tried his best not to get burned.

Mark didn't want to talk about New York. He'd messed up already talking about things. He'd practically shoved Lexie out of the door by telling her all of those things. He scoffed when Beth brought up their relationship as if it was a trump card. She'd said our, she'd referred to them together. Again, the two of them as a collective was as jarring as it had been when Addison had said it.

He wasn't receptive to this conversation.

They'd argued.

Beth saying Lexie's name and then proceeding to repeat everything Mark had said to his ex-girlfriend in a moment of weakness was something that had frustrated him deeply. He didn't appreciate having his emotions and feelings weaponised against him But Beth was feeling everything so intensely.

She was angry at him, furious with how he'd shared so many things. He'd tried to pacify the situation, he'd tried to not get angry too. But Beth was like a live wire, always ready to set fire to his fuse.

And then he'd listened to Beth talk about the beginning of their relationship. He'd listened to her get dates wrong, dismiss information that he hadn't forgotten-- he'd felt as if the five years of his life had been pointless. He hadn't wanted to speak. He hadn't wanted to speak about Addison. Speaking about New York always lead to bad things and yet, Beth didn't seem to care.

She had nothing to lose.

She wanted closure. She wanted him to speak-- that's what she'd done in Manhattan, constantly wanted things from him. Taken and taken and taken until Mark had felt awkward and empty. He was overwhelmed and backed into a corner and he replied with indifference.

Mark had a lot to lose.

He always had. A premiere example: Petunia, the return of the woman who rivalled Beth in the capacity they'd fucked him over. She'd appeared, regarded him as if he was nothing but an old friend, but smirked as if they both mutually knew how much she could screw him over with a single phone call. They were, indeed, mutually aware of how much damage she could do.

If he'd regarded Beth and Lexie to be a nightmare, he'd never been able to imagine the chemical reaction that was Petunia and Beth. He'd done everything he could to keep them apart-- he'd dragged Beth into a staff room and vented at length, being uncharacteristically honest about how frustrated he was to find himself in such a rut. Beth had listened (she'd always been good at that, he figured that was why she was a psychiatrist).

Even when Petunia, in a twisted change of fate, went after Beth instead of him.

He'd tried to phone Beth, he'd tried to forewarn her. Asshat had tried to make up for his lack of communication, for the shitty excuse of a truce that had fallen through the moment Lexie had opened her mouth.

Mark even phoned Petunia too, he'd stood outside while on his lunchbreak and dialled that wretched woman's number and pushed aside his pride.

"Leave Beth alone," He'd been so confident, so firm. "It's not her that you have a problem with. It's me."

"Oh really?" Petunia had been the same, but she always sounded perpetually amused. As she'd replied, he could imagine the look of delight on her face, the glitter in her eyes and the curl to her lips. "It's been a decade, Mark. You chose Addison over Elizabeth and yet you're still trying to be her hero?"

There was a tut.

"I thought you were smarter than that."

He was smart. He was smarter than Petunia gave him credit for. How easy it would've been for him to use their past as leverage-- how easy it would've been for him to threaten to tell someone about what had happened. How easy it would've been for him to detonate his own career.

He had something over Petunia just as she had something on him. All he had to do was make a single phone call to the right before--- but he didn't.

He was smarter than to sacrifice himself for a long-dead relationship. Simply put, he didn't have the guts. His reply was less than cinematic:

"Leave us alone," Was all that he'd said. His throat had been dry, his voice low and scratchy. He'd hung up.

Us. Not me. Not her. Us.

Mark didn't allow himself to feel guilty that he didn't blackmail Petunia Greenman. It panned out too-- the lawsuit, the issue, fixed itself.

He'd approached it with disbelief as if he'd misheard Derek when he'd told him. The issue was gone, Petunia was gone. She'd surrendered to a mystical force that Mark refused to believe was luck. He hadn't believed that she'd go down so easily.

He wished that the other issues would just disappear too. Issues like the feeling he got when Beth revealed that she was engaged. Feelings like the way Derek had looked at him long and hard. There'd been a very brief moment, one in which Mark had been completely bewildered-- he met his best friends gaze and was speechless.

"Engaged?"

He hadn't meant to say it out loud like that. It'd been as Beth disappeared down the hallway, minutes after Arizona had just revealed the big news. Derek's head was tilted to the side, his eyes were glittering, amusement in his eyes.

"Engaged." Derek confirmed, nodding.

Engaged. Mark couldn't contain his thoughts. Engaged to that Charlie guy... Maybe Beth is New Beth after all.

This Beth was happy, engaged and moving onwards with her life while Mark was stumbling. He'd resolved back to jumping into peoples beds, sleeping with whoever would give him the time of day. Beth was wearing diamond rings and falling in love with other guys and befriending Harper Avery representations-- the thought of it made his head spin.

"I'm happy for her," Derek said eventually when a curt silence had last a little too long. He'd watched as Mark nodded very stiffly, still in the process of gathering his thoughts. He'd watched as Mark kissed his teeth, put down a chart and looked as though he was about to leave. "You're happy for her, right?"

His question caught Mark off-guard.

"Of course."

Mark had figured long ago that he didn't have choice to be anything but happy for her. Their ambush therapy session had been enough for him to realise that they would, quite possibly, never be okay. They'd never be friends like they once were, despite how hard they tried. There'd been too many emotions, too many things said, too many things done-- Mark rubbed his jaw as Derek grilled into him, waiting for a tell-tale sign of discomfort.

There was none.

"Good." Derek nodded again. There was a pause in between the two words. He seemed to drink up the way that Mark turned back towards him, a shadow playing in his eyes. "Good."

"Why wouldn't I be?" Mark said, eyebrows raising.

He met Derek's eye again and the neurosurgeon blazed through him. The question had been a mistake. He'd been able to tell as soon as he'd said it. Derek's eyebrows raised too, as if he hadn't expected it. There was a very brief moment of confusion as if Derek couldn't belive that Mark didn't know the answer to his own question.

"It's Beth."

He said Beth as if he meant Beth. He said it as if it was half a decade earlier and Derek was attempting to push Mark towards some grand romantic gesture like Mark had failed at when Beth had left. He said Beth as if he couldn't imagine Mark ever been happy for her, if he wasn't involved.

"And?" Mark didn't understand. Or at least, he wouldn't. Derek couldn't tell which one was a better one to believe.

So he paused. There was a brief chuckle that fell past his lips.

"What?" Mark repeated, looking bewildered.

"It's Beth," Derek repeated, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. He seemed to chuckle again, shaking his head at his own thoughts. "You're Mark... join the dots."

***

When Beth had told him that she loved him, the first time, Mark hadn't known what to do.

I'm sorry, I think we should see other people.

It'd taken him six months to figure it out. He'd slipped into old habits. He'd gotten the thrill of flirting, of charming and of being a single man. He'd slept his way through the hospital and he'd completely disregarded the pair of eyes that would meet everyone's but his. He'd broken Beth's heart. He'd effectively even shoved it deep into the ground with his heel.

He hadn't told her that he loved her back. Instead, he'd ran. He'd ran because the ability of breaking Beth's heart was so terrifying to him. Holy shit, he couldn't contain his own power. It terrified him. It was the exact reason why he'd never wanted to-- fuck, he didn't like feelings, emotions-- she told him that she loved him and he just--

Of course, he fucking loved her. He hadn't been able to not love her. She'd been-- she was Beth, he was Mark, they'd been a collective, a us.

If Andrew Perkins had asked Mark Sloan, what he was thinking about during therapy, he would've never said Beth. He couldn't think about Beth. He couldn't afford to. He had, for a fleeting moment-- the sight of her sat on that deck outside Meredith's house, lit under the moonlight, telling him that she forgave him for all of the shit with Addison.

He'd allowed himself to get caught up in the feeling of nostalgia-- and for a split second, it'd hit him how easy it would be to love Beth again.

That's what Mark had thought about when Beth had almost died.

That's what Mark had thought about when he'd carried her engagement ring in his pocket.

And that's what Mark did not tell Andrew.