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"OH CRAP!"

The exclamation came from the other side of the bedroom as he was ripped out of the clutches of a rocky night's sleep. 

He would've been happy to stay there forever, but there was a phone alarm screaming at high volume in his ear. 

At first, he didn't quite understand why there was someone yelling across his bed in the early hours of the morning-- the curtains were still closed, sleep was still heavy in his mind and he could still very faintly taste the liquor he'd consumed the night before. 

It took a while for his brain to catch up that morning; he ran a hand across his face, groaning to the tune of the sound of the electronic device by his head.

This was not Mark's usual wakeup call.

It took a lot more effort than he'd expected to open his eyelids. It took a lot of concentration and determination. His muscles were aching, head sore and face twitchy. 

He very, very carefully raised his head to peer across the gloomy bedroom, just in time to watch a woman teeter her way through linen and lurch across to a dress that had been discarded on the floor. She did it with very little grace, slipping and sliding all over the place as she tried her best to find the device who was the culprit of the rude awakening.

He had no idea who this woman was. It wasn't that Mark didn't particularly remember what had happened the night before... well, okay, maybe it was. 

Whenever he attempted to think about the night before all he could remember was going to Joe's bar after the dinner party and then... nothing. 

It was as if his brain had decided to take a vacation, as if it'd donned a lei, packed a suitcase and boarded the next flight out to Hawaii. In a way, Mark wished that he'd gone with his brain; he was beginning to think that he could solve a lot of problems in his life with a single flight.

"Oh crap," The woman mumbled to herself, quieter this time. 

Her back was turned to him so he just tiredly stared lines into her naked form; his chin was propped on the pillow, head throbbing as he tried to recount exactly how many drinks he'd had the night before. 

There'd been the wine at Beth's apartment... some scotch... oh, there'd definitely been tequila... maybe some vodka too-- 

"Crap, crap, crap, crap--"

The unnamed woman was tapping at her phone, attempting to shut off the alarm while swearing quietly to herself. 

He found himself straining to remember who she was; there was something familiar about her dark hair, about the stretch of skin that he could see in the gloom from the obstructed window. 

He couldn't remember how exactly the evening had gone (Had he charmed her? Had she approached him? Had he bought her a drink? Had she bought him many of his?) and he could even remember her name (Something was telling him the name Emma but he wasn't 100% sure). Hell, had she even told him her name? He hoped that he'd at least been charming, even if he had been drunk off of his ass--

Mark didn't quite know whether he had the energy to care.

What he did have the energy for, however, was the long groan past his lips. It was a signature sound: The Mark Sloan: I've Woken Up With Naked A Woman In My Bed That I Don't Recognise (Come Back This Evening For The Encore). 

He took a few moments to allow himself to just exist in the voices in his head-- it was the reminder that he was supposed to be pretty military about getting people out of here to avoid small talk, but it was drowned out by the sound of the woman's ring tone. 

Until it wasn't... she silenced it with a complimentary 'Oh crap' for good measure.

"Not a morning person, I take it?" 

He didn't know why he was so averse to small talk these days, he was good at it. He spoke without even looking over at her. Instead, he just willed his hangover to go away, pressing his fingers to either side of his temple and pressing his lips into a thin line.

On the other side of the bed, the woman just snorted. 

Mark found himself glancing over at her back again, watching as she attempted to find her clothing off of the floor. (She had a nice back. Drunk Mark had good taste.) He propped his head on his arms and hummed lightly to himself, trying his best to ignore the dull pain in his head.

"Is it that obvious?" She replied. Her head was still turned away from; he just shrugged to himself despite the fact that he knew she couldn't see. "I slept through one alarm clock fifteen years ago and I've never been able to live it down-- can you pass my panties?"

He did so while still vaguely drunk, making him wonder exactly how much he had drunk last night. 

Honestly, he couldn't remember the last time he'd had so much to drive; it wasn't often that Mark lost count of how many drinks he'd had. Maybe that was how his year was destined to go-- he'd develop an alcohol addiction and end up wasting away in some rehabilitation facility on the outskirts of town. 

It wasn't like Mark had anything against rehabs, he'd visited people inside them before; he just really didn't think he'd suit standardised clothing.

(Scrubs were an exception.)

"Rough night?"

She sounded amused as he barely even made conversation; he could only grumble slightly, wincing as she passed a window and caused the curtains to flutter. 

Inwardly, Mark was asking himself to get his shit together. Outwardly, he was five seconds away from burying his head back under the cover. 

As he laid there, fit for a coffin, Mark was surpassed by this mystery woman as she got dressed with impressive speed.

"I might have had a few drinks," Mark murmured, barely able to bring his voice higher than a slight moan of pain. 

He heard the woman chuckle as she crossed the room. He didn't how familiar that laugh felt to him. 

He just pressed his hand to his forehead and attempted to sit upright. "Usually I'm a lot wittier in the morning-"

"Don't worry about it," The woman breezed, shrugging. 

He was just able to make up the twist of her back as she shrugged on a shirt and shimmied on a pair of jeans. 

"I usually like to stick around but... I've got a really important day that I'm already--" She checked her cell phone and let out a long breath. "--late for, fantastic."

Just listening to her get ready for the day exhausted him. God, he was beginning to remember exactly why he wasn't a fan of this whole having flings staying over thing; not only was it drastically domestic and messy, but it also impeded on his sleep.

 If there was anything that being a surgeon of such high calibre had taught him it was that he really did need his beauty sleep. It was just one of the many reasons why he was trying to convince himself to find a different extracurricular activity, one that wasn't primarily nocturnal.

(So far, Mark had come up blank for ideas so he figured that he was just in a brainstorming phase.)

"Being on time is overrated," Mark said, his words torn apart by a yawn. 

He couldn't exactly decide whether he needed to vomit or not. He figured that he was going to just have to see how it went-- 

Crap, he really couldn't remember the last time he'd been this hungover. 

The woman snorted to herself again, shaking her head.

"Not when it's an important day," She struggled to find her shoes. 

Mark didn't particularly feel like helping her; it wasn't as if he was running some sort of hotel. He was planning on dozing the next half hour until his alarm for rounds kicked in and then he was going to take a nice long, hot shower. He'd never been so thankful to only have one surgery in his day. 

"A very important day," The woman remarked and then froze, "Wait, how far am I from 12th Avenue?"

"You're on it," He could barely hear his own words. 

He was too busy wondering whether he'd just ate some really bad food last night and hallucinated the whole evening. He was pretty sure that the dinner party at Beth's Apartment with Addison, Derek, Archer and Charlie had happened but honestly, Mark was beginning to question how his life was working out at the moment. 

He let out a third consolidatory moan and rubbed at his forehead: "In town for business?"

"Yeah," She said to herself, attempting to make herself look presentable. She let out a snort, regaled with her own tardiness. "A business meeting that's in a half-hour that I flew how many miles to be late for?"

"East Coast?"

"Rhode Island, I'm a long way from home," She hummed lightly, head bobbing up and down in a nod. He raised his chin in recognition. ("New York."). She let out a chuckle. "Yeah, you give off TriState bachelor energy, very niche."

Mark attempted to prop himself up, but the motion caused his head to spin. 

For a moment, there were two of the woman in front of him; a tall, grinning brunette who was commanding his bedroom as if she'd been here for longer than he had. As he said before, the sight was a little bit too familiar.

Seeing double was, perhaps, a little bit too much for such an early hour of the morning.

"I'm usually more professional than this," She said to the room, hopping across the chilly hardwood floor as she got dressed. "I at least have a change of clothes--"

"We'll blame the scotch."

He stared at this woman as she teetered around the room and, once again, tried to remember her name. Fuck it, it wasn't as if they were ever going to see each other again. 

(What was it? Linda? Jasmine? She did really, really look like an Emma.) 

He vaguely remembered meeting her at the bar-- or had it been the street? Please tell me she's not from this apartment building--

"And the tequila," The woman mused as she kicked her heels into a pair of heels. "And vodka, gin... and some shitty red wine which I really didn't think would be your style, so I was a little bit surprised." Then she paused. "I also wouldn't be surprised if we have alcohol poisoning--"

What he could remember of the evening before was the storm that had been left at the back of his head by Beth's dinner party. There was the distinctive aftertaste of disagreement at the back of his throat, alongside the unfamiliar remnants of arguing alongside his ex-girlfriend and not with her... 

He remembered the look on Addison's face as the eldest Montgomery sister realised that she'd done more harm than good, the exasperation on Archer's face and the way that Charlie had been so bewildered and--

Mark groaned into his hand as he remembered the reason for the death of their evening.

She came back to him. In New York. Beth came back-

"You sure it's just the alcohol?" 

The woman's voice cut through his internal monologue, stopping his thoughts from falling down the same slope that they'd tumbled down last night. He just grinned, letting out a miffed laugh and massaged his eyelids. 

She sounded amused. "There's a hangover and then there's the look on your face..."

Mark didn't respond at first. 

Instead, he just looked over at her. He'd been right: he did have good taste. She was pretty. When she smiled at him a muscle twitched by her eye. She tilted her head to the side and kissed her teeth, already completely ready to get out of the door. 

She raised a delicately plucked eyebrow as she ran her fingers through her hair and adjusted her bra strap. She was staring at him as if she was actually expecting a reply.

"Definitely the alcohol," was his response. 

It was said breathlessly with his muscles bunched and his arms stretched out in front of him. He trailed his eyes over the overcast interior of his room and winced at the shards of light that appeared from the window. 

In the corner of his eye, he saw her wave an arm almost dismissively.

"Sure," She said, and he knew that she didn't believe him at all. Mark didn't quite have the energy to respond. He looked up at her, head throbbing and stomach already turning. She stabbed an earring through her earlobe and sighed. "I'm gonna go--"

He could see how his morning was going to go. 

This woman was going to leave, Mark was going to try and salvage some sleep and then he was going to pop an aspirin and turn the shower up onto the hottest setting. 

He'd make himself a coffee, attempt to pull himself together and waltz into an OR before it'd even passed 10 am. Maybe he'd even grab a bagel from the store he liked across the street or maybe he'd vomit before he made it out of his apartment, the world is his oyster.

"You did drink a lot," She was talking as if they were in a therapy session and the sensation of it made Mark want to bury himself deep, deep under his comforter. 

But instead, he did the opposite; he willed himself into a seated position, goosebumps raising across his bare chest as he stretched out his shoulders. 

"We both definitely drank way too much but... but you...If you need to talk about it..."

She paused, reading the expression on his face. 

It was halfway between amused and slightly miffed, a mixture of really not wanting to get into it and finding it amusing that pillow talk had turned into an impromptu therapy session. What was it with Mark and finding himself in these sorts of situations? 

A beat passed between the two of them. She seemed to realise what was happening; the breath that she let out was long and annoyed as if she couldn't believe what she was saying.

"Crap," She said. It seemed to be her favourite word. "I'm sorry that's super invasive and rude-"

"It's fine," He said, mostly because he didn't have the energy to say anything otherwise. "It was just a rough night-"

"If you're having a crappy time right now, just know you're not alone," She continued, speaking passionately with her hands and with such speed that it almost gave Mark whiplash. He squinted over at her, watching as she chuckled to herself almost nervously. "I mean, I'm pretty sure I just slept with you because you look like my ex-boyfriend and that's... That's really crappy so--"

Mark's eye twitched slightly.

"...And I'm actually gonna go now," She smiled awkwardly, realising that she'd definitely overstepped her boundaries. She'd thrown on the clothes from the night before and Mark recognised the dress. (He had a thing for brunettes in red.) She seemed to hesitate for a moment, going to say something and then laughing. "I always find this really awkward, like do I just say thanks for the sex and then go or?"

He didn't laugh but his eyes crinkled with amusement.

"Okay, well, thanks," She answered for herself, grinning sheepishly. "It was nice to meet you...." 

She trailed off, realising that they were nothing but strangers. It appeared that Mark wasn't the only person who had let names surpass them. A dent appeared between her eyebrows.

He raised a tired hand in a professional handshake. "Mark."

"Mark," She repeated back to him, testing his name on her tongue almost flirtatiously.

She shook his hand lightly, taking great pleasure in the normalness of it. 

Mark just gave her a strained smile, all too aware of how his head thudded incessantly. He almost could feel the alcohol still in his veins. He couldn't concentrate over anything other than the second heartbeat that was pounding away at the back of his skull...

"Mark, okay. Well, it's nice to meet you, Mark, I'm Beth."

... It kept going on and on and on and it made Mark think of rough nights back in college. He'd a lot of those, a lot of late-night drinking and sleeping around and pretty girls whose names he didn't remember---

Wait.

He couldn't tell whether he was still drunk or not.

Did she just say...He couldn't tell whether his brain really had caught that flight and crashed and burned in the process-- She definitely did say that right? 

Was he beginning to hallucinate this sort of shit now? Maybe he shouldn't have had those shots of tequila or the vodka or the scotch or the shitty red wine. Maybe he was just finally going insane? 

(This was his breaking point, a Thursday morning in the middle of March while he was butt ass naked.) 

Maybe this was his nervous breakdown? 

(He'd always wondered when it was going to happen.)

Mark stared at her as if she'd just grown a second head.

"Beth?"

The way he repeated the name was so different from how she'd repeated his. 

The name was so familiar on his lips but felt so bizarre all the same. 

This woman, Beth, paused in the centre of the room, caught off-guard by his slightly strangled tone. There was a strain in the way he held his breath for her response. The light in her eyes dwindled slightly, bewilderment appearing across her face.

"Beth," She confirmed, oblivious to the way his brain seemed to implode very slightly.

Beth. She'd definitely said Beth. 

Not anything that could be easily understood. Not a similar name that was just a little bit too close for comfort-- Beth. 

Not only did she remind him a little bit too much of his ex-girlfriend, but she also had the same name too.

Mark didn't realise that he was laughing until he was breathless. 

He was laughing and laughing and laughing, the sound loud and scathing in such a quiet space. It was a long chuckle, the sort that made goosebumps span down his arms and the hairs rise on the back of his neck. 

Almost like an itch at the back of his throat, a tired exhale that rang a little too loud. It appeared exasperated. He rubbed at his eyes and shook his head; really, he should have seen this coming--

Of course, she's called Beth? Why wouldn't she be called Beth?

"What?" Beth asked. When he looked over at this woman, her eyebrows were raised and she was frowning slightly. "Do you not get along with 'Beth's' or something?"

He didn't really know how to answer that question. 

He didn't really know what he'd class his relationships with 'Beths'; sometimes he felt like she needed her own section on his Wikipedia page (but even then, Mark wasn't sure whether she'd be classed under 'Personal Life' or 'Cause of Death'). 

How did he even begin to describe his history with Beth? Did he even want to begin to unpack it? 

Was this his bedroom or a psychiatrist's office? 

Did they have time to even make a dent in the last twenty years of his life? 

He couldn't tell whether it was bad that he wanted to say 'Fuck that' and ask this woman to leave and never return. She seemed nice enough but Mark just couldn't...

Instead of vocalising the slight crescendo of a madman who felt as though he'd just seen a ghost-- Mark just continued to laugh. Exasperated and slightly strained by the realisation that settled in his bones:

Beth (not this Beth, his Beth) was still deep under his skin.

***

Her name was written on a label and attached to the front of her shirt.

She'd tried her best to make it look as presentable as possible but handwriting had never been her strong suit. 

She fell into the tradition of doctors and their questionable scrawls-- when people attempted to read her name, they squinted with furrowed brows and had to make a noticeable effort to greet her. 

She extended a hand, shifted her shitty coffee from one hand to the other, and smiled in what she could only describe as a 'perfectly personable smile'.

"Feel free to introduce yourself..."

She'd forgotten what it was like to walk into a room of strangers like this; maybe she'd been in Seattle for too long?

All she knew was that heads turned to face her, eyes peeled away from the group leader and onto her-- the newcomer, the stranger, the woman with the inconceivable name on her chest.

She felt the need to preface: This was Andrew's idea.

The room was quiet, so quiet that you could probably hear a pin drop in the furthest corners. Their gazes felt so heavy that for a moment, she felt them clog her words at the back of her throat. 

She felt small there, sat on the chair, meeting the eyes of the group leader on the other side of the circle. The breath she inhaled, a shot of cold air that was briefly mixed with nicotine, made her rise in her seat, offering yet another obsolete smile to those sitting around her.

"Hi."

 It felt awkward. Introductions were never easy. 

She let out a breath and pushed her hair behind her ear. She hated this part. 

"I haven't been to one of these in a long time...but, uh..." She cleared her throat. "My name is Beth and I'm an alcoholic."

Beth. That's what she'd written on the label, that's what it said on the group leader's sheet. Beth, not Bella (which was what an old man had mistaken her label to say as they'd shook hands) or Bette (as the person taking the register had called her), but Beth. 

Beth the alcoholic who hesitated on mentioning her drug abuse as it was just a little bit too early in the morning. 

It had given her the resolution to make her handwriting clearer.

Things like this felt clinical, although she supposed that she was used to these sort of things.

 Introducing herself to a group of ten people, all of whom sat around in a circle of plastic chairs, staring at her as if they were waiting to hear her life story. 

She nursed her crappy coffee as if it was some finely aged scotch and organised her thoughts-- the coffee was very crappy, it was cold and felt more like an oil spill than a french press. 

They asked her about her life and she set it out just as she had a lot over the past few weeks: "I work as a doctor downtown, I've been in Seattle for nine months and... I've been clean for the same amount of time."

"Hello Beth," the group leader smiled warmly. 

He was an elderly man, kind in appearance with earnest eyes that made Beth's chest tighten. Around him were sat all of the other attendants, all with the same distracted look in their eye as they echoed his words. She smiled back, a muscle jumping in her jaw. 

"Welcome to your first meeting."

Talking about sobriety, especially in a room full of strangers, was something that Beth definitely hadn't jumped at the chance to do. But, she'd gone to the extra effort of arriving early for this first meeting; she'd dressed well and even taken care with her appearance. 

She'd chosen the chair in the centre of the room, feigned enthusiasm and thought in depth about her responses to whatever questions would appear. Despite this being her first meeting in Seattle, it was far from her first time sitting in one of these chairs.

The Seattle AA meeting was held in a hall that felt musty and old, the air stale and the chairs screeched against the ground with their every movement-- she could feel the dust in the air, the familiar bite of therapy that liked to creep up on her whenever she strayed a little too close to certain feelings. 

She chewed on her bottom lip thoughtfully and looked around at all of the people surrounding her; she wondered what they'd think of her if they knew that she was a psychiatrist...

Her heeled boot clicked loudly against the concrete floor as she folded one leg over the other. (That thought didn't make her feel very enthusiastic.)

As with every therapy session Beth went to, she tended to look at things from a professional point of view, something that was only exasperated by the way that she had been so many of these that she'd also started cross-comparing. 

The group leader was good, he was attentive and you could actually read the label on the front of his shirt. Beth's was starting to peel against her silk blouse and she'd almost forgotten, in the last two months of recovery, how to actually listen to people.

Even so, Beth had had to listen to Andrew. He'd told her where to go and who to speak to. He'd told her to sit there and engage and give herself all the time in the world-- Beth didn't like that. She didn't have all the time in the world at all. She never had. 

However, no matter how much she disliked it, Andrew Perkins was calling the shots; if AA meetings were what she needed to attend in order to get her job back, then this was what she was going to do.

He wanted her to embrace her mental health and the threat of a relapse? Beth was determined to give him one that he couldn't refuse.

"Do you work at Seattle Grace Mercy West?"

The question was given to her during the intermission, once the conversation had faded into polite small talk and the group leader had encouraged everyone to take a break. 

She stood at the table with the refreshments, far too reliant on caffeine to deny herself the greasy contents of the coffee pot, in mid pour as a mousy woman with luminous eyes appeared beside her. 

Beth turned her head, said a polite 'yes' and set the coffee pot back down onto the table.

"It's a shame about the..."

The woman trailed off, eyebrows bunching as Beth tilted her head to the side. 

The woman's sticker said that her name was Sally; she'd introduced herself as a mother of four and a habitual drinker who had been sober for the last eight years. 

A slight chill caressed Beth's skin as Sally lowered her voice, throwing a glance as if to see whether anyone was going to overhear.

"Did you know any of those doctors from... from that shooting?"

That shooting. The tone, the lowered voice, the way that Sally leant a bit closer and made her nostrils swim with her floral perfume-- for a moment, Beth felt suffocated. 

Her world halted and her mind spluttered and she forgot all about the crappy coffee and the wedding planning and the dinner party and Mark and all of the other things that lived rent-free in her mind--

The pause was noticeable. 

The muscles in Beth's body seemed to clench immensely, as if, suddenly, all the air had been torn from her body. Her fingers lingered on the coffee pot, numb to the heat that scalded her fingertips. 

Sally, oblivious to the amount of effort it took for Beth to breathe out, just waited and watched, barely fazed by the way Beth shrugged. Her exhale was loud and Beth immediately frowned at the floor, averting her eyes.

A flash of familiar pain ricocheted through her chest cavity.

"Uh, yeah," Beth nodded as she was reminded exactly why Andrew was so intent on having her attend these meetings. She cleared her throat and nodded, her hair falling in her eyes as she bowed her head. "Yeah, I did."

That exchange dominated her thoughts throughout the second half of the meeting. She was sure that Sally hadn't meant any harm (people almost never did), but whenever that topic came up, it tended to do a lot more bad than it did good. 

Beth held her coffee cup a little bit tighter and listened to tales of hope, inspiration and perseverance, all while wondering why she'd put so much effort into her clothing and makeup today.

She had been so meticulous with her clothing, hoping to convey the picture of someone who had her shit together. In reality, the evening before had left her unsteady and on the verge of booking a one-way flight out of Seattle. 

(Oh, and not to mention the whole unaddressed trauma thing, neither of those things screamed a modern, mentally stable woman who liked to wear heeled boots and a blazer to group therapy). 

When Sally's words eventually faded into background noise, Beth found herself thinking about her favourite topic of the last twenty-four hours: Addison Forbes-Montgomery.

She'd told Mark that I--

"That was very insightful, D'Angelo," The group leader cut Beth's thoughts in two with a round of applause; it was a polite gesture, the sort of sound you'd hear at a golf match. 

The man in question grinned, flashing a gold tooth as he went to sit back down after sharing his story. Beth followed the crowd, clapping aimlessly as she struggled to focus on what was happening. 

"I was hoping we could finish today's session with a reflection on our week... I want to go around the circle and share one thing that happened that was positive," His words bounced around Beth's head and, for a moment, made her feel dizzy: "What made you happy? What made you hopeful? Sally, if we could start with you."

Oh boy. Beth, again, thought about the last twenty-four hours of her life. 

Whenever she blinked, she could imagine herself back at that dinner table, surrounded by people who felt like milestones of the last ten years of her life. They each represented such powerful emotions, such different ideas of herself and parts of her existence that were constantly conflicting with one another. 

Seating Charlie at that table had been nothing short from surreal. 

Beth wasn't sure whether it had made her happy per se...

Giving Addison a piece of her mind, on the other hand?

"Beth," The discussion reached her just as she finished daydreaming about backhanding her sister. The group leader raised out an arm, inviting her to share her thoughts. "What's made you happy this week?"

She took a moment to formulate her response.

"I had dinner with my family," Family. She supposed that they'd all been her family at one point in her life. She watched the wide smile appear on the leader's face and just chuckled. "I haven't seen my sister in four months...so, um, it was very nice to reconnect."

"That's amazing," The group leader said, appearing delighted with what Beth had chosen to share. Another chuckle and Beth's head bowed slightly, fingers toying with the zip on the side of her boot. "And how did it make you feel?"

Beth paused.

 A beat passed and she thought about the look in Addison's eye; her older sister had been so flustered and caught off-guard by Beth's anger that it had set a very lovely precedent. 

Addison had left the dinner before dessert, cited a work issue and, an hour later, Archer had told Beth that Addison was going to be returning to LA in the morning. 

She'd taken a cowards exit, driven out of Seattle out of, what Beth could only assume was guilt.

 Beth held onto the feeling of knowing that her sister was in turmoil, she clutched it deep in her chest and took a mouthful of crappy coffee.

If you had told her twenty-four hours ago that Addison would back across the country, out of Beth's hair and dizzy from a dose of her own medicine, Beth wouldn't have believed you. 

But here she was, fuzzy and warm from the revelation.

"Good," She said finally, unable to stop the crooked grin that bloomed on her face. "It felt really good."

***

Mark, meanwhile, couldn't remember the last time he'd been so hungover.

The light hurt. He squinted across rooms and buried his teeth into his bottom lip, breathing sharp through his incisors as he navigated his way through his morning. 

Ever so often, his head would throb as if to remind him exactly what he'd gotten up to the night before-- Mark took as much aspirin as humanly possible and pretended as if everything was fine.

(It wasn't.)

The street was too loud, the sky was too bright and the crosswalk took far too long to let him cross. His walk into work felt clumsy and slightly incoherent, by the time he'd reached the hospital and stood in the elevator, he had to lean against the wall and close his eyes. 

He spent a few moments trying to adjust himself, taking an empty elevator as an excuse to cradle his forehead and try to pull himself together. A two-second window where the world was a bit quieter, where he could collect his thoughts and allow himself to feel sorry for himself.

C'mon get your shit together, Sloan. It's just hangover... it's not the end of the---

" ...Listen to me... No, you can't wear white to a wedding..."

It took everything within him not to groan at the sound of a voice. 

Before he knew it, he wasn't alone in the elevator. 

Suddenly, the air was filled with the familiar scent of perfume and his forehead massage was cut short. He opened his eyes and blinked over at the psychiatrist as she appeared, blazing her way into the mechanical space with a cell phone pressed in between her cheek and shoulder. 

She met his eye briefly, flashing him a greeting smile (one that was a lot less stormy than he'd anticipated). 

He inclined his head towards her as she continued her conversation, slamming her thumb against the floor number for the psychiatry department.

"I don't care if you look cute in ivory," Beth pressed a hand to her forehead, standing beside Mark and sighing as if she was having one of the most aggravating conversations of her life. She was dressed smartly, making Mark wonder whether she'd been admitted back into work. "Amy, no, you can't--"

Amy? 

Mark's brow furrowed as he overheard the mention of the illusive Shepherd sister (or at least, he assumed that it was her, it usually was). 

He didn't know whether he had the energy to be surprised that they were talking again, let alone about what he presumed was Beth's wedding. He shot her an odd look, a reflex or a habit that made Beth look over at him. 

She rolled her eyes at him, as if she could hear the thoughts that were accumulating in his head. Amy must've said something she didn't like as Beth immediately scowled.

"I do have the power to uninvite you, remember?" 

She sounded incredulous and loud and Mark almost winced as his head throbbed. He buried his teeth into his bottom lip and looked away; he couldn't decide what was worse, listening to his ex-girlfriend talk about her wedding or the fact that he felt as though he was about to vomit his soul out. 

"I'm not kidding. No, don't you... don't you dare--"

The gasp that fell past Beth's lips were almost comical. She withdrew the cell phone from her ear and stared at the device, a look of shock on her face.

"She hung up on me."

"Sounds like Amy," Mark said quietly, nodding his head weakly as Beth's face fell into a frown. 

It did sound a lot like Amelia Shepherd, he didn't quite know why Beth was so surprised. He looked over at her, noticing the name tag that was plastered to the front of her red blouse. 

"I didn't realise you guys were talking..." He added tentatively.

"She likes to phone me in the middle of the night," Beth said, tapping away on her phone and sighing to herself. Then she paused and shook her head lightly. "And before you tell me that she's a bad influence I'm going to very politely tell you to stuff it up your--"

"Is it worth it? When have you actually ever listened to me?" He asked with a chuckle. 

It was a reasonable question; he really couldn't remember a time that Elizabeth Montgomery had ever paid attention to anything he'd said. It'd been both a blessing and a curse. She looked over at him and laughed, her good mood making his smile a little bit wider. 

Mark shrugged and then immediately regretted it, "I'm pretty sure we all learnt ages ago that trying to keep the two of you apart is physically impossible..."

"It's nice to know that at least you pay attention."

The amusement in her eyes made him pause for a second. He got distracted by the feeling of the two of them looking at each other-- it was a very fleeting moment, one that was gone the moment Beth looked downwards and noticed something. 

Mark caught the subtle raise of her eyebrows and the brief look of hilarity.

"Busy night?" 

She sounded entertained as if he'd just told a very funny joke (which, for the record, Mark found extremely probable as he was extremely witty and charming). His brow furrowed. He had no idea what she was talking about. 

For the second time in the last five minutes, Beth rolled eyes, hand raising to gesture to his neck. "Jeez, watching me lay into Addie last night really set the mood for you, huh?"

Frowning, Mark squinted over at his reflection, moving his head to the side-- ah shit. 

He hadn't noticed it before but Beth from Rhode Island had really done a number on him. He adjusted his collar and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Not only did he have a very noticeable hickey but he looked like he'd had a busy night too; he really could've done with longer in bed this morning. 

For a moment, Mark debated on whether to comment on it or not, but he let it pass, instead deciding that maybe talking about his sex life with his ex-girlfriend was not exactly how he wanted his morning to go.

Suddenly, Mark remembered exactly how shitty he was feeling today. 

He also remembered exactly what Beth 'laying into Addie' had entailed. 

Immediately, he found himself thinking about why he'd gotten so drunk in the first place--

"Is it just me..." Beth sounded miffed. When he looked back at her, she was staring out of the elevator, realising that the doors were still open. The elevator was showing no signs of movement, the two buttons they'd pressed both still glimmering back at them. "Or are we not going anywhere?"

"Oh yeah," Mark breathed, realising that, in his hungover exhaustion, he'd completely forgot about the staff memo they'd received at the beginning of the week. "Maintenance said that the sensors are out... can you press the--" 

Gingerly, she leant over and pressed the manual button. 

Once the doors started moving, Mark cleared his throat. "I actually wanted to talk about last night..."

He didn't miss how Beth grimaced slightly in his peripheral. 

She knew exactly what he meant by last night. Was she as surprised as he had been that he hadn't brought it up at the dining table? He'd been unable to fit it in the conversation between Charlie and the constant stream of alcohol. 

In the span of a few seconds, Beth seemed to silently debate whether she actually wanted to answer.

"You wanna know whether what Addie said was true?"

In all honesty, Mark had spent a lot of the last fourteen hours debating whether he wanted to know the answer to that question. 

Five years had been a long time and, even with all the painfully unanswered questions, he wasn't sure what this was going to accomplish. 

What had Addison set out to achieve? What was Mark finding out that Beth had almost stayed going to change? Was he really supposed to be this messed up over one tiny piece of information? At this point, Mark didn't know how he was supposed to feel about any of this.

Mark nodded slowly, relieved that she decided to speak. "Yeah, did you come back from the--"

He was cut short abruptly. 

Just as the doors went to lock, someone seemed to slam the button on the other side, forcing them back open. It caught them both off-guard, the two of them looking upwards with such urgency that it almost caused Beth whiplash. 

Mark sighed in annoyance, watching as the doors crept open. He'd been so close and they'd been interrupted by--

The blood drained out of Beth's face.

"Oh, fuck no."

Her words were intent and her head started shaking with such determination that it exhausted Mark by just watching her. 

He looked between the two of them, watching as the newcomer grinned, eyes sparkling. Beth just looked as though her good mood had very quickly gone south.

"Well isn't this cosy."

He'd almost forgotten how smug Addison could look in the right lighting. 

There was something so innately self-satisfied about the sight of her in between the doors. She was dressed neatly as if catching a flight out of Seattle was the last thing on her agenda. 

She lingered in the doorway, visibly amused by the way that Beth's eyes narrowed very slowly. Unlike her sister, she appeared completely calm and collected, entering the elevator with the sort of sweet, sickly smile that would give you a cavity.

"You're not supposed to be here," All amusement and hilarity was gone from the conversation, instead substituted by the muscle that jumped in Beth's jaw. Her eyes narrowed as Addison stepped around them, taking up the back of the elevator and standing just between the two of them. "What happened to leaving for LA?"

Mark wasn't sure whether he was supposed to be filled with deja vu but he was. 

There was something so familiar about the hostility that filled the small space. 

It reminded him of how he'd asked Beth why she hadn't left Seattle following Archer's recovery-- hadn't he said the exact same thing?

"Nice to see you too," Addison responded.

 Immediately, Mark realised how uncomfortable it was to have the eldest Montgomery sister ghosting over their shoulders, like a persistent reminder of their mistakes. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Beth's hand clench tightly around her cell phone. 

He could hear Addison's smile, "How was your AA meeting?"

"Why the hell are you still here, Addie?"

Beth didn't take the bait, despite the glance that Mark tossed in her direction at the mention of the AA meeting. It explained the name tag. 

She ignored him, instead just put all of her energy in glaring at the furthest wall. When Addison showed no sign of leaving, Mark took the initiative to close the doors. 

His hangover decided to make a resurgence, noticing how the tension in the small space rocketed as soon as the elevator was sealed. It was only then that he realised that Addison and Beth used the same perfume-- he felt swamped by their presence, drilling into his senses and causing the back of his throat to burn.

"I thought I'd stick around," Addison sounded so light and nonchalant, taking great joy from the way Beth's face twitched in agitation. "Derek mentioned that they needed some help with surgery covers so I thought that I'd offer a hand--"

"Of course," Beth scoffed to herself. Her voice was low and she shook her head again as if she was miffed at herself for not realising it earlier. "Of course, it's for work."

"And what do you mean by that?"

Once again, Mark was reminded how much he didn't want to be in an elevator with the two of them. It made him wonder how the hell he'd ever been dumb enough to get involved with the two of them in the first place. 

He could tell that he'd unknowingly found himself in a continuation of the evening before; in all honesty, he found it very surprising that Beth hadn't closed the doors on Addie as she'd smirked at her.

He'd very quickly come to the conclusion that, out of the two sisters, Beth was far more likely to commit homicide.

"You only do things for your career," Her response was quick and without hesitation. Beth didn't even look back as she spoke, she kept her glower fixed on the floor count as it rose. Mark rubbed at his jaw-- he really needed to stop getting into arguments in confined spaces. "You only ever work or care about whether things are going to get you an Harper Avery nomination--"

"Oh, I'm the work-obsessed one?" Addison seemed to find the rebuttal hilarious. 

She even laughed. In the corner of the elevator, Mark closed his eyes, knowing that this wasn't going to go well. The older sister turned her head towards him and grinned widely. The expression was slightly manic. 

"Mark, tell me..." Addison threw it across her shoulder, much to his horror, "Why exactly did we have an affair?--"

There it is.

Mark almost winced. He really didn't want to get dragged into this-- not again, at least. 

Addison's rhetorical question (oh, he really, really hoped that it was rhetorical as there was no way in hell that he was going to answer that) dug deep under their skin. He could practically pinpoint the moment that Beth reached a whole new level of anger. 

In his peripheral, he watched how Beth shifted from one foot to the other, shoulders hunching as she seethed silently-- his stare at the door turned longing.

"I must've learnt it from somewhere," The amount of venom and anger in Beth's voice caused goosebumps to rise on Mark's arms. "Are you disappointed I chose to steal your work ethic instead of your husband?"

Holy crap.

In his head, Mark was still in bed. He was having a very peaceful, lazy morning. 

The curtains were closed, the sheets were hugged tight to his chest and he was perfectly comfortable. There was no one in his bed, just a comforter that was warm and the beckon of sleep. 

Or maybe he was having a nice long shower... that sounded nice. A nice hot shower, the type Maybe he was where he had been three minutes ago, in an elevator alone with nothing but his own headache for the company. Somewhere silent, calm and peaceful.

He could tell from the brief pause that Addison really hadn't appreciated the inclusion of Derek in this conversation; she seemed to be caught off-guard completely. 

Mark couldn't exactly know why she was so surprised. It felt like they were constantly trying to pull out cards to out trump each other, using him, Derek and Charlie as ways to strike out against the other.

Poor Perkins doesn't even know what he's getting himself involved in...

"You could have at least learnt manners--"

"That's your best comeback?"

"What... what do you expect me to say?"

"To answer your earlier question, my AA meeting was fantastic, thanks," Beth's face twisted into a scowl and she crossed her arms over her chest. She shot Addison a sharp look with a vicious smile that was all teeth. "It's a shame they don't have meetings for backstabbing hypocrites--"

Mark tried harder and harder to fade into obscurity.

"That's mature."

"God, I'm sick of people bringing my maturity into everything--"

"You're acting like a child--"

"I'm a grown woman, Addie--"

"Look," Mark wasn't exactly sure why he decided to speak up. 

Maybe it was the fact that his head was spinning with their raised voices and he really wasn't enjoying this conversation. 

"I've had a really long night," He sounded vaguely breathless, brow crumpled in pain, "I've had a long night so I would really appreciate if you guys could wait... maybe five seconds for me to leave this elevator and then continue--"

"Shut up, Mark." They spoke in unison, both of their heads snapping around to glower at him.

He didn't bother looking at them, just realised his mistake in talking in the first place-- he bowed his head and rubbed at his temple. 

(He'd forgotten how slow this elevator seemed to be, especially in the moments where he really wanted to get out of this damn thing). 

It didn't surpass him how despite the rift between them, there was always one thing that the Montgomery siblings would unite on: hating Mark Sloan.

He braced himself for the continuation of the argument, but it never came. 

Instead, they were cut short by the sound of the elevator arriving at a floor. The doors opened and, with the sudden irony of what it seemed only today could bring, Derek entered the elevator. 

He didn't even falter. He walked into the elevator, gave them all polite smiles and stood beside Mark as if he hadn't walked into a minefield.

Beth let out an angry scoff and shook her head once again, choosing not to speak. 

There was a lack of energy in the elevator, his air was stiff and stagnant. It was as if they were standing in a pressurised container; if he concentrated close enough he could hear the way the metal walls strained slightly as if the tension was fighting to surpass the box. 

Mark found it extremely difficult to imagine what life had been like outside of this moment-- had he known peace once upon a time?

Derek glanced over at Mark. 

They locked eyes for a fleeting moment as he read the room. A subtle shake of Mark's head. Derek turned his head to the front, seemed to debate speaking and then, once the elevator slowed again, made the same mistake that Mark had made. 

The plastic surgeon figured that it was futile to speak out and dissuade him, so he just held his breath as Derek's voice filled the elevator.

"No fighting in my hospital."

Neither Addison nor Beth responded, but out of the corner of his eye, Mark saw the bitter silent chuckle flicker across Beth's face. 

Her fists clenched and he was immediately reminded of how Derek wasn't on good terms with her (whether he knew it or not.) Even Addison seemed to hesitate as if she was very tempted to tell her ex-husband to shut up. 

Her hesitation spoke volumes-- it reminded Mark of how, out of everyone at Beth's dinner party, Derek hadn't said a word. 

He'd found that weird. Out of everyone here, Derek had never missed an excuse to bat for his ex-wife.

Maybe they were better friends than Mark had thought.

The door only opened once more before reaching their destination. 

This time, it revealed a chipper looking Archer, dressed in a pair of scrubs and looking ready to get into his day. He had a satchel over his shoulder, a hope in his eyes and it all faded into a laboured sigh when he realised who was standing inside. 

His eyes bounced from one sibling to the next, then over to his ex-brother-in-law and the way Mark was seconds away from just taking the stairs.

Mark was seriously considering making a break for it. He really didn't want to be stuck in this little suspended metal box. It felt like the sort of cocktail that would leave someone either hopelessly wasted (Martini) or explode into hellfire (Molokov). 

It wasn't helping the morning he was having, in particular, the way that he was feeling a little bit too nostalgic and hung up over the fact that he'd woken up with a Beth in his bed. 

He would've taken the stairs if it wasn't for the pounding in his head and the melodic twitch of his stomach, as if his hangover was reminding of how much worse this morning could get.

Archer, on the other hand, barely even hesitated.

"Yeah," Archer said slowly, shaking his head just as Beth had been doing constantly for the past thirty seconds. His movements were simple: he gestured towards them as if to say 'this is a lot' and then pointed in a nondescript direction, already half-turned away by the time he finished speaking: "I'm gonna take the stairs."

***

"You look pretty good for a dead girl walking."

She couldn't truly put into words how happy she was to see him.

The last time she'd seen Elijah Lloyd he'd been standing in the doorway of her hospital room back in Seattle Pres, drawling some shit about how he'd had to 'haul ass halfway across Seattle because she'd had the audacity to have a near death experience'. 

It was one of the rare occasions where she'd seen something other than smug indifference on his face-- he'd looked tired, slightly concerned but had held a stiff upper lip. He'd only visited when she'd been awake ("Would've been pointless to turn up when I can't let you chat shit back to me, huh?") and he'd spent the whole time making comments about how he was a much better nurse than any of the other staff members he had the misfortune of setting his eyes on. 

He'd spent his lunch break making polite conversation, scolding her for not making it to her lunch date with Charlie ("Over your dead body? You really spoke that one into existence.") and then, once he'd exhausted all of his snide comments and jokes, he'd taken a breath.

Eli had told her that he was glad she was okay and he'd told her, very firmly, that if she ever died again, he was personally going to go to hell and drag her back to life. 

Immediately, Beth had figured that that was as close to a heartfelt moment with Elijah Lloyd that she was ever going to get.

They hadn't seen each other since she'd been bed-bound two months ago, but now they were wryly smiling at each other across the front desk in the Psychiatry department, Beth having just disembarked from the elevator ride of misery. 

She signed the staff sheet at the receptionist's desk, taking great joy in tearing the name label off the front of her desk and stuffing it into the waste bin. 

All the while, Eli just leant against the desk and waited for her to greet him.

"And you look pretty good for someone who's supposed to be working," She couldn't help the slight smile that played on her lips as he shrugged innocently. "To what do we owe this pleasure, Eli? It's not often we catch you here in Psych..."

"I heard that you're in today so I thought that I'd come to share my joy and cheer," His dry comment made her roll her eyes. He watched as she finished signing the form, pushing it back over towards the receptionist. Beth had found herself signing a lot of things lately. "How'd you convince the board to let you back?"

"I'm just here to do some admin," She said those words with such reluctance and strain that it was clear she wasn't happy about it. "I made a deal with Andrew... for every AA or NA meeting I attend downtown I get two hours of admin work in the clinic."

"Impressive," Eli whistled lowly, "You watch a lot of Shark Tank?"

"I've been watching a lot of daytime TV," Beth laughed, nodding shamelessly. "And Legally Blonde like... one thousand times. It's a good movie." The ICU nurse smiled in recognition but didn't agree or disagree. "But yeah, it's not exactly what I was hoping for... Still, I'm out of that damn apartment so..."

"Where's your loverboy?"

"Making himself at home in my office," She let out a dry sigh, "He's spending all day interviewing replacements for Katherine with some of the senior doctors... apparently he's dependable and reliable for a good judgement despite the fact he's been here for two months..." There was a noticeable pause and Beth grimaced. "I sound bitter, don't I?"

"Like a lemon," Eli commented dryly, eyebrow twitching in amusement.

"Fuck," Beth breathed out and then chuckled. "I'm happy for him, I swear. He's just working a lot and I'm... " She paused, "I don't know whether I'm more jealous of the hospital for spending all this time with him or... Charlie because he's working."

The nurse didn't respond, just stared at Beth with raised eyebrows. She read his facial expression and exhaled heavily, eyes closing in exasperation. A brief touch of her forehead, she pressed her lips into a thin line.

"Okay, message received."

(Eli severely doubted that Beth had received his silent message-- if she'd been able to read his mind, she would've seen something far different from what she'd clearly concluded. 

He was currently thinking about how, being an ICU nurse, he was all too familiar with how long people were supposed to spend in recovery for pericardial effusion (and god knows what else she'd ended up with) and she hadn't had enough time. 

He'd seen some patients spend up to a year recovering from bullet damage like that. He'd seen patients who had had half of the trauma that Beth had had to spend even longer. The message Beth would have received, if any, would've definitely had been focused on that, on how they both knew Andrew giving her admin work was far more generous than he'd needed to be.)

Eli averted his eyes back down to the discarded label in the trash. "Hugh told me that your sister's name popped up on the OR board this morning..."

"I would've appreciated the heads up," The groan that fell through Beth's lips was laboured with annoyance; her contorted face practically screamed 'don't remind me'. Eli just chuckled to himself. "I was told that she was going back to LA but then she decided to surprise me in the elevator, so..."

"What does that mean?" Eli questioned, appearing surprised, "All three Montgomery siblings... all in one hospital in little 'ole Seattle? What's that? A Montgomery flush?"

He'd half expected Beth to laugh at his joke (sometimes he liked to deadpan and say that her comedic support was the only reason he still kept her around) but she didn't. 

Instead, she let out the longest, most strained breath that could possibly come from her mending body. She looked over at him, her nose scrunched and voice dripping with dread.

"If my brief gambling stint at Columbia taught me anything it's you can't have a full flush without your parents involved," Beth's smile was almost bitter and manic. It sparkled in her eyes. "And believe me... it wouldn't exactly be a party. And just like my college dormmate snitching on me to the RA... it'd require a lot of self-restraint and shoving a lot of alcohol under my bed."

***

Derek should've anticipated this.

The look on Mark's face was far from approving. 

The Plastic Surgeon was frowning into his cubicle as he got changed for his shift, his back was turned, but Derek could still feel it (Mark was doing his best to make sure that it was self-evident). Ever so often, he'd let out a little huff and drop his shoulders (obvious, very obvious) and he'd pretend as if the gesture didn't make him want to crawl into a very dark room. 

He wasn't sure why Derek was lingering in the Attending's locker room, but he was going to take the opportunity to make his disapproval very clear.

After all, what good was a Chief of Surgery if they didn't take very useful feedback from their Attendings?

To Mark's bewilderment, Derek was wistfully looking around the locker room, hands on his hips and face slick with nostalgia. 

He was so distracted that, for a moment, he completely missed the way that Mark shot him an off-standish glance from his locker. In fact, he seemed as though he was on a completely different wavelength; Mark dropped a shoe loudly against the bench, sighed loudly (and even seriously considered just yelling) but nothing managed to get his attention. 

Eventually, Mark just settled for a scoff-- it was loud: loud enough for Derek to finally raise an eyebrow and turn his head towards him.

"What?"

What? 

His response did not satisfy him. 

What? 

That was the sort of answer that Mark would give when he was specifically trying to be an asshole. That was the sort of answer that Mark would give when he knew exactly what he'd done wrong but just wanted to dig that much deeper under someone's skin. 

What? It almost made him scoff again. What? The nerve of the man--

"Addie?"

 Mark didn't like the fact that he even needed to point it out. Had Derek just completely blanked on what had happened? Mark wished that he was able to just dismiss this whole situation. 

"You hired Addison... Addie... Addie really?"

He felt the need to repeat it over and over just so he could understand. 

Mark wasn't often bewildered, but he was definitely blindsided in that moment. He couldn't understand why, he couldn't understand how and he sure as hell couldn't understand when-- The last he'd heard, Addison had been on her way to the airport and hellbent on getting out of this city. When had she changed her mind? When had she convinced Derek to let her stay? How had she? Why had Derek said yes--

"We need staff," Derek said simply as if it was obvious. 

His brow even furrowed slightly; Mark found it a little too funny that Derek was so confused by his reaction. The neurosurgeon tilted his head to the side, seemingly oblivious to the situation he'd caused. 

"Addison offered to work for a few weeks and we really need to catch up on the backlog of surgeries left behind by all of the resignations..." he shrugged,  "Arizona is basically our only Paediatric surgeon that's qualified for complex level surgeries--"

"But it's Addison," Mark interjected, frowning once again. His blue eyes were vaguely stormy, face twisted despite how badly his head throbbed. "Did you completely miss everything that happened last night or--?"

"What was I supposed to do?" Derek asked, still confused by Mark's aggravation. "Was I supposed to just say 'no thank you' and continue to overwork my staff?"

"I don't know," The other surgeon shook his head, completely miffed. "I'm assuming that you're supposed to hate your ex-wife? She's your ex-wife... you left her... she cheated on you with me? Isn't that reason enough to not hire her and give her a job?"

"That's unprofessional, my personal life should not--"

"Oh c'mon, It's practically a family business at this point and she really did screw you over--"

"You still have a job, don't you?"

Mark almost had half a mind to shrug and say 'touché'.

"She's only going to cause trouble," was what he said instead. It felt like the more mature choice, which was exciting for him as he rarely got to take the high road. "Isn't it suspicious that she's had two months to come to Seattle but suddenly she's moving here and working for a few weeks?" Mark found it very suspicious. "It makes you wonder what she's up to."

(Derek knew exactly what she was up to. He made no comment.)

"Not to mention all of the shit she's pulled with Beth," Mark continued, once it was clear that Derek had nothing to say on the matter. He was disappointed but not surprised at all. So, instead, he turned his attention to adding to his list of 'Reasons to not give Addison Forbes-Montgomery the time of day'. "You don't think the fact that Beth's not able to work and... and Addison's suddenly in the hospital like she owns the place... you think that's going to go over well?"

The Chief of Surgery's brow furrowed slightly.

"I just don't think it's a very good idea," There was no interruption to Mark's words so he continued on and on. "We both know that this isn't fair on Beth... she has enough to deal with at the moment. Addison is only here to make things more difficult, it's Addie, that's what she does and Beth's not going to--"

"Are you suddenly the world-leading authority on Beth Montgomery?" 

Derek's question made Mark pause; the words physically glued him to the spot, rendering him useless until they sunk deep enough into his mind. His head was turned away from the neurosurgeon, allowing him time to grimace lightly as he stuffed his shirt into his bag. 

"Mark, it's been five years..."

"No," Mark's head turned so quickly that his head spun. "This isn't about that--"

"Is this really about Addison?" More questions that made Mark feel a little too sick. The idea of just taking a plane on a nice long vacation was becoming more and more attractive. "Or is this about last night?"

"So you actually paid attention?" It was Mark's turn to volley questions aimlessly. "You're just choosing to make Beth's life more difficult? How much did Addison bribe you? Is it a sex thing? Does Meredith know--"

"Mark," Derek sounded as if he was toeing the line between disgruntlement and mirth. He took a moment to adjust himself, clearing his throat and steadying his train of thoughts. "I asked Addison to stay in Seattle because we need help with the OR board. She's told me that she's not here to cause problems."

"And you believe her?" Mark wasn't exactly sure whether he trusted either of the Montgomery sisters anymore. At a push, he'd consider himself to at least think about trusting Archer. "I give it maybe five hours before one of them cracks and then there's a dead body."

"Well, good thing this is a hospital," Derek crossed his arms over his chest and sighed. "We're kind of... specialists in the whole saving lives thing."

The Plastic Surgeon didn't know whether to scoff or laugh. 

He continued his prep for his surgery, flipping through his surgical notes as Derek continued to linger in the centre of the room. 

Occasionally, someone would appear: a fleeting Teddy Altman passed down the corridor and Callie Torres smiled at Mark through the window as she headed into surgery. 

The room itself, however, was silent, seeped in the same sort of sordid tension that had lingered between Addison and Beth. It was almost infectious, a feeling that Mark couldn't shake off. He found himself waiting for Derek to say something, waiting for a conversation to happen--

"You thinking about moving the Chief's office in here or something?" 

He couldn't help it, Mark refused to let awkwardness settle in between them. 

Despite how much he wanted silence, he couldn't bear it with Derek-- Derek was much like Beth in his quietness: dangerously thoughtful. The Chief just looked up, blinking as if he'd momentarily forgotten where he was.

"Just feeling nostalgic," Derek sighed, rubbing the back of his neck as he exhaled. Mark didn't miss how he seemed to eye his old locker (space which was now taken up by Archer) wistfully. "All of this paperwork is getting to me..."

Mark had been feeling nostalgic too. He'd been plagued with the sort of thoughts that had left him dizzy in the back of that elevator, wondering exactly how the last five years of his left had led him here. 

He didn't voice the pressure that liked to appear whenever he thought a bit too intently about the past; instead, he just allowed Derek to reminisce on things that were a little bit less serious than what had been clogging Mark's head-- Mark, for example, was still stuck in the look on Beth's face as Addison revealed how different things could have been. 

The neurosurgeon shook his head lightly as if he was trying his best to clear his mind.

"Are you okay?" Mark wasn't often concerned about Derek, but the past few months had been far from ordinary. He raised an eyebrow, pausing as Derek just shrugged.

"I'm fine," He said stiffly, but neither of them were convinced. Idly, Mark wondered whether Meredith had noticed the slight shift in Derek's manner; hell, Mark barely had himself, it was so subtle but it was there. He couldn't exactly pinpoint what it was, but something was different.

"I know you're the Chief and everything, but you're allowed to... y'know... be not okay," The awkwardness returned as Mark attempted to navigate an area he'd never been successful within: feelings, concern and the subtle art of being tender. He waved a hand almost indifferent, contradicting his own words. "You don't have to do a job you don't want to do--"

He wasn't good at this thing, Mark realised. 

He wasn't good at the whole 'let's have an impromptu therapy session in the middle of the Attending's locker room.' He wasn't good at the gentle voice or the buzzwords or the encouragement. 

He wasn't Beth, he wasn't a psychiatrist, maybe he should've just left it to the experts. He'd continue his suturing and his world-class surgeries and he'd leave people like Beth to do all of this heartfelt shit.

"I like being Chief," Derek interrupted shortly.

"I didn't say you don't like it," Mark said, half a second away from rolling his eyes. God, why had he even attempted this in the first place? Sometimes, it was hard to remember that not long ago he'd been roughing it in Derek's hospital room to keep him company. "I'm the sure the power's great--"

"It's not about the power," Derek's dismissal was sharp and curt, leaving no room for a continuation of the conversation. 

His best friend fell quiet, staring at him with a pair of blue eyes that were very slightly narrowed as if Mark wasn't entirely convinced. Derek just sighed (for what was probably the hundredth time in the last few minutes) and gestured towards him. 

"Enough about me..." Derek pressed, "How are you? How was your night?"

Mark didn't appreciate the change in topic but, historically, he was not known to ever bypass an opportunity to talk about himself. "D'you remember that night out I had back in college... the one with the sorority over in the West Village?" Derek's eyebrows raised, and he nodded hesitantly, confirming that he knew exactly what he was referring to. "This feels like that did."

"That bad?" Derek stated, blinking as if he didn't realise that was even possible. Mark nodded, grimacing. He nodded in the direction of Mark's neck. "Please tell me you didn't sleep your way through another house of college students--"

"I didn't exactly have time," Mark said and then rolled his eyes at himself. "It's a funny story actually--"

"Funny as in 'haha' funny or as in 'you had to buy Plan B so this isn't actually that funny' funny?"

"Uh," He faltered, briefly caught off-guard over how exactly he would categorise the evening. Mark took a few moments to deliberate, lips turning down into a frown. "Funny as in 'you're probably the only one who is going to find this hilarious' funny."

He wasn't exactly sure where his evening fell on the scale of comedy; where did it fall on the classic silliness vs seriousness scale? 

There had been the dinner: that had been very serious, he'd almost witnessed a homicide and the pizza, admittedly, had been so shitty that it was almost criminal. There had been Addison's constant attempt to pull out the rug from beneath everyone's feet, the snide comments, the revelation that Beth was definitely keeping some things secret and that Mark definitely wasn't as comfortable at that dinner table as he'd thought he would be. 

But, on the complete opposite end of the scale, there had been Joe's; a lot of alcohol, a lot of (what Mark could faintly remember) making out at the back of the bar and shots (so many shots). 

Which, in turn, had led him to Beth-- no, not that Beth, Rhode Island Beth, the one who was a little bit too familiar to him.

Derek was looking at him with a furrowed brow, eyebrows pulled down tight out his eyes as he inclined his head, encouraging Mark to continue. 

He looked slightly baffled but intrigued. Mark let out a long breath.

"So I saw this girl in the bar last night," Mark had never been particularly good at telling stories, but he tried his best. "And, uh, I was very drunk, and I think I still am, for the record... but I was really, really drunk then and we flirted, and you know... I bought her back to my place and everything but.... waking up this morning there was just this moment..." There was a slight lump in his throat. "A split second where... where I felt like I was..."

He paused, face twisted as he tried to think about what he was trying to say.

(What he was trying to say was that, for a moment, between sleepiness and awakeness, it had been as if he was waking up in Beth's Manhattan apartment six years ago. The nostalgia had hit him far harder than any alcohol he'd consumed, far harder than the hangover or the sound of the phone alarm. For a moment, he'd been drunk enough to think that maybe he'd gone back in time or that everything had been a very bizarre dream. He'd looked over at that moment, the brunette whirling across his bedroom and it had been enough for him to think and think and think--)

"I don't know," He shook his head, dismissing that point completely. He kissed his teeth and averted his attention back to clearing the bench. "But, uh... The only reason I was in that bar was that I wanted to get my mind off of this whole Addison and Beth thing and... turns out in the morning when we do the introductions, this girl's name is Beth."

In retrospect, Mark didn't think it was a funny story at all-- it was barely even interesting. But either way, Derek seemed to find it funny. 

He let out a low, gradual laugh, the one that was less 'that's hilarious' and more 'oh you're fucked'. It made Mark shake his head slightly, feeling his hangover have a particularly fun moment where the room spun a bit.

"I don't know whether the universe is trying to tell me anything but..."

"I think it's telling you that you've gotta stop hooking up with random women from bars," Derek commented dryly. He shrugged as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. His best friend was a little bit more sceptical, he chuckled and realised that Derek wasn't on the same thought train as him at all. "That doesn't give you an excuse to sleep with the nurses. If I find out you're sleeping with my staff then I'm going to try this like a family business and make things personal--"

"Okay, okay."

"But still, it's nice to know you had fun at the after-party."

Maybe after-party wasn't the right word, but either way, Mark knew that he must've had a lot of fun. That was the sort of hangover he had, the one that you could tell had been worth it (to a certain extent), between the spinning room and the impulse to lie down in a very dark room. 

He still, much to his chagrin, had no idea what had happened from the moment he'd entered Joe's bar.

He paused, looking up at Derek and pressing his lips into a thin line.

"Do you think that Addison was telling the truth?" 

There was a sudden shift in his tone. The dinner party had ended so suddenly that he hadn't had the chance to talk to anyone about it. Addison had appeared and disappeared so conveniently that the question hadn't been answered. Derek stared over at Mark, watching as the Plastic Surgeon's shoulders tensed a little bit. 

When he didn't immediately answer, Mark felt pressured to fill the silence. 

"New York... you spoke to Beth, you told her about the affair do you know if--"

"I don't know," Derek spoke with the same slight detachment that Mark had spoken with. His face was lined with deep thought, mouth in a frown; there was a tension in his "I didn't really- we didn't really say much. You're going to have to ask her."

His answer displeased Mark, but he'd had the sneaky suspicion that it wasn't going to be that easy, things like this never were. 

That's what the whole relationship had been: never simple, never straight forward or given up without a fight.

"It's been five years," Mark repeated Derek's words from earlier, but his voice was slightly strangled as if he was having a very hard time finishing his sentence. "It's been five years and it wouldn't change anything. Five years is a long time."

"It is a long time," Derek nodded. "It's a very long time."

(Sometimes, however, it didn't feel like a long time at all.)

***

Beth couldn't exactly express how many times she'd done this walk in her mind over the past few weeks.

It'd become a stress reliever; whenever she was aimless or bored, she'd trace her steps through the psychiatry department, completing the familiar route between the elevator and her office door. 

Down that corridor, past that door, around that corner, between that department and that window... 

It was her attempt to hold onto something that was familiar as her world had spun just so slightly off of it's axis. Even so, doing it, finally, was the closest thing she'd gotten to a high in nearly half a decade.

The glance she shot in the direction of Katherine Wyatt's old office was choppy and almost hesitant. It distracted her. She shoved her shoulder into a door with a little bit too much weight behind it. 

Her chest twinged painfully and she almost knocked the air straight from her lungs-- she forgot that more than she remembered: that she was tender still and needed to be careful. The problem was, much to everyone's chagrin, Beth had never been the careful type.

Knocking on her own office door was a puzzling experience that had her sighing slightly; she scrunched her nose and pressed her knuckles against the door, noticing how her name plate had been removed (just as Katherine's had been). Her free hand gently pressed against her chest, resting over the skin that was still a little too sensitive. It fell away as soon as the familiar voice called out to her.

Her office was emptier than she'd left it. 

It felt unfamiliar. It'd been stripped down into a monotonous office, one that lacked the life that she'd tried to bring to the space. 

It caused her to falter slightly, eyes sticking on things like the bare walls and the absence of clutter. The only thing that wasn't completely vacant was the chair behind the desk, of which moved immediately, a head raising to smile at her from the other side of the room.

"Reporting for duty, boss."

Beth wasn't sure whether Charlie was going to roll his eyes or just tell her to beat it immediately, but he didn't. 

Instead, he just chuckled, pushing aside a stack of papers and finishing whatever he was doing on the computer. She stood in the centre of the room, closing the door behind her and crossing her arms over her chest (her chest twinged slightly but she buried her teeth deep into her bottom lip).

"You left for work early this morning," Her voice was a light, off-handed drawl as if she hadn't been extremely disappointed to wake up alone. "I didn't even get to make you a morning coffee."

"Yeah, sorry about that," Charlie said, shifting in his chair and giving her a small, sad smile. "I had a lot of paperwork to get through this morning before the interviews started." She nodded slowly, tapping her fingers against the edge of the desk. "How was your meeting?"

"It was pretty good," was Beth's slightly slow response. There was a dent between her eyebrows that did not convey conviction. "Next time... Next time I need to remember to bring my own coffee... How are the interviews going?"

"Busy," He leant back in his chair and stretched, rolling out his shoulders as he avoided a yawn. "But we're getting somewhere. Looks like the board has someone in mind and we're going to offer her a job."

"Ooh, another woman to lead the department?" Beth's eyes lit up and she stepped around the desk. "Girl power. I can get behind it."

He hummed lightly as she glanced over her desk, noticing how it was far more organised than she usually kept it. Charlie grabbed her hand, lacing their fingers and tugging her closer to him. "Yeah. I think you'll like her, she seems like a good leader."

"I'm pretty easy to please," Beth chuckled and Charlie raised his eyebrows at her, ("Oh, are you?"). She slapped him lightly on the arm. "Well, I'm sure people would disagree with me... but in a professional setting I'm not exactly picky..."

A flash of amusement raced through his eyes and he shook his head, chuckling softly under his breath. It didn't surpass either of them how bizarre it was that Charlie had barely been at the hospital for two months and yet he was helping the hospital board find Katherine's replacement. 

Maybe it was because that's the sort of person Charlie was, he was so easy to trust. Beth trusted his judgement and so, as it appeared, did most of the senior staff; she wasn't bitter enough for her jealousy to surpass the pride she felt in him.

"I did suggest internal recruitment," Charlie mused lightly, leaning against the desk and tiredly rubbing his chin. It was as if he could tell that there was the brief suggestion of a thought hidden at the back of her mind. "Remember... I did ask--"

"You asked me if I wanted to be considered," Beth recounted with a warm smile. She nodded slowly and glanced down at her fingers. "A whole Psychiatry department... That's one hell of a wedding gift. But I still don't..."

"I know," Charlie said. "I know you don't want the job."

She paused for a moment, taking another glance around her office. 

Her jackets had been removed from the back of her door, her chair had been lowered to account for the change in occupant and there was an absence of empty coffee cups in the trash can. In the place of these things, she could recognise pieces of her fiancé, little fractures of himself that he'd brought into this space almost subconsciously. 

Her smile turned slightly sad.

"Katherine was amazing at her job," She sighed, pushing her hair behind her ear. "It's not going to be the same without her," Charlie inclined his head in agreement, reflecting her sad smile. The couple paused for a few moments, Beth squeezing his hand a little bit tighter before she looked away. "Do you have the patients files for me?"

"I do," He gestured in the direction of the admin, a binder of folders that had been set aside, and cleared his throat. "It's mostly chart updating... possibly a few prescriptions that need revising..." A slight sigh as if he was annoyed. "I haven't been able to prescribe anything... there's been an issue with my prescription license--"

Beth's eyebrows raised. "What sort of issue?"

"Just some admin technicality," Charlie responded, shrugging. She blinked at him, slightly caught off-guard that he hadn't mentioned this to her earlier. He seemed to read into the look and laced his fingers with hers. "It's not a big issue... I didn't want to worry you..."

It was the stark contrast of their lives at the moment: Beth was too bored and Charlie was too busy. 

She hummed to herself, bouncing on the balls of her feet as conversation moved onwards-- in a selfish way, Beth almost missed having issues that weren't tethered to her personal life. She also missed not having people tiptoe around her, everyone seemed to be waltzing around her as if she was still bleeding out on that damn floor. (It's been two months, she wanted to say, and then immediately berate them for their babying.) 

Not only was Charlie refusing to talk about his work day, therefore cutting off her only lifeline to her job, but he was constantly acting as if she was going to shatter into a million pieces. Archer wasn't much better. Addison was the only exception.

Charlie pressed his lips to the back of her hand and she rolled her eyes, turning away and hitching her bag further up her shoulder. "Anything to help... Do you have my keys?"

They swung on a lanyard (one that had been replaced due to the faint pink tint of the light fabric following the 'incident'). 

She held them tightly in her fingers, trying not to think of the last time she'd locked her office and what had followed. He watched her, eyes flickering between an incoming email and the distracted look on her face.

(It'd become a very familiar expression to him over the past few weeks.)

"I almost forgot!" Beth turned towards her bag, the purse that she'd abandoned when she'd entered. 

He blinked at the back of her head, bewildered by her sudden lift in mood. When she faced him, she was holding out a small potted plant. A small, slightly faded and smudged face grinned at him sheepishly from the pot. 

"Arizona got me this when I moved into my apartment... I thought he could keep you company."

Gingerly, she sat it on the desk in front of him, almost bashfully. When he looked back up at her, she was blushing slightly, chewing on her bottom lip.

"It was just a thought..."

Charlie's lips twitched. "I'll treasure him, thank you." 

(It wasn't quite the same as gifting a whole Psychiatry department, but it was a sweet gesture that made him feel very warm inside.)

"Oh, and talking of Arizona... Callie wanted to reschedule that double date... the one at Spinasse. They were thinking maybe Tuesday or next Thursday?"

"Thursday sounds good," Charlie nodded softly. 

It was the first chance that they'd gotten to have a conversation since all of the chaos of the evening before. They hadn't really had time, between dinner and work and Beth's bid to make a prison-break-esque bid for freedom. He gazed at her, all too aware of the very slim time frame that they currently had before his next patient-- he glanced over at the clock and then sighed. 

"You okay?" He asked, "I didn't get my morning coffee or the chance to ask how you're feeling--"

"Oh, I'm fine," Beth shrugged indifferently, waving a hand. "You should see the other guy."

"It was a lot," Charlie tried again, "I don't blame you if you--"

"Addison's working here now," She interjected curtly, dragging in a breath that was a little too close to a death rattle. She crossed her arms over her chest and averted her eyes out of the window. "She's not leaving like she said she would but I'm... I'm not not worried about it. I mean what could she do?" A chuckle. "Shoot me?"

Charlie winced.

"It'll be fine," Beth continued, completely missing his reaction. 

Instead, she just picked up the binders and shoved her keys into her pocket, taking great delight in the familiarness of it. 

"The worst Addison's got is the tendency to sleep with my boyfriend but you're not my boyfriend..." She paused and shot him a very amused smile. "And something tells me that she's not your type."

(Something told Charlie that they both had very different definitions of fine.)

(Beth had used that word a lot over the past two months and Charlie had been far from convinced by it. If her idea of 'fine' involved Addison staying in Seattle for the foreseeable future, Charlie needed to find a dictionary.)

(He'd gotten the feeling, while sat at dinner, that this whole situation was alike a fishing boat in the middle of a very rocky ocean-- Beth's blood was in the water and it was drawing people to Seattle. They were being circled by sharks and Charlie had never learnt how to swim.)

"Oh," He raised his eyebrows, despite the weight on his chest. "Tell me, Doctor Montgomery, what's my type?"

"Stunning... witty... charming..." Beth's face twisted in faux concentration, grinning shamelessly. Charlie leant back in his chair, chuckling at her self-consolidation. "Gorgeous... and unforgettable, perhaps?"

"I don't know..." He squinted at her, making a face. "Who are you again?"

"Just a girl stood in front of a guy really hoping that you've given me some interesting cases to admin for today," Her deadpan made him laugh. Beth liked the sound of it, it was the sort of sound that made her think that she had things under control. "I'm not saying I'm going to change the locks if these are all duds... but you might need to sleep at Callie and Arizona's tonight."

"Maybe I'll stay the night with Mark."

Charlie's comment made Beth blink at him, eyes wide and very visibly caught off-guard. 

It was so casual, so indifferent and off-the-cuff that it seemed to take a few moments for Beth to digest. It was as if he'd pressed pause on a VCR, freezing her in her tracks-- in reality, Beth was still trying to process how bizarre it was to hear Charlie say his name, nevermind joke about him. 

Very slowly, she came back to life.

"Ah," A slightly stupified smile unfurled across her face. "So it's Mark that's your type, huh?"

 When Charlie didn't say anything (he opted for rolling his eyes and a breathy laugh that made the hairs on the back of her neck raise), Beth just tilted her head to the side and sighed. She threw her head back dramatically, as if it was the most tiresome concept in the world. 

"Always knew he was the one I should've kept an eye on, that slick bastard."

***

The light hurt.

Mark felt as though he couldn't escape it. 

He squinted across rooms and buried his teeth into his bottom lip, breathing sharp through his incisors as he navigated his way through his morning. 

Ever so often, his head would throb as if to remind him exactly what he'd gotten up to the night before-- Mark took as much aspirin as humanly possible and pretended as if everything was fine.

(It wasn't.)

Sitting in the cafeteria, Mark found himself blinking away sunspots and nursing coffee just as he'd nursed his glass of wine at Beth's (Not that Beth) dinner table. He flipped through a medical journal and debated whether he'd felt this shitty since college; he doubted it. 

The brief relief that he felt whenever he blinked was enough for him to resolve that maybe he wasn't going to go out again tonight. Was he getting too old for this sort of stuff? It felt like it. 

Maybe he was going to have an early night, watch something on the television... Hell, maybe he'd even give himself a bubble bath too, do one of those face masks that seemed to be so relaxing--

"Let me guess..."

 It was Callie's way of a greeting as she appeared in front of him. 

She'd come straight from a surgery, hair still pinned back tightly and her hands were still raw from scrubbing. The way she regarded him was almost knowingly. Her girlfriend materialised a few seconds later, the two of them sitting down across from him with the enthusiasm of not-hungover-people. It took everything within Mark to not groan, almost blinded by their suddenness. 

"Dinner party disaster?"

Mark's grimace was a permanent fixture today; "After party."

Again, after party still didn't feel like the right term, but he was too exhausted to think of anything else. Callie commented on the hickies on his neck and he just shrugged the comments off, dedicating all of his energy into not vomiting. 

He could tell she wanted to ask, she'd been the first person he'd gone to when Beth had extended the invitation, ("Is it weird that my ex-girlfriend has invited me to dinner?" to which Callie had responded to, "I think everything that happens at the moment is weird"), he could just tell by the way that she shifted constantly while Arizona discussed her upcoming surgery. 

She waited until Arizona had finished and took the first opportunity--

"Well," Callie asked pointedly, her eyebrows raising at his silence. He couldn't exactly figure out what she'd expected; was she expecting a full report? Did she expect a fully updated chart with the full medical workup. "What happened?"

(Mark was asking himself the same question.)

"I turned up, ate some pizza and then--"

"With Beth. What happened with Beth?"

"Which one?" 

Mark was a little too proud in the way he diverted the subject. He managed to distract Callie with the story of his hookup; she found it as dryly funny as Derek had. Arizona, on the other hand, frowned slightly. 

"I think I've got to find other hobbies," He said tiredly, "I think this is the universe trying to tell me something. I can barely handle one Beth... talk about two."

"I think Beth's great," Arizona commented off-handedly. The two of them looked over at her, watching as she stabbed at some nondescript salad leaves with a plastic spork. "I don't see what's so bad about Beth."

Callie, very slowly, reached out and patted her hand. "Mark's just an idiot."

"Hey."

"She's right," The blonde agreed with her girlfriend, nodding so her ponytail bobbed up and down. "You're just a tiny bit of an idiot."

"How am I a--," Mark looked between the two of them, his forehead creasing. He stopped in mid question, deciding that he really didn't want the answer. Instead, he took a deep breath and shook his head. "Remind me again why the hell I have lunch with you two every day?"

Callie went to respond, but was cut short by the sound of Mark's pager lighting up suddenly on the table. 

The noise it made left him scowling slightly, ringing through his ears and leaving a horrible echo at the back of his head. The couple exchanged a lot between them as he got to his feet, making a comment about how it had been 'short but sweet'. 

His page was from the ER department, his journey to said floor framed by the ever-so-present muted thud of his hangover.

(He spent a good portion of his elevator journey trying to remember exactly how many aspirin you could take before you gave yourself a kidney problem.)

His patient was a young adult; a girl with dark eyes that latched onto every person as they passed. She sat on a gurney with dressing pressed to her palm, shoulders hunched and a slight wobble to her bottom lip as she watched the ER around her. 

It was busy down here today but Mark had become desensitised to the activity of it a long time ago. 

He ground his molars and approached her, reading the name on her chart.

Wouldn't it be so funny if she was called--? Gretchen, her chart said. 

That was a name that Mark could deal with today.

"I hear you burned your hand because you were studying?" 

His introduction was framed by the inquisitive question as he took off her bandages. She was a law student, stressed by trade and in serious need of sleep, by the looks of it. She blinked at him, wincing as he took a look at the skin on the palm of her hand. 

He took one glance and realised why he'd been called down for this consultation.

It was bad. A partial thickness burn right in the centre of her palm. 

It looked extremely painful and, from the way she flinched under his delicate touch, Mark knew that she must've retained at least a few nerves in there somewhere. It wasn't all completely hopeless. 

(As he prepped for irrigation, he found himself musing over how quickly his day could go from women deeply enjoying his touch to indescribable pain.)

Gretchen watched as he gently began cleaning the skin, her eyebrows knitted together in an expression of deep discomfort. "Yeah," A nervous laugh followed by an immediate hiss of pain. "Can't be allowed to warm soup within five days of taking the bar."

That caused Mark to pause, midway through debridement. His eyes flickered back over towards the chart and the incident report that the trauma nurse had taken on Gretchen's arrival-- that wasn't what the report said. 

Sure, he was a bit out of it, but he was pretty sure that that nurse had written tea and not soup. (Yet another case of Mark very briefly questioning his own reality.) 

He supposed that it might have just been a Freudian slip or a miscommunication, but it made him pause long enough to allow suspicions to raise. He definitely hadn't read it wrong, either.

"It's stupid," She said quickly, appearing more nervous than anything else. "I know better. When I'm setting up for the bar... I'm a mess. I can't focus on anything for weeks, but tourts and real property and constitutional law."

"That sounds stressful," He glanced between her and the precise work he was doing with her skin. 

The skin on the hand was so delicate and thin and the thought of burning his own palm was enough for goosebumps to race down the backs of his arms.

"It is," Gretchen breathed out tightly; Mark honestly didn't know whether he'd ever met someone so uptight and stressed... and he'd briefly dated Addison. 

The law student seemed to twitch ever so often, unable to keep still. He laid a hand on her wrist and cautioned her, telling her that it was extremely important to be as still as possible. 

"I was about to start a practice test," Gretchen said almost offhandedly, "I wanted something to eat. So I put on some soup. So I put on a pan and forgot. Half an hour into my section on contracts and the smoke alarm was blaring...and well you know the rest."

Mark, from experience both as a general 'idiot' and surgeon specialized in burn treatment, could guess.

As he stared into the centre of her hand, he found himself thinking about the sort of crap that had been bothering him all morning: the universe and all of the bullshit that it seemed to bring with it. 

Wasn't that the sort of thing that palms were used for? He'd seen a palm-reader at a fair when he was a kid once and he'd seen a fair share of them in movies: the sensual touching of your skin, reading your palmar creases and predicting your future-- Mark thought it was more than likely a tonne of crap. 

He also couldn't figure out whether he liked the concept or not; there was something just a tiny bit terrifying about the thought of universal messages. Was there really someone out there watching him making all of these questionable (at best) decisions? Was there something that he was supposed to do or say--

If he were to give Gretchen a palm reading, it would've been that she was definitely not going to be sitting the bar exam anytime soon. 

Only, this prediction came from the nasty partial thickness burn that was glaring angry, red rings into Mark's tired eyes.

"So you burned your hand...?" 

He found himself unable to follow along with the story, suspicious of how exactly Gretchen had managed to find herself in the ER. His statement curved up at the end, inviting her to continue.

"While I was burning the soup," She recounted, nodding her head. Mark didn't miss how she averted her eyes very quickly, as if she couldn't quite make it to his eyes.

"You grabbed the pot..."

"Well, I dropped it," Gretchen fixed her gaze on the red, angry blistered skin on her hand. She jolted under his hand again, causing Mark to grimace at the sudden movement. "Obviously, it was hot."

"Very hot," He agreed, noticing how she'd attempted to dress it herself. The bandages he'd removed had been poorly done, as if she hadn't even put effort into keeping her hand clean. "Must have held onto it for a while though. This burn's extremely deep."

She blinked at him, "Oh yeah, uh, I held onto it and then I dropped it."

Mark was a good liar. He'd always been good at lying and telling when people around him were lying. He had a sixth sense for it, a feeling at the back of his head that would rise whenever someone was being dishonest-- 

Gretchen, admittedly, wasn't a good liar at all. 

He could tell that she wasn't telling the truth; there were no subtle, interesting tells, just way that she seemed to change her story constantly and couldn't meet his eye. She was staring wildly around the room, as if she needed every person who passed to believe her.

"There are some deep partial thickness burns here," He looked over towards the surgical intern who was on Gretchen's case; the patient looked in between the two of them, leaning forwards as Mark took off his gloves. "Give her a gram of Cephazol and a tetanus shot."

"It's too bad really," Gretchen sighed as the intern headed off to prep for the shot; despite her words, she didn't sound too sad. She stared down at her palm. "I did this to my hand. I'm supposed to be taking the bar again on Friday."

Mark shrugged. "This burn is bad, but we'll get you fixed up. You'll be fine to take the test on Friday."

He didn't miss how she froze.

"Really?"

There it was again, the inconsistency in her mood. 

The eyes that fixed on him were slightly panicked, as if she hadn't considered this outcome. He paused, restrained the sigh that fought to leave his body and nodded, trying his best to appear optimistic and oblivious. 

Mark took great joy in walking away; he tossed his gloves into a medical waste basket and pulled aside a passing nurse.

"Can I get a Psych consultation for Bed Seven?"

"They're backed up for the next three hours," That definitely wasn't what he needed to hear. He looked over her shoulder, back towards Gretchen and wondered how much time he had before she caught onto his suspicions. He was fairly sure that this burn hadn't been an incident at all. "We've got a load of patients waiting down in the--"

"She might be a flight risk," Mark said evenly, hoping that it would push Gretchen to the front of whatever line that had formed. He had the feeling that he knew Gretchen's type; something told him that if she left then she was just going to do something more destructive and stupid. "I don't think she should be left--"

"Like I said, they're busy," The nurse shook her head, "Take it up with Doctor Perkins--"

"Which one?" He asked, but the nurse was already walking away, distracted by an incoming trauma as an ambulance appeared. 

He was left in the middle of the corridor, wondering how the hell he was going to make sure that Gretchen got the consultation he knew she needed. 

Like he'd said before, he really wasn't good at this whole psych stuff---

"Someone say they need Psych?"

She appeared out of no where, materialising beside him as if out of thin air. 

He turned his head towards her, squinted down at her beaming face and paused for a second, brain struggling to keep up with the pace of his day. 

This time, when Beth Montgomery decided to make an appearance, she did so silently; there was no phone call or arguing with Amelia Shepherd, just her sudden question and Mark's slight jolt as he realised that a psychiatrist had seemingly fallen out of the sky. 

Her lip quirked as she watched him blink at her, definitely a couple of seconds behind reality.

Of course it was Beth.

He was caught off-guard. "Perkins cleared you?"

(Within seconds, Mark was already planning his second angry rant in a psychiatrist's office.)

"Well..." 

Her face twisted and she glanced over his shoulder, as if she wasn't supposed to be this close to the ER. It was then that Mark noticed the folders she was carrying and the lack of her doctor's coat. He answered his own question before she even spoke. 

"Define 'cleared'."

"By cleared I usually I mean 'cleared'," Mark's brow furrowed. 

He couldn't decide what was worse, the fact that they both knew Beth was very clearly trying to break hospital protocol, or the fact that it was Beth that was breaking hospital protocol. (If the universe could just give him a break today!) 

"As in you're actually allowed to speak to patients."

She paused. "Technically... no."

"Beth--"

"Hear me out," He went to walk away but she slid in front of him, throwing out a hand to keep him from escaping her. Immediately, Mark took a step backwards, avoiding the desperation that was plastered on her face. "I can get Doctor Chaudhry to sign off on the consultation... she owes me--"

"You're not supposed to be working--"

"He has me doing admin," Something told Mark that she'd heard that phrase many times today. He wondered whether Charlie had told her the same thing. "I'm sat in an nurse's office down the hallway going through patient charts. The cases are genuinely so boring I can feel my brain melting... my expertise is literally being wasted."

Mark could tell what this was-- it was Beth's stubbornness, her inability to take things slowly. She had little to no patience for things like this, he'd learnt that the hard way. 

He stood there and watched as Beth pleaded her case, wondering the whole time whether Charlie knew what was happening. If he didn't, he should've expected it.

Beth must've been desperate if she was coming to him.

"You're lucky you're even in the hospital in the first place," Mark pointed out, gesturing to the look of hope on her face. If she thought he was going to give her a case to consult on, (while she wasn't even eligible for cases) she must've had a very interesting humour. "We've still got loads of staff that are benched and not even allowed on the premise--"

"Yeah, but they're not me--"

(She was right, they weren't her. None of them were.)

"I don't think--"

"I've hauled my ass for the past two months to get back to work," Each word she said carefully chosen and filled with determination. "I've done everything Andrew has asked me to do. I know the protocol, it's practically tattooed on the inside of my eyelids. He's babying me and making me take baby steps-- I can't deal with baby steps--"

"Everyone's the same, you've just got to trust--"

"If one more person tells me to trust the process I'm going to actually stab something."

 Something told him that she wasn't exaggerating; she had a slightly crazy look in her eye that made Mark wonder how far Addison had gotten under her skin. (He guessed pretty deep, by the looks of things.) 

"Please, just let me talk to your patient for five minutes," Beth begged softly, "I'll get Mable to put her in Psychiatric hold if she needs it and then we'll all be fine and dandy, okay?"

He couldn't exactly decide whether he needed to be concerned or not. 

He couldn't decide whether he wanted to say okay, either. In fact, the only thing he could feel completely sold on was the idea of finding the nearest on-call room and having a very nice and long sleep. In all honesty, Mark couldn't remember the last time he'd actually slept in one of those rooms, but he was definitely up for trying something different.

"Look, all I have right now are conversations about taffeta fucking ball gowns and wedding cake," Her eyes searched his. It very briefly occurred to Mark that they hadn't been this close since she'd been bleeding out in his arms. (His molars locked and his breathing hitched slightly at the memory.) "I need to do something else other than plan this... this wedding. Every day I wake up and I just think about venues, vows and guest invitations. I think I'm two RSVPs away from going full bridezilla."

Mark didn't speak. He was too busy staring at her, his brain in a very specific set of thoughts that he didn't really want to be in. Beth sighed, glancing over his shoulder once again and shaking her head.

"And then there's this whole Addison thing..." She rolled her eyes at her own words, seemingly exhausted by the mere mention of her name. "I mean... not to guilt trip you or anything but I've kind of been having a really shitty two days so--"

He wanted to tell her that he hadn't been having the best time either, but he didn't. He just let out a long breath, debating whether it was worth it. 

Suddenly, the idea of just taking off on a flight to somewhere nice and quiet sounded like the perfect plan; he could imagine himself in some sort of forest somewhere, far, far away from civilization and free to do whatever the hell he wanted without any spontaneous 'Beth's' appearing out of thin air. 

(No Addison's to say things that made him have scary, familiar feelings or Lexie's to remind him that he had no idea what he was doing anymore--)

"You also kinda owe me, too," Beth's voice brought him back to reality, tethering him into a hospital that still felt bloodstained. He frowned at her, not sure what she meant. She sighed. "Not to be a bitch... but you did... you know... stab me, so... it'd be a nice way to say sorry--"

Holy crap.

They stared at each other. 

It felt longer than it was. 

She'd cut herself short. Beth seemed to pause completely, faltering as Mark just attempted to organise his thoughts; there was a lot happening in his head in the moment. Their stare wasn't particularly uncomfortable, but it felt strange to him-- god, why couldn't he just have one moment to himself where people didn't demand things from him or start making everything so... Beth was playing dirty and so, it seemed, was the universe.

He really shouldn't have gotten so drunk last night, he shouldn't have slept with that woman and he really shouldn't have gone to that dinner party. He didn't like the way she was staring at him and he wasn't sure whether she liked the way he was staring back. Mark was the person who looked away first.

(Five years. It's been five years, Mark.)

He didn't like the fact that they both seemed to be waiting for something, waiting for the inevitable. 

He wasn't sure what it was; was it for Mark to cave or for Beth to give up? 

Historically, they both knew that the first option was more likely; there had been a time where he'd been physically unable to say no to her and Beth was far too stubborn to walk away from things when she really wanted them. And she wanted this. She wanted this so much--

She hadn't wanted him.

(Or maybe she had? Mark still wasn't very clear on that.)

"That was really bitchy," Beth sounded breathless. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, bitchy but you're not wrong," He said, finding his voice somewhere at the back of his chest. Mark even shrugged, a hand on his hip as he leant against the desk beside him. "Usually I have better aim..."

"Like I said," She pushed her hair over her shoulder and rubbed at her forehead, chuckling to herself. "Well, it's been more like a bad couple of months for all of us."

Like he found himself doing often, Mark glanced at her engagement ring. 

It was an absent habit. He made a silent resolution to stop. He pressed his lips into a line, glanced over his shoulder back at Gretchen and let out a very strained laugh. It was a weird smile and Beth frowned at him, not liking the expression on his face.

"What?"

Oh, fuck it.

"One conversation," He said quietly, tone dropping so the passing nurses couldn't hear. He watched the light as it bloomed in her eyes, a very slow and delighted smile replacing the downturned lips. She went to speak but he raised a hand. "You've got ten minutes... any longer and I'll--"

"What?" Beth snickered, "You'll stab me again?"

He was beginning to wonder whether everything today was just going to catch him unaware today. 

The day seemed to be getting a bit out of control-- was he still drunk? He was beginning to think going into his surgery wasn't a good idea. She raised an eyebrow and held out a hand, her eyes flashing as if it was a very clear challenge. 

It was inconspicuous but had a clear point to it. She'd painted her nails, they flashed as she gestured to the chart in his hands. 

Her engagement ring leered in the light. 

Mark glanced down at it and then looked back up at her face.

"Don't tempt me," His words were low as he handed over Gretchen's chart. 

Beth rolled her eyes and looked down at the chart, murmuring under her breath about how he was a drama queen. He watched her run an eye over the nurse report and the added information that he'd scrawled on. She brushed her hair behind her ear and sighed to herself. 

"I still wanted to uh," Mark cleared his throat, "Talk about the whole--"

"Does this say soup?" Beth seemed to not have heard him, brow furrowing as she pointed to his handwriting. Mark followed her finger. "It either says soap or soup... nice to know that after all this time I still can't make sense of your writing--"

"Yeah it does," Mark cleared his throat. "But about New York--"

"Oh, I came back."

It sounded so indifferent and off-handed. 

It was as if they were talking about the weather. Beth was looking down at Gretchen's chart, attention completely devoted to the patient she'd poached. 

Her 'Oh' had been so casual, her shoulders had rocked slightly as if to say it was nothing at all-- and yet Mark halted completely, his blue eyes blazing into her like exposed flames.

I came back.

"You did?"

"Yeah," Beth said, chewing on the inside of her cheek as she flipped through Gretchen's notes. "I got halfway to JFK and then..." A breathy laugh that sounded more tired than she'd intended it to, "and then I made him turn around. But, uh, your apartment was empty so I just..."

"I went to find you," He said softly. Mark almost didn't sound like himself. It was as if he'd suddenly ascended himself. He could almost feel the deep, long breath that Beth dragged into her hungry lungs. A dent appeared between her eyebrows. "I went to look for you too."

He had. He'd come back for her too. He'd told her this. 

He'd gotten that train out to Connecticut. He'd wanted her back. 

He wasn't exactly sure why he felt the need to remind her of this; maybe he was setting it out between them, reminding her that there was something they could share? There was something so dazzling about the thought of the two of them-- both of them trying to make amends all that time ago. 

At the same time. The same city. The same impulse. The same thoughts--

Eventually, Beth tore her eyes from the chart. 

It was gradual and, to Mark, seemed to take a thousand years. The stare between them was suddenly very different: it just felt different, Mark couldn't explain it. All he knew was that, in a span of five minutes, five years felt like yesterday.

Her lips twitched into a small smile. It was neither happy nor sad.

"I know."

I know. I know. I know.

Mark didn't know what to say. What is he supposed to say? 

He wasn't often lost for words. He was stuck, watching her turn to walk away-- she'd said her piece, but Mark wasn't convinced that he'd ever vocalise everything he felt like he needed to say. 

He stared at the back of her head as she just walked away as casually as Addison had left the dinner table. Was leaving things on fire just a genetic thing? He knew what he wanted to say but-- why did it just-- what does this change-- it doesn't change anything but still everything is so--?

"Doctor Sloan!" 

He responded to his name without even realising. His head moved towards the doorway, seeing Derek coming down the hallway. 

He'd entered in the opposite direction to Beth and for a moment, Mark was confused. Doctor Sloan? Since when had he ever been-- Oh.

Derek wasn't alone.

There was a woman walking alongside him. 

They were caught in conversation as Derek seemed to show her the length of the corridor, talking briefly about the ER. The Chief of Surgery had spotted him and was waving him towards them, inviting Mark into the conversation. 

The woman's back was turned to him; she was dressed smartly, nodding enthusiastically as Derek tried to multitask. (Mark was a little too distracted to fully realise what was going on.) Derek seemed to spot Beth just before she went out of sight. 

He called her over too, causing her to turn around.

Mark and Beth caught each other's eyes. They seemed to find each other almost absently, as if they hadn't even had to try. This time, she was the first one to look away.

"Come over here for a second." 

Mark could tell that Beth was reluctant, but she followed Derek's instructions. Her heels clicked against the floor and she put on her politest smile, passing Mark as if they hadn't just agreed to work with each other on a case (alongside the conversation that was still struggling to be processed by Mark's mind). 

"There's someone that I'd like to introduce to the both of you."

Beth held out a professional hand and Mark watched her smile out of the corner of his eye. 

Her invitation for a handshake was so different to the way she'd just waited for him to hand the chart. He was fixated on how sudden things seemed to change--

"This is Doctor Elizabeth Montgomery," If Mark had been paying attention to the conversation, he would've caught the exchange between the two women. "She's actually on leave at the moment but usually she would be one of the Attending Psychiatrists in the department upstairs--"

"Hi, it's nice to meet you."

If he'd been paying attention at all, maybe he would've caught the universe screaming at him. 

If he'd believed in messages and divine intervention, maybe he would've at least believed in this.

The woman extended her hand to him.

"And this is Doctor Mark Sloan..." 

He was beginning to think that he only was ever able to pay attention to conversations if his name was mentioned-- and lately, Beth's too. 

He glanced over at the psychiatrist before anything else. She was avoiding his eye, holding the chart in front of her and still smiling a perfectly synthesised smile. 

"He's our head of Plastic Surgery. He's actually supposed to be here--"

Mark's charming smile was second nature. 

It kicked in like muscle memory. His head raised an he met the eyes of the woman standing across from him, being shown around the length of the hospital by his best friend. His hand froze in hers mid-shake. 

There was a brief moment-- he wasn't sure whether it was shock or surprise, but something settled deep in his chest and caused him to let out another dry, uncomfortable laugh.

Oh fuck.

"Right, Mark," said the same woman who had run from his bed this very morning. She grinned wildly, her eyes sparkling. "We've met."

Mark's one night stand held onto his hand for a little longer than necessary. 

In his peripheral, he could see both Derek and Beth exchanging a confused look. Derek faltered in his introductions, realising what had happened. When their handshake ended, Mark realised that he'd somehow found himself in a Beth sandwich of sorts. 

The Beth on his right, the one with the history and the tendency to reveal information that made his head spin, seemed to catch on a little bit quicker. 

She let out a sound that sounded exasperated, so subtle and soft that Mark was sure he was the only person who heard.

"This is Doctor Bethenny Ballard," Derek continued, his eyes blazing into Mark's. He couldn't figure out what emotion that was; Derek was so expressive, Mark couldn't decipher whether it was just anger or disappointment or a mixture of the two. He couldn't exactly figure out why he was so-- "She's just been offered the position as Head of Psychiatry."

Oh.

Oh.

Mark was pretty sure that Derek was a mixture of the two: equal parts frustration and disappointment with half a cup of the chuckle that fell through Beth's lips (not Bethenny's, Beth's). 

The Attending psychiatrist paused, shook her head lightly and then decided that maybe it was time for her to get to work.

"Congratulations on the offer," Beth said to Bethenny and it was enough for Mark to think he was going to have a aneurysm. The other psychiatrist thanked her, causing Beth to pause. She chuckled to herself and then shot Mark a look out the corner of her eye. "I've never worked with another Beth before."

"Two Beths," Doctor Ballard seemed to find it very amusing. Mark just cleared his throat and made a silent decision to take another aspirin. "Who would have thought?"

"Yeah," Derek hummed lightly in the background, his eyebrows raising in Mark's direction. "Who would've?"