𝙇𝙓𝙄𝙑.
HAND IN UNLOVABLE HAND

──────

    "CHARLIE CAN'T KNOW about this."

She spoke those words with such determination to him that Mark found himself caught off-guard. 

It was almost a beg (Mark hadn't heard Beth Montgomery beg him for anything in years and yet here she was begging for two things in the span of two hours) and almost a threat. 

He wasn't sure whether he was supposed to be intimidated but it caused him to at least raise an eyebrow. Her face creased as he followed her through the hospital, into the West Wing towards the On-Call rooms.

He was following her-- wait, why was he following her? 

He hadn't quite figured that out yet. All he knew was that Beth had started walking and he'd followed her and that she'd started talking and talking and... yeah, his hangover was definitely still there. He found himself needing to brace himself as Beth shoved through a double door; she held it open for him and he stepped around her, their fingers brushing on the window. 

He murmured a very small thank you and nodded listlessly to Beth's demands.

She seemed to be making a lot of those today.

Charlie can't know about this. 

Bold for Beth to assume that Mark would talk to Charlie at all. He'd barely spoken to the psychiatrist at all. They'd see each other briefly passing in the halls and there'd be that moment. That one moment, that weird second of time, the awkward polite smile that Mark always said he wasn't going to do until he did... It was mutual. 

He felt vaguely bad about yelling at the psychiatrist over Lexie, but he stood by it. For the record, Mark still had a weird feeling about him; he wasn't sure what it was, but something gave him the impression that Charlie wasn't as squeaky clean and perfect as everyone seemed to think.

(Mark really didn't like Charlie.)

But, that still didn't exactly explain why Mark found himself following to an on-call room on the opposite side of the hospital. He definitely had more important things to do; there were a handful of post-op patients that needed reviewing and an OR that needed prepping, but Beth had an iron grip on Gretchen's chart and he felt the pressure to keep an eye on her.

It hadn't hit him until Derek had shot him a sharp look while leading Bethenny Ballard away, that maybe giving Beth one of his patients really wasn't the best idea he'd had.

He was definitely going to get yelled at by Charlie or Andrew, that's what Mark was guessing. Maybe by both of them at the same time. That would be interesting. 

Charlie always seemed so passive and ineffectual. Mark wondered whether he made Beth fight all of his battles. He couldn't imagine Charlie sending back food in a restaurant. Beth, on the other hand, he had seen do many things that wouldn't exactly be considered ineffectual or passive at all--

"So, Beth huh?"

The comment was so casual and off-handed that he almost didn't notice it. 

Mark hadn't realised that Beth was talking until she was pausing in her step, looking over at him when he missed the cue for an answer. Her eyebrow quirked inquisitively. She'd been walking so quickly that the falter in her pace was what caught his attention first, and then those dark eyes fixed on him as her head rose from the medical record. 

He blinked at her attempt at small talk-- was she trying to make unnecessary conversation? (What the fuck is happening today? No, but really, am I still drunk?)

Not only was Beth trying to make conversation, she was talking about the exact thing he didn't want to dwell on... especially not with her. 

His head was already cluttered as it was, he really could've done without a further Beth conundrum. The mere mention of his latest hookup made the blood rush to his ears and his skin prickle with discomfort.

"Can we not..." 

He trailed off, dread filling him as he thought about talking on his little nighttime adventures with his ex-girlfriend. It was the same feeling he'd gotten when he'd spoken about Beth with Lexie, a pit in his stomach that sucked in everything it could find. 

"I don't really think it's--"

"She's pretty." Another off-handed comment, one that made Mark groan silently to himself. "She seems nice too. Charlie said that she's a good team player, reliable... apparently she gets on well in positions of authority so I'm sure that'll suit you just fine--"

"I don't really want to talk about personal things..."

"Me either," Beth said, pausing as if she was deep in thought. "But you got out every skeleton in my closet and put it on show for Lexie so... excuse me if I don't have sympathy."

Her words caused them both to pause; it was a weighted pause, the sort of stutter that Mark could feel on his skin and in his airways. It burned vaguely, as if he'd just caught the scent of an alcoholic drink that made his head spin. 

It boiled at the back of his throat. His stomach lurched. This time, he wasn't exactly sure whether it was his hangover or not.

There it was, the very brief moment of heat that had fuelled Beth's dinner with Addison. 

She glanced over at him, pretending as if nothing had happened and that her passing comment hadn't scalded the top layer of his skin and left him as braised as Gretchen's palm. 

Mark lowered his head, blinking in the momentary disorientation that her words left behind. It was enough to remind him that he and Beth were still estranged in ways that he didn't think they'd ever overcome.

"Fine," Beth let out a breath, dissatisfied by Mark's silence. She shot him a look out of the corner of her eye. He could tell that the subject was definitely far from dropped. Idly, he wondered whether this whole thing was as weird for her as it was for him. "What was the last case we worked on together? I can't remember..."

"I would say probably one... from before," What he wanted to say was from ManWest, but he wasn't sure whether that was still a sore topic for her. The psychiatrist hummed thoughtfully. His lip twitched slightly. "It would've been more recent if you weren't purposely making Doctor Chaudhry take my pages for a Psych consult."

Her reaction was immediate. She looked over at him, her mouth falling open as her cheeks flushed. Her face scrunched in the way that indicated she was about to lie; again, Mark knew liars well and, as much as Derek liked to insist otherwise, he knew Beth's tells even better.

"I don't do that," She spoke with good conviction. He had to give it to her, she'd always been a good liar. But she had little tells that he knew like the back of his hand. It took everything within him not to nod sarcastically. "Jeez, your ego is really that big, huh?"

"So it's not a coincidence that we've never worked together?"

"It's a big hospital, Mark," Beth answered without a moment of hesitation. 

He got the impression that she'd at least prepared for this question. He could imagine her preparing for this as if it was one of her medical school exams; flash cards and highlighters and a prearranged answer that rolled perfectly off of her tongue. 

"I'm very busy and very in demand," She added after a beat, "so I'm sorry that I can't cater to your every little page--"

"I am the Head of Plastic Surgery--"

"Thank you for reminding me why I can't stand Plastic Surgeons," Beth cut his ego-trip short, eager to change the subject. She glanced over at him and shook her head, dwelling on the prospect of working with a Plastic Surgeon for the day. "I can't remember the last case we were on together but something tells me it wasn't a walk in the park..."

They both knew exactly why Beth couldn't remember the last case they'd worked together; she'd been successfully avoiding his pages for a Psych consultation since arriving in Seattle so their last shared case had been back when she'd been his surgical intern in New York. He wondered what Beth did remember from her final months in Manhattan-- he guessed from what he remembered himself about the state of her it wasn't much.

"You wanted this case," Mark reminded her, making her nose scrunch up slightly. "You're not even supposed to be working. You shouldn't be working." When Beth didn't respond to him, Mark just shook his head. "You owe me."

"I owe you?" Beth echoed. She cocked an eyebrow and tilted her head to the side, eyes gleaming."We're doing that, huh?"

"We are," He nodded.

"Well," Beth let out a breath. "I am getting a bit of deja vu..." She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and then snorted. "Although it's nice that you're the one who's hungover and covered in hickies for a change."

He decided not to reply to that.

Instead, he watched as Beth stopped outside an on-call room and pressed her ear against the door, as if to test whether someone was inside. 

Slowly, Mark frowned as he caught onto what was happening. It was as if he'd finally realised that was going on and how this appeared. Beth hummed lightly to herself, ignoring the expression that appeared on his face. 

A few passing nurses exchanged looks between the themselves, spying the engaged psychiatrist and the notorious playboy seemingly waiting outside of a on-call rom--

What exactly was it that she didn't want Charlie to know?

"Get that dumb look off of your face Sloan," She didn't even look back at him as she wrapped her knuckles against the wood, rousing whoever was inside. Mark didn't say anything, just tilted his head to the side. Eventually, Beth shot him a sharp look. "Not a chance in hell."

"I didn't say anything."

"You were thinking about it," She drawled with ease, waiting patiently for the door to open. Suddenly, Mark felt a lot less comfortable than he had two seconds ago. "I know what you're like--"

"I wasn't thinking about anything--"

"You're Mark Sloan," Beth interjected, raising an eyebrow at him. He went to speak but thought against it; she glanced down at his hickies and shook her head. "You're thinking about it."

(He was thinking about it.)

His denial bubbled into the shake of his head as the door to the on-call room opened. 

Meanwhile, Mark was wondering whether he had tells too when it came to lying; as Beth spoke to whoever it was behind that door, he just frowned at the floor. He wasn't even sure why the hell he was even here--

"Hi," Beth began, pretending as if Mark wasn't even standing beside her. He could tell she'd gotten good at that: disassociating from his presence. (Mark had a lot to learn.) She leant against the door and smiled a wide professional smile, the sort you'd see on park benches and at bus stops. "I'm sorry to disturb you... Mable told me that you were down here and I was hoping that I could ask for a favour--"

"You're back?"

Mark didn't recognise the voice behind the door. 

He guessed that Beth was right, this was a big hospital full of too many staff members for Mark to keep track of-- and besides, he'd never been one for befriending everyone (He could imagine Beth having a very interesting rebuttal to that point, something about him getting a little too friendly with his colleagues). 

He watched the back of her head as she nonchalantly shrugged.

"A favour, Jeff," She skirted around the topic completely, instead speaking in a curt way that made Mark's eyebrows raise. "I just wanted to ask for a favour." 'Jeff said something but Mark couldn't quite make it out. "Great... I want transfer paperwork... no, I know that you're taking a break and I know that it's very busy up there today... Just one form.... No, Jeff, I just--"

(He still had no idea what was going on.)

"We're friends, right Jeff?" Beth said with what Mark considered her 'friendly voice'; it was a forced tone, one that reminded him of Addison. "I just need one transfer paper to be put on hold in case the patient needs to be sectioned... Yes, of course Doctor Perkins knows about this... Yes, you're very welcome to talk to him about it--"

(He didn't need to know Beth well to know what was a very blatant lie.)

Mark didn't know what was said in response, but the door was closed very abruptly. 

The sigh that Beth let out was long and annoyed; she turned her back to the door and nodded to herself. Her head swung in his direction and she seemed very briefly surprised that he was still there.

"You have friends?"

He wasn't exactly sure whether he was allowed to be so openly sarcastic with her, but it felt natural and comfortable. 

The deadpan felt like good timing. He couldn't resist it. Beth's eyebrows raised and, for a split second, it felt like they were in New York again.

"Very funny," She didn't sound as though she found it very funny but Mark knew that she had a very good deadpan too. She shook her head and sighed, overplaying an expression of disappointment as if she was in a pantomime. It was too much to be real. "And here I was, thinking that we were friends?"

Friends? The question made Mark pause. 

He hadn't expected that. He saw the light glitter in Beth's eyes as she said it. He'd been caught off-guard so many times already today that he wasn't sure whether anything could surprise him today. 

But even still... Friends? He really hadn't expected that.

"Well," Her face crumpled and she looked away, her eyes trailing up and down the hallway. Her forehead folded into a trio of lines, a look of persistent debate. "I guess friends don't... y'know...break the other's heart."

For a moment, Mark felt the blood in his body rush to his ears. 

He was still reeling from their last conversation and now this? He wondered whether this was Beth's favourite hobby: bringing up New York like some sort of stun attack to leave him slightly light-headed. It had the same sort of effect as a stun grenade or tear gas, leaving him momentarily dazzled and breathless. 

He looked over at her, eyes squinting at her as if she was the sun on a very hot day in Manhattan, high in the sky and blazing down without a moment of hesitation. The tightness in his head and his chest resumed and Mark knew that it wasn't anything to do with his hangover. He didn't know what to say. 

So he just shrugged, opening his mouth and closing it, looking down at the floor as Beth showed no sign of moving. She was staring over at him, watching as he blinked away the effects of her words.

It was then that Mark caught how Beth's lip twitched out of the corner of his eye. 

She was trying not to smile, shaking her head slowly as if she was amused-- amused? 

Realisation washed over him like a cold bucket of water; sudden, icy and enough to make him grimace. He hadn't liked how she'd implied that only one person had come out of Manhattan worse for wear, but now he had the feeling that that wasn't what she was talking about.

His sigh almost aged him.

"If this is another joke about the pericardiocentesis--"

"I would never," Beth interjected his tired words, looking away so she could grin. Quick and sharp as she bit down on the tip of her tongue. She flinched again, just as her hand strayed across her torso. "I would never joke about something so serious and traumatic..."

"Right."

She rolled her eyes. "I'm taking that as a no to the friendship thing then."

"You want to be friends?"

Mark frowned at her, not exactly sure what was going on (a very common occurrence lately, apparently). Another roll of Beth's eyes and she readjusted her posture, twitching in discomfort; whenever she stood in a certain position, her jaw would clench as if she was in pain. 

It was subtle, it was fleeting, but he couldn't get the idea that she was still hurting out of his head.

She shifted from one foot to the other, juggling her weight onto either sides of her body. (She didn't answer his question either, much to his chagrin.) 

His gaze averted back to the door, giving into a change of subject.

"What are we doing--"

"I'm waiting," Beth said, eying him with exasperation, "I don't know what you're doing but I'm waiting..."

"For what?"

"For Jeff," She shot him a look that was slightly annoyed. She spoke as if it was extremely obvious. "Haven't you got anything better to do today?"

"She's my patient too," Mark reminded her. The psychiatrist chuckled to herself and mumbled something that suspiciously like 'I'm going to regret this aren't I?'. "And from the glare Derek sent me... I think I'm supposed to be chaperoning you and making sure you don't..."

Beth's brow furrowed and she looked over at him. "Don't what? Stab her in the ches--"

"Okay," Mark interrupted before the blood rushed to his ears again. 

Maybe he was going to be the one regretting this. He was already seriously regretting his evening and his morning-- why not his afternoon too? Briefly, he massaged his temples, feeling the thud of his hangover beneath his thumb.

 "Don't forget that without me you wouldn't have this patient..."

You owe me.

She was staring at him, studying his face and watching as he closed his eyes and tried to recollect his thoughts. 

He could feel the weight of her gaze on his aching skin; it wasn't as blistering as it had been the night before. It was softer, like the gentle warm touch of a rising sun. 

Mark took a sharp breath and straightened his back against the wall, raising his head and trying to roll the fatigue out of his shoulders.

"What was it?" Beth's voice was softer too. He glanced over at her and caught the way her brow furrowed slightly. He mirrored the gesture, not quite sure what she was talking away. "What'd you drink?"

He sighed, his lips twitched slightly into a guilty smile. "Everything, apparently."

She turned her face away to hide her chuckle,"That'll do it."

"Whatever it is, it's putting up a fight," His voice was slightly strained and Beth smiled faintly in recognition; it was her way of telling him that she was very familiar with the feeling. He watched the expression come and go. "It'll teach me to not drink when I have surgery in the morning..."

"I thought I would've been a cautionary tale," She shook her head slowly, appearing exasperated with his words. Beside him, Beth slid slightly down the wall, losing her footing on the floor. "If you need a reason to go cold turkey you should see the state of my liver."

His eyes dropped to her torso, specifically to the area of his chest that he'd spent half an hour pressing his hands against desperately to stop her from bleeding out. 

She caught the prolonged glance and, immediately, turned her head away again, sighing through her nose. 

There was a moment in time in which things felt a little too real-- Mark was being reminded of exactly how fragile everything was. He was being reminded of how close she'd been to...

"Hot water with lemon and honey," Beth murmured, lightly, dropping her head so she could play with her engagement ring. The action caused Mark to reanimate; his head rose back to normal height and he looked down the corridor. "It helps with nausea and boosts the blood sugar... I used to swear by it."

"I remember," He nodded slowly in response. 

He did. It was what her apartment had smelt like, citrus and the faint scent of warm honey. He closed his head and rested it against the wall, feeling the room spin very slightly. 

Of course he remembered.

When he opened his eyes, Beth was smiling at the floor. 

It was retrospective, thoughtful and she was unable to meet his eye as he unknowingly thrust them both into the memory of it-- a warm apartment, the one with the latch that would jump whenever the subway passed under it, the one with the flickering light in the bathroom and Manhattan's best bagels just two blocks away.

He opened his eyes to see the smile for what it was: sad and twisted. Mark didn't like it. Standing next to him was someone who, very clearly, didn't think about those times fondly at all. He supposed that once he'd been the same; things like that felt so poisoned to him sometimes, yet over the past few weeks Mark had coveted the normalcy and simpleness of it. 

Beth, very clearly, didn't share the same sentiment.

He didn't speak.

It made his nostalgia feel foolish to him. It made him regret every thought about Beth he'd had in the past two months; Mark didn't often regret things and yet regret seemed to be the most common emotion he felt when he looked at the woman beside him.

A dismissive, almost bitter chuckle fell through her lips and she shook her head. It was a subtle gesture, but Mark would've been hard-pressed to miss any of the smallest twitches in her face. 

She straightened, distancing herself away from him as if she was drawn back to the On-Call Room. Mark watched the back of her head with far more intent that he would have liked to admit. She crossed her arms over her chest and winced at the pressure, the crack of her heels breaking the spell of a rare candid moment between them.

Somehow, Mark felt worse than he had been five minutes ago.

"I knew you'd come around eventually..."

Beth leant against the doorframe as the infamous 'Jeff' appeared from the gloom of the overcast on-call room. 

Mark stayed where he was, watching Beth as she immediately transformed into the charming Montgomery, capable of getting whatever she wanted with a flutter of the eyelash-- he pressed his lips together, fingers still on his temple and sighed to himself. 

Seeing the subtle lilt of her muscles and the sudden, spontaneous sparkle in her eye, Mark wondered how many times he'd fallen for that exact expression.

"Who's patient is it?" Mark could hear the response now. It was sleepy, sluggish in the way that made him ask whether Jeff had immediately gone back to sleep after closing the door. He heard the shuffle of someone leaning against the wall and the click of a pager.

"Doctor Sloan's."

Beth threw in a second smile for good measure, pretending as if moving so suddenly hadn't caused her an intense wave of pain. 

She struggled to keep a straight posture, but did her best, arm desperately clutching at her hipbone as she shifted her weight around again. She ignored the way that Mark frowned at her, purposely not looking in his direction.

"Doctor Sloan?" Jeff repeated; his tone particularly piqued Mark's interest. 

It was slow, almost skeptical and made the Plastic Surgeon's eyebrows raise. He watched Beth's smile grow a little strained, head bobbing in a peppy nod to reaffirm her words. Very slowly, Mark's head tilted to the side. 

"I thought you refused to take any of his cases?" Jeff asked, audibly confused.

Called it.

"That's not true," Mark sensed a tightness in Beth's reply; while his eyes widened in surprise at the transport staff's words, Beth just seemed to tense. "I don't know where you've heard that from but that is definitely not true--"

"But Doctor Van Ness told me that she's taking on all of the Plastic referrals--"

The sound that left Beth's body was one of immediate alarm. She held out an arm and waved it, as if to dispel the conversation before it had even happened. 

Her face scrunched, her arm trembled slightly and she attempted to talk over Jeff's words-- her whole expression screamed desperation.

(Mark, meanwhile, was enjoying this immensely.)

"I don't think that's... I don't know why Helen said that--"

"And Doctor Chaudhry said to automatically redirect his patients to her even if it's a specific request for you--"

"Well... that one was because of a mix up with a patient that we've already had in the past. It's completely professional--"

Jeff paused, his tone turning thoughtful. "Didn't you call Doctor Sloan 'impossible to work with'?"

"I don't..." There was a noticeable fall in Beth's shoulders. The air seemed to suddenly rush out of her in a moment of resignation. Her mouth fell into a frown, head still shaking from side to side as if it would stop Jeff from speaking. "I don't remember saying those exact words."

"I swear... I swear that you said that he was 'arrogant' and that he has a 'really punchable face'..."

Another sigh. 

Beth hung her head, exhaling in loud resignation and acceptance that this conversation was happening. She pinched the bridge of her nose, eager to avoid the pair of electric blue eyes that stared at her from beyond Jeff's line of sight. Just a few steps away, Mark was able to hear every single word; arms crossed over his chest and a very faint smirk on his lips. 

Eyebrows raised, head cocked to the side almost inquisitively, he enjoyed the way Beth nodded along to Jeff's words with clear exasperation.

"I did," Beth said, "I did say that yeah."

"And you told Doctor Chaudhry that he wasn't even that good in b--"

She cleared her throat very loudly and Jeff halted completely in his sentence, finally interpreting the message to shut the fuck up. 

Her skin prickled as Mark let out a very low but audible chuckle; it was his turn for his eyes to flicker in amusement. He was so tempted to step forwards, alert Jeff of his presence and encourage him to continue: what was he about to say? 

He wasn't even that good in what exactly?

"Jeff," Beth's voice was haggard, a shell of the charisma it had been just minutes before. She took a step backwards and gestured in Mark's direction. She refused to meet Mark's eye. "Jeff, this is Doctor Sloan."

A head appeared around the doorframe, a pair of tired eyes that widened immediately on seeing the Plastic Surgeon leant against the wall. 

Jeff wasn't familiar to Mark but he assumed that they'd more than likely crossed paths once or twice. The psychiatric transport co-ordinator blinked at him, catching the wide, polite smile that Mark flashed him; Mark even held out a hand.

"Nice to meet you Jeff," He noticed how Beth twitched at his every word, subtly rubbing at her eyes as he introduced himself to the staff member. He could hear her gently murmuring something to herself; it was most likely some sort of curse on Jeff's name or an expletive that usually came after his. "Mark Sloan, Head of Plastics."

Beth pressed her forehead into her palm.

"Yeah," Jeff remarked, his face noticeably pale. "I know."

Meanwhile, Beth was staring between the two of them, eyes cloudy. 

Her shoulders were sunken, face contorted into a very pained expression (one that Mark was pretty sure was completely emotional and not physical.) She winced as they shook hands, as if the exchange was, in fact, physically painful for her. Maybe it was? 

Mark didn't know where the lines between Beth's pain and peace laid. 

Once their arms dropped away, she looked back over at Jeff. 

She sighed.

"So about that paperwork...?"

His face flushed with mortification. "Ten minutes tops."

"I thought so..."

Beth sounded exhausted. The transport co-ordinator nodded and disappeared back behind the door, leaving the two of them idle in the corridor. The sound of the door closing behind him made her flinch slightly. A beat passed. And then another. 

Beth's back was turned away from Mark, chin tilted upwards so she could blink at the ceiling.

It was as if she was directly to some divine spirit, begging to be cut some slack. 

He was bemused as it unfolding. If Beth wasn't the least religious person he'd ever met, he would've thought that she was praying. He knew better. When she turned to face him, he caught the embarrassed burn to her cheeks and took a moment to enjoy it shamelessly. It was delicious to him.

"Don't even start--"

"Wasn't even that good in bed?"

Mark wasn't sure whether he sounded miffed or amused; maybe he was halfway in between?

 There was a very long pause, one in which Beth's face returned to her palm and she let out a long laugh. Her laugh wasn't a pleasant laugh, it was one that was frustrated and tired and amalgamated the last two minutes of her life. 

She shook her head rapidly (back and forth, back and forth, back and forth). If she'd looked over at him in that moment, she would have seen a faintly bruised ego; it was one that Mark was trying to play off very casually, chuckling at her distaste.

"Don't worry, Doctor Sloan," Her words were slightly muffled and paired with a unhinged laugh. "I'm sure you can get your New Beth to leave a good Yelp review or something."

He let out a noise that sounded suspiciously close to a sigh.

"New Beth?"

"Well yeah," Her eyes appeared again, looming above her thumb as she recollected herself. She adjusted her blazer and held out her arms as if the answer was obvious. "I'm the original. The first sorry idiot to..." She waved a hand and wrinkled her nose, not able to bring herself to say it aloud. "Leave a Yelp review."

"So, you're the Old Beth, then, huh?"

It was Beth's turn to let out a sound of exasperation. Putting 'Old' and 'Beth' right next to each other was a risk he hadn't thought through. 

He braced himself for the comeback, for the snide comment that would remind him that he was still older than her no matter how old she got herself. Without warning, she started walking. He fell into step behind her, the pair retracing their steps through the hospital and back to the ER. She spoke over her shoulder, expressing indifference with a shrug of her shoulders.

"Call me the Original."

Mark pulled a face.

***

Lexie Grey wasn't having a particularly good day.

She wasn't sure what made it bad but it just was. She'd been given the morning off and found herself stranded in the middle of her sister's house, counting birds outside the kitchen window. She watched the wind in the trees and hugged a mug of coffee to her chest so tightly that her fingers almost went white from the lack of blood flow. 

Her palms had been slick as she'd rinsed the mug under the faucet, her skin had crawled as she'd gotten ready for work, her whole body had itched as she arrived through the hospital doors.

"Sloan's service today," was what Cristina Yang had told her as she appeared for assignments.

 Lexie assumed that there was supposed to be a 'You're' thrown in at the beginning of that. (Ah, so that's what made it bad, the ex-boyfriend who had the ability to make her day very difficult with the smallest case assignment.) 

Lexie nodded, despite the feeling of dread that built in her stomach.

Another thing she wasn't sure of: what was happening between the two of them. Mark was Mark. He'd seemed to take a very protective stance over her following everything that had happened. 

He cared more than Alex had. Alex had been indifferent. Mark had been determined to make sure she was okay. This whole mess exhausted her-- 

Mark still cared and Lexie didn't know what to do with that information.

He seemed to be caring about a lot of people lately. She didn't exactly feel special.

It wasn't until she spent a half-hour searching from the elusive Plastic Surgeon that she realised exactly how bad her day was going to get. 

She eventually found him in the ER, but he wasn't alone. There was a woman with him. She wasn't wearing a hospital uniform and for a split second, Lexie didn't recognise her at all--

But then she did.

Crap, she thought to herself.

Working on the same case as Mark and Beth Montgomery didn't warrant a good day at all. On the contrary, it sounded like Lexie's idea of hell.

***

Gretchen was a strong believer in hard work.

She'd worked hard for everything she had: every scholarship at college, every paper she'd ever turned in, every rewarding smile or moment of peace. She was juggling three jobs, hauling ass to make it through law school and stressing over her elderly mother who was living back in Arizona. 

But she was happy; she insisted it with a wide smile and dismissed her severe lapse in judgement at nothing but a stupid little mistake. She had a good life, Gretchen said, she had a good law career ahead of her, one that she'd worked so hard for-- the retake of the bar exam was just her final hurdle. 

She'd been working so hard to clear every hurdle so far; to be frank, she couldn't remember a time where she hadn't been working and working and working and working--

Beth thought that they were going to get on just fine.

By the time that Beth arrived into the ER, Gretchen had managed to convince herself that everything was fine; her smile was perky as she looked up at Mark, she barely winced as he redressed her hand and introduced her to the woman behind him. 

They'd moved into a private room for the Psych evaluation, leaving Beth, Mark and Gretchen all in a small room together. Beth pressed the transfer papers to her chest, attempting to appear as nonchalant and professional as possible. 

A hand was extended, Gretchen made a soft wisecrack about how she wouldn't be shaking any hands anytime soon. Beth chuckled.

"The biosynthetic dressings should ensure that you won't need skin grafts," Mark said lightly as he pressed them to her palm. "What I'm doing now is just redressing so we can get some recuperation on the skin--"

 As he spoke, Beth was pulling up a chair, asking Gretchen whether it was okay to have a chat with her; slightly bewildered, Gretchen agreed. She didn't ask any questions about Beth's presence, just turned her head back to her doctor. 

"No skin grafts?" Gretchen repeated, her brow furrowing. "Is that good?"

"It is," Mark said lightly, conscious of the way that Beth was watching him work very closely. The hairs raised on the back of his neck as he attempted to concentrate. "It's very good."

"Would that take long?" Her question caused both Mark and Beth to pause. There was a purpose behind the way that she looked up at the Plastic Surgeon. The light stutter, the scrunch of her forehead... "I mean, how long would something like that take to heal? If I had needed them?"

Beth didn't miss the glance that Mark shot her. 

It was low, subtle and maybe someone would have missed it if they didn't know him well enough to practically read his mind-- it was a brief bounce of his pupils to hers. She pressed her lips together and looked down at the papers in front of her.

(Keeping to his word, Jeff had organised the paperwork very quickly. He'd even apologised as he handed them over to her, expressing regret that he'd 'gotten her in trouble' with Doctor Sloan. To that, Beth had chuckled and taken the transfer papers with a grin; then once he'd grovelled enough, she'd shook her head and said: "Trouble? It's nothing I can't handle.")

"Well," Mark cleared his throat. Again, he shot a glance in Beth's direction so she leant forwards in her chair. He was hesitant in answering, Beth could tell. She could feel it too; Gretchen didn't look all too relieved about her short healing time. "It depends on the burn."

"Doctor Sloan mentioned that you burnt your hand while you were studying?" She stepped into the conversation with ease, interjecting in between Mark's statement and Gretchen's response. "Would you mind telling me what happened?

"I wanted some tea," Beth nodded thoughtfully as Gretchen recounted her version of events. Her eyes found the notes that Mark had left. He definitely had written soup. "So I put on the pot and I went to go and start my practice test. I got to the section on criminal law and then the alarm went off..."

"So you picked up the pot?"

"I did," She said, "I got really confused and I wasn't thinking straight... But I dropped it. It was hot." And then, as if Beth hadn't been speaking at all, Gretchen's head turned back to Mark. "So you mean more severe than this one? It would have to be more severe for a skin graft?"

That was one hell of a red flag. 

It wasn't Mark who responded to that question, but Beth. She leant even further forwards in her chair. When she made eye contact with Gretchen she was immediately hit by the familiar force of determination and drive, it was something that came off of Gretchen in waves. 

Sat in front of her was a woman who had worked so hard for everything she'd ever achieved; it felt familiar to Beth in a way that she knew she'd never be able to express to anyone else. The psychiatrist pushed her hair behind her ears and concentrated on the case at hand.

"A skin graft is a very serious surgery," She began, all too aware of the fact that Mark was an arms length away, listening to her. "You got off really lucky in this situation. This burn could have been much worse than it is."

It was in that moment that she realised how weird it was to hold her own when she'd spent so long just being his surgical intern.

"I know," Gretchen's face contorted as she looked down at her palm, at the angry puckers and blisters that were very carefully being tended to. Her fingers twitched. "Thank god for gravity, huh? But... but would a skin graft take longer to heal?"

"Have you been experiencing high levels of stress?" The question was sudden and caused Gretchen to stutter slightly. "I understand that you've been prepping for your exam and that it's very important for you. But would you consider yourself to be more stressed than usual?"

"It's always the same," was Gretchen's answer. She shrugged with one shoulder, being careful not to jolt her sore hand. "This is the fifth year in a row that I've had to sit this test. Every year I prep for this two-day exam. I'm used to it. I'm this stressed all of the time."

"I know the feeling," Beth chuckled with a sympathetic smile. "We have that in common... as an ex-med student who lived and breathed exams for a good decade of their life, I know how it feels. I'm sure Doctor Sloan can relate..." Gretchen looked over at her, eyes slightly glassy as she listened to what Beth was saying. In the corner, Mark bopped his head in an agreeing nod. "It can be a lot. All that work... it can really pile up on top of you, become overwhelming... I have friends who went into law and they said that they almost had to sell their soul to pass the bar. It's hard work."

"Maybe I should try that," Gretchen deadpanned as she leant back against the seat. She looked over at Mark as he continued to wrap her hand. "I've had five attempts on this exam already... maybe for the sixth go I should make a deal with the devil."

"So would you say there's a lot of pressure on you at the moment?" Another slightly out-of-the-blue question that made Gretchen pause; yet Beth spoke so calmly and casually that it was as if she was talking about the weather. "How do you feel about the exam?"

"I'm used to it," Gretchen murmured, a dent appearing between her eyebrows. "The pressure... it's there, definitely. Uh, there's a lot of pressure for any lawyer that wants to do well... I work hard and I want to pass. It's hard but I enjoy it."

Slowly, Beth nodded. This was familiar. 

It sounded like a very faint memory to her, the pressure of constantly needing to do more, be more... it swirled around the back of her head like a sour photograph that was pushed to the back of an attic. 

It was hidden under cobwebs and years of therapy, echoing the exact words that Andrew had iterated back to her in her sessions-- her eyes flickered back down to Gretchen's hand.

"It is hard," Beth said softly, pulling at the bottom of her sleeve, "Pressure is good sometimes. It keeps you motivated and keeps you going forwards... but sometimes it also makes you lose focus of the things that really count."

The law student seemed to blink at her. 

Beside her, Mark's shoulders hitched and his attention piqued; she could see that he was listening very intently-- maybe he was thinking about New York too. 

(Did he think about New York too?) 

Not about medical school but everything that came after it: the long shifts, the fractured relationship, the stolen kisses in half-cast supply closets, staggered elevator exits so no one saw. ManWest was Beth's stove and the alcohol and the pills had been her pot. 

She couldn't help but see herself in the woman sat in front of her.

(Beth had, also, learnt a long time ago that she'd lost focus of one thing in New York and that had been Mark. She'd also learnt that he wasn't the sort of guy she needed to refocus on. She'd bought new glasses. Nice ones. They were shiny and gave her even shinier engagement rings even when she couldn't make their morning coffee.)

(They also lost their prescription license and received mysterious letters from Boston.)

"I'm focused," The student insisted without a moment of hesitation. Beth's lips pressed into a thin line. Was this another Manhattan where Beth had become so good at convincing herself the unreal? "I've been focused for the last five years of my life. I want to pass this exam so bad I just--" Gretchen cut herself short with a wince of pain. Mark apologised softly.

"Okay," said Beth, quietly. She looked over towards Mark's expert work, watching his fingers gently soothe the burnt skin. "Five years is a very long time, Gretchen. A lot can happen, a lot can change."

(Mark glanced up at the psychiatrist, but looked away before they could meet eyes.)

"It is," Gretchen nodded, her face contorting as Mark made contact with particularly raw skin. "

"What kind of doctor are you?"

Gretchen's question made Beth smile softly at her. It was the question that always would appear eventually; the moment of hesitation, a flicker of suspicion as they realised that this wasn't exactly a surgical consultation. 

An: Are you?, Is she? or Is this? 

It was a slow process, one that began in the slight dip of Gretchen's lips. The foundation of a skeptical frown.

Beth didn't have a badge today, she didn't have a coat or a security pass or anything that made her look remotely official. 

All she had was the light smile and the papers in her lap. Mark's head raised to look between the two women, noticing how Beth paused for a moment. She was calm, collected and poised.

"I'm a psychiatrist."

(What struck Mark was the smoothness of Beth's voice, the way that she was able to make even him believe that nothing was wrong.)

(He hadn't fully seen this before; the way that, for a second, while Beth was speaking to her patient, it was as if the world wasn't spinning at all. He recognised the way she'd learnt to smooth-talk and schmooze from Addison's soirees, it was translated into a certain charm that she carried when she spoke. He found himself caught off-guard with her softness and care-- he hadn't expected it at all.)

"Gretchen, I have to ask," The law student sucked in a breath, feeling the question on the horizon. Even Mark drew backwards, turning to pick up some gauze. "Did you burn your hand on purpose?"

It wasn't an easy question to ask. 

They could see it in Gretchen's face, the slight twitch in the way that Gretchen's lip wobbled. She looked away from Beth immediately, averting her attention to her unaffected hand, playing with the cuticles on her forefinger. 

When she raised her head again, her face was contorting with discomfort.

"I'm not crazy."

Beth paused.

The last time she'd heard those words there'd been a gun in her face. A loaded gun, a finger on the trigger and a dangerous mind behind it. (A 99 Ruger Pistol. They'd found it on the floor of the OR. It was the same gun that Gary Clark had eventually committed suicide with.) Her pause was visible, a moment where her professional focus stumbled slightly; in her head, those words vibrated through bone and tissue, stunning her for the few seconds that she froze. 

They worked their way deep into her mind, unlocking the memory that had visited her a few times in daydreams and sleep. Her head lowered and she, in a distracted twitch, rearranged her papers. In reality, she was finding it very hard to move past the images that clogged her mind: the gun, the pain, the feeling of numbness--

The last time she'd heard those words, things hadn't gone well.

"I didn't say that," Beth continued eventually.

It felt as if she'd been frozen for a millennium, but in reality, it was a few seconds. 

Gretchen was still frowning and Mark was still working. 

The world was the same, but Beth's mind had gone wildly askew. 

The plastic surgeon glanced over at her, catching the way she faltered out of the corner of his eye. His lips gradually fell into a slight frown, not sure what had happened to throw her off her game.

"I'm not crazy," She repeated and Beth nodded softly as if she was scared the movement would break a bone or pull a muscle. "I...I can't fail that damn test one more time. I just can't. It's all anyone in my family...anyone in my life talks about. It's all I'm known for. Oh Gretchen the failure. Can you imagine failing the bar exam five times?"

(Neither Mark nor Beth responded. The most Mark knew about law was whenever there was nothing to his usual taste on television and he ended up watching Judge Judy while he did his morning reps.)

All Beth knew about the law was how to break it (and get away with it.)

"Five times! I mean that's absurd." Gretchen was completely absorbed by her professional failure, Beth could see it eating away like a parasite behind her eyes. "It's just...that's pathetic. I cannot sit for 2 and a half solid days of testing...again...just to prove to everyone again...how pathetic I am."

"You're not pathetic," Beth said tenderly, with a slightly sour taste in her mouth as she cleared her throat. "It's completely understandable that you're finding this very difficult. Failure isn't kind. It's..." A pause and Beth, again, heaved a breath. "It's challenging, often more challenging to get over than the thing you failed in the first place."

Gretchen hadn't answered her question verbally but there was something about her manner that gave her answer away. 

She'd harmed herself to avoid sitting this exam and now, here she was, quizzing the Head Plastic Surgeon on how much more heat she needed to warrant a skin graft. She was desperate. She was under so much pressure that Beth could almost see the cracks in her marble shell.

"That's easy for you to say," Gretchen said dejectedly, laying her head back against the chair. She fixed her eyes on Beth and sighed to herself. "You say that medical school was stressful... but you have the career you wanted, you got through all of the exams and the... you didn't fail everything five times. You don't understand."

(Mark looked over at Beth just in time to witness the little chuckle that fell through her lips as if to say: You have no idea. Gretchen really did have no idea.)

(She was looking at this psychiatrist as if she hadn't once upon a time been a disgraced surgical student who was still banned from practising surgery in forty-nine states. He wasn't sure whether he should've even cracked a smile, so he just watched as Beth nodded along with her words.)

"Okay, you're right," Beth conceded, "I don't understand."

That was a lie. She'd fallen at every hurdle she'd been given, hadn't she? How had she put it? Oh yeah: A cautionary tale. The sort of story that parents would tell their kids before they slept. Again, Mark watched Beth out of the corner of his eye; she pushed her hair behind her ears and sat a little in her chair.

"It's hard," She continued, reflecting on how she'd felt when everything had gone to shit. There were too many negative emotions in this room; Gary Clark, the ghosts of her past and even the way that Mark seemed to constantly watch her out of the corner of her eye. Beth found it almost suffocating. "It's demoralising when things don't go to plan. But there are other ways to get through this."

Beth wasn't particularly sure whether Gretchen was listening. 

The law student was frowning to herself, staring at Mark's fingers as he did his best to clean her burn. She could tell that Gretchen was far more like she had been ten years ago, desperate to make something of herself, hungry for the success that she'd worked so hard to achieve... all to a fault. 

Beth's had been the alcohol and pills, Gretchen's' seemed to be the need to physically cripple herself instead of damaging her own ego.

The two doctors stood outside Gretchen's hospital room as she signed papers with the nurse. 

As Gretchen brought a pen to paper, so did Beth. She signed a section order as Mark consulted on an incoming trauma; once he was finished, he found himself being drawn back to this patient. He lingered at Beth's side, watching as she handed the document over to the secretary.

"Are you going to admit her?"

"Yeah," Beth sighed, noticeably lacking the chipper attitude she'd had previously. She was slightly stormier now, frowning at the door to Gretchen's room. "I'll get Mable to place her on a 72-hour hold. She's going to try to hurt herself again and she might not get off lucky next time."

"A fun first case back at work, huh?"

A dry, unenthusiastic laugh in response to his sarcasm. "Somehow it still beats spending all day staring at flower arrangements and lace veils..." She trailed off almost thoughtfully, scowling at the memory of her wedding planning attempts. "I still have no fucking idea what the difference between ivory and white is. They both look the same to me."

(Mark had no idea either.)

(He also had no idea what sort of conversation he was supposed to make. He felt unlike himself, standing there and watching Beth fill out paperwork-- why was he always just standing around watching her do paperwork?)

(He was a surgeon, he had things to do, patients to suture, surgeries to organise... why was he here feeling very un-Mark-Sloan and silent and lost for words? He kept finding himself unable to do anything but stare, despite being infamous for loving the sound of his own voice.)

(He was so unsure about Beth, to the point where he felt so vividly uncomfortable, yet couldn't bring himself to walk or look away...)

Even Beth seemed to notice it. She'd completed her consultation and was no longer his concern. (Arguably, Mark would've made a solid case that she'd been his concern for (what was beginning to feel like) as long as he could remember.) She noticed that he was still standing beside her and frowned to herself, looking over at him once the pregnant pause had gotten awkward. 

He seemed to want to say something, want to make conversation, (but like all too often, Mark didn't know what to say.)

Her eyes met his.

She'd forgotten how overwhelming it was to work on a case with Mark. He was constantly there, appearing at the backs of rooms and glancing over at her as she attempted to concentrate-- she felt saturated and overwhelmed and she was pretty sure this was the most time she'd spent with him since she'd left New York all those years ago. 

Frankly, she'd forgotten how exhausting she found it to exist in the same space as him but she needed him. Mark was the only way she was going to get back to work. For some unseeable reason, she was trying her hardest to not bite that hand that fed her-- those award-winning fingers being that of Mark Sloan.

Small talk with Mark felt much alike the awkward conversation she'd made over shitty coffee at the AA meeting that morning. In one of those meetings, she found that everyone just seemed to just know; they knew why you were there and looked at you as if it was part of a big secret that they'd all been sworn into. It was always there, the secret, hanging around and moments away from being addressed. 

Here, Mark had that same feel to him, but this wasn't alcoholism, this was the throb in her chest that echoed through her body whenever a muscle twitched or she twisted too quickly. It was beginning to get suffocating.

She wished he'd just stop--

"I've never seen you like that before," Beth couldn't exactly make out his tone. She quirked an eyebrow, tilting her head to the side and frowning lightly. ("What?"). Mark grimaced at his own vagueness. "Working, I've never seen you do this whole therapist thing--"

"Oh," Beth said and then shrugged. She swallowed the lump at the back of her throat. "Well, it's my job."

"It's weird," He said. The psychiatrist seemed to pause and look up at him, visibly caught off-guard. She blinked at him, dark eyes burning into him as his nervously scuffed his foot against the floor. Mark almost stuttered. "No-- not weird-- but different. Uh, it's still kinda weird that you're not a surgeon and that you're doing psychiatry it's uh, different."

She paused.

"I guess," Beth said with a slight awkwardness. "It's been my new normal for years now so I don't really see it as weird anymore. It was weird at first... but now it's just... it's just normal."

It was as if Mark's sudden awkwardness was contagious. It seemed to bury itself underneath Beth's skin and cling there like a parasite. 

She pressed her lips together and furrowed her brow, looking back towards the secretary as she asked to page Mable down into the ER (the staff member lifted an eyebrow at the lack of uniform but got an encouraging nod from Mark (Beth sighed at the help) and proceeded with the page). 

Once Mable was on her way, Beth just lingered there, visibly unsure what to do.

Her head was stuffed with thoughts. 

It was filled to the brim with little sentences and pictures that had been plaguing her since she'd woken up in Seattle Pres all that time ago. Now, with Mark just there and the silence palpable, they were spiralling like vultures overhead. 

She was thinking about dinner, thinking about how she'd almost stayed in New York, thinking about how she'd almost died in Mark's lap, thinking about how he'd told her that he missed her and she'd told him that back--

(At the same time, Mark was thinking about the exact same thing. He was thinking about dinner, thinking about how they might have survived New York if she'd stayed, thinking about she'd almost died right with him, thinking about how he'd told her that he missed her and she'd told him that back too--)

"You're good."

"Hm?"

She wasn't really paying attention.

"At your job."

 (Jesus Christ, Sloan, just talk like a normal human being.) 

She stared at him as he rubbed at the back of his neck. Beth sensed that he was unbalanced in conversation. He was unsure of himself and kept looking around as if he was expecting her to disappear at any second. That was unfamiliar to her. 

"You're a really good psychiatrist."

"Thanks," Her eyebrows bunched over her eyes and she looked over his shoulder. "I would hope so... I work really hard."

"I know," Mark nodded. (The gesture made his head throb angrily. He regretted it swiftly.) "I know you do."

For a second, Beth thought back to Gretchen, the law student who was pressed to her limits, backed up against a wall she really didn't want to fail climbing. 

She couldn't meet Marks eye as he finished speaking; inwardly, Beth was wondering whether Mark could see it too. Gretchen had the same hunger for success that she'd had, the same desire for perfection, the same drive and same inability to not take no for an answer. Gretchen wanted to do things on her own terms. 

Beth wondered whether that was familiar to Mark too.

Instead of commenting on her silent question, Mark just cleared his throat and shrugged. "But you can really hold your own in there... I'm impressed."

"You're surprised?" Her eyes widened a little bit, a slight scoff falling out of her lips. His words let her taken aback, slightly offended by the suggestion that she wasn't capable of her job. He seemed to notice his mistake from the way she rose at the slightest confrontation. "When have I ever not held my own?"

Admittedly, Beth had been itching for a fight from the moment that she'd left Seattle Pres. 

She had so much tension built up in her chest and her limbs that she was just waiting for the opportunity to tear someone to shreds-- her temper was constantly simmering on the back burner, her usual restraint blown to ash the moment that she'd made eye contact with her sister across her own apartment.

(Mark knew exactly what was going on. He knew her better than she realised.)

She watched as he seemed to debate whether or not to take the opportunity that she'd left for him; Beth realised it before he did. Her lips parted and she cocked her head to the side, waiting to see whether he'd take the opening-- she could see the indecision play around at the back of his head, see the subtle shift of his eyes as he glanced over her shoulder. 

He was really giving it some thought--

"Tell me... Who had to save your life again?"

He took it. She wasn't particularly surprised, either. 

Beth's cheeks hurt from the painful smile that ripped across her face. It was a smile born from a mixture of PTSD and the need to be okay about it. She shook her head and lowered her chin; she was filled with a very slow-acting relief. 

She hated to say it, but Mark's silence on the comedic relief front had started to concern her and hearing him joke about her near-death experience was far more comforting than she could ever express in words.

It didn't anger her, it almost amused her.

"Asshole," Beth scoffed. "Y'know... if I'd been given the chance I reckon I could've performed that pericardiocentesis better than you could have--"

"On yourself?" He looked amused, raising his eyebrows as she blew out a lungful of air, dissatisfied by his disbelief. Beth nodded, fingers playing with the cell phone at the bottom of her pocket. Mark pretended to ponder it, but eventually just shrugged. "I'm not going to argue with that. I don't often make the wrong call but that--"

"That was an asshole move," Beth agreed with him (and Mark smiled as if that wrong call hadn't haunted him for the past two months.)

(She looked away, pushing her hair behind her ears and chuckling to herself; Mark watched the side of her face, trying his best to push the image of her broken and bloody on the floor out of his mind.)

Her eyes found him again and she grinned widely. "I'm perfectly capable of saving myself. Just stick a cardio textbook and a mirror in front of me and I would've been able to do the whole damn surgery."

"I don't doubt it," She couldn't tell whether he was just humouring her or not. But then his voice seemed to tiptoe a little too close to raw and Beth felt a shiver run down her spine. "You were an excellent surgeon."

Were. Her smile turned sad. She lowered her head until she wasn't looking at him anymore. She wished he'd stop doing that. 

That. Bringing up the past as if it wasn't something they both really really wanted to forget.

"I really fucked up on that pericardiocentesis, huh?" He seemed to take her lack of a reply as an instruction to talk and talk and talk-- Beth quirked an eyebrow, listening to him rush out a question that she figured was rhetorical. "Okay, I'll admit it... It wasn't my greatest judgement call. Happy?"

(Mark didn't know why he was talking about it.)

(Inwardly, he was slapping himself over the head. For a surgeon with a god complex, he sure loved to focus on his failures. He wasn't exactly sure what bringing it up again was supposed to accomplish-- maybe it was to quench the guilt he felt over it. Either way, he found Beth's chuckle almost therapeutic, far more effective than any therapy shit that Andrew Perkins could have served during his hour-slot.)

(He'd always enjoyed making her laugh.)

"Overjoyed," Beth sniped dryly, pressing her lips together to hold back a smile. "You're one more botched judgement call away from me seriously questioning your sanity."

(Mark raised an eyebrow, wondering when he'd ever made a decision that was worth labelling him as insane--)

"Choosing Addison was a very questionable call," Beth didn't like his obliviousness and ignorance. In her opinion, Mark was one of the biggest dumbasses she'd ever met. He, historically, seemed to fuck up when things really mattered. Her example caused him to tilt his head to the side, staring at her as she rolled her eyes. "It really didn't make any sense... or maybe it did because you've always had a thing for difficult women, right? You go after the sister, you choose the married woman and you fuck my new boss--"

His face contorted briefly. "Technically, she's not your boss yet--"

"-- Judgement calls," She continued as if he'd never interjected. "Not your thing, really."

Mark didn't respond, just pulled a thoughtful face and looked away.

Beth found herself looking at him, a certain heaviness tearing at her chest-- it was a familiar feeling, the same feeling that had appeared when he'd asked her earlier if she'd come back.

She couldn't look at him for long; before he'd even felt her there, she was staring down at the papers. She heaved a breath.

"But even so," Beth added, sighing softly. "Even though the pericardiocentesis was questionable... it saved my life so... I guess I owe you one."

(Like he said: far more effective than any therapy.)

"Do you miss surgery?"

He'd asked her once before, while hunched over in the OR gallery overseeing Sloan's surgery.

It had been a distraction then, an offhanded question to distract them from what was happening; but now, now Beth almost shuddered under the intense weight of his full, undivided attention.

She blinked at him, wavering very slightly as he watched her, waiting for her response.

A vapid pause. Mark seemed to stare right into her soul.

She cleared her throat.

"Sometimes..."

Sometimes. It felt like their exchange when they'd discussed missing each other. She missed it sometimes, too.

She could see Mark's eyebrow twitch at the word.

Sometimes. She wasn't sure whether this was all some big euphemism for their relationship; she hoped not.

"I worked hard for that career," Beth sighed, "I deserved it."

"I'm surprised that you didn't take the job as Head of Psych," Mark spoke casually, looking away and down at the pen in her hands. She followed him with her eyes, brow creasing as he seemed to shrug to himself. "I thought that medical directing was the sort of thing you wanted to go into--"

"I wasn't offered the job," Beth shrugged back to him, appearing cavalier but inquisitive at this branch of the conversation. She didn't miss how his eyes widened slightly with surprise. He opened his mouth and then, after a few moments, decided to reorganise his response. "I didn't get an official offer and honestly I wasn't interested anyway so--"

"I just thought..." He cleared his throat. "I just thought that with Derek offering the position to Charlie that it would've been the next move--"

Beth felt her chest seize.

It was a very familiar throbbing sensation, one that made her mouth go dry and her eyes go wide.

"Wait," She threw out a hand to slow the Plastic Surgeon down. Mark was talking too quickly and she'd barely even digested what he'd already said. She couldn't comprehend what he'd just said. "He offered the job to Charlie?"

(Ah crap.)

(Mark realised that he'd made a mistake from the moment that Beth's eyes fixed on his.)

(It was hidden away in the way that Beth's jaw slackened and her nervous retracting on the pen stalled completely. Her eyes drilled into his but faded as if she was suspended in very immediate and deep thought. That was when Mark knew that he'd really fucked it up-- he'd heard from Derek directly that Charles and Andrew Perkins had been the first two psychiatrists to receive formal job offers from Seattle Grace Mercy West.)

(Mark hadn't realised that Beth didn't know that too. What he did realise, on the other hand, was that revealing that Charlie was keeping secrets from his fiancée was not what he'd wanted to accomplish today.)

Another brief interlude in which Mark's eyes drilled into her subconscious; she was left with little shapes in her vision as if he'd made a lasting imprint on the back of her eyes.

He took a long breath and scratched at the back of his neck; Beth's eyes narrowed slightly with the unfamiliarity of his actions.

He felt so foreign to her. She couldn't tell what it was but something was just off about him. He was too close to her. He was too... too tentative and soft.

A muscle twitched in his jaw and he wouldn't quite meet her eye.

"It's good that you..." Mark said slowly, "Are you okay?"

His question was sudden, out of the blue and made Beth trap her tongue between her teeth. She bit down hard, almost drawing blood, and made a face.

She didn't like that question much. She'd heard it too many times over the past few weeks. She'd exhausted her Rolodex of answers-- the first time she'd been asked that question had been by a hurried Lexie as she bled out in the middle of a corridor:

Okay? I'm dying.

Even still, Mark asking the question made Beth exhausted.

It was exhausting. That question implied that he cared about the answer and Beth really was exhausted by the concept of Mark caring about anything but himself.

(She really, really didn't want Mark to care about her answer and she really, really hoped he didn't.)

She looked away, tapped a finger against the worktop and hoped to high heavens that one day people would stop being so fixated on whether or not she was okay.

She didn't really understand why all the wrong people seemed to want to know.

Why was Mark asking and not Addison? Why did Mark have to ask and not the one person that Beth really wanted to care about her?

"Close to it," was what she opted for as her reply.

***

The last time Lexie had worked on the same case as Beth and Mark, albeit accidentally, had been Petunia Greenman.

There had been something there, she'd sensed it in the way they'd all looked at each other.

The stilted ex-socialite had looked between the ex-couple with such contempt that Lexie had practically burned from the heat of it. The tension had been palpable, the silence had been thick and the lawsuit that had come as a result of it had almost flattened the hospital completely.

It had been the sort of standoff that had warranted a legal team and it had made Lexie realise that dating Mark and mingling with these sort of people made her feel her age-- it made her feel as though she was a kid trying to find it's place at the adult's table.

Now, she was stood outside Gretchen Johnson's door, attempting to make herself scarce to avoid entering the trauma room.

She had already missed her brief and now was trying her best to waste time as effectively as possible; she'd watched Mark and Beth talk with each other, watched how Mark stared after Beth as the psychiatrist headed back into Gretchen's room.

She'd noticed how he seemed to take a moment to adjust himself before continuing onwards and then, as if enticed by Beth's absence, the Chief of Surgery appeared.

He materialised as if out of thin air. It was almost ominous; there was this suddenness to him, a slight look of strain in his face as he approached his best friend.

Lexie had looked between them and realised that her immediate assumption on her day had been very much correct-- this wasn't a good day at all.

"I need to talk to you."

Derek had not carried a greeting nor had he cracked a smile.

Instead, he appeared grave, forehead lining as Mark glanced over at him.

The Plastic Surgeon raised an eyebrow but didn't comment; he was busy co-signing the paperwork for Gretchen's Psych transfer, head swinging from Derek and the papers back and forth like a pendulum. 

Mark didn't seem to grasp Derek's seriousness until the fourth swing-- by then, he was already frowning.

"If this is about Doctor Ballard I swear I didn't know she was going to be working here!"

His words all came out in a very swift rush, as if he knew exactly what was on Derek's mind. Lexie overheard the sigh that came out of the Chief's body, drawn out by Mark's transgression.

"We didn't really have time for talking if you know what I mean--"

"That's not what I..." From here, Lexie could see how Derek's face contorted in disgust. He paused, re-evaluated the conversation and then retraced his steps. "Actually, I'm honestly not surprised--"

"In my defence," Mark drawled, with a smirk that was reminiscent of life before their whole world had turned upside down. "When you told me not to sleep with staff, you only mentioned nurses and Doctor Ballard isn't a nurse--"

"I thought I'd be safe with psychiatrists," Derek interjected.

He rubbed at his chin, forehead furrowed in deliberation. Between the bustle of the ER and the seriousness of the look in his eye, Lexie felt very slightly unsettled as she listened into their conversation.

"I'm pretty sure they're smarter than other staff here," Derek sounded exhausted, "They have morals and standards. They all have the right idea and want nothing to do with you."

It was Mark's turn to sigh-- it was long and interrupted by a chuckle.

He shook his head and muttered to himself, throwing a glance back towards Gretchen's door.

Lexie followed the subtle flicker of his eyes and found herself catching sight of Beth in the room; she was sat opposite the patient, smiling tenderly and attempting to console the burn victim. Mark's glance was very subtle but it was enough for Derek to follow it too.

"You're not wrong," was Mark's eventual reply. He squinted over at the ex-neurosurgeon as if his headache was making it hard for him to concentrate.

"I thought you didn't like psychiatrists anyway," Derek said curtly, as if struck by a sudden thought. "You used to say that they were overpaid crazy fantitiscists and that psychology wasn't real--"

Even Lexie could see the irony in it. Another glance back over towards Gretchen's trauma room and Mark bit the tip of his tongue.

He cracked a wry smile, the sort that spoke more than words could ever achieve, and laughed. He shook his head from side to side and looked at Derek as if he was one of the greatest comedians in the world.

"And then I discovered the wonders of therapy," Lexie couldn't decide whether Mark was being sarcastic or whether therapy was a euphemism for the nocturnal activities that he'd received (and definitely had not been prescribed). Neither, so it appeared, could Derek. "I'm a changed man."

"Right," The Chief of Surgery was visibly skeptical, running an eye up and down the Plastic Surgeon. "Something tells me not even Andrew Perkins could get you to fall in line." (Lexie could probably give Derek the name of a specific psychiatrist who could.) He paused. "I've already been told that you're not playing nice with staff members--"

"You sound like my shrink," Mark sighed. He scratched at the top of his neck, grimacing to himself. "Apparently I'm volatile, self-obsessed, and don't play well with others."

Silently, on the other side of the room, Lexie agreed with his shrink.

"-and picking fights with Charlie Perkins," Derek barely even batted an eyelash at Mark's interruption. Instead, he just continued onwards, watching as Mark rolled his eyes. His tone turned tired. "You can't just burst into people's offices and interrupt their sessions--"

"Technically," Mark said tightly, wagging a finger thoughtfully. "Technically it's not his office, it's Beth's--"

"What's the problem there?"

Problem?

Lexie considered Charlie too nice to have a problem with; even she, with her questionable morals and wavering reasons for disliking the couple, knew that Charlie was the sort of guy people found it hard to be angry with.

He was passive, caring and seemed to have the whole psychiatry nailed to a 't'. She could see from the way that Derek put his hands on his hips and frowned deeply that he agreed. Meanwhile, Mark just scoffed and shook his head again.

"There's not a problem."

"One of my Department Heads has a formal complaint against him for rude conduct, I consider that a problem." Derek pointed out, making Mark grimace. (It was the first time he was hearing about this and for some reason, it surprised him. Maybe there was more fire to Charlie Perkins than he'd anticipated.) "Did you really just burst into one of his sessions and yell at him? That's violating a handful of hospital confidentiality codes not to mention--"

His face contorted. "Not a problem."

"Mark," Derek sounded like a disappointed parent, "Look, I'm barely holding this hospital together as it is... the last thing I need is one of my Attendings getting himself suspended because of some inappropriate rivalry with a psychiatrist--"

"It's not a rivalry," Mark was quick to interject, eyes narrowing slightly. "I just wasn't satisfied with how Doctor Perkins was handling one of his patients. It's not inappropriate--"

"You're telling me it was completely professional?" Derek didnd't sound convinced. He mimicked Mark's stance, putting his hands on his hips and frowning deeply. "You being angry at Doctor Perkins isn't personal at all... So it has nothing to do with Beth?"

She could recognise the same skepticism and exhaustion that she'd carried through her own conversation with Mark.

Her eyes flickered between the two doctors, watching as Mark answered quicker than humanly possible. He said the word 'nothing' as fast as he could, making Derek blink at him, eyebrows raising.

There was a brief moment in which Lexie and Derek seemed to be on the same page, even on other sides of the room; neither of them believed a word he said.

"Give me some credit here, Shep," Mark added for good measure, shoving the paperwork across the desk towards the secretary. The secretary accepted it, warily looking between Derek and Mark as if she could sense the tension. "I'm perfectly capable of being an asshole for no reason. It used to be one of my greatest skills." When Derek didn't laugh, Mark just continued. He rubbed at his nose and sighed. "Okay, so there was a reason but it wasn't what you think--"

"Beth wouldn't--"

"Surprisingly, Beth's not the only woman I've ever dated," He said it in a resigned way, in the sort of way that made Lexie feel as though he knew she was listening. It made her think about how awkward things had been ever since they'd broken up. Derek made a sound, one that sounded very skeptical. "It's always Beth. Can we stop talking about Beth? There was another one... remember? About yay big, brunette, watched me turn my other ex-girlfriend into a shishkebab and was completely screwed over by her psychiatrist with a lot of prescription drugs--"

"Lexie?" Derek answered the rhetorical question, making Mark sigh. He sounded incredulous, as if he couldn't fathom Charlie and Lexie being in the same space together. The intern in question grimaced and turned away. "You argued with Charlie over Lexie?"

It was at that moment that Lexie figured that her day would have been better spent elsewhere. She really didn't want to listen to Mark exhaust himself over concern for women that he didn't even date anymore. 

She took a couple of steps away, attempting to peel herself away from the conversation, but in response Mark and Derek both seemed to gravitate towards her, obliviously pulled along as if by a string. It seemed, at least until Lexie was able to get reassigned to another case, overhearing this conversation was inescapable. 

Briefly, Lexie considered just going off and making herself scarce until she was able to barter her way into paeds or general surgery (maybe she'd strike lucky and get into ortho? Or maybe she'd manage to convince Jackson to let her onto cardio? Lexie felt almost dizzy with the possibilities. She couldn't understand why she seemed to keep getting assigned to Mark's service. Did the universe just hate her that much?). 

But that meant walking past Derek and Mark to go back to the staff stairwell and elevators-- which, of course, was nothing short of bad news.

"I disagreed with him," Mark corrected him, shrugging dismissively. It was a very clear downplay, Lexie could tell without even looking at him. She'd been avoiding staring at the two doctors this whole time, instead opting to stare down at a nondescript piece of paper as nurses shot her odd looks. The ex-neurosurgeon, once again, did not appear convinced at all. "Argue sounds like there was... something personal..."

"Formal complaint," Derek reminded him.

"Disagreed... passionately," He conceded, as if that would explain the email that Derek had received this morning. (From the face that the other surgeon pulled, Mark figured that it hadn't explained it at all.) "Not even a disagreement really... more of... uh... a curt exchange of differences--"

Derek stared at him, "You're full of crap, you know that right?"

Mark's eyebrows raised. "Now you just sound like Beth."

"That's not a bad thing," He said, (trying his best not to roll his eyes). "I'm beginning to think she's the only person who can keep you in line-- you're fighting with Charlie and sneaking Beth into work when she shouldn't even be on hospital property. I think this is getting a little out of hand Mark--"

"Well sorry I didn't want Lexie to get snowed again," The Plastic Surgeon seemed bothered by Derek's intrusion and Lexie could feel his annoyance from across the room. She busied herself with helping a nurse set up an IV, but her ears pricked up at the sound of her name. "I've already watched drugs ruin ex-girlfriends so excuse me if I didn't want to watch Lexie get fucking wiped out with it too-- she's a good kid and the drug abuse completely stripped Beth of everything she had, her career, her happiness-- Lexie deserves better than that."

There was a brief pause in which both Derek and Lexie stalled. 

It was as if they were synced, two people that had the same skepticism over Mark Sloan buried in their bodies. Lexie felt a shiver go down her spine and turned her back towards the pair, hiding the way her brow furrowed at the thought of it all-- she'd been given a lot of heavy psychiatric medication and it had affected her for a long time, longer than either Charlie or Andrew had expected. 

Her body hadn't burnt through it but held onto it, as if desperate for relief from the PTSD that she suffered from time-to-time. The medication had left her mellow and dizzy, the sort of calm that had felt infectious and she hadn't wanted to lose--

Lexie cleared her throat and blinked the threat of tears out of her eyes.

(Meanwhile, Derek was just staring at the side of Mark's face, watching as he continued with the paperwork as if nothing had happened.)

(Behind them, the transfer team had arrived to take Gretchen up into the psychiatry department and they overheard the law student's words of contention when the door opened. Beth was speaking to her calmly, her voice low and soft under the conflict. Both surgeons looked towards the door, watching as Gretchen was wheeled out and taken to the elevator. Beth did not follow.)

(When Gretchen caught sight of Mark, he lowered his eyes, looking back down at his signature on the document.)

"You still care about Lexie?" Derek asked and Mark scoffed.

Her heart jumped into her throat at the mention of her name. 

Her head spun slightly and she found it very hard not to stare at the two of them so blatantly. The nurse beside her shot her an odd look, finding her stiff and unresponsive, her attention dedicated to the man she'd once loved so intensely.

"Lexie was my opportunity to do things right," was his response. 

It was a diplomatic response, calm and balanced as if he'd thought about it extensively. Maybe he'd even practiced this speech in the mirror? Lexie wouldn't push it past him. He avoided Derek's eyes and just laughed to himself, shaking his head. 

"I went into that relationship wanting to do everything I didn't with Beth," Mark said calmly and softly, "I wanted to do everything right. I made an effort to just be better, to learn from that dumpster fire. I think I did everything right. I didn't condescend, I didn't cheat, I didn't walk away when things got difficult- I was noticeably less of an asshole for her, which, as you know, is apparently pretty hard for me... I did it right. I'm standing by that even though she doesn't want me anymore. So yes, I care about her."

A beat passed.

"Oh my god," Derek deadpanned, eyebrows aloft. "You've grown up."

"Oh fuck off-"

It was at that specific moment that, in a weird moment of coincidence that Mark decided to look in her direction. It was a wanton glance, one that could've been played off if it wasn't for the way that directly met each other's eyes. 

She watched the way he seemed to freeze when he realised she was there-- their eyes connected for such a pregnant pause that Mark, immediately, knew that she'd been listening. His chin raised and he inhaled in either surprise or dread, Lexie couldn't tell which. 

At the same time, her skin burned with embarrassment; her eyes averted, her head lowered and her blood simmered with the mortification of being caught.

He called out her name but she'd already hightailed it out of the way. 

Lexie wasn't sure what he intended to do. He took a few steps towards her but she was already gone. She found herself inside what had formerly been Gretchen's room, opening the door with such little regard for what room it was and closing it so abruptly behind her. 

Lexie stared at it, slightly out-of-breath from the suddenness of the last five or so minutes-- she pressed a hand to her face and turned...

(Outside of the room, Derek remarked how he hadn't found Mark for this reason and explained that he needed the Plastic Surgeon to have a look at a few papers from a medical record if he was free.)

(Mark asked what patient and Derek, with a nonchalant shrug, said that it was confidential. He just needed him to give a consultation on a patient's botched breast augmentation surgery. With a sigh (peeling his eyes off of Gretchen's door), Mark nodded and asked Derek to fax the papers to his secretary.)

Lexie, on the other hand, was still not having a good day.

The room wasn't empty. It somehow, in amongst the fleeting chaos, had completely passed Lexie that Doctor Beth Montgomery hadn't left Gretchen's room. 

She'd forgotten that the psychiatrist was still sat to the side, completing admin on one of the computers while waiting to be chased out by one of the trauma nurses for an incoming trauma. 

Beth was out of sight, but, the psychiatrist looked up from the notes, spied the younger Grey sister and spoke.

"Doctor Grey."

Her voice made her jump.

 Lexie was convinced that it wasn't something far from cardiac arrest; suddenly, she was whipping around and blinking at the familiar brunette as she twirled a pen in her hand. 

Their eyes met and Lexie, immediately, felt like exiting the room-- her heart was in her mouth again and she felt her head spin with the memory of the last time they'd been in a room like this one.

"Beth," Lexie sounded breathless and surprised. 

The psychiatrist's lips twitched with amusement at how unsettled she was. As if bored, Beth looked back at her computer screen, tapping away and pretending as if Lexie wasn't on the verge of combusting right in front of her. 

"You're back..." Lexie remarked, eyebrows raised, "How are you back?"

A dry, slightly bitter chuckle. "Let me guess... you hoped that the next time you'd see me was at my funeral?"

The blunt response nearly knocked Lexie off of her feet. 

There was so much animosity behind it, so much venom that it left Lexie short of breath again. She blinked at Beth, struggling to process the words that had just left her mouth. A beat passed. Lexie's jaw dropped in shock.

"N-No," She stumbled over her own words, shaking her head. "N-No I didn't-- I just--"

"Sure," Beth didn't look up from her computer screen, just chuckled to herself. She shook her head lightly. "Look, I'm actually pretty busy at the moment so... so can we reschedule the whole 'you're a useless addict that broke Mark Sloan's heart' thing for tomorrow? I'll even let you kick me when I'm down--"

"I don't want to--"

"Oh!" Beth exclaimed, as if a thought had just occurred to her, "Maybe I can let you shoot me? That sounds fun right? I'll just stand here and you can take a gun and just--"

"Beth."

Lexie couldn't remember the last time she'd felt so tightly wound; she felt like a coil that was pressed and pressed and pressed, ready to explode at any moment. 

Her arms were tightly pressed against her chest, as if she was physically holding herself together. It was such a contrast to Beth, who was sat in that chair on the other side of the room, one leg crossed over the other and fingers twirling the pen around and around and around.

The surgical intern's interruption seemed to achieve what she wanted. It was as if Beth had gotten distracted or carried away so suddenly; she blinked at resurfaced, throwing a glance up at Lexie as the younger doctor's jaw clenched. 

Their eyes met for a split second and then Beth looked away; the psychiatrist chuckled.

"It's Doctor Montgomery to you."

Those words were so heavy, so full of distaste and hate that Lexie almost wanted to recoil-- but she couldn't, she was stuck to the spot. 

She watched every twitch in Beth's face, watched as something fiery and dark flickered through her eyes. Lexie felt her throat go dry; there was a lump there, one that had built up ever since she'd said all of those words--

"I..."

"Don't," Beth's voice came out in a rush of hot air. "Don't bother. I really, really don't want to pretend to care about anything you have to say to me. I'm having a shit day and would prefer if you just let me have this... this ten minute window alone instead of making me feel bad about myself--"

She reminded her so much of Addison. 

They were so similar but different at the same time; Lexie had spent so many hours listening to Meredith talk about the eldest Montgomery sister at length, how close things had gotten to falling apart for her-- she could see parts of Addison in the exhaustion of Beth, in the way that Beth still didn't even look when addressing her. 

There was power there but there was also tiredness, desperation, a need for Lexie to never speak to her again..

Turn around, Lexie's inner voice told her. She wanted to grant Beth this silence. She wanted to turn and go and just leave them all alone. Walk out of that door. Turn around, get out of here, leave her alone--

"Thank you," was what Lexie said instead.

Her voice trembled slightly and her hand was lingering on the door knob. Suddenly, it was exactly like her session with Charlie. 

She was speaking and speaking and speaking and her head was so full and heavy and overwhelmed... she didn't think she'd be able to stop. Words were parting her lips and Beth was frozen in her chair and she couldn't bring herself to walk out of that door just yet.

"Thank you," She repeated, a little louder than the first time. "I know that you don't like me but I-I wanted to thank you for... for what you did for me. I don't know w-why you did it or um, what... but thank you."

Her thoughts had gotten cloudy over the past few weeks. 

She had trouble navigating them just like she had trouble putting them into words. Beth showed no signs that she'd heard her, just continued to stare lines into her computer screen. The pause in which Lexie struggled to organise her thoughts and waited for Beth to speak, left the younger doctor breathless again. 

When she realised Beth wasn't going to talk, Lexie jumped into action again.

"I'm also sorry," Again, she was speaking too quickly, too chaotically. "I'm a good person. I don't... I don't usually treat people like this... I don't... I'm not-- I'm sorry. What I said... how I said it... it wasn't right. I had no right to talk about those things. That's your personal life... that's your business not mine. I shouldn't have-- I didn't want to-- I'm sorry."

Lightly, Beth sighed.

"I really am," Lexie continued, conscious of her current tendency to talk too much. It had become a nervous reflex, one that she couldn't drown out. "I'm really... really sorry. And I'm not just saying that because you-- you-- you got hurt, I'm saying it because I'm a good person and I don't... I don't do stuff like this. I should have never involved you with what happened between me and Mark. It was inappropriate and wrong and I'm just... I'm so sorry for hurting you."

She'd thought about it a lot: how to apologise, how to move past this. Lexie didn't want to be that girl, she didn't want to be the antagonist in this situation (she'd realised that maybe making Beth a villain wasn't the right way to deal with all of this.) 

Maybe it had been the therapy, maybe it had been the look on Charlie Perkin's face when Lexie had told him that Mark Sloan still cared about Beth Montgomery in the slightest way-- but Lexie was tired of making things difficult for her.

Lexie waited for her to say something, to do something... but Beth didn't show any sign that she was even aware that Lexie was still in the room. 

She was impassive, eyes unmoving from the screen and jaw locked in a clench. Lexie found it impossible to even read her (I bet Mark would be able to tell what she's thinking, the jilted voice in her head whispered), she didn't know what to expect or what to do... so Lexie stood there, waiting for a miracle to happen or for the sky to fall or the world to implode--

"No offence, Little Grey..."

Lexie didn't like how Mark and Beth seemed to collide in that sentence. She'd never understood how that nickname could get under her skin until it was coming from Beth. 

It was so jarring, it took her by surprise and made goosebumps rise on the back of her neck. The moment was so hauntingly cinematic... Beth's eyes raised to burn straight through her and her lips twitched into a carefree smile that chilled her to the core.

"But you...." She said every word so slowly, as if they tasted sweet on her tongue. "You can shove your apology."

***

Despite everything, Gretchen was still a believer in hard work.

Beth could see it in her eyes, even sat in a wheelchair outside of Charlie's office. The law student avoided her gaze, instead focusing on anything else, something that would giveaway where they were. Beth sighed to herself, waiting for Gretchen to ask the question; in the ER they'd only told Gretchen that she was going to speak to a different doctor, that she was going to be moved upstairs. Now, there were more questions than Beth had answers.

"Where am I?"

You know where you are, Beth wanted to say, but she knew that she couldn't risk any vagueness or blurred lines. 

She'd just appeared from the staff room, holding a neon green mug and sporting a sad smile. She'd chanced upon Gretchen in the hallway and Jeff had left the patient under her supervision as she waited for Charlie to finish his current session. Now, Beth watched the realisation settle in, even before she'd given her answer.

"You're in the Psychiatry department," Beth's answer was concise. Her voice was calm and collected, her demeanor smooth. "We need to place you on a seventy-two hour hold. I'm sorry Gretchen. You're going to be staying here for a while."

"No."

Beth had been committed once. 

She recognised the desperation in Gretchen's voice as the law student processed what this meant. She raised her bandaged, burnt had to swipe at the air in an attempt to balance herself-- it made Beth think of how hopeless she'd felt when Addison had arrived at her apartment and forced her into that rehabilitation clinic outside of Manhattan.

It'd never stopped hurting, Beth had found, to think that sometimes, in her job, she was the Addison to people's Beth. 

She could still feel the resentment and the panic and the desperation and the-- her throat tightened slightly and she averted her gaze to the floor. She cleared her throat, adjusted her posture and reminded herself that she would never be her sister. She was determined not to be.

"I'm not crazy!" 

Gretchen repeated those words from earlier and once again, Beth was reminded of Gary Clark. She blinked away the memory of it but still felt her chest throb as a reminder of the last person she'd tried to subdue. Her last failure. (If Gretchen really wanted to talk failure and compare notes, Beth had one hell of a TEDtalk ready for her.) 

"I need to go home. I need to go home right now--"

"Gretchen, I'm so sorry--"

Beth took no pleasure from watching her crumble into despair. 

She, herself, hadn't been committed peacefully. She'd gone down with a fight, arms flailing and lungs raw from screaming... of course, going into narcotic withdrawal had been extremely different to the change that Gretchen was going to see now. 

Beth had been committed for a 6 month program; in all honesty, 72 hours didn't seem like a lot compared to that. However, what Beth did know was that Gretchen didn't care how long it was-- she wanted to harm herself, to stop herself from failing over and over again. 

She didn't want to be branded as a failure, she didn't want to be held against her will.

"I just need to go home," She begged. 

Her face was contorted in pain, eyes welling with tears as she noticed the security that was positioned at the end of the hallway, stopping Gretchen from attempting to get away. Beth nodded empathetically, understanding the flight impulse when you were backed into a corner-- 

"Please, please I just need to go home."

(Beth felt her throat grow tight with the threat of tears.)

"There's no shame in saying you can't do something," Beth's voice was low and slightly unfamiliar to her. 

She wasn't used to getting emotionally invested in cases but Gretchen reminded her so much of herself-- she blinked wildly and cleared her throat, forcing herself to focus on the matters at hand. 

"You know you're just going to hurt yourself again. You need some help Gretchen," The psychiatrist said, "If the idea of taking an exam makes you hold the palm of your hand to a burner... you need some help. Everyone needs help from time to time. To make sure they're okay, they're ready. I have that. And you need that right now."

There was a pause. 

From behind Beth's old office door, they could here the ending of a therapy session. Charlie's office door opened and he appeared, following out a patient who Beth vaguely recognised as one of her old cases. 

They exchanged polite smiles as the patient passed, but Beth's smile faltered slightly when she saw the expression on Charlie's face. Their eyes met and a silent conversation played out between them.

He did not look happy that she was working.

"I'm not crazy," Gretchen said softly. 

It seemed as though Charlie's appearance (a far more professional appearing psychiatrist in a coat and a official nametag) had knocked the reality into her. Suddenly, Gretchen looked as though she couldn't fight anymore. She looked tired and drained and set her sad eyes on Beth with little fire left inside her.

Beth nodded, "I know."

"I just don't want to fail."

Again, Beth nodded, "I know."

(She really did know.)

Charlie's first move was to ask a security guard to sit with Gretchen in his office. He asked for five minutes of Beth's time and swiftly took her by the hand, walking across the hallway and back into the staff room. 

She followed in his wake with intrepediation, knowing exactly what was about to happen; she was left with very strong deja vu of how Mark had dragged her through the hospital all that time ago when she'd stumbled into that room with Petunia. Charlie closed the door behind them and Beth just played with the top of the mug in her hand, avoiding meeting her gaze. 

When she did, eventually, psych herself up enough to look at him, Charlie had his arms crossed over his chest and was sighing lightly, as if he was a parent whose kid had just acted irresponsibly.

"How's the admin going?" He cocked his head to the side and spoke nonchalantly; Beth closed her eyes briefly, a guilty smile twitching at her lips. 

The moment was brief. Charlie took a few steps towards her, closer than what would have been deemed professional. His fingers lingered on her upper arm as she chewed on her bottom lip, nodding slowly. 

"Did you get through all of the paperwork?"

"It's going great!"

 A lie. She'd gotten sidetracked and Beth knew that Charlie could tell. He'd been so surprised to see her stood beside his emergent case. (He'd also been so surprised to see her stood beside Mark Sloan's patient.) 

"It's going really, really well--"

"You're not supposed to be--"

"I know," Beth cut him off, shaking her head. 

She'd heard this all before. She'd had this talk over and over to the point where she could anticipate what he was about to say before he said it. He brushed some hair out of her eyes and she looked over his shoulder, back out towards her old office. 

"I'm not supposed to be this and I'm not supposed to be that--"

"We've talked about this."

"I know we have," Another interruption. She could see Charlie's face flicker very fleetingly with annoyance. "It's just... I'm... " Beth sighed, a rush of air parting her lips. "I'm bored. I'm really, really bored. Not just slightly bored-- I'm watching paint dry bored."

"I know you are, I wish I could--"

"You don't," She said stiffly. "I work. That's all I'm programmed to do. I'm left at home while Addison traipses into this hospital-- you don't know what that's like. Don't say you do. You're here working and I'm at home trying to sort out a wedding... and I still really don't fucking know what the difference between white and ivory is..."

Beth couldn't tell whether this was an argument or not. He hadn't said anything but he pulled a face. They'd never argued before. It was unfamiliar territory and Beth really couldn't sense whether she was tiptoing into a minefield. 

She watched as Charlie held her gaze; she couldn't read his thoughts, she couldn't read his emotions or anticipate his response. All she could do was watch a very slow progression of debate cross at the back of his eyes. 

There was something there-- a disagreement, an animosity, she could feel it. Charlie wasn't happy. He didn't like that she kept disobeying things and stepping out of line.

She had a feeling she was overthinking. 

(Fuck that, she was sure she was overthinking.) 

Beth didn't want to admit it, but between Addison and Lexie, today had left her supercharged for a fight. She wanted Charlie to get mad. She wanted him to yell and get all worked up and mad and tell her that she was being impossible. 

She wanted him to say those words again: tell her that it was part of her recovery, that these things needed time. She wanted conflict. She wanted to clash with someone else who was angry all the time and had so much fuel to burn with. 

She had a deep hunger for something loud and brash and fierce. She also wanted the consequences: she wanted the rough hands and the punch of a kiss and the angry hot feeling of someone digging themselves deeper and deeper under her skin--

"Okay."

That was Charlie's response: Okay. 

Her riled mood had wanted something better, something fiery, something that Beth could really sink her teeth into, but Charlie was so calm and reasonable. 

He pushed her hair behind her ear and said it softly, his fingers glazing over her skin with care: Okay.

Okay?

"I'll see what I can do," He even spoke quietly, studying her face as if he wanted to commit something to memory. Even his syllables were gentle. "I'll talk to Andrew and we'll see whether you can get back to work. I'm sure that with the therapy sessions and the sessions down at the community centre... I'll see what I can do."

She blinked at him, watching as he just shrugged it off so casually. 

Had she imagined it?: The shadow that had lingered at the back of his eyes, teasing her with something more... just more. 

Charlie took a few steps backwards, turning his back to get a water from the mini fridge. In that time, Beth let out a breath, shoulders sagging. 

She stared at his back, trying to suppress the disappointment that filled her when Charlie appeared to walk away.

(There went Beth's hope for a hot angry make out session in a supply closet.)

"Okay," She echoed, brow furrowing. Had it really been this easy all along? She'd expected a fight. She'd thought that she was going to get fight. Turned out that all she needed was to bury her heels and stand her ground. "Thanks."

"Did you really hijack Sloan's patient?"

He was speaking nonchalantly as if nothing had happened. 

His back was still turned as he stooped for the fridge, closing the door with a muffled snap. Her head was full of confusion, of bewilderment, as if her skull was stuffed with cotton balls. She hadn't anticipated it to be so easy. 

Something didn't feel right-- In answer to his question, she shook her head but, once she realised that he couldn't see, Beth spoke up.

"He let me on the case," A light shrug and she looked back down at the mug in her hands. It was in that movement that she missed the way Charlie paused. He faltered slightly, but continued as if (once again) nothing had happened. "I think he could tell I needed something to... to level me out."

"And did it?" The question came out sharper than Beth had expected. Her head raised to look up at her fiancé as he turned around and looked at her. He leant against the counter top and realised his mistake. He itched at his nose and proceeded softer this time. "Did it help?"

Not really.

"It did," Beth lied.

"Good," Charlie said with a nod. "That's good."

A beat passed.

"I thought you didn't like working with Sloan," His voice was even and collected but Beth's skin prickled at the question. Her eyes dropped to her sleeve and she played with her cuff, picking at a few loose threads. "If you're not comfortable you don't have to--"

"I don't like working with him," Beth admitted quietly, the mug in her hand feeling a little bit heavier than it had five seconds ago. "He's exhausting and... draining and I still..." A pause. "I'm really desperate to get back to normal, Charlie. If pretending that looking at him doesn't make me want to throw myself down a flight of stairs... and making small-talk and actually taking his consults is what it takes... I'll do it. My job is everything to me."

She didn't often talk about Mark with Charlie; she found it oddly melancholic to be so honest. In response, Charlie just stared at her. 

She didn't find his stare invasive like Mark's. She found Charlie to be thoughtful, as if he was thinking and processing her words deeply. Time ticked by, resonating her words through the half-empty room. The couple stood across from each other on either side of the room. Beth ran her fingers over the side of the mug and Charlie watched her movements. 

She knew that he had to go back to his patient, that he had things he needed to do, conversations that needed to be had... She wished that she could be there with him, working by his side. She watched as he looked up towards the clock over the door, took a mouthful of water and walked towards her.

Beth watched him approach. 

He paused in front of her, looped his hands around her waist and pulled her to him, searching her eyes for a few seconds-- it was an intimate hug, the sort that Beth would think about for the rest of the day. 

He pressed his lips to the top of her forehead and held her there for a few moments.

It was gentle, soft, as if he was scared that she was going to fall apart in his fingers at any moment.

"I love you," He said quietly. "I'm not trying to be an ass--"

"I love you too," She said, her words barely even audible. She pressed her face against his chest and spoke into his shirt. "And you're not an ass you're...."

Beth didn't finish her sentence.

"Am I finally going to get my 'morning coffee'?" Charlie asked with a light smile, jerking his head down in the direction of the mug in Beth's hands. She glanced down at it and chuckled, shaking her head.

"Not for you," She said softly, "But I'm sure I can figure something out when we get home."

He stepped away, letting go of her and picking his water bottle back off of the table. He shot her a crooked grin and told her that he was actually going to cook tonight, for the two of them. 

Then he was gone, door swinging closed behind him and heart throbbing in the centre of Beth's chest. She stayed there for a second, listening to the mini fridge hum and the muffled sound of a hospital that was still beating despite the odds. 

The silence suffocated her, leaving a very dry tightness at the back of her throat.

There were too many thoughts in her head, too many emotions that she couldn't navigate her way through. Beth lingered long enough for things to die, locked her yearning and disappointment deep at the bottom of her chest and slowly, and looked down at the green mug in her hands.

It was barely still warm.

***

Mark didn't particularly want to talk to Addison.

He could see her on the other side of the reception. 

He was waiting for Derek, the aforementioned sheets from a medical record stowed away in a manila folder in his hands. He'd caught sight of her from the moment that she entered; she hadn't seen him, but he'd definitely seen her. Mark was beginning to wonder whether he had a radar for the Montgomery siblings, his years of being so attentive to Beth had extended to them all.

"Hey."

(Ah, but not that Beth.)

He looked over to see Bethenny Ballard stood beside him, having appeared from the elevators. She approached him with an earnest smile, her bright eyes picking him out as easily as he'd spotted Addison. 

Mark couldn't exactly gauge what emotion rose in his chest at the sight of her, but he just opted for a polite head nod.

"You still got a headache?" 

Her attempt at small-talk, somehow, was worse than Mark's had been with his ex-girlfriend. Her smile was strained as if she was all too aware of exactly how awkward this was. ("Just about"). 

"Hangovers suck," Bethenny remarked with a slight smile, "I almost vomited in a potted plant halfway through my interview earlier."

His headache had been persistent, but Mark had figured that it had hung around due to stress. Between Beth and Beth and Lexie and Addison and-- 

(too many women, too many women to keep track of) 

Mark was sure that his blood pressure was extremely high. He glanced over towards Addison out of the corner of his eye and tried to repress the impulse to massage his forehead.

"So..." She was still trying, despite the fact that Mark really wasn't in the mood for talking. He chewed on the inside of his cheek and watched as she folded her arms over her chest. "You work here, huh? That whole situation earlier wasn't weird at all."

"I do," Mark confirmed, "And I've had weirder."

"Oh," Doctor Ballard waved a hand, "I almost forgot about the whole... player thing."

He pulled a face and just shrugged.

He still hadn't decided what the hell he was going to in this situation-- actually, no, that was a lie. Mark Sloan was going to do what Mark Sloan does best: he was going to pretend that nothing had happened about that everything was perfectly fine. 

His shrink, Andrew, had called that disassociation but Mark liked to think it was called being productive.

"I might be completely out of line... seeing as I'm technically going to be a more senior member of staff than you and this would all be just a gross misuse of power..." 

He could tell what was coming before she'd even started speaking. She sounded hopeful. Yet Mark was looking elsewhere. The elevator across the reception opened, revealing a familiar brunette as she prepared to go on her break. Mark followed Lexie with his eyes, watching as she exited out the front of the hospital. 

"But I actually had a really good time last night... from what I can remember, that is. We had a good night and... and I would really like to do that again sometime--"

He kept his eyes on Lexie through the window. "I actually make it a rule not to date colleagues."

Ballard made a dismissive noise. "Who said anything about dating?"

It caught him off-guard. 

The expression on his face must have been comedic as she let out a little chuckle. She pushed her hair over her shoulder and grinned at him, watching as he blinked at her, eyebrows raised. She was dressed the same as she had earlier and Mark was reminded of how intently he'd watched her from his bedsheets--

"Look, I'm going to go back to my hotel and I'm going to take a nice long shower," Her voice dropped a tone, making him listen closely. "Tonight I'll be at the same bar... in the same dress... and I'll be celebrating because I just got offered a job that's... it's better than I could have ever dreamed. I won't be drinking but I'll have a free seat beside me. Okay?"

He couldn't quite find the right words to respond with; a silent nod was suffice.

She flashed another smile. "Great, if I happen to see you later then...."

He nodded again.

Mark didn't watch her leave. 

He dropped his eyes back down to the manila folder that Derek had faxed over to him. As the sound of Doctor Ballard's heels faded into oblivion, he found himself deep in thought. He was still unable to remember anything about the night he'd spent with the psychiatrist... but he was far more tempted to take her up on her offer than he'd like to admit.

(Mark didn't like being lonely and, as he'd found out over the past two months, the way he was currently living appeared to be the loneliest of them all.)

Addison was still on the other side of the reception; it appeared as though she was waiting for something, for someone. She was pacing in a light line, back and forth, tapping away on her cell phone as if she was growing impatient. 

He looked away from her, hoping desperately that they didn't directly cross paths: he wasn't that desperate for company, not anymore. Instead, in that particular moment, he was content with being alone. He risked a very brief moment of peace, closing his eyes and focusing on keeping himself upright--

"Hi."

He definitely hadn't expected that company.

This Beth approached him with a softer, more hesitant smile than Doctor Ballard's. 

She had her bag over her shoulder, a neon mug in one hand and her jacket slung over the other. Compared to when he'd last seen her, she appeared far more tired and drained, shoulders low as she halted beside him.

"Hi." 

Mark hadn't intended to sound so surprised, but he did and he was. He really hadn't expected Beth to approach him like this, especially not after the amount of time they'd already spent together today. 

"I just saw Gretchen," Beth began, jerking her head in the direction of a nondescript room with a nondescript doctor. "She's in a session with Charlie. They're going to give her the full evaluation and then put her on hold for the next two days." Mark noticed how her voice seemed to catch at the back of her throat. "I think she's going to be okay."

"Good," He said, feeling himself slip back into the same crushing awkwardness that had plagued him earlier. He ran his fingers over the file, making Beth glance down at it very briefly. "That's good to know."

Her head bobbed up and down in agreement, momentarily distracted by her own thoughts. He could sense that she was in a very reflective mood, she appeared to be completely devoured by whatever it was that was on her mind. 

Her chin dropped and she stared at the cup in her hands, a beat passed and she set in on the desk beside them.

"That's for you," Beth said, smiling softly. He found himself staring at it as if she'd just given him something unfathomable. "Hot water with lemon and honey. It should make you feel better. I know how crap it is to feel all gross and everything..."

Mark couldn't remember the last time she'd made him a drink. 

They'd once done that often for each other; it'd become their thing, making each other coffees when things had gotten hard or as a way of reminding the other that they were there. He glanced between the cup and the delicate smile on her face-- now that felt familiar. 

Far too familiar--

"Like you said earlier," She said, crossing her arms over her chest. "I owe you."

Mark didn't speak.

"This is for the case today," Beth elaborated, tapping the rim of the mug. 

He watched her every movement and gently took the beverage, feeling it burn against the inside of his palm. She seemed almost nervous, wringing her hands as if she didn't know what to do with herself. 

She watched him bring it to his lips and leant forwards, grimacing. "It got cold so I had to microwave it upstairs... so it might be really hot. I'd be careful if I were you."

Even the taste of it felt familiar. 

To him, it tasted of long morning in Manhattan, back when things had been almost-okay. If he closed his eyes he could imagine standing in the centre of that Bloomingdale apartment and seeing Beth throwing herself through the room, a mug in one hand and a shoe in the other. It made his chest hurt. 

Not the drink but the memory.

She was right, it was really hot. 

He was sure that he'd burnt his tongue. 

It wasn't until he'd swallowed that it occurred to him that he hadn't, for a split second, been worried that it was poisoned and that this whole thing was just a farce to assassinate him. The thought made him chuckle.

"Is it okay?" Beth asked, brow furrowed.

"It's good," Mark answered. 

It was. It was better than good. He held her gaze for a while until Beth was satisfied with his assessment. His thanks was on the tip of his burnt tongue; it was quite possibly one of the most genuine things he'd said in a while. 

"Thank you."

She gave him a parting smile and turned to leave. 

He watched it as if in slow motion: one minute she was there and the next she was going to walk out of that door-- Mark took a step forwards and called her name, stopping her from leaving. She halted in her step; when she faced him, her eyebrows were raised expectantly. 

He glanced over in Addison's direction.

"I think Addison's looking for you," Mark said, jerking his head in the direction of the neonatal specialist. Beth followed his gaze and made a very annoyed noise. She stuffed her cell phone away back into her purse and shook her head. "Have you figured out why she's here?"

"To make my life very difficult," was Beth's reply, "Is there any other reason?" (Mark couldn't think of an alternative.) "She keeps phoning me. I'm trying my best to forget that she exists but she just... she's like a cockroach."

With a chuckle contributed to Beth's fractured thoughts. "Does Hermes make cockroaches?"

In unison, the two them stared over at the surgeon, watching as she seemed to be so intent on getting in contact with Beth that she hadn't heard Mark exclaim her name. 

For a moment, Beth seemed to be cemented to the floor at the sight of her, visibly debating whether or not it was worth answering her phone call or going to approach her. Subtly, Mark stepped in between the two of them, effectively hiding the youngest Montgomery from her sister.

He turned to face her, watching as she just frowned down at the cellphone with contempt written across her face. At the back of his head, he could hear the comment that she would have made; she would have caught herself doing it, rolled her eyes and made some pass at her mother's proclivity for botox. It would've been made with a raised larynx and a further scowl. He could picture it so vividly... 

He chuckled at the thought of it and raised the cup to his mouth; it caught Beth's attention. Her chin raised, as did an eyebrow.

"What?" She looked suspicious. With a wide grin, Mark just shook his head. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing," He played it off, but the smile was persistent. "It's nothing." 

She eyed him oddly but didn't comment on it. Instead, she continued to use him as a human shield, shoulders hunched as she ignored Addison's third call in the last two minutes. It was Mark's turn to raise his eyebrows at her, glancing down at the vibrating device in her hand. 

"What did you do?"

"Who knows," Beth sighed, getting on her tip-toes to peek over his shoulder, glaring at the woman in question. "Maybe she thinks I... I don't know... murdered someone?"

"Maybe," Mark said, shrugging, "That's funny, though. I always thought Addison would be your first victim..." She snorted loudly, unable to suppress the laugh at his joke. (It wasn't really a joke at all.) He paused. "Or me."

"Oh," Beth raised an eyebrow, looking over at him with vague amusement written across her face. "Definitely you. I really should return the favour, right?"

Yeouch.

"Good to know," He said, figuring that maybe being Beth's murder victim was the least he could do after all of the hell they'd been through together. He watched closely as she declined another one of Addison's calls. "Do I get a hint on how it's going to happen or is it a... a surprise sort of thing--"

She shrugged, "I haven't decided yet. I think it'll be spur of the moment."

"Great," He nodded. "Great."

"I'm thinking for my own next near-death experience... I might go for something really big and dramatic," Beth mused, scrolling through a conversation with her thumb. "My first idea was a truck crash... like one of those big ones that blocks off a whole national road... but I don't think that's my sort of thing per say. So I think I've finally settled for a plane crash."

"Really?"

 It must've been a time thing, Mark concluded. She'd had so much time for thoughts that she'd started thinking about anything. She really must've hit cabin fever to contemplate how she'd like to die, or maybe this was what dying did to you: made you think about it constantly. Either way, the discussion of something so macabre made Mark far more uncomfortable than he would've liked to admit. 

His brow furrowed. "You hate planes."

"I do," Beth agreed, "They're stupid."

"So you're going to--"

"I'm thinking full Lord of the Flies," She insisted, pitching her idea as if she was trying to sell a television episode pitch. Ironically, it was the most animated he'd seen her in a long time. "If I don't get wiped out by the crash itself I'll end up stranded somewhere remote. Have to fend for myself, fight off nature, set off a flare... avoid getting eaten by wolves."

"Wolves?"

"Yeah," Beth exhaled out of her nose. She shrugged as if it was the most logical situation. "Lone survivor in the middle of a forest sounds a lot more peaceful than what I've got right now."

"You can't psychoanalyze woodland creatures," Mark reminded her. 

If she'd found two months of recovery impossible he couldn't imagine what she'd be like alone in the middle of nowhere after a major traumatic experience-- he couldn't even begin to imagine-- actually, he didn't want to imagine that at all. 

"I don't think there's many psych jobs out in the wilderness."

She rolled her eyes.

"Are you trying to convince me out of a plane crash?" She asked, seeming amused by the conversation and his train of thought. Hearing the question aloud, Mark couldn't help but laugh.

"No, by all means go ahead," Mark shrugged after a prolonged pause. 

In reality, he'd spent that pause thinking about exactly how he'd react to that sort of thing happening to her. He didn't think about it a lot. The thoughts that did appear made his body ache far more than a usual hangover. He played it off with a nonchalant smile. 

"Actually," Mark said, his brow furrowed slightly, "it sounds pretty good to me, let me know where I can get a ticket--"

"No way," Beth shook her head, "This is my death... get your own."

"But didn't you say near-death--?"

"Okay," She sighed, interjecting him with an exasperated glance, "I'd love to stay and continue this amazing conversation but... I need to leave before I either get Andy on my ass or actually end up committing homicide..."

"Oh," Mark said, realising what had happened. She was leaving, for what looked like a while. She had a bag over her shoulder and her jacket in her arms and it looked as though she had no intention of returning. "Someone snitched?"

"I wish," was Beth's reply. "Charlie's a lot smarter than I give him credit for. I always choose the worst..." She trailed off and grimaced. "I'm a really crappy friend when it comes to looking out for myself."

He got a little too caught up in her pause. 

His grasp on the mug tightened and he found himself looking back over towards Addison. As he watched the redhead pace in circles, he wondered how exactly Beth would define a good friend. Was it a binary thing? Were friends specifically only good or bad-- it almost made him dizzy to consider.

"Lucky for you, you've got a pretty good friend right here."

He spoke with his eyes still stuck on the older Montgomery sister. 

He was pretty sure that Addison had never been a good friend to any of them; she'd had her moments but none of them particularly came to mind. He was sure that if it wasn't for Derek, he would've never been anything close to even acquaintances with her-- that was a concept to him: an Addison free life. It was the sort of utopia that made him wonder if trees could be greener, the sky could be bluer. 

He could list a thousand reasons why and how his life would be easier without Addison Forbes-Montgomery--

But then there was Beth.

No Addison meant no Beth. No Beth meant... whatever cracked friendship they had left.

The psychiatrist in question looked over at him and she snorted. It was a loud snort, the sort that made her face crack into a smile and shoulders jump. 

It was more jarring than Mark had expected it to be and it was, so it appeared, to Beth too. The gesture was cut short by a wince of pain. She couldn't hide it this time-- she held a hand to her side and bit down on her lip hard, eyes flashing to his in a moment of panic.

The moment was fleeting and, before Mark could comment on it, Beth was pretending that everything was fine. He stared at her as she corrected her posture, sucked in a long breath as if to chase away the stabbing ache. He watched her piece herself back together, face smoothening into an amused expression that he wouldn't have second-guessed if it hadn't been for the last ten seconds.

"We," She gestured between the two of them, nose wrinkled, "We can't be friends. We don't do friendships."

He wasn't sure whether that was a joke or not.

(It wasn't.)

***

Charlie didn't often make the trip to the surgical department.

In fact, he tended to avoid it. 

It was too big, too crowded and, to him, stunk of inflated ego. He didn't like the long hallways, the luminescent lighting and the way that every corner and shuttered room made him think about the trauma that was still so alive in this building (and his fianceé too). He'd been here only a number of times and each time, he felt his shoulders sag a little lower--

Today, Charlie had made an exception.

"Doctor Sloan."

(It was two hours after Beth had left the hospital. Mark had filled his time getting back to his normal routine. He'd gotten coffee, performed a simple scar revision and found himself stood at a nurses station finalising a consultation on one of Callie's patients. It was with raised eyebrows that he looked over at the psychiatrist, wondering to himself whether this was the homicide that Beth had promised.)

(No. Getting Charlie to do it was just a little too cowardly for Beth's taste.)

"You can call me Mark," was the Plastic Surgeon's way of a greeting. 

His smile was charismatic and just had only the smallest touch of egocentric glimmer. Charlie didn't reply, just choppily nodded, catching sight of the hickey on the side of Mark's neck. There was a pause and Mark seemed to debate something at the back of his head. A split second passed.

 A breath fell through his lips. "Look if this is about the thing with Lexie--"

"It's not." 

It wasn't. In all honesty, Charlie hadn't taken the situation to heart. It had been his colleagues from Andrew's company who had insisted on the complaint; they'd argued that the doctors in this hospital had very little respect for the psychiatry department. Mark could handle the repercussions of a public hanging. 

"It's not about Doctor Grey--"

He saw the moment Mark caught on about what was going on. It was a realisation that Charlie was honestly surprised hadn't dawned earlier. 

He wondered if Mark thought about it as much as he did.

He sighed, putting down his chart. "About Beth--"

"I wanted to thank you," Charlie said, wiping clammy palms against his pants. His jaw was clenched ever so slightly but his tone was genuine, expression earnest. Mark just watched him, visibly unsure on how to respond. "She really needed something to remind her of normality and you really helped her... so thank you."

At first, Mark was completely off-guard; Charlie could see it in the way that his lips parted, head moving to the side as if he was trying to digest what was going on. Inwardly, Charlie questioned what he'd expected; maybe he'd expected something more confrontational? 

Historically, Charlie was not known to throw the first punch. He liked to think that his PHD gave him a more refined position as a mediator.

"It's no problem," was Mark's slow and hesitant reply. Charlie could only presume that his ego had severely stalled his thought process-- it'd taken him a long time to say something so simple. A muscle twitched by the surgeon's eye. "I'm happy to help."

The psychiatrist nodded, satisfied with the brief exchange. 

That's what it was, a few words back and forth and a handful of nonchalant smiles (Charlie was good at that when it came to Mark, he'd learnt that he could get by in a conversation with his girlfriend's douchebag ex by making things concise and clear.)

"Do you think she was okay with it all? Did, it, did it make her happy?"

It felt so weird to talk about Beth so formally. 

To Charlie, it felt as though he was discussing a patient and not the woman he'd grown to love so intensely. He saw the flash of recognition in Mark's eyes too; he, too, could recognise the distance that was set in this conversation. 

It was as if she was being held a professional length. It was easier this way, easier to pretend that Beth wasn't Beth and Mark wasn't Mark and Charlie wasn't constantly trying to keep up with everything that was going on around them--

Did it make her happy?

"Yeah," Mark answered, another slow and uninspiring response. He pressed his lips together, a dent appearing between his eyebrows. "I don't get how she's so headstrong all the time."

Softly, Charlie chuckled, nodding along to Mark's words. 

He went to verbally agree but was momentarily distracted by the familiar green mug that was sat on the nurses' station beside Mark's chart. He followed it's journey as Mark reached out and brought it to his lips-- for a split second, Charlie was frozen, thinking and thinking and-- but then he was reanimated, his chuckle ending with a delicate smile. 

At the back of his head, he was thinking about the smile on Beth's face as she steered the beverage away from him.

Not for you.

Mark, on the other hand, seemed to also have something on his mind. When Charlie went to walk away, he called out, causing him to stop in his tracks. 

The psychiatrist didn't exactly have the energy to turn around and instead, just moved his head to side, catching sight of that neon mug out of the corner of his eye-- he knew that mug, it was a mug he'd brought from Boston and placed in the Psychiatry staff room only last month.

He swallowed and strained to hear what Mark Sloan had to say.

"Beth's not ready."

Those three words were enough for Charlie's ears to sting. 

It was said with such sureness, such confidence that he had to pause to let it sink in fully. He listened to them and immediately regretted stepping foot inside the surgical department-- his courtesy call had failed. 

He couldn't tell what was worse: the fact that Mark was telling him this or the fact that Mark seemed to assume that Charlie couldn't see it.

Of course Beth wasn't ready, but Charlie almost felt like challenging Mark to make her see that.

Or maybe there was a third worse factor that Charlie didn't think about until he'd walked away; he'd done so with a clenched jaw and a jilted nod that was far from his usual carefree jovial manner. 

Oh how many words boiled under it's surface. How many things Charlie wished that he could say-- 

He buried a fist into his pocket and boarded an elevator with Mark's eyes burning into his back.

It wasn't until he was stood in the elevator, staring at a flier for Andrew and his own staff counselling sessions that it occurred to him: those words that Lexie Grey had said in her session, the abstract concept of Mark Sloan still caring and still-- he shook those thoughts out of his head. He had a second person to visit tonight.

He found Andrew tucked away at the back of the Psych department, signing off charts and looking effortlessly professional. He'd moved into a meeting room and now sat in amongst all of his notes and his pamphlets. Andrew didn't look up as Charlie walked in through the open door, closing it behind him. 

He only looked up, with a cracked chuckle and a light shake of his head, once his younger brother paused in front of him, arms crossed over his chest and a storm already brewing over his head. Andrew glanced upwards, only fleetingly, and then continued with his paperwork as if nothing had happened.

"Can I help you?"

The question was said lightly, but made the back of Charlie's eyes burn. 

Suddenly, they were both reminded of their last conversation. (It'd been a long one. There had been a lot of shouting too. A lot of vocalise disappointment on Andrew's part. A lot of scowling and arguing-- maybe it hadn't been a conversation at all?) 

It was the elephant in the room, pushed aside by Andrew's attempt at a professional stiffness.

Andrew's phone was on the corner of the meeting desk. A glance at it further reminded Charlie of all his missed calls. He knew what Andrew's chuckle meant, it meant 'you've been avoiding me since I got to Seattle, rejecting my phone calls and now you're standing in my 'office' like you need something'. 

It was written in the slight lift of his brother's eyebrows, the nonchalant way that he threw out that question: Can I help you? Charlie let out a long, slightly irritated breath and nodded so abruptly that he almost gave himself whiplash.

"I need a favour."

In this family, those four words held a lot of weight to them. 

Andrew paused but, after a few milliseconds of deliberation, came back to life with a second long, slow chuckle. He stopped writing and instead, with a bemused smile, set his pen down and leant back in his chair. 

Charlie's face twitched in agitation-- there was something so patronising about the way his older brother lifted his chin, stared into his soul and crossed his arms over his chest. Suddenly, Charlie was transported back to his childhood, standing in front of his parents while admitting that he'd broken something and needed help fixing it.

"Do you mean a favour...?"

 Underneath Andrew's amusement was exhaustion, Charlie could taste it in his voice. It was a very distinctive flavour, the sort that left a sourness on his tongue. It was as if Andrew had been waiting for this moment, dreading it. The two of them were overworked to the bone, but Charlie had no doubt that he'd had a worse time over the past two months than Andrew had. 

"Or another Calum favour?"

Again, a muscle in Charlie's face twitched with the question. 

It was subconscious, the sort of purely biological impulse that he couldn't help. His jaw clenched for a few moments, face appearing far gaunter than Andrew had ever seen it, in the subdued lighting. Charlie looked away and shook his head, scratching at his forearm.

"Just a favour," was Charlie's response. "I don't need anything like that. Not now... Uh-- I just need your help with something--"

"Oh," Andrew's eyebrows rose. Another chuckle. This time he sounded as if it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. The sound got under Charlie's skin, sinking deeper and deeper until it was reverbing around the inside of his head. "Now you want my help?"

"Andy--"

"No, let me have this," The older sibling looked at Charlie with his pointed, sharp gaze, grinning wildly and shaking his head from side to side. The younger Perkins child didn't comment, just kissed his teeth and let Andrew say his piece. "After avoiding me for the past two months... a-after rejecting and avoiding my phone calls since Boston... I've been trying to help you since Christmas... but now... now you want my help?"

Again, Charlie didn't answer. 

He just stared over at his brother, waiting for him to run out of air. Andrew did this often, gave lectures-- he was the sort of guy who loved the sound of his own voice, could talk for hours and hours and hours... Charlie supposed that's why he'd gotten this sort of job. He was, effectively, being paid to talk; talk therapy was his life mission. 

He was so good at talking that he'd managed to build a whole career out of it.

Maybe that's why Charlie had been avoiding his calls and dipping out of hallways whenever they came across each other, or maybe it was because 'that', which Andrew was referring to, was something that he really didn't want to address anytime soon. 

But here he was, standing in front of his big brother, itching as his jawline and waiting for time to move faster.

"Do you feel better?" His deadpan was not appreciated. 

The psychiatrist across from him let out a breath and rolled his eyes, heaving a long breath. Andrew seemed to pinch the bridge of his nose for a few seconds, trying to adjust himself at the pure frustration he felt towards his brother. A beat passed. 

"How long have you been waiting to say that?"

"I feel amazing, actually," Andrew sighed, disdain painted all over his face. He took a deep breath. "And I've been waiting ever since you screwed everyone over at Christmas. I'm hoping that's what you're talking about..." Charlie pulled a face but didn't comment. Another laugh. He hung his head, sensing that this wasn't what his brother was talking about. "It's not about Back Bay--?"

"No," Charlie cut him off, shaking his head with tightness in his jaw. "It's about Beth."

He could see the disappointment in Andrew's eyes; it was subtle but it was there. He wasn't disappointed often, in fact, Charlie would have called him an optimist that lacked the common sense to be disappointed. 

Yet it shone through the tightening of his jaw and the pursed lips-- Andrew squinted at him and then sighed.

"Of course," He said as if he'd been completely delusional to think anything otherwise. His tone said: It's always about Beth, which was very much true. It's all Charlie would allow himself to talk about these days. Talking about himself with his brother felt like a gamble that he was set to lose. A beat passed and he nodded slowly. "How is she?"

Now that was a question. It was the sort of question that made Charlie falter. Andrew caught his freeze. It wasn't exactly subtle and it made the psychiatrist cock an eyebrow attentively.

"Annoyed," Charlie grilled out. Somehow, the change of subject wasn't as helpful as he'd thought it would be. He tugged down his shirt sleeve and wiped his clammy palms on his pants. "Other than that you probably know more than I do... She won't talk to me."

He sounded only vaguely frustrated but even still, Andrew's attention was piqued. Charlie watched his brother's head lift, eyes lighting up with the vaguest implication of some sort of dispute. 

He wasn't sure what it was, his brother's inclination towards disputes and problems as a therapist who was trained to solve everything or the fact that Charlie barely ever spoke candidly about his personal life.

(In reality, Andrew found it so indicative that here he was, sat in front of his brother, and he knew far more about Beth than he did. As her therapist, Andrew was pretty sure that he had more of a grasp on Beth's mind than Charlie did.)

"Trouble in paradise?"

What an asshole thing to say.

Charlie blinked at him. That question made him wonder if Andrew's love life was so barren that he was now getting involved in couple's therapy part-time. 

Frankly, Charlie could list a thousand things he'd rather do than talk about his personal life with his brother-- the same brother who, in their last conversation, had told him that Beth was too good for him.

"Don't do that," Charlie said, instead of all of the other things that swirled around the head. He'd gotten good at that since meeting Beth, the ability to think before he spoke. He was good at cherry-picking exactly how this conversation was going to go. Andrew frowned at him as if to question him. ("Do what?") Charlie crossed his arms tighter over his chest. "Aren't you sleeping with Beth's doctor now?"

"Dr Altman is a good friend," Andrew replied with a smile lingering in the corner of his lip. "But, if your 'favour' involves trying to get me to break doctor-patient confidentiality and tell you about my sessions with your fiancée--" ("It won't") '-- or forcing me to clear her for work then you're going to be sorely disappointed."

Suddenly, Charlie's mind was two hours in the past in that staffroom. 

His thoughts were trailing over his promise to Beth that he'd speak to his brother and attempt to sway his mind on Beth's sabbatical. He knew how badly she wanted this. He could feel how desperate she was for work. 

She'd already gone behind their backs to poach a case (from Sloan of all people!) and he would have been severely stupid to think that she wasn't going to do it again. Slowly, Charlie was brought back to the present; he briefly thought about the vague suggestion of concern in Mark Sloan's eyes and the way that Beth had looked so agitated when discussing her career--

She wanted to come back to so desperately.

"No," His voice sounded different. He sounded low and unlike himself. "The opposite, actually. I need you to promise me that you're not going to clear Beth. At least not anytime soon."

It very clearly hadn't been what Andrew had anticipated. 

It was the surprise on his face that gave it away. The scrunch of his face and the raise of his eyebrows. He hadn't expected that answer. He was taken aback, staring at Charlie as if he'd started suddenly speaking in a long-dead ancient language or grown a second head. A beat passed and Charlie waited. 

He waited for the shiny, smart cogs in Andrew's head to fully spin and process his request. A second beat. A third.

"I was going to trial her next week," Andrew cleared his throat, glancing towards his session notes. They were all stowed in a binder in his satchel that was hung on the back of the door. They hung there like a dead weight as if to remind him of the only real reason he was still in Seattle. "I was going to give her a patient and see how she coped. If she was successful and happy, then I was going to clear her."

Charlie shook his head.

"No," He repeated, "I need you to veto that."

His brother's gaze had always been very heavy. 

It was scathing and attentive, trained to burn him to the core and see straight into his darkest and most scathing thoughts-- Charlie cleared his throat and averted his eyes. He itched at his palm; he'd been doing that a lot lately. 

His eyes flickered around the room, unable to fix and concentrate on one single detail.

"Veto?"

"Scrap it," Charlie confirmed, "Kill that idea completely."

(There was something so final about the word kill. It made Andrew very slightly uncomfortable. He couldn't decide, exactly, what it was: was it the choice of wording or the intensity in the way Charlie spoke? Either way, Andrew was reminded exactly of why they'd fallen out over Christmas.)

(Andrew's eyes dropped to the way Charlie scratched senselessly at the skin on the back of his hand and, just for a moment, things made sense.)

"Okay," Andrew said tightly, making Charlie feel an intense sense of relief. He crossed his arms back over his chest and watched as his older brother nodded gradually. "Has something happened?"

"I don't know" Charlie really wished that Andrew was a no-questions-asked kind of guy. But he wasn't. His career was built on asking questions and getting to the bottom of things. "You know her better than me at the moment... all she does is talk about the wedding. She won't talk about her feelings or--"

"Let me guess," The older sibling let out a long, aged breath. (He wasn't able to get read off of Charlie, he never had been able to. He had a good poker face and Andrew knew him well enough to know that Charlie seldom ever gave away what he was truly thinking.) "If Beth asks... you want me to cover your ass, right?"

Charlie looked away, silently answering his question.

Andrew made an annoyed noise at the back of his throat. "I told you last time that it was the last time I was going to lie to her for you--"

"And yet here you are."

The interruption was sharp and made Andrew halt completely. 

A pause played out between them. It was almost uncharacteristic for the Charlie that he'd built for himself in Seattle; it was a lapse in time, a slip that made Charlie bite his tongue. A serrated tone that, again, reminded both of them of Christmas. 

As Andrew stared at him, he seemed to study Charlie a little too closely. Idly, he wondered what his brother was noticing. Was it the bags under his eyes? The slightly dilated pupils or the irritated pinch at the corner of his mouth? 

Andrew waited a long time before responding, letting the silence sink into the trench that had been dug between them.

Instead of raising his voice or getting angry as Charlie had expected, his big brother just let out a long groan, pressing a hand against his temple. 

He massaged his forehead generously as if he was trying to chase away a stress headache. His dark eyes loomed between his fingers, blinking at the way Charlie attempted to steady himself.

"I'm tired of trying, Charlie," It felt more of resignation than an outburst. Andrew stifled a yawn with the back of his hand and shook his head. Charlie avoided his eye. "Do I even need to go into the ethics of all of this--"

"You really don't have to lecture me," was the only response Charlie could manage. His mouth went dry and he spoke pointedly, unable to focus on one thing in the room. "You're not my boss anymore--"

"Because you quit, right?" Andrew sounded almost amused. He sounded exhausted and amused and very, very close to giving up on Charlie all together. Charlie wished that he would. His breathing hitched at the mention of that little white lie. "I fired you, Charlie. You know exactly why I fired you--"

"Beth can't know about this."

"About what?" Andrew tilted his head to the side. 

Charlie could tell he wanted to laugh. He could sense the tension in the way that Andrew's face scrunched as Charlie had just told a very endearing joke. Once again, he felt like a child stood in front of their parent, dwarfed by a patronising leer that he didn't like. 

"Does she even know anything in the first place--?"

"Andy--"

"If I do this for you, what do I get in return?" 

It was a proposition, an exchange, the sort of strategic business transaction that their parents would have been proud of. Maybe it was the big boardroom or the fact that Andrew looked extremely grave and serious at that moment, but Charlie had half a mind to check whether he hadn't just accidentally walked into an episode of The Apprentice. 

"Will you let me help you?" Andrew asked.

A dark grimace flickered across Charlie's face.

"Not this again--"

"You look like hell," Andrew said matter-of-factly, "You don't think Beth's going to notice?"

"This isn't about me, it's about Beth--"

(Andrew stared at his brother long and hard, attempting to gauge what exactly was going on. He wasn't particularly surprised by Charlie's vague answers; that's how things like this tended to end up.)

(Once in a while, Andrew would get a phone call and there would be no questions asked as there were no useful answers to be given. The usual next call of action would be the dialling of Calum's phone number. That's usually how Andrew's exchanges with his brother seemed to go.)

"She's going to notice," The continuation was without hesitation. Andrew's eye barely even twitched but Charlie found himself staring deep into his brother's soul; he felt his skin crawl. "How can she not notice? She will, eventually... and when you go down and need me like you always inevitably do... You're going to drag Beth down with you."

It was a very brief moment. 

A brief moment in which Charlie felt the truth of his words.

 The truth was a rarity in their family. It made his heart freeze and his skin crawl and bile fill every crack and crevice left in his body. The youngest Perkins paused. He inhaled. He exhaled and then he shook his head.

"Leave Beth out of this."

Charlie sounded irritated. 

His muscles were clenched and his head was lowered very slightly and he was inhaling deeply. (Andrew realised that he must have struck a nerve. He knew that his brother loved Beth. He'd never seen a girl quite like her who'd gotten so deep under his skin. Mentioning her, in the haze of this mess that Charlie had accumulated around him felt alien. It was as if she didn't fit into this conversation-- she didn't fit into the world outside of Charlie's idea of reality.)

"If you really want to help me, you'd do this for me," His continuation avoided Andrew's words at all cost. He didn't address them; maybe because they were true and maybe because they weren't. Either way, they both knew that Andrew wasn't exactly wrong about the eventual downfall. "Fine, I'll phone our parents and let them know I'm okay--"

"Yeah, they'd like to know that you're alive," Andrew said, tone tiptoeing on the side of anger. "You should've seen Mom when you decided to jailbreak like that--"

Andrew was visibly exasperated. 

It had become his resting mood; a career of conversation and therapy could do that to a person. But something told Charlie that this was far more personal. It was directed at him specifically, at the way Charlie's fingers seemed eager to itch at his skin. It was a telltale twitch that he'd gotten better and better at restraining over the years. 

(Idly, Andrew wondered how bad it'd gotten.)

"Talk to Beth," Charlie interjected, very clearly not happy to talk about what had happened over Christmas. (Andrew ground his teeth but didn't say anything else.) For a split second, Charlie seemed genuinely overcome with exhaustion; he let out a long breath and his voice became strained. "My world has been upside down over these past few months... and this is the last thing I can think about right now. Please, just talk to her, get her to take some more time off and help me. Help me in that way, okay? Stop talking about Christmas, stop talking about Back Bay-- this is the help I need right now."

Andrew didn't speak.

(He eventually agreed with Charlie. He'd gotten so attuned to helping his brother with these sort of things that he'd almost forgotten that this wasn't how things were supposed to go. He was unable to say no to family. They had each other's backs.)

(At this point, Andrew couldn't tell whether blind loyalty was his own personal downfall or just a shitty life lesson that their parents had taught them while they should have been taught not to lie--)

(As Charlie left, leaving him alone in the meeting room, Andrew couldn't help but wonder how long it would be until this whole thing fell apart. From experience he could estimate that it wouldn't be long at all.)

(When it came to Charlie, things always had to fall apart eventually. It was just a matter of time.)