𝙇𝙓𝙓𝙑𝙄.
DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS

──────

AN AIRPORT, ADDISON concluded, was no place for a Montgomery.

She'd never taken flights as a kid as it had never crossed any of their minds to ever leave suburban Connecticut. 

They'd grown up thinking that the whole world was inside the aisles of clean-cut convenience stores and finger foods. Their brushes with the outside had been restrained to the odd commute out to boarding school, a glimpse of New Jersey or New York; the only one of the three of them that had even graced a plane had been Beth being sent out to Pennsylvania every September.

 She'd been packed on a plane to the trendiest school for girls all on her own and had come back at Christmas terrified of them, vowing to never wilfully get on a flight. 

(It had been too much for a kid to handle on their own at such a young age, and Addison wondered whether Beth would ever recover from it, or whether her sister would simply be stuck wherever she happened to land.)

Addison didn't mind planes. What she did mind, she supposed, was their tendency to drop out of the sky.

That's what she thought about as she stood in the middle of the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, massaging hand cream into chipped and chapped fingers. 

What if, on the way back to California, her life just ground to a halt? What if the damn tin box fell out of the sky and that was it—things were left unfinished, conversations had been shirked and avoided and Beth was left wondering whether she'd made the right decision to chase her own flesh and blood out of the Emerald City on a time crunch.

Economy, Addison sniffed as she stooped and grabbed the handle of her suitcase. T

he word itself made her want to burst into flames right there. Her hand was slick against the plastic, making her shoulders raise very slightly in disgust. 

I'll die in last-minute economy.

It was almost physically painful for Addison to let Beth have the last word—and oh, there had been so many. She could still feel her veins throb from the force of it, the slight wind-lashed sting of her skin as it recovered. 

There were so many things that Addison wanted to say; she'd never been fond of being outsmarted, she was the one who said the final things and got the final say and the final laugh—and say final over and over again made her chest want to collapse from the weight of saying goodbye. 

(Final things hurt more than firsts.) 

She wanted to tell Beth that she wasn't leaving and that she wasn't going to let Beth give a happy life either—

It was only when she'd cleared security and stood in the terminal, eyes glazing over at a setting sun, that Addison realised that Archer was right. Running through an airport was the grand gesture that Beth had deserved. 

Sure, Addison wore heels all the time and she'd probably completely butcher her ankle, but wasn't that what it was all about? Selflessness?

For a woman who had spent so much time advocating for patients, fundraising and priding herself on her morals, Addison figured she was terribly selfish.

She balanced her cell phone in the palm of her hand, pacing a thin line down the centre of the passenger lounge, just as she had outside of that patient's room.

She was dressed in what she'd been unable to pack, the same heels on her feet that carried her through a days shift. The pain was buried at the back of her mind. Her face was contorted as she debated pressing a single button. 

Oh to hell with it. 

She pressed it to her ear and listened to the drone of the dial tone in her ear.

Unsurprisingly, Addison didn't get an answer.

Oh crap.

She pinched her nose, listening to the answerphone drawl back at her. She hadn't exactly anticipated having to leave a message and she'd hoped what she'd had to say would come more naturally in the heat of the moment.

 (That was out of character for her. Usually, she liked to meticulously plan everything she had to say.) 

It didn't help, either, that as she stood there, waiting for the answerphone to stop with the same apprehension as a prisoner waiting for the executioner's axe, that she felt Derek pestering her with messages about the resignation letter she'd left on his desk.

Fuck off Derek, Addison thought to herself, the thought more Beth than it was her own, Not now.

"Hey."

She'd never been good at leaving voicemails, and god, hadn't she left many of them. 

Speaking into that tiny receiver transported her back to New York, hurried, desperate and clawing her ex-husbands' number in with shaking fingers. 

(Oh, how ironic it was for her to be avoiding Derek's call now.) 

Addison had long ago figured that he'd changed his phone number and that her pleads had fallen on deaf ears (that was, to a degree, a relief seeing as she'd been sobbing for most of them, begging him to come back to their life together) but she liked to consider it good practice.

"Beth," Addison's voice caught at the back of her throat as she stared over at her gate. "It's me, Addison." (Of course, she fucking knows who you are. Get on with it woman.) "I'm doing it. I'm at my gate and the plane is going to start boarding soon..."

This is going really well.

It felt almost useless to talk to Beth when she wasn't even there. 

Sometimes, talking to the psychiatrist felt like trying to make conversation with a brick wall anyway, but this seemed like an extreme version of it. 

Addison was completely caught off-guard by her own pause, her heart beating in her mouth as she grasped her cell phone a little too tightly.

She had options for this message. She could've been the bitch that Beth expected her to be: the one who had manipulated New York and dragged Mark through the fire while leaving her own sister to burn. She could've wished bad will on her, telling Beth that it wasn't right to shut her off and that they just needed time—

"I just wanted to say I'm happy for you," Her voice sounded unlike her own, words straining and eyes stinging slightly as Addison pressed a hand to her forehead. She blinked, feeling the tears build and her throat clog. "I know we haven't seen eye to eye for a long time now... but I just want you to know that I'm happy for you. I know you and Charlie are going to be really happy together."

Another pause.

"I'm proud of you," Her bones ached with the weight of those words. 

They were truthful. 

"I'm really proud of you," She said, "I know that it must not be easy. I know that we've all fucked you over and that you find it really hard to love..." 

(Addison felt like giving herself a self-congratulatory pat on the back for that one.) 

"But you're doing it and I'm so proud of you. I'm happy for you and, you probably already know that I really want to be there for you tomorrow... to see my little sister grow up but..."

Addison's brow furrowed slightly, and she nodded to an invisible, absent audience.

"I understand."

She did.

"I left a, uh, wedding gift at the reception for you..." 

Her voice was low as she twisted around to stare out of the window, out at the plane that was waiting for it's passengers to board. She stared out at the orange sky and the sleepy clouds and the sun that was sinking down. 

"It's nothing fancy, I just saw something I thought you would like and I just..." Addison chewed her bottom lip. "I'm not good at admitting that I'm wrong, I'm a nightmare. We know that... but I just... I was wrong. I'm sorry, Beth. I'm sorry for making you feel like I chose Derek over you."

They were all the same. They were all fixers by trade and fuck, Addison wanted to fix this desperately. It was going to annoy her for the rest of time, it was going to genuinely weigh on her heart.

"If you ever need anything, ever, I'm here," The offer felt like one that was never going to be accepted. It felt empty and useless but Addison meant it. "If you feel like coming to California, I have a guest room that's always open. If you want someone to call to just yell at for the hell of it, you're always welcome."

Addison halted just to listen to the crackle of nothing on the other end of the line. 

In her mind, she was trying to imagine Beth, an hour in the future (or maybe three hours, maybe ten minutes, maybe even five) listening to these words. Or maybe she wouldn't even listen at all? Maybe this was destined to get deleted, just like Derek's? 

Addison didn't know—but whatever was going to happen, Addison just hoped that Beth heard the sincerity in her voice.

She supposed that Beth was getting ready for her meal now, probably spending time catching up with Amy and swapping goodwill stories of how they'd both bounced back. Addison could imagine it so vividly. She could imagine how it'd look so similar to conversation back in Beth's apartment in Bloomingdale, with the only thing missing being the bottle of red wine.

"I'm sorry," She breathed out, "I'm sorry and I love you. You're a good person. A good sister. I'm sorry that I don't say that enough."

The sensation of leaving a message, allegedly, was worst than the leading up. 

Addison found herself staring at the cell phone as the voicemail saved. Immediately, her head was filled with crap, the sort of berating and indecision over whether it had been enough. It was startling, she found, how vulnerable a couple of words could make her feel.

Attention! Flight 5632 is now boarding.

Addison shot a glance back over towards her gate, suddenly filled with the impulse to leave a second message. She had time, she supposed, as was the perk of her economy ticket. She grimaced to herself, a little nagging, wanton thought at the back of her head making itself known.

It was something that she'd been trying to ignore for a while now, the sort of topic she'd tried to quiet. She wasn't proud of it, but she considered herself to be quite paranoid when it came to Beth, excruciatingly sensitive to the things that she knew had once been bad omens. 

Maybe that's why she dialled the number and encouraged people to line before her, turning her face away as she became the victim of the second voicemail box of the evening.

"Hey Arch," Addison began to the familiar roar of static, "It's me, Addison."

***

Mark was alone tonight.

He was quite enjoying it, actually. It'd been a long time since he'd genuinely had the chance to enjoy his own company. 

It was just him, the world's worth of whisky and the slight concern in Joe, the bar owner's, eyes as Mark mercilessly ordered drink after drink.

He'd become a regular, he could tell it from the way that people seemed to welcome him with friendly smiles. 

Joe had barely even had to acknowledge him before his first drink was sat in front of him-- a simper of a smile passed between customer and bartender. Mark held it in between his fingers and stared at it for a few moments. 

He could feel eyes shift to him from across the bar, silently waiting for someone to adopt the seat beside him and for the cycle to begin again as it did every night: boy meets girl, boy flirts with girl, boy takes girl home with him for the evening.

The barstool beside him, however, remained noticeable empty.

What a sight it must've been to see the great Mark Sloan void of company. 

His badge as a regular meant people knew when something was awry; when Joe ambled past and get him a second glance, the next seat seemed to feel emptier. Mark knew that the people who saw him every night had learnt his pattern; he was usually very efficient at the whole process and didn't like to waste time. 

On a normal evening, Mark knew what he wanted: the flirty banter, the wry smiles and the moment the ball seemed to drop and the evening twisted into something delicious. 

(Idly, he wondered whether his process of finding someone almost immediately and spending the whole evening with them, appeared as systematic and impersonal as it felt. God, what they must've thought of him. Did he look like the sort of honey-trap he tended to feel like?)

"Starting early tonight, Sloan?" The bartender chipped across the bar, his head jerking in the direction of the clock.

 The time, 7:00 pm was noticeably earlier than his usual bar call time of 9:00 pm. The sun had barely even set. Privately, Mark wasn't sure whether that made him look eager or just desperate. He let out a soundless chuckle, his knuckles resting back on the bar top. 

Joe's lips twitched at the infamously scandalous surgeon's vague response. "Special occasion?"

Now that really made Mark laugh.

(He supposed for some it was.)

"Just a long day, Joe."

It wasn't a normal evening, it was a thought-provoking one, one that left Mark staring at the clock above the bar for a long time. The seat beside him successfully remained vacant of any long term residents, but not for lack of trying. 

It almost amused him the way he had to serve rejections only to be met with blank looks as people failed to process that he, Mark Sloan, could simply not be in the mood. A blonde in a green dress had approached him with such confidence that he'd practically watched it wither and die in her eyes.

Assholery, he concluded, was a viable talent. 

You had to get it perfect otherwise it wasn't entirely successful and, if he had the math right, Mark was pretty sure his success rates were about 80%.

He watched the girl slink away, visibly disappointed with the shutdown she'd just received. He hadn't been nice about it; he'd been half drunk, pointedly telling her that it definitely wasn't happening tonight. 

(For the record, nothing was happening tonight. Tonight, he'd be alone. He was pretty clear about that.) 

He'd vaguely recognised her from the hospital too, he couldn't place her face, but he was sure she was a nurse or maybe even a surgical intern. 

People were beginning to all look the same to him these days. All he knew was that, as she dropped down off that stool and did a whole new brand of walk of shame to the back of the bar, Mark didn't have the energy to feel bad about.

Tonight, was a Mark night. It felt blue and cold, and it felt like the sort of night that he wanted to tackle alone.

What he did have energy for, however, was a glance over at the entrance as the door opened, spilling in a new group of Hospital staff that had just come off of shift. He watched Joe gravitate towards them, already happily receiving their orders before they'd even taken off their jackets. The bartender welcomed the newcomers with warm, open arms—

Mark noticed Lexie before she noticed him

She was talking to fellow interns, the bright smile on her face so different from the haunted grimace that she'd been sporting for the past few months. 

He watched her, as if he hadn't seen her in a long time, despite the fact that they'd been working on the same patient, the girl with the burnt hands, for the majority of the day. How unfamiliar that look of glee was on her as she passed, her conversation briefly informing him that they were debating something medical and something new. 

Mark only looked away when she passed out of sight. Her appearance, to no one's surprise, left a sour taste in his mouth-- his resolve was to wash it away with a mouthful of whisky.

His second whisky? His third? 

Mark wasn't sure, but he knew it was 9pm and Joe was constantly refilling his glass (sparing the odd, concerned glance over at the man who was currently the walking definition of a red flag. It had been the brutal rejection that had raised his eyebrow. The way Mark had shut it down instead of appearing with his usual slick and easy charm. Joe had first-hand watched the fire dwindle in that girls eyes and immediately, his hand had descended to dial his cell phone. He could tell something wasn't quite right.)

Mark wasn't usually a whisky man, at least not as his first-choice drink. Scotch was his main vice, his last remaining love and the one lover that would prevail even his assholery. But, in the tradition of tonight, he'd felt like he needed a change. So many things were changing, so why not this too?

(The whisky had caught Joe off-guard too.)

Lexie was sat just in his eyes view, laughing over pool as she had, what was very likely to be, the first good night she'd had in weeks.

Good, Mark thought to himself, distracted by how differently their evenings were going, she deserves it.

She was having a good time and he was having a Mark time. She was smiling and Mark was staring at the bottom of his glass as if it was about to reveal all of the answers to all of the questions in the universe. 

He supposed that, again, was a pretty sizeable red flag. Well, that and the fact that tonight felt like a part two of his date-therapy-dinner with Bethenny Ballard.

The aforementioned psychiatrist had been unavailable to meet at Joe's this evening, citing some emergency at work that couldn't be pushed aside. He'd taken that information with a sigh. 

(A sigh which had been half full of apprehension, convinced that the conversations they'd had in that restaurant had scared her away, and half understanding, after all they were all doctors Work was work.) 

But even so, Mark had taken a moment to realise that he was alone mostly because everyone around him had better plans and things to do.

He paused at that thought, all too well aware of the meal that was currently starting around about now. He stared at the clock, daring it to move. 

Callie had been vocally looking forwards to this meal and he hadn't had the heart to tell her that even though it was a Mark night, he really kind of, kind of only a bit, just a tiny bit... would have appreciated some friendly company.

But hey, he was hot enough to hang out with himself and be happy about it, right?

It was this particular train of thought that bolstered as a very weird distraction from what Mark was trying his best to not think about. 

Maybe this distraction was what caused him to miss the screech of the bar stool beside him.

It was past 9pm and the stool was occupied again, screeching like the bell at the front of a shop door. He didn't realise he wasn't lonely until he heard the slap of apartment keys against the bar and the order of a dozen shots to a welcoming Joe. 

Just as Mark's head turned to dissuade whoever had dared to line up next for his grand rejection, he was met with a familiar face that sported a strained smile.

It was as if he'd manifested her.

"Are you going to drink that?"

Mark's brow furrowed as he watched Callie scoot the stool closer to the bar, her eyes fixed on the shot of whisky he'd ordered on a whim just minutes ago. 

For a moment, he didn't quite process that he was sat beside him; she was dressed nicely, as if she'd just come from a very fancy event with some very fancy people. 

Her hair was done, her clothing was pressed and the enthusiasm that burned in her at the sight of alcohol told the story of someone who had been mentally prepared to schmooze and eat free food.

"Go ahead."

Needing no other encouragement, the orthopaedic surgeon tossed it back, barely even grimacing as the alcohol burn straight through her. 

He watched as she rolled her shoulders, appreciating the alcohol as it managed to loosen the tensed muscles in her shoulders. Mark wished he could say the same, tonight it just seemed to be making him feel worse.

A subconscious smile crept onto his face as he realised that Callie was here. 

She'd turned up the invitation she'd refused just hours ago. He studied her face, watching as she let out a very long breath and let her hair out of it's respectable updo, allowing herself to relax a bit before she spoke again.

"Shit," Callie said as she set the shot glass down on the counter, "That wasn't spiked, was it?"

Mark's lip twitched.

But then realisation slowly filled him; his eyes flickered between his friend and the clock over Joe's head. She was dressed for dinner. She was dressed for dinner at 9pm. She was dressed for the dinner that Mark had been almost sensitive toward what was happening exactly as they were sitting here-- exactly as the clock ticked over past the hour--

"You should be at the restaurant."

It wasn't a question. Callie seemed to falter very slightly at it. 

She didn't look as though she'd dressed for Joe's Bar and Mark seriously doubted that she'd spontaneously decided to take him up on his offer. Callie looked down at the empty shot glass between them, then up at the tipsy gleam in Mark's eye; he'd drank a lot.

(A lot. He'd drank so much that Joe, in his friendly concern, had made the decision that Mark shouldn't be alone tonight at all. Callie was sat there because she needed to be here, because someone needed to be sat on that barstool beside him.)

"I changed my mind," Callie said, off-handedly, shaking her head dismissively. She threw in a shrug for good measure, her hands drumming against the top as she watched Joe serve her order. "I'd rather sit here all night and get very familiar with the tab you have set up behind the bar--"

"You should go."

(Her head turned, startled at the clarity and insistence in Mark's voice.)

(She looked at him, at the way Mark's shoulders were raised, at how he seemed to lean against the bar so heavily, despite the fact his whole body was as stiff as a board. For a moment, Callie was reminded of the last time she'd seen him unlike himself. She was transported back to that OR, watching Mark fray very slowly at the edges, resulting in him freezing in the middle of Teddy's surgery.)

"They're your friends," Mark continued in the absence of Callie speaking. She blinked at him warily, watching as his head turned away and a muscle jumped in his jaw. "They're leaving. You should go say goodbye and celebrate."

His words came from the same fraction of his brain that had accepted that he was destined to share his closest friends in Seattle with his ex-girlfriend, that they'd probably decided that they liked Charlie's friendly demeanour more than the asshole who lived opposite them. 

He'd lost Derek to god-knows-what and had very little desire to drink with a man who appeared to be so full of hate towards the world, so why not lose Callie too? Mark didn't have the energy to apologise for his negativity or vague bitterness; his drunkenness had made him tired and sad.

Callie cleared her throat.

(But Callie wasn't thinking about the meal that was currently due to start a couple of streets over.)

(She was thinking about how, all the months ago, she'd sat at this exact bar in this exact street and stolen a shot from a Beth on the verge of relapsing. It'd been only a handful of days since she'd gotten to Seattle and Callie had had to join the dots on who she was.) 

(She'd looked so sad, dealing with facing everything again with the added weight of her brother on his death bed--)

(Mark had the same look in his eye as Beth had had then.)

"They're not my best friends," Callie said slowly. Mark received her startlingly genuine smile with a dry mouth. She shrugged too, the choppy gesture almost causing him to jolt out of whatever daze he'd been in. "You, on the other hand... I'd say you probably are."

He paused for a second; there was a lag in the way that he processed what she'd just said. 

A second that felt a lot longer than it truly was. 

Mark kissed his teeth, a muscle jumping in his jaw as he looked away, down at the glass in front of him.

If he could formulate a proper, sober answer, he would've told Callie that she was his best friend too. He knew that he'd lost Derek somewhere along the way, the expensive cost of screwing everything up in New York and then Derek's prior actions of just being so damn difficult. 

Sure, they were still friends, but the damage was still there; Manhattan felt distant and unreachable. Callie, on the other hand, was sat here.

(She was sat beside him despite the fact that she'd really been looking forward to having someone pay for a nice meal. She was sat beside him even though she really wanted to be at that table with those people and god, that free food. She was sat beside him because he was her best friend and he needed someone to take that bar stool.)

"Probably?"

His voice sounded lighter than he thought it would be in reality, his heart was swelling and his palms felt clammy and he wanted to say a lot more than he'd managed to chip out. 

He was staring at the orthopaedic surgeon, realising that she'd turned up for him when he really, actually, needed someone.

To that, Callie just scoffed.

"Don't push it."

His chuckle reverbed inwards more than it did out. 

His head dropped to stare at the wooden bar top and he shook it slightly. He appreciated her words. He would happily push it out of some hungry search for validation; Mark had once scoffed at the thought of being needy but now he figured that he was lucky to get whatever he could. 

Another hasty glance over in the direction of Lexie's table and Mark found himself submerged in Callie's chosen conversation.

Admittedly, Mark wished he was better company.

He didn't have many words to offer as he sat there beside Callie; nothing really came to mind. 

He was trying his best not to think about things and take everything seriously, as that's when things happened to always go south. 

He kept himself to himself, allowing Callie to ramble about whatever filler conversation she could think about: she spoke about Arizona, about a case she'd been working on at work and about all of the other wanton thoughts that she happened to grasp and hold tightly. Mark, for the first time in a very long time, was happy to just sit and listen.

He'd always loved the sound of his own voice, he was infamous for it, but he was relieved to have someone else speak for a change. 

He'd done so much of that lately, talking. He'd talked and talked to Ballard until their food had gotten cold—he still wasn't sure whether he found that whole conversation to be cathartic or just undemeaning. 

Mark supposed it'd been nice to have someone listen without a goal or objective.

He was just so damn tired of just talking all the time.

Ever so often, his eyes would drift in the direction of Lexie and stick there, like a fly that had flown a little too close to a trap. She had continued to have a good evening, talking enthusiastically with her friends. She played pool and told jokes and hugged someone when they won a round of darts. 

Mark didn't recognise any of them; he didn't really pay attention to things as much as he should have. Admittedly, he only tended to remember people if they had a good ass or impressive chat. If he hadn't known better, he would've thought that the friends around her were all suddenly appearing paid extras that simply didn't have anything better to do. 

He couldn't name them, couldn't place them-- and yet Lexie seemed to know every single one of them.

Mark took a mouthful of whisky, swishing it around his mouth as if it was mouthwash.

"And how about you?"

He was startled when Callie eventually swung the conversation around to him, volleying a question over at him. 

His head swayed back from Lexie's corner and he saw the way that Callie seemed to glance in that direction. She'd moved onto a cocktail now, the straw bunched in between her teeth as she rested her jaw on her wrist, watching Mark with dark, glimmering eyes.

"How was your date the other night?"

"Good," He said evenly, nodding as if it had been really good, "It ended up turning up into therapy."

He said it so casually that Callie didn't take him seriously. 

She exploded into a long chuckle, her shoulders shaking as she stirred her beverage and placed both elbows on the top, skin slapping slightly as it stuck to a counter that probably hadn't been cleaned in a while. Bemused, Mark watched her, watching as she continued to chuckle, repeating 'turned into therapy, that's funny', back to herself. 

A beat passed and, when Callie realised Mark wasn't laughing with her, she looked over.

Mark watched the realisation bloom in her eyes.

"Oh shit," She said, eyebrows raising, "You're serious?"

Slowly, Mark nodded.

"Oh," Callie repeated, reciprocating the slow, hesitant nod. That time, he did chuckle, he heaved a breath and looked down at his glass, turning it so he watched the light refract across it. "Well, that's good."

"Good?" His lip twitched as he looked over at her, "You got something to say to me Torres?"

He didn't like the way that Callie paused, as if she did, indeed have something that she'd been meaning to say. It held the same feeling to it as that surgery had that day in the OR when Mark had been able to feel the physical restraint of every staff member in that room. 

He'd been able to taste their concern, the way that they all wanted to ask about how he'd made front-cover news as a bloody, broken surgeon who'd been able to have a private moment to himself. (He'd needed Mark time then too.) 

Callie seemed to bite her tongue now too, forever hesitant of how exactly to continue.

Instead, she just smiled in a small way, "It's just good, I'm happy you found someone to talk to."

Ah, yeah, that's why they didn't talk about it, Mark realised. He didn't like how stiff he felt at that tiny concession of vulnerability. 

Apparently, he hadn't drunk enough for this degree of personal confession. His shoulders were still raised and wired and he could still feel the wrench of his heart as he thought about 'finding someone' in this cruel bitter fucking world.

Right, Mark felt like laughing at that, Like anyone's gonna wanna hear what crap I have to say.

An obligatory glance over at Lexie Grey left him thinking about the other figure that made regular rounds in his brain. 

He'd been trying not to think about it, but sometimes it crept in through the back door. As Callie attempted to steer the conversation back into something almost self-indulgent, Mark felt the alcohol really take its toll. 

He felt his attention grasp onto Lexie as if she was a monument of all of his romantic failings and he felt the words build at the back of his throat:

"I miss her."

He spoke while his eyes were trained solely on Lexie, on the bright brunette that had burned too quickly for his liking. Lexie and Lexie alone. 

His thoughts were still heavy with Ballard's stare and provoking questions, on her quick exit and her hurried phone call-- even though he was trying not to think, it didn't particularly work very well. It was that train of thought specifically that accidentally made an appearance. 

In his peripheral, he caught the way Callie paused, already slightly tipsy off of the shots she'd been throwing back as if to make up for the food she was currently missing.

She followed his gaze, head tilting the side, "Grey?"

Callie had a handful of peanuts that she was slowly working through, her words nonchalant and not at all surprised as she figured that was exactly who he was talking about. 

(Honestly, she could've put money on it. She should have put money on it.) 

(She would've been rich. She'd been watching Mark mope around over his ex-girlfriend and Mark saying that he missed her was a surprise to none. He'd told Callie before that he missed her. He'd told Lexie herself that he missed her too--)

But Mark's brow furrowed very slowly.

"No," He breathed out, his head shaking by the tiniest fraction, "Beth."

Time, at that moment, seemed to progress slower than usual. 

Nothing had been usual about tonight so why not time too—Mark couldn't remember when he'd been taught about measurements of seconds and minutes and hours, but he knew that it was universal. 

Sixty seconds to a minute, sixty minutes to an hour, twenty-four hours to a day, three-hundred-and-sixty-five days to a year. So why did it feel as though centuries passed in a handful of breaths?

Callie had been frozen to her seat for a surmountable moment.

Mark was almost concerned about her. 

When he looked over, Callie's jaw was slackened but her forehead was creased as if all of her skin had elasticated in the past few seconds. Her hand was grasping her peanuts so tightly that he could hear them quietly crackle under the stress. 

For a moment, he'd thought that she'd choked on a shell and gotten herself killed, but no. 

She was staring at him blankly as if she'd momentarily left her brain to go buy something from the shops, but her eyes followed his movements as he moved with impassive boredom.

Mark was bored. He was bored of his thoughts. Bored of his drink and bored of the interrogation he knew was bound to follow.

He knew what came next after saying that sort of shit, divine accusation, confusion and the need to explain. 

He'd gone through all of that with Ballard; the questioning, the reasoning, the explaining at length that he was half-submerged in a world that was no longer there. 

He found himself wondering whether that was where this evening was destined to go too.

No, Mark concluded as he watched Callie slowly come back to life. Callie wouldn't want to know.

He was pretty sure he'd been thinking about it a lot, and by a lot, he meant a lot. 

It wasn't a mistake, it felt like the next logical thing to say. It was the sort of stuff he could only say once he was too tipsy to really care anymore-- that's how his therapy date had gone and that's how this went too. 

Three whiskeys, that look in Callie's eye and Mark saying out loud, for the first time, that he missed Beth.

He'd told her that while she'd been on the brink of death, but in the moment, it had been the sort of impulsive confession that he wasn't even sure whether he even meant. 

He hadn't entirely meant it until it was already out there in the world; the words had come first, and the sincerity had lagged and waited until Beth was bloodied and unmoving. 

He'd told her that he missed her sometimes, which, he guessed had been somewhat true: he'd missed her in the most niche moments, like when he'd driven home alone at night back in Manhattan or been lost for a movie to watch and had needed someone to tell him why exactly Tom Cruise wasn't worth his time. 

He'd missed her in the dead of night when the brunette beside him hadn't been right or when he'd needed someone, just for a second, to remind him that he wasn't the faultless God that his ego drove him to be.

But that had been then, this was now.

He missed Beth.

Not sometimes. Always.

He missed her always.

(How ironic, he thought, how Beth's flatline had revived this feeling in his chest and bought these thoughts and memories back to him.)

He waited patiently for Callie's mind to buffer enough to produce a response that felt adequate. He could hear the cogs turning (around and around and around) and see the way she bit the tip of her tongue, as she did whenever she was in deep concentration. 

He'd seen the same expression on her face as she'd looked at shattered and scattered bone on an X-Ray. Was that what he looked like now? Like a patient whose bones were out of place and were going to be so difficult to finesse back into place? 

As if in response to his silent question, a dent appeared between her eyebrows and she seemed to debate with herself silently, looking back down at her shot glass and holding her breath.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Her reply sounded hesitant. 

It wasn't the sort of professional response he would've gotten from Ballard but Mark acknowledged it all the same. 

She didn't just sound hesitant, she appeared it too, her eyes shifting over to him in a fast motion as if she didn't want to spook him.

(Of course, it was hesitant.) 

(Mark didn't say these sorts of things. It was Mark.) 

(The most sentimental thing she'd ever heard him say had been about a Top Gun movie. And here he was, admitting that he cared about someone. That someone, in particular, being someone, eleven months ago, that he'd hated deeply.)

Mark just shook his head. He'd meant it when he said he was tired of talking.

Callie just continued to stare at him. 

He could feel the weight of her gaze, at the eyes that were trying to grill into him and crack his skull open like he was an egg. (Sunnyside up? He felt like asking with a toast of his glass.) It's useless, he also felt inclined to say. 

If he couldn't understand half the things he was feeling and thinking, how the hell was Callie supposed to? The only people who could possibly even begin to unpack everything had psychiatry degrees; Ballard was busy and Beth-- well.

Yeah, they weren't going to go down that route tonight.

"Do you want to--"

"No," Mark said lowly, cutting Callie's words short, "I think I just..."

A pause.

Mark cleared his throat: "I think I needed to say it at least once."

They felt like the sort of words that should be spoken and shared. 

He'd been internalising them for a while now. 

He wasn't sure when he'd realised that he missed her, but he was sure that it came hand-in-hand with memories of stolen Christmases, late-night drives and hidden touches under restaurant dining tables. He'd considered telling it to Ballard, but he got the feeling that she wouldn't understand the depths of what those words actually meant.

Callie, however, seemed to understand entirely.

Mark had thought he'd regret saying it, but he oddly didn't. 

Instead, Mark felt as though a weight had been moved off of his shoulders. A large weight, a crushing weight, one that shifted very slightly as he avoided Callie's eye. 

He cleared his throat and let whisky burn the back of his throat. The orthopaedic surgeon just inhaled sharply and nodded.

"Okay," She said quietly, "You miss her."

"I do," Mark said.

"Great," He could tell from the slowness of her voice that she was hesitant in addressing it. 

But why was she talking? She'd asked if he wanted to talk about it and he'd said no. But, more importantly, why was Mark answering? If he didn't want to talk about it, why was he speaking? (He didn't know the answer to that question.) 

"Is this like a... a Lexie thing or?"

Mark rubbed at his chin tiredly.

"No," His head shook again, "It's a Beth thing."

 That's what Ballard had called it right? 

"Beth," Callie repeated and then she turned to look back over the bar, her brow furrowed. 

Mark nodded even though she wasn't looking at him, his eyes vacantly wondering back over towards Lexie over at her table. 

This time, it was almost as if she could feel his gaze; Lexie looked up and met his eyes at the exact moment Callie started speaking again. 

"Do you think..."

Mark groaned at that sentence starter, holding Lexie's gaze as she looked at him the same way she'd looked at him in that hospital room. 

Closely, intimately, as if she knew something that the rest of the world didn't about him; he supposed that was true. 

Idly, Mark wondered how Callie would react if he told her he had an engagement ring that was once intended for Beth hiding at the back of his dresser. (Now that would've been one hell of a sentence opener.) 

Instead, Mark was forced to hold Lexie's gaze until she eventually looked away, her face pulled into a grimace in a betrayal of displeasure.

"Callie."

"Do you think it's because you can't have her?"

Her question made him pause, whisky glass on his bottom lip as the air exhaling from his nose fogged the opposite rim. 

He was staring at the back of Lexie's head, unable to see the expression or the intention behind Callie's question as she spoke. She sounded innocent, she sounded thoughtful-- but the question didn't feel either of those things. 

Mark couldn't describe the emotion that filled him as he, very slowly, drained the rest of his glass and set it down on the bar in front of him.

He couldn't have her. 

Why did that feel like something that New York Mark would have scoffed at? 

He'd seen no boundaries, left nothing untouched and laugh at the idea of any woman being off-limits. 

He couldn't have her. 

It'd been a challenge; the same sort of challenge that had lured him into Beth's web and now left him hanging there. 

He couldn't have her. 

Callie was right. 

Beth was unattainable, unreachable and Mark didn't have an answer to whether that was the exact reason why he was sitting here feeling like this.

He supposed that she'd been very unattainable when she'd been dead.

"I don't know," He answered honestly.

He didn't. He really didn't know.

"You don't talk about her," Callie said. 

This time she sounded breathless. She set her peanuts down on the countertop and watched his hand tap against the bar. It was a jittery movement, a displaced one. A movement that looked so out of place on a man who was usually so suave and collected. 

"You don't talk about Beth."

"I don't." Mark agreed with her. He hadn't. Not to her, not to even Derek. 

He'd only spoken to two people about Beth and Lexie had been a disaster. (Mark was really hoping that Ballard worked out a bit better.) He was pretty sure Callie had only known about Beth's existence because Addison had told her.

"I thought it was because you hated her," Callie continued in the smallest voice, her eyes studying every movement and every twitch. 

Halfway through her speech, Mark called Joe to settle his tab. (He was done here, just for tonight.) When he looked back at the orthopaedic surgeon, the woman he considered his best friend, she appeared sad. 

"I thought that you were angry about it and you needed time..."

A pause.

"You don't hate her."

It wasn't a question.

"No."

He didn't. He'd spent a long time trying to hate her. 

He was pretty sure that that was exactly what he'd tried to do, and he'd tried to compensate that innate feeling of failure with anger that drowned out the hurt that he hadn't been able to swallow. 

Then she'd been in Seattle, staring at him with mirth and hurt in his eyes and he'd tried to meet her fire with gasoline, but it hadn't worked out the way he'd intended. 

It had left him a little too crisp at the edges, frozen into place as if his muscles and his bones had fused into one-- god, he'd tried to so hard. Tried so fucking hard--

"It sounds stupid out loud," Mark commenting, mostly to himself. 

It sounded more than stupid, it sounded like the most idiotic thing he'd ever said. He could tell from the way that Callie sighed instead of denying it that she agreed; his lips twitched, and he shook his head. 

A breathy chuckle. "Fuck."

(Fuck indeed.)

"It doesn't sound stupid," Callie said a couple of beats too late. 

He glanced over at her, raising an eyebrow that very clearly told her that he doubted she was telling the truth. A beat passed and Mark rolled his eyes. 

But Callie just pressed her lips together in a thin line, "I remember what you were like--"

"Like what?"

"When she first came here," Mark felt his skin prickle as if with a chill as Callie watched him listen to her words. 

(Again, he felt as though he was being observed, as if he was a lab experiment that needed to be closely documented.) 

"I asked about her and you said—"

"She was just Addison's sister," He finished the sentence, hearing the echo of his past words. 

(Callie's eyes lowered to his hand, watching as he held onto his whisky glass so tightly that his knuckles shone white under taut skin.)

(She'd also noticed at how his lip seemed to curl at the word 'just' as if Mark's retrospective thoughts were patterned with hilarity. Just, it seemed to ridicule. Beth had never been just anything.)

"I had to find out from Addison," Callie continued, turning her head to the side. 

(She stared a couple of seats down to where two off-duty nurses talked leisurely about world news, to where she'd had her first conversation with Beth.) 

The orthopaedic surgeon cleared her throat. "I had to find out from Addison that you'd loved each other."

Mark's eye twitched.

"It wasn't hate, was it?" 

That question made the hairs on the back of his neck raise. When he looked over at his best friend, Callie was speaking with her eyes too. They gleamed, shining so brightly that it was enough to make Mark have an inkling that he was seen. 

Her lips downturned almost sadly. "It was hurt."

He didn't speak.

"You were hurt."

A silence passed in between the two of them, a silence that felt a lot different to the pauses of Mark's pseudo-therapy. 

Ballard had always been so methodical in her silences, giving Mark time to linger on the important things and move quickly past the others. Callie, meanwhile, just stared and stared until Mark's mouth was dry. 

It was almost as if she was trying her hardest to read his mind.

He didn't correct her because he was pretty sure she was right.

Callie nodded, interpreting the silence.

"What are you going to do?"

Somehow, that question was easier to answer than the last. 

Callie said it as if there was something he wanted to do, as if Mark had options on how exactly to proceed with this--

Mark wasn't stupid, he knew what these evenings usually meant. He'd been subjected to watch enough Rom-Coms to know exactly what shade of blue this was—this was the 'My Ex-Girlfriend Is Getting Married Tomorrow' that usually sparked some sort of inspiration within dashing gentlemen. 

Sure, Mark had the dashing part down pat but he was little lost on inspiration. In the movies they did the grand gestures, they did the divine exclamations of love and peace and swapped wedding vows for vows that they will improve and be the best person—

That's what Callie implied with that sentence right? 

She'd taken his words as a call of action. But Mark hadn't declared undying love. 

He missed her, that was all. More often than not, he missed the way she used to smile at him and enjoy his company. 

That was all. There was nothing more to it. 

He missed her.

This wasn't a Rom-Com. This wasn't the moment where he realised that he loved the girl. 

There was no grand gesture to be had. He wasn't Patrick Swayze and Beth was no longer his baby. 

This was real life with a man who had just held onto memories in order to keep himself afloat. Good memories that were only fractures of the bad; in fact, they'd begun to feel a lot like floating scraps of debris on a sea of arguments and betrayals.

Missing someone wasn't enough.

With that thought, Mark wished Beth the best. She'd be happy and he'd just--

He shrugged as the clock kept ticking, "Get over it."

***

YOU HAVE ONE (1) VOICE MAIL

FROM ADDIE LEFT AT 8:05PM

Hi Arch, it's me, Addison... I'm heading back to California... 

I thought it over and you were right about letting Beth go. She's an adult. She can make her own decisions and I know she's going to be really happy with Charlie... 

It was also Beth's idea... so I think it's best. I think it's the best. Charlie's good. He's a good guy and... I'm not a good guy really—Uh— But yeah, I'm about to get on my flight. 

And I uh, I—I was just thinking about things and I'm just... I don't know whether I'm crazy or I just...

[UNINTELLIGABLE]

I guess Beth's doing really well, y'know? 

She got shot and now she's fine and she's recovering and I just... I don't know. You're gonna hate me for saying it... but I'm worried. I know I shouldn't be worried. I know I have no right to say anything but she's just doing so well that I'm- I'm just—

[FIVE SECOND PAUSE]

She was scratching. [...] I know that means nothing to you, Archie, but in New York that was... that was a sign. Her wrist. He left wrist. 

She stood in the elevator and she did it and I just I-- It was... It was a thing that she did and it was a sign that things weren't okay—and—and it might mean she's not okay. It might... it might mean that she's using again. A relapse I just-- It's a symptom and it always was a bad sign...

[TWO SECOND PAUSE]

It's shitty for me to say this and leave, but I don't know for sure and I don't want to... I don't want to make a big deal about it. I don't want to make her miserable or sound the alarm. If I wanted that I would've phoned Derek... but I just thought that you should be aware. 

Don't do anything unless you think it's bad but... but I know Teddy was sceptical how she managed to recover without using and I just... I don't want to be paranoid... I really don't. I want to believe that Beth's able to pull through like that but I just...

[FURTHER PAUSE]

I'm scared, Arch.

[...] I told myself that I wouldn't get involved again, but it was always the pills, always. It's how Beth works. Please, just keep an eye on her. Don't say anything. Just watch her, please.

[UNINTELLIGABLE]

I'm sorry. I'll speak to you soon.

END OF VOICEMAIL.

PRESS 1 TO REPLAY. PRESS 2 TO ERASE. PRESS 3 TO EXIT.

YOU HAVE PRESSED 1.