𝙇𝙓𝙓𝙑𝙄𝙄.
LOVERS REQUIEM

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AMY DIDN'T KNOW about anyone else but, personally, she was fucking pumped to be in Seattle.

To her, it had seemed like a party that everyone had been invited to. 

It felt exclusive and exciting as if she'd been trying to smooth talk the bouncer into letting her pass for the last eleven months. 

(For the record, in New York that had been her special talent, conquering the unconquerable and slipping in between the cracks where no one else would dare go. She'd taken pride in her ability to talk her way through barriers and flash pretty smiles.) 

Admittedly, Amy had lost her touch over the last few years, she'd gotten out of the game and struggled to get back in; Addison refused to take her to Seattle with Archer and had refused to tell her that Beth had graced them all with an reinsertion back into their lives.

Sure, Amy was a troublemaker and she had the tendency to bring chaos wherever she went. But she also really, really missed her best friend.

It was fucking rude, Amy thought, fucking rude that everyone was allowed to have a good time in Seattle but her.

(Well, and when she heard rumours that the hospital had gotten shot up and both Beth and her brother were on her death bed, and she figured, hey maybe it was a good idea to sit this one out.)

But then had come the phone call, at a painfully respectable hour for a night owl like her: Charlie Perkins all the way in Seattle, telling Amy that he wanted to surprise his fiancée. 

He'd gotten her phone number off of Beth's cell and offered to pay the airfare. Apparently, Beth missed her and Charlie figured that seeing as he couldn't find anything on such short notice, an Amelia-Shepherd-Shaped-Wedding-Present was the best call. He'd already organised everything for her: the flight, the hotel and the transfer. All Amy had to do was say yes.

Needless to say, Amy had never packed so quickly in her life.

Her first impression of Charlie was clear from the moment he'd faxed over her airplane tickets: Where the hell had Beth found this guy? 

She'd been able to hear his smile over the phone, sense his genuine excitement at the thought of surprising the woman he loved with someone she hadn't seen in a long time. 

(Well crap, had been Amy's succinct reaction to that realisation that Beth had found someone who appeared to genuinely have her best interest at heart, Where do I get one of these?) 

It had almost made up for the screaming baby that had been wailing behind her through the whole of her flight; it had resulted in her seriously debating whether it'd been worth it to take the Hippocratic oath all of those years ago.

(Spoiler alert: It hadn't. The stupid thing had had lungs of steel and Amy had not once but thrice considered gambling her surgical licence on an assault charge against a toddler.)

But it did lead her to standing in the middle of Beth's Seattle apartment, mystified by the thought of Beth having a life that was so unfamiliar to her. 

The last time they'd seen each other had been in the pouring rain in the middle of the night, two passing shadows outside of Mark's apartment on the East Side of Manhattan. As Beth had squeezed Amy tightly, it was all she could think about. 

The way that Beth had wilted in the middle of that street like a flower that refused to soak in the rain. What a paradox it felt to consider it like that: Amy's last appearance and first seemed so tightly wound in definitive events of Beth's life. 

She'd prologued Beth leaving New York and now, like an omen or a vulture descending on 'Emerald City', she was here to watch Beth leave Seattle too.

Amy held her glass of alcohol-free cava, watching as her old best friend did a little dance across her apartment. 

There was no music but Beth seemed happy to sway on kitchen tiles, having donned a tiny plastic tiara that Amy had found at the back of a gift shop back in LAX. 

She held her fake champagne aloft and gave Amy a wicked smile. It was a makeshift bachelorette, the sort of twenty-minutes that was going to stick at the back of their heads when they reflected back on it.

"I'm quitting my job tomorrow," Beth said it so lightly and it almost made Amy chuckle. 

Her nose scrunched and she seemed to run that thought through her head over and over. It was, by far, the words that Amy had never expected to hear her speak. 

"I'm quitting my job and I'm getting married to a nice guy," The Montgomery mused, "Who am I?"

Who was she? That was a great question. 

Amy had known Beth for a long time. She'd seen the woman through a lot of crap and she almost didn't recognise the psychiatrist stood in front of her—the Beth she knew was a workaholic with a panache of losing herself somewhere along her journey into whichever direction. T

hat Beth would have never quit her job. That Beth, also, more than likely would have never married anyone, too bruised and blue from the consequences of loving a certain Sloan. That Beth would have never asked who she was because she would have known.

Amy watched as Beth spun on the tile, not drunk but drunk in spirit—Beth was happy. 

Amy snorted to herself: Fuck you and your unbridled happiness.

She was half jealous and half glad that Beth had found the sort of love she deserved. That, and she was happy that Beth was going to stop complaining about how men were so wildly non-committal and general pain in the asses.

"Does my brother know?"

Her question made Beth chuckle to herself, her head turning to raise her eyebrows over at the neurosurgeon. Her message was clear, but she spoke anyway.

"Does your brother know you're even in Seattle?" Amy pretended to think about it. She scrunched her nose and shrugged. "Are you going to tell him or are you going to even see him?"

Another shrug. Amy spoke into her champagne. "He'll figure it out eventually."

She was pretty sure that Derek must've had a sixth sense when it came to stuff like that anyway; her brother had always been able to tell when Amy was misbehaving. She wondered, idly, whether it was like a cold chill that went down his spine whenever she strayed too close. 

Was it part of his hero complex? Did it come with the hero hair? Did his spider senses tingle and the hairs raise on the back of his neck? Did a icy feeling wash over him as if Amy was parading over his grave.

Derek would figure it out eventually, that was true. He always found things out eventually. It was almost like the divine right of knowledge— for some godforsaken reason Amy couldn't figure out, everyone always went to Derek with information, whether they felt he needed to know or whether they needed his help dealing with it.

The thought almost made Amy want to cheers to it.

Her conversation with Beth, on the other hand, was carried out much like their conversations over their late-night conversations over the phone. 

If there was one thing Amy enjoyed about her friendship with Beth it was how dependable she was; they sat on Beth's couch and spoke as if they were still in that tiny apartment back in Manhattan. 

Suddenly, nothing had changed, no time had passed and Amy had half convinced herself that the champagne in her glass was actually alcoholic. In fact, she'd also found herself glancing over towards the apartment door, half expecting a New-York-weathered Mark to amble in.

"This is so fucking weird," Amy commented off-handedly, cutting Beth off halfway through a tirade the psychiatrist was working her way through. 

She was talking passionately about some sort of wedding thing (which, in all honesty, Amy had not been paying attention to in the slightest) and it had made her head spin. 

A chuckle was directed to the bottom of her glass, "God, I can't—it's so weird."

"What?"

"This," The neurosurgeon gestured to the two of them. 

Two women sat across from each other, eyes sparkling as they genuinely entertained the fact that they were normal. She could see the shift in Beth's eyes as she recognised exactly what she meant. "

You're getting married and we're..." Amy waved her glass, "we're drinking crappy fake wine."

Beth's face twisted slightly, "It's not that crappy—"

"You're a wine snob," Amy snorted, rolling her eyes, "You know it's crappy you just can't say otherwise—"

"I used to drink three-dollar wine from bodegas in Washington Heights," was all that Beth said in response. 

The memory of their nights out, of the eclectic shitstorms that had ensued, despite how toxic it had been to both of them, it made Amy smile. She cracked a shameless grin, one that made Beth's lips twitch. 

The psychiatrist chuckled and shook her head, "I'm not a wine snob, I was an alcoholic that started off with a preference, but everything really went to shit from there..."

"It did go to shit," Amy agreed, "It went to big crappy shit."

(That was putting it simply.)

"The biggest," Beth's head dipped in a nod, her little plastic tiara stooping slightly, "But I guess everything worked out fine... I got Charlie out of it."

There it was again. Amy didn't have to be looking at her to know that she was smiling. She could hear it. She could hear the specific Beth smile that meant only one thing: that Beth was head over heels and in way too deep. 

Eventually, however, Amy did look over at her, watching the way that Beth's cheeks warmed slightly as she fell deep in thought. If Amy had known any better she would've said Beth was high, head tilted slightly as she smiled the same smile she'd once reserved for Mark.

(For the record, that was weird too, Amy was yet to be used to a universe in which Beth Montgomery and Mark Sloan weren't actively pining for each other. It felt unusual and uncomfortable and made her wonder whether this truly was the end of a epic love story like theirs.)

It lauded the introduction and the realisation that Amy was not here on her own volition. An open door, Charlie's warm smile and exhausted eyes and his soft footfall against the hardwood floors. 

He closed the door behind him, his apartment keys tinkling between his fingers and his satchel hanging from the other-- he noticed the two of them, received and reciprocated Beth's greeting and set his eyes on their newest guest.

"Charlie, this is--"

"Amy, right?" 

He interrupted the introduction. It was not with surprise or shock, but with a vague familiarity that made a dent appear between Beth's eyebrows. Amy glanced over at her old friend, amused by the way that Beth seemed completely lost. 

"I hope the flight was okay," Charlie said softly, "Sorry we couldn't get any better than economy on short notice."

Beth seemed to buffer and blink, her eyes zipping in between the two of them.

"Oh yeah," Amy pressed her lips into a smile as if it hadn't occurred to her that she hadn't explained exactly how she'd gotten here. Charlie leant against the table in front of them, his knee nudging Beth's. "Turns out I'm a wedding gift from your little boy toy."

Immediately, Beth looked over at the man in question, eyebrows raising. 

His grin was pristine and nonchalant, the sort of squeaky clean that felt diplomatic and political. Amy wondered whether it was perfectly rehearsed. She watched Beth stare at him for a few moments, cogs turning in that mysterious brain of hers. 

All the while, Charlie just waited, eyes sparkling and lips upturned. Eventually, Beth seemed to find the right words to express her reaction.

"You didn't--"

His grin cracked into something almost bashful, "Well, you were talking about how you missed your friend--"

"You flew her out here?"

"Well, yeah," Charlie shrugged, shooting an amused glance over at Amy. The neurosurgeon received it, chuckling as she shifted on the chair. "I wasn't going to make her walk, was I?"

Beth shook her head, eyebrows raised as she murmured to herself about how he was testing her patience. It was almost said fondly and, the glance shot between the two of them reminded Amy of exchanges over a dinner table in some Upper East Side haunt. 

Her skin almost prickled with the memory of it, of the last time things had been simple and fine—now Beth reached over and pressed her lips against her fiancée's cheek, muttering her thanks. He ran a hand down her back, humming to himself as he inclined his chin in Amy's direction.

"Nice to meet you."

"Likewise," Amy replied with a wry grin, holding her glass aloft. 

Her eyes seemed to sparkle as she looked between the couple, lips pressed together tightly as she watched them interact for the first time.

It was so familiar to her, as someone who had spent so long third-wheeling Beth's romantic pursuits, and had witnessed things burn firsthand, but so unfamiliar at the same time. Beth smiled the same and fondly watched Charlie exit the room to get in a quick shower in before they left for their meal—it was the same. 

But Charlie was not Beth's usual type or the usual recipient of those sort of glances and smiles. Amy pondered over it as she held her glass tightly to her chest, clutching the glass so tightly that she felt her heartbeat in her fingertips.

"I like him," Amy said off-handedly, her eyes lingering on the closed door as Beth enthusiastically poured herself a second glass of alcohol-free champagne. (The gesture and impulse was almost mechanical, like a procedural memory that had never faded.) Her head skewed to the side as if she was thinking deeply. "He's like Calum. Nice, right?"

"The nicest," Beth corrected her.

Come to think of it, he was very similar to Calum. They were both mild-mannered and sweet. Both had good jobs. Attractive. Nice. Just nice enough, perfectly so, as if their qualities had measured and mixed in a lab. Just the sort of normal nice guy that she'd needed. 

Clean-cut, perfectly balanced, unlikely to run and hide for six months at the smallest sign of commitment.

"He's cute too," Amy added as an afterthought, looking over at her old friend. A slight grin played on her lips. Beth's head pivoted, nodding softly in agreement. There was a brief pause and then Amy chuckled, "In New York, you would've crushed him like a bug."

Beth cocked an eyebrow, "Y'think?"

"I know," was her response, "Poor bastard would've been dead in the water."

The chuckle that fell past Beth's lips was half hushed. 

It seemed to echo from deep within her, her lip curling as she laid back against the back of the seat. Her chin tilted up towards the ceiling and she seemed to stare through it, as if she could see straight up towards the setting sun. 

(Beth rested her head against the back of her couch and stared up at the ceiling. She guessed that Amy wasn't exactly wrong. Beth knew that if Charlie had seen her in New York, experienced that sort of crap, there was a chance he wouldn't be able to look at in the same way.) 

(She really would have eaten him alive. She felt Amy's eyes on her as she drained the rest of her glass, the action like a ghost from the past. She set it on the coffee table and traced the outline of the lighting fixture with her eyes.)

Amy joined her, tilting her head up to stare upwards.

They laid side by side, a monument to the evenings that they'd spent out of their heads in some questionable alley in the middle of the night. Amy could remember one night where she'd carried the Montgomery halfway across Manhattan after leaving a club. 

If she closed her eyes tight enough she could still feel the rough bite of the night time winter's wind against her face and the weight of Beth, drunk and belligerent draped across her.

"You're really getting married."

It wasn't a question. It was a matter-of-fact statement. 

She, Elizabeth Theodora Forbes Montgomery was going to walk into a courthouse tomorrow, with Archer and Amy as her witnesses. 

Amy knew that Beth had never liked her name, it had always been a mouthful. It was too long and winded and proclaimed the suburbia she'd grown up in. Maybe she'd even shake the weight of Forbes off while she was there?

"I am," Beth breathed those words out. Two words. Two words meant something to married people. "I'm getting married."

"Jesus fucking Christ," Amy stated, her voice echoing around the apartment and making Beth chuckle. "Jesus Christ. Married." 

Her cheeks hurt from her smile. 

"I'm kinda mad about it," Amy joked, "I thought it'd be me and you in the end, the two ex-junkie spinsters that are too fucked to give a damn about traditional marriage..."

Amy's voice dropped a couple of octaves.

"I'm not just the wedding present, y'know?"

(Beth heard the crinkle of fabric as Amy's head turned to look over at her.) 

(She felt the heat of her eyes as she took one scathing, unapologetic look at someone she'd once known so well. It felt like an invasive stare, one that very few were capable of. She looked at her with Derek's eyes and Derek's precision and Beth felt her heart jump into her mouth.)

"Hm?"

"I'm the getaway driver too."

Beth's chest almost collapsed in on itself (again.)

"Amy--"

"No," The neurosurgeon continued, appearing determined when Beth's head twisted to look over at her. These weren't words that had been strung together lightly. "I know you. I know that you are probably shitting yourself over this and I'm not saying it's needed... but if you need to go, we'll go."

Beth just stared.

"No questions asked," Amy said, "No judgement. You need to go? We go. Just like with Mark, just like with New York. If you change your mind. We go."

Amy heard the breath catch in the back of Beth's throat.

There was a lot of weight to that. It was the same thing she'd said to her, as Amy had mentioned when things had gone south last time. She'd grabbed Beth then, held onto her arm tightly until they were staring into each other's eyes. 

Their pupils had been blown and their mouths had been burning from the bitter kick of a few shots: No questions asked. No judgement. You need to go? We go. 

It worked both ways. It was almost an agreement between the two of them. If Amy needed out, Beth would go too. They'd worked that way. They'd used that code before when Beth had fled from a particularly bad fight or Amy had needed to lie low. 

Beth, really, should have seen it coming, but Amy could tell from her aghast expression that she hadn't.

She seemed to stare at her as if she didn't recognise those words, which, to Amy, fucking sucked.

Was it possible that when Beth had left her behind in New York she'd wiped herself clean of their friendship too? Had she forgotten the sort of shit that Amy had held onto all these years, of the one friendship that hadn't been founded on some intent to understand or betray her?

(In reality, Beth was thinking of how the ghost of that sentiment felt a lot like the captain's last salute on the Titanic.)

(Beth found it bittersweet how, no matter how long it had been since they'd last seen each other, Amy was still happy to go down with her ship. It made Beth's heart throb with the thought that, despite all of the rallying Amy had done, she'd eventually left the neurosurgeon behind to battle with her own sobriety. She'd abandoned her, disappeared for too long-- but Amy had encouraged that. She'd wanted Beth to leave on her own.)

Beth closed her eyes and massaged her forehead.

"I need this."

She spoke to the black emptiness behind her eyelids, words so low and breathy that she could feel her lungs ache with them.

 (Breathing, these days, had become a luxury; not a day went by when Beth couldn't remember the feeling of that room. She'd laid on the floor and stared at the ceiling just like that and she hadn't been able to breathe. She hadn't been able to feel Mark's hand crushing hers as he so tightly to bring her back to them.)

(Back to him.)

(She needed oxygen. She needed air to flow into her pulmonary and oxygen her blood. Beth knew the biology like the back of her hand: in, down, into the pulmonary veins through the lungs, left heart atrium and around.) 

(She knew exactly where her body had failed, exactly what Teddy had had to fix and tweak. She knew exactly why she needed oxygen-- but Charlie. She needed this too. She needed something, she needed this. She needed this like she needed air.)

Amy stared at her, at the woman who she'd flown back to out of the hope that she'd wanted her here. It had been a gesture of self-sacrifice, that night, to encourage Beth to leave Manhattan and not look back. 

Amy had lost a friend who had been one of the best she'd ever had; now to re-enter her life she felt awkward and clumsy as if there was no space for her anymore.

Of course, she would've never voiced that to anyone. 

She'd prided herself on being wildly self-sufficient, capable of being thrown aside and bouncing back without a care in the world. But when Beth opened her eyes and turned her head to look over at Amy, it was the closest thing that Amy had felt to understanding in a long time.

"I need this, Amy," Beth repeated.

"Okay," was Amy's response, "Okay but if you--"

"I'm not changing my mind." 

She sounded sure.

Amy nodded, (although Beth couldn't see that. When Beth opened her eyes she was met with the ceiling again. A plain ceiling. A boring ceiling. Not the ceiling she could place as the inside of the hospital boardroom. She'd been meaning to paint this ceiling all the way through her sabbatical but hadn't found the time.) 

(Now, she supposed, with the suitcases by the door and half of her belongings wrapped in bubble wrap for storage, she supposed it wasn't needed.)

"This is the real thing," Beth continued, mostly because she felt she needed to. (Why did she feel like she needed to convince the universe that this was right? That this was hers? She was growing tired.) "He's a nice guy, I need a nice guy."

"Hm," Amy hummed, looking to disperse the sudden seriousness of the conversation with a light comment. She spoke trivially despite the fact that her heart was in her mouth. "So, he's the nice to balance out your bitch?"

"Dilution," The psychiatrist said dryly, barely even fazed by Amy's words, "Chemistry, y'know?"

"Makes sense," Amy distracted herself with the sleeve of her shirt, balling it between her fingers as Beth itched at her forearm. She caught it in her peripheral, momentarily distracted by the sight of Beth's finger tails chipping at red, irritated skin. "He flew me here. Me of all people. Must be crazy about you."

"God knows how," Beth murmured, seeming to pause, "I think I'm damaged goods."

Amy chuckled, but it oddly caught at the back of her throat as if there was a dry patch that made the sound get stuck. 

A pause played out, one that was approached serenely by Beth but caught Amy in a moment of intense reflection—she'd meant it. She'd been serious when she'd offered Beth an out. She knew Beth, she knew that Beth was shitting herself because they were the same. 

As much as Beth and Derek were the same, Amy and Beth were doubles of each other. All Amy had to do was insert herself into this situation—

Charlie was great, but Beth's anxiety was greater.

"I think you're alright," Amy said in a hushed voice, one that made Beth smile in a soft, quiet way. 

She looked back over at the neurosurgeon, her eyes round and glassy. 

If Amy looked close enough she could see that Manhattan night all over again: the sleeting rain, the taxi cab that had flushed red light over the both of them as Beth's tears mixed with the precipitation. 

After a moment of debate, Amy chewed on her lip and she asked the question she'd been wondering ever since she'd landed in this city:

"What would you do if Charlie ended up like Mark?"

The question made her freeze.

"What?" Beth asked, her voice frighteningly calm, "If he cheated?"

She could tell from the way that Beth spoke that she'd thought about it. 

She looked over at Amy so dryly, with the frankness of a woman who had internalised it. Amy had been cheated on before too, she knew that shit never faded. It was the sort of deep wound that followed everywhere—and it'd be deeply engrained in the Montgomery siblings since birth. It seemed to be why none of them could love in a healthy way, forever overshadowed by the knowledge that sometimes just loving wasn't enough.

If Charlie cheated, that felt like a dark thought to throw into the conversation, but Amy wanted Beth to be sure. 

The guy was nice, but Mark had been nice too. It wasn't really a very good measurement for how well a relationship was going to go. 

Nice could be a mask or a front or something to get in while the guard was down—nice, historically, hadn't gotten anyone anywhere. 

Amy watched as Beth cleared her throat and, very diplomatically, chose her response.

"I'm not stupid," She said, her voice still smooth and succinct. "I know that I'm going into this like a crazy person. It's what I do... when I love I love blindly and I really shouldn't because it hasn't gotten me very far in the past..." And then she paused, "If Charlie... if he did that I..."

Beth took a longer pause and shook her head.

"It's naïve to say he wouldn't but I'm fairly sure he loves me enough to not..." 

It felt like the sort of well-thought-out, mature response that a politician would give in front of a crowd. She'd thought it out, she'd theorised that situation. When she looked back over at Amy, the neurosurgeon was momentarily struck by how much things had changed. 

"I'm optimistic, Amy," Beth said, "But if he did... I think I have enough respect for myself to walk away again. I've done it before and I think I can do it again."

That's what Amy had thought about during her flight (her train of thought only periodically interrupted by the cries of that stupid fucking baby a couple of rows back.) She'd thought about how Seattle seemed to be a big monument for change for so many people; it'd been where Derek had flown to and tried to rebuild his life, where Addison and Mark had eventually followed and where Beth now attempted to leave. 

So much had happened here and Beth onwards didn't particularly surprise either of them. 

Amy was just sad that she hadn't been able to share the city too.

As much as she understood Addison's reservations about telling Amy that Beth was here, she really didn't appreciate being made to feel like some sort of liability. 

She'd tried so fucking hard to keep the two of them separated, harder than she'd fought to distance Beth and Mark, when Amy was pretty damn sure that Mark was capable of doing far more damage to Beth than she was.

Amy recounted the look on Addison's face when she realised that Amy had finally made it to Seattle—

Yeah, Amy thought to herself quietly, it's good to be here.

***

The meal was great.

That's what Amy would define it as: great.

Sitting at a table with Beth's eclectic Seattle friends felt different to New York. Back then, family dinners had felt forced and disingenuine. This one, however, was nice. 

Good food, good people and good conversation. Amy was introduced to new people and new faces. She even finally met her brother's new wife, awkwardly bonding with Meredith over her brother's stupidity. Arizona Robbins sat across from them, talking animatedly about Callie and about tiny humans, Meredith to her left and Eli on her right. 

Even Archer had thrown his two cents into conversation, talking with Charlie as if they'd known each other their whole lives-- she looked over at Beth, catching the gleam in the psychiatrist's eye as they sat across from each other for the first time in half a decade.

("Callie can't make it," Charlie had called across the apartment as he leant against the dining table, squinting down at his phone. His brow had furrowed slightly as he read Arizona's message, using his free hand to tuck in the front of his shirt. "She has an emergency at work.")

Beth tipped her glass of lemonade to her. Amy did the same back.

However, despite how great the food was or how excited Archer was to talk about the latest surgical feat-- the absences at the table were noticeable. 

It didn't hit Amy until she was looking around at everyone how many people they'd lost over the years, not to death but just to the void that had become their lives. Seeing a table without Derek at it's head made Amy vaguely troubled. 

Seeing Archer talk about socialite New York without Addison chipping in every so often felt oddly wrong-- and earlier, as Beth had sat beside her on that couch and watched Charlie tiredly amble through that door, Amy had been stuck by how different it felt to living with Beth and Mark back in Manhattan.

So many things had changed, so many people had been lost in the folds of time and Amy didn't know whether she had the energy to mourn it. 

After all, it was all for the best right? Addison was off to California, Derek was keeping quiet, and Mark was doing what Mark did best: existing in blissful Mark-Sloan-certified ignorance.

Amy would've been lying if she'd said that she wasn't thinking about Mark a lot that evening. Whenever her eyes flickered between the engaged couple, she couldn't help but wonder what he thought about all of this. Was he aware of how time had moved on and they'd both been left behind—Amy felt a bit of kinship in that, on how they'd been left behind in New York together like two toiletries travellers had forgotten to pack. 

But the only difference was that Amy was welcome at this table and back into the picture (despite how hard Addison tried to fight it) and Mark was left dusting the countertop of some hole-in-the-wall bar.

Or, at least, that's how Amy found him in Joe's.

(Past Mark's half buzzed confession to Callie and the messages left on both Beth and Archer's phones, the dinner party turned into the after party.) 

She'd made the executive decision to go to said after-party, of which happened to be a bar crawl that was very enthusiastically headed by Archer and would be joined by a very 'eager to get drunk' Eli who had RSVP'd to Joe's faster than the actual meal. Arizona appeared too but had wavered when she'd agreed to meet Callie back home. 

And Charlie, well, Charlie had managed to drink his weight in wine, half-hauled home by a chuckling Beth who said that the night would go one without her. It was going to be a good one, it appeared-- but not for everyone.

Mark was the first thing that Amy noticed when she walked into the bar; a pensive little sad man hidden away to enjoy his own company. 

(The barstool beside him was once again abandoned, Callie having left to spend the rest of her evening with an equally tipsy Arizona.) 

He looked fine by himself, so that's exactly why Amy found herself dropping down beside him, flashing a wide grin. His head slowly turned towards her.

He was neither surprised nor alarmed to see her. He just looked at her, at the brunette little ghost of their collective past. She gave him her hazy smile, tossing a twenty down for something that was, upsettingly, not alcoholic in the slightest. 

A couple of seats down the bar, Amy noticed Eli and Archer settle down, the dynamic duo very clear about their intentions to not make it through the night. Mark, however, didn't look away; he stared at Amy for a long time, as if his brain couldn't quite put two and two together.

"You've looked better," Amy chipped out instead of a greeting. She'd known him long enough to not be fazed by the signature smile that cracked across his face. He shook his head, chuckling to himself and looking away. "This is a very new aesthetic for you."

Sad man in bar? How uniquely un-Mark of him.

"Good to see you too, Amelia," He said it with a cracked fondness that felt long faded and tired.

 It reminded her of exhausted smiles over a dining table and the smell of early morning pressed coffee.

What exactly could she say to Mark? 

She'd known him for most of her life and yet often he'd felt like a stranger. They weren't particularly close, they'd never been particularly good friends and, without fail, Amy could only think about Beth whenever she saw his stupid face. 

She thought about long nights back in Manhattan and thought a little bit too in depth about the slight slump to Mark's shoulders as he heaved a breath. 

(Admittedly, his confession to Callie had left him more sober than he would have liked. It had been the equivalent of a cold douse of water, as if he'd just been drenched head-to-toe. He was sober enough to feel the regret of saying something so (as he felt was) selfish.) 

(He chewed on the tip of his tongue and chuckled with dryness in his throat, like an itch that no cough could quell.) 

When Mark looked over at Amy she could see a lot more than the normal eye—

She scoffed and shook her head, "You motherfucker—"

"Don't," He said, his voice strained, "I know. You don't have to—"

"I feel like I do," Amy said, her nose scrunching as she registered the fact that Mark was clearly feeling very sorry for himself. He seemed to sigh, his body folding into himself as a slight wince contorted his face. "No, I really do--"

"Amy--"

"Oh god," Amy chuckled, the laugh bubbling from deep within her. 

It was half caught in a dry resentment that still lingered from seeing that expression on Beth's face. It hadn't been pretty; watching someone tear in two had not been pretty at all. So Amy laughed, finding the whole situation nothing further than hilarious. 

"This is just..."

It was fucking weird; she hadn't lied earlier. 

To be honest, when Amy had heard that Beth had come to Seattle, faced Mark and then stayed, she hadn't believed it. 

But here she was, with in person proof that there was a universe in which the two of them co-exist in a city without it falling apart like the last one. 

They could live peacefully—

Well, Amy looked over at Mark, 'peacefully', sure.

"Nice pity party you've got going on here," Amy said instead of finishing her sentence. She looked around the bar, wondering exactly what it was that seemed to bring all of Seattle in those doors. "It's roomy."

"I'm not—"

"No, you are," Amy said bluntly, looking over at the man who had caused a lot of shit over the years. 

She could practically see him sag under the weight of it; in fact, Amy was pretty sure she'd never seen him look so bleak. (He hadn't looked this hopeless since her Mom had found him trying to microwave Derek's pet turtle when they were kids, and even then, Mark had had a little more life to him.) 

She tsked, her head shaking, "What would Beth say if she saw you sat here like this--?"

"Amy—"

"Man the fuck up."

They both knew exactly what Beth would've said. 

She would've told Mark to perk his ideas up and she would've given him tough love. She would've told him that he'd made his bed and now he needed to sleep in it—and, if this had been New York, she would've perhaps even given him hers. 

She would have told him off for drinking himself through a swan song. Maybe Beth would have even yelled. That's what Amy thought about as she sat there, she thought about what Beth would've done—but then again, Amy got the feeling that Beth had changed. 

That was New York Beth and Seattle Beth, well...

Amy didn't really know how Seattle Beth felt about Mark.

She raised slightly in her seat, studying every inch of her childhood friend. She pressed her elbows into the countertop and watched as Mark seemed to let out a thousand-year-old sigh. His face was crinkled and he nodded lightly, understanding what she meant. 

He was in a very clear slump, one that they both knew exactly where it originated from. 

Again, the thought of it made Amy want to laugh; she felt her lips twitch on their own accord and, as if sensing it, Mark spoke again.

"You don't—"

"No, I do," Amy said, her brow furrowed as she looked over at him again. 

He closed his eyes and massaged his forehead, groaning lightly to himself. She felt as though she needed to give her two cents, no matter how sorry he was feeling for himself. 

"If I need to remind you of how badly everything ended, I will."

"Amy..."

She knew that no one else exactly understood how Beth had felt like she had. 

Idly, Amy wondered whether Mark had forgotten. 

Had it been all lost on him? Did he not remember how everything had burned down? He'd lit the match himself and Amy had watched all of it burn in the way that Beth had hesitated to leave and told Amy that she needed Mark and couldn't do it alone.

"I thought about it a lot," Amy said with a slightly miffed curl to her lip, "You didn't see her stood out there, stood in the rain after getting that phone call from my brother. I'd never seen her just..." 

She trailed off, shaking her head.

"You didn't see that look on her face, but I did," She sounded as incredulous as she looked, "You didn't have to convince her to put herself and her happiness first. I did. I had to be her person through all of that crap and you have the audacity to throw yourself a pity party because she's happy."

A pause.

"She thinks she's damaged goods," Amy's voice was a little too sharp, "I don't think she ever recovered from the shit you guys did to each other."

This time, Mark didn't interject. 

He stared down at his glass, a muscle jumping in his jaw as he dared himself to think back to that night. 

(Mark had spent years wondering what exactly had happened outside Beth's apartment that night, how efficiently she'd packed and how she'd disappeared before he'd even been able to say a word to her. He'd spent years theorising and labouring over it and here Amy was—someone who knew exactly what had transpired, who had seen it first-hand—)

Meanwhile, Amy was hoping that Mark's frustration ran deep. She hoped that she felt it in every inch of his body.

"You don't get to do that," It's what Beth would have said, Amy was sure of it. She said it with gravitas, with the sort of tough love that Beth lead with during her relationship with Mark. "Mark, you don't get to miss her, that isn't how this shit goes—"

"I don't..."

Amy's eyebrows raised at the attempted lie. 

Mark's head turned to look over at her and, on seeing the expression (which felt innately Beth in every way) he trailed off, realising that not even he believed it anymore. 

(What was the point, anyway? It was out in the universe. It was a label that was now attached to this shaking hands.) 

He picked up his whisky and finished it. Amy watched the twitchy movement, her own drink clutched in her hands. She wondered what exactly it had taken for him to come to this point—she'd seen Mark when Beth had left, she'd seen how much hate he'd carried within himself. She'd seen his anger and she'd ridiculed him for it, and now he just seemed so full of sadness.

He let out a sigh. Another one. He shook his head.

What the fuck had Beth done to him?

"I never thought I'd see the day," Amy mused to herself, shaking her head and causing Mark to grimace to himself. 

(His eyes were trained elsewhere, unable to miss the sight of tipsy Lexie Grey picking her way across the bar to talk to a wary Archer. The eldest Montgomery seemed to smile at her in a hazy, half-drunk, apprehensive way.) 

"I knew it'd hit you at some point but god," Amy whistled lightly, "I never thought I'd see it in person."

It was honest. It was true. The breath caught at the back of his throat and he, with all the reluctance in his bones, looked over at the youngest Shepherd sister. 

She could see something travel behind his eyes, something that Amy couldn't quite name. Despite that, however, she understood it. 

She swallowed whatever reproach that bubbled inside of her—the vivid recount of watching Beth fray at the edges, that she'd planned to throw in his face as a way of making this sadness stick. Instead, Amy sighed, turning her gaze back to the topic at hand.

Maybe she should've taken a photo, hung it up in some sort of gallery just to document it. It was bizarrely delicious to see and spoke directly to the Amy who had had to wipe Beth's tears off with her thumbs and force suitcases back into her trembling hands. 

Of course he missed Beth, of course he did-- for a long time, Amy had been convinced that they were the sort of people writers wrote stories about. 

She'd been convinced that, if soulmates were to exist, they'd been the closest damn thing humanity had to it.

She cleared her throat.

That was not how this shit went.

"Sam owes me a hundred bucks," Amy said, leaning against the bar as Mark shot her a questioning glance. The neurosurgeon rolled her eyes, clearly exasperated with the tone of the conversation. "We made this stupid bet back in New York about the future and tomorrow I'm going to lose it."

Mark just blinked at her.

"Yeah," She murmured after a beat, enjoying the way Mark withered in on himself. "You're screwed if I'm the romantic one out of the two."

He chuckled but it was almost bitter. In fact, everything about him seemed to frost over like a grassy knoll on a winter's morning. 

His sadness seemed to sharpen slightly into something that felt a lot more Mark-like. Amy picked up on it, a spark running through her a she watched Mark's empty grin and the way his shoulders tensed as if he was mentally dusting himself down—it was the end of a swan song, the unceremonious closing notes as he pulled himself back together piece by piece. 

(His eyes were still trained further down the bar, watching as Lexie laid a hand on Archer's upper arm.)

"I'm surprised you're not sticking your tongue down the throat of some other brunette," Amy commented idly, watching as Mark adjusted his jacket and shot her a look out of the corner of his eye. 

She played with a maraschino cherry, running the fruit between her fingers as the plastic surgeon tried his best to ignore her. 

"Don't tell me you've run out of women to sleep with? You seemed to have plenty when you weren't single—"

"She knows," Mark cut in, still not looking at her. "She knows we fucked, she tell you that?"

Amy paused only for a moment, her eyes trained on the man in front of her, or, specifically, the way Mark balked at the subject of his cheating. 

She was less troubled by the way he'd said them and more by the contents of that sentence; her reaction came in a sudden hot flush, blood rushing through her body in a dizzy spell that made her fingers cling desperately to the bar-top. 

It was only a short sensation, headed by the glance that Mark threw over at her just to gage her reaction; Amy's lip curled as soon as she'd recovered.

"And yet she still wants me here..."

 Her reply was impassive and almost bored, a single eyebrow twitching upwards as if to challenge his point. 

(Inwardly, Amy was cursing his stupid face out for chatting shit about her. She'd been waiting to break that news herself. Oh, what the hell.) 

"Says a lot about you, doesn't it?"

Mark rolled his eyes. The gesture came off a lot less natural than he'd intended, Amy was sure. He seemed to dip very slightly at the realisation that there was space for Amy in Beth's life but none for him.

"I've been meaning to ask you about that, actually," Amy continued, fully intending on setting fire to all of this kindling that Beth had spent so much time piling up. It was deliciously dry, just like her tone and the flick of her tongue as she tied cherry stem knots with the tip of her tongue. "I've spent the last half decade wondering why you slept with me after you told Derek you'd never even dream of going after any of his sisters—"

"Amy."

"I mean, bro code, right?" 

She was flat and unamused, not stopping even when Mark tried to intervene. 

Amy just rolled her eyes. "I'm pretty sure there's gotta be something written in there about it—and then I thought, maybe it wasn't just me—"

"You don't know what you're talking about—"

"Maybe I'm as close as you're going to get to the real thing."

Mark's face was twisted very slightly, as if in physical pain, carrying the weight of Amy's gaze as if it was his cross to carry. 

Her words seemed to freeze him, as if she'd pointed a remote right at him and pressed pause. It was the sort of thing Amy had been mulling over for a very long time. It was brutally honest. His eyes flickered over to her and, for a second, Amy saw the brute force of regret and pain that he seemed to carry within himself. 

If Amy looked closely, she could see the reflection of Mark's bloodstained hands looming in the back of his irises, the ghost from the past that, no matter what, he seemed unable to shake off.

(What a dizzying cocktail it'd become: PTSD and regret. Light a single flame and he was sure to burn into ash.)

He didn't speak and it was all gone, just like that, as if nothing had ever happened.

Amy was pretty sure she was right. She was pretty sure that, when he looked at her, he probably saw Beth too. They'd been the same, they'd been halves of the same whole—for a long time, Amy had been Beth's better half, not Mark. 

They'd acted the same, felt the same, spiralled the same. 

(Amy took a chaste mouthful of her soft drink and counted the seconds in her head, allowing him enough time to digest that fact.) 

They were the same blueprint, same design. That night in Mark's bed, although neither of them remembered it, had been after a bad argument between the couple and Amy was pretty sure that he'd come to her with the intent of finding what Beth had been unable to provide. 

Whether that had been attention, time or just sex, Amy had to admit that despite all of his bad traits, Mark hadn't been half bad.

It was bizarre, even still, seeing Mark alone in this bar. 

She knew his way of coping with things and he was very notably without a female companion tonight. Maybe that was just it: he wasn't coping at all. 

He'd shirked his usual distractions and vices and settled for alcohol instead. 

Amy's eyes bounced towards it and her nose wrinkled; how Beth of him.

For a moment, Amy thought about how she'd had to beg Beth not to stay in New York, how she'd convince Beth not to love him anymore. She'd been honest and brutal then too, saying exactly what she'd thought Beth would say to herself if she had the chance. 

Amy had told Beth that he didn't love her and that she just needed to end things right now—She was the reason Beth had turned around after coming back for the man in front of her and a tiny part of Amy wondered what if.

What if Beth hadn't turned around? What if she hadn't been able to change her mind? Would she have found Charlie? Would they all be sat in Seattle right now at all? 

What a conundrum it was to wonder how things could be different, how things could have turned out.

"I get it," She said after a few moments that were a little too long. She held his gaze, her head tilting to the side and her lip curling, "I am the closest you're going to get to the real thing." A pause. "I mean, I won't psychoanalyse you and all that crap... but I've got the whole.... Beth thing going on."

(Beth thing? Mark's chuckle got caught in his chest.) 

(It echoed around, bouncing from flesh to flesh, rib to rib, and serving a nice punch into the centre of his lungs.) 

(He wheezed slightly, coughing into a balled fist. Was that a code for addiction trouble? Was it synonymous with complex thoughts and emotions and mental health battles? Or was it the ability to make his heart clench very slightly whenever she looked him dead in the eye?)

"I know we've all given you crap over the years for how you deal with things..." 

Amy's drawl made his head twist to look over at her, his eyebrows raising slightly as her tone dipped towards something a bit more suggestive. She watched something unspoken shift behind those eyes, a slight twist in that incomprehensible mind of his. 

"But if you're going to have a swan song tonight... you might as well have a duet partner."

It was almost mystical how quickly the ambiance could change. She knew how Mark's mind worked, not as well as Derek or Beth, but she knew how his brain tended to lean. 

He was the sort of guy who saw suggestion first and intention second, but in this situation, they crossed into one. All this time, Amy watched him. 

The tilt of his head as he toed the line of logic and emotion, reduced back to the same water-logged man who had appeared in the centre of the apartment and kissed her with lips that didn't belong to either of them. 

She watched his gradual progression: from the amusement to the pause and the serious consideration—her lip quirked.

Yeah, she thought to herself, Seattle's peaceful, alright.

***

Amy had drafted a wedding speech on the flight over here, despite the fact that she'd never get an opportunity to say it. It went something like this:

"I remember I once had a conversation with Beth outside a bar in the West Village. We had a lot of those. But she was standing there, and we talked about the future. I've never been good with the future; I've always been the sort of person who lives in the moment and forgets that time keeps going. I never really looked beyond the end of the night. But Beth... Beth plans."

" She told me that she wanted it all: she wanted the success and she wanted love. And Beth, I know that things haven't gone the way you thought they would and that it took a while to get here, but I think this is it, right? Standing here, looking at this couple, I know she's found it."

"I know I haven't known Charlie for very long at all, but what I do know is that Beth's crazy about him. He's gotta be crazy too to fly me out here for this. You must give a damn and that, apparently, is hard to come by for all of us. I remember how Beth told me over the phone that she'd met a guy and that he was nice and funny, and they were engaged... and I remember how shocked I was." 

"But I'm not really shocked now because I can tell this works.
This must be the only time in history anyone has been happy to lose a hundred bucks.
I hope you're very happy together. To you two."

It was at its bare minimum, but it didn't particularly matter as she would never have to recite it. 

Where she did recite it, however, was in her head as she found herself in the centre of Mark's apartment.

It floated through her head as she looked around it, eyes wandering and jaw slack. And then, later, when Mark was looking at her, his eyes heavy and his fingers wandering over her skin. With his hands on her, Amy figured that Seattle was a lot different to what she'd expected. 

She'd expected some sort of battleground where there was constant fighting and conflict and the tumultuous battle wounds of two lovers bled dry. But then Mark was kissing her, pressing her up against the dining table and getting her drunk off of the whisky on his lips. 

She inhaled him deeply and dug her fingers deep under his skin.

This wasn't a battle, Amy realised as Mark ripped their clothes from their skin and prepared to swallow her evening whole, It was a surrender.

But that was fine right?

It wasn't as if Beth was going to mind anyway.