❛ 𝐅𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐄 . . . ❜
001. ever since new york by harry styles 
SEASON 5, EPISODE 15     

──────

Yeah, screw this.

Nothing quite terrified Beth like an airplane.

She didn't like the precariousness of it, of how you could feel every move and jolt of an aircraft that seemed so small in the face of everything else in the universe. She didn't like the performance of taking off, of landing and the in-between. 

She, also, just didn't like the feeling of getting onto that plane and never being able to shake off the feeling that this flight would be her last––

Every flight she'd ever taken, she was just totally convinced she was going to die going down on it.

It wasn't an irrational fear. She promised. She pinky promised, despite how much the sentiment made her teeth ache. It wasn't an irrational fear at all.

She didn't have those. She'd always been a smart kid that knew smart things, whether it was niche facts about the production of niche things or science facts that she'd once memorised out of a kid's biology textbook with a torch under sheets.

She'd watched the air hostess' safety demonstration with a clenched jaw, a mint racing between her teeth as she tried to concentrate on things other than the present. As they spoke about death and disaster, she tried to not think about Seattle, which, funnily enough, spelt out nothing but death and disaster too.

It was always the same, no longer how long or how short the flight was, she gritted her teeth, inserted music that was traditionally considered calming and curled her toes in her shoes. A flight to Toronto out of New York had once left her with her forehead pressed against the mirror in the restroom, chest heaving and lungs struggling for any semblance of air.

Now, Beth was rendered breathless by the prospect of a landing in Seattle for a prospective funeral.

Flight AC8089, she thought to herself, staring at the tiny dot flying across the Canadian border into Washington State, Oh, how you can suck my ass.

A succession of four flights out of Indonesia had led her here: chipped nails gripping Air Canada fabric for dear life. Days upon days of living out of a suitcase, trying to justify overpriced purchases in airport lounges and sleeping in beds that had reminded her of a brief stint of homelessness in her past.

She'd been passed country to country, city to city, all until that light shone in the distance, happy to inform everyone that they had officially entered into United States airspace.

The only peace was the music in her ears: a Bach concerto that she'd been playing over and over to drown out the thoughts that had left her sleepless for the past few days. It was an odd backing track to hours that felt a lot like a horror movie–– the thump of her heart in her chest, the tremble of the world as she resigned to life in a suspended metal cage––

Doesn't this look a bit like a coffin? Was it her or were they spiralling a little bit–?

One of the problems with flying, she found more often than not, was that it allowed her to think. Too many trains of thought working all once, all ready to spew some pessimistic bullshit about how death and destruction was inevitable any moment.

Thinking, actually, had been the last thing that she'd wanted to do. It sounded like a honey trap, like the sort of spiral that would lead her back to that restroom, feeling sick to her stomach as she stared at her own reflection and wondered what the fuck she was doing with her life––

Well, She thought to herself, eyes watching the air hostess as they did their final sweep down the aisle, offering refreshments to every passenger, Right now I'm hoping that my brother isn't six foot under, and wishing that my sister was.

The inclination for homicide, meanwhile, was not genetic at all.

(Her light chuckle at the thought of a very untimely funeral caught the attention of the man seated on the other side of the aisle. It was short, eventually muffled by the realisation that yes, the next few days were going to be as painful as she thought they were. A slow shake of the head and it ended. The passenger glanced over at her, an eyebrow aloft, but did not speak on it.)

It'd been a joke that she'd thrown around for a couple of years, of how if anyone from her family ever wanted to reach out: Someone better be dying. 

 She'd only kept in contact with two people from New York and that had been her brother and her old best friend, her old roommate, Amelia. Each one of them had understood the seriousness of her self-exile and had carried the duty of contacting her in an emergency––

Then, Archer, her brother, had managed to get a brain infection that she, a doctor who had made it a year and half into a surgical internship before being kicked out of her program, had never heard of. 

She'd tried to google it on airport wifi and had stared, with a dry mouth, at pictures of worms encased in cerebral fluid. From what she'd been able to piece together from the very minimal amount of information her estranged sister had provided to her, her brother was a ticking time bomb–– one that not even Bach could calm down.

"Can I get you a refreshment?"

The interruption was sudden but should have been unexpected. She should've really have known how these things went by now. 

She blinked up at the air hostess with a plastic happiness as she stood, expectantly, in between the aisles. Shiny eyes, a lot of energy for nine am in the morning and intoxicating perfume that made her head spin. 

The two women exchanged strained smiles.

Like a very old clock that had never quite stopped ticking, her eyes flickered over to the tiny bottle of red wine being poured to a passenger in the next aisle. It must've only been a mouthful, just a taste, the sort of tiny, conveniently sized plastic bottles she'd once taken to hiding at the back of purses.

Her mouth dried and she felt the blood rush to her ears.

Oh Crap Crap Crap Crap Crap––

It was tempting. It was oh so very tempting––

"Coffee," She chipped out between aching gums. The word was a lot harder to say than she would've liked to admit. "Black, one sugar."

The air hostess nodded, completely unaware of the amount of money the passenger she was serving had spent on getting herself clean and how close she'd been to blowing it all on an overpriced shitty glass of Merlot.

There was something about turning up into some random hospital in downtown Seattle drunk off her ass, that really called to her. Maybe it was the stress that she'd been feeling non-stop, the crushing knowledge that everything she'd set out to avoid over these past few years would come crashing down on top of her, or maybe it was just the fact it'd been three years since she'd had a glass of wine?

Three years, almost to the day, and yet when she pressed her lips into a thin line, she could almost taste it.

There was also something so rotten about the sense of pride she felt at the back of her head. How times had changed, how they'd be surprised at her now!

Her jaw clenched as she tried to imagine the look in her sister's eyes as the great Addison Montgomery realised how twisted Elizabeth Montgomery had truly become––

"Uneasy flier?"

She'd barely had the cup of coffee in her hand for three seconds before a voice travelled the gap between the aisles. Her eyebrow lifted and she turned her head to look over at the man flipping through a trashy magazine. 

Eyes flickered between his friendly smile and the way he looked at her, as if he knew something she didn't. Her brow furrowed.

What is he talking abou–– Oh.

He was looking at the polystyrene cup in her hand, watching as it trembled very slightly, and smiled in very slight amusement. Her gaze followed, noticing how, despite her best effort, she still shook with a combination of the caffeine she'd already taken like shots in the airport bar and the stress of everything in the universe building on top of her. 

Her stomach twisted in discomfort.

Oh, fuck this fucking fuck–

"Oh no," her response was drier than the coffee. She cleared her throat, attempting to steady herself, "I'm having the time of my life."

The pep talk she'd been giving herself over and over for the last couple of hours clearly hadn't worked. Her body was betraying her and he seemed to notice every little twitch in her. She wondered whether she looked like a madwoman.

She felt like it–– to put it plainly, she felt as though she was losing her fucking mind. This shaking hand was the symptom of a very slow and gradual mental breakdown that she was hoping hit a lot later than the SSRIs.

As much as she loved in-flight entertainment (always partial to a Swayze movie to take her mind off of their impending doom) she sure as hell didn't want to be it. She'd seen it before, felt the erratic heartbeat, the tears, the torture and the existential crisis.

Home Sweet Home.

She'd once been called stand-offish, told that she wasn't particularly approachable or friendly, but the man seemed to cope fine. He let out his own low chuckle, picking up on her sarcasm as if she'd willingly thrown it to him.

"I can tell," He remarked as she took a long drag of the black liquid, knowing that it wasn't the exact buzz her body had asked for. "You have that vacation glow about you."

"Yeah," She said, feeling her skin bristle. She couldn't help the slightly bitter smile, it was ready to arm, like a spooked cop with their hand on their firearm. "Not really a vacation, but sure."

"You either really hate flying or really did not like Vancouver."

Ah. The realisation settled in as she let the coffee burn her fingertips through the polystyrene (it was a good pain, the sort that made the aching in her body waver, focused on ten digits that were being traitorous bastards anyway).

She wished it'd just burn her completely, head to toe. After all, for years, she'd felt like the slightest misfortune would catch her on fire and completely raize her to the ground.

(Maybe Seattle was finally her match?)

"Vancouver was nice," It felt like a stock response, that sort that would be preloaded into a video game character and triggered by pressing 'A'. She shrugged. "Or at least it was from my hotel window... I, uh, I didn't really get to experience any of it."

That was the truth, but she was too much a pessimist to class this feeling in her chest as just cabin fever.

"Connecting flight?"

Maybe that was something else she hated about flying, the friendships that strangers seemed to thrust on you. It was completely crazy; the way he smiled over at her as if the shared experience of hurtling through the air was the equivalent of knowing each other for years. 

She'd heard of trauma bonding and, in fact, had made quite a career out of it, but she didn't want this to be the sort of event that brought people together. Her smile sharpened very slightly, a sigh was caught at the back of her throat.

"Yeah," She said.

"Where from?"

"Manila," was her response, "Philippines."

(Another city that had been restricted to the flash beyond windows and the brief time she'd spent holding a shaky cigarette to her lips in the rain. It'd been a regret cigarette and would have tasted the same as the glass of wine that she'd almost bought. The past few days, it seemed, were patterned with those. The lung full of Manila air and her first cigarette in two and a half years had been a symptom of it.)

"Oh, no way," He seemed visibly caught off-guard, his eyebrows raising. "Me too! I didn't see you on the flight!"

"Ah," Beth smiled, the expression slightly cracked and causing her facial muscles to burn, "I tend to keep to myself."

She hadn't once, that bitter part of her brain reminded her. It'd only been when people had started disappointing her over and over, that she'd taken to solitude as her favourite company.

Now, as he spoke to her about how he'd been living in Manila for a few years now, enjoying the culture and the landscape, all Beth could think about was how she couldn't have cared less, but she guessed it was a nice distraction while it lasted. 

Just about enough to direct her thoughts away from the mental image of her brother, face-up in an open casket, skin gaunt and pale and––

"You really don't like flying, do you?"

She had to give it to him, he was persistent.

Her eyes flickered away from the diagram she'd been blankly staring at as he spoke about his girlfriend and her cater-water job. (It was a series of images arranged into the very unsteady safety procedure the air-hostesses had demonstrated.)

She must've made a face at it, signalled in some way that pretending she was cool and collected was not working as well as she would've liked. When she looked over at the man, at this stranger, she just shrugged.

"I've, uh," A breathy, awkward laugh, "I've got a lot of things on my mind and... and the fact that we're in a tiny flying metal box, is definitely one of them, so..."

His head tilted to the side.

"What's the worst that can happen?"

She just stared at him for a few moments, wondering whether it was just her. Maybe it was. Maybe she'd become a pessimist right down to the bone. Maybe she'd manifested anxiety and it'd left her slightly brittle–– or, maybe it was the constantly overbearing thought that at any moment they could drop right out of the sky, end up skewered on metal wreckage and bleed out slowly until they became worm food.

That was only if they were lucky enough; she figured that knowing her luck and how the universe seemed to be working this week, she'd probably be the only person left fully intact.

She could imagine it now, the thud of her heart on her ribcage as she attempted to tap into long-abandoned surgical knowledge and save the lives of the eighty other passengers on this plane...

She just opted for a weak smile.

He chuckled to himself, "It's okay," It wasn't, but sure. "I'm just joking around with you..."

Mm, She thought to herself, turning her head back to the cartoon outlines of people wearing oxygen masks and inflated life jackets, And I'm just having a nervous fucking breakdown.

"I do this flight a lot," was what he said next, "It's easy, really."

Right.

"What's worse is Seattle traffic, now that, that's the worst-case scenario," He seemed to amuse himself, but shook his head at the thought of getting anywhere near a road in their destination, "Especially downtown, y'know... by the hospital, it gets locked up down there for what feels like hours–"

"Just my luck," She drawled back, feeling the weight of travelling sink deeper and deeper into her skin. "It's probably where I'm headed."

Her gaze settled on the coffee (now firmly placed on the plastic table in fear of unsteady hands making catastrophic mistakes) and she almost felt like berating it. You traitor, you were supposed to do something.

His head tilted to the side.

"Which hospital?"

"Uh," Her brow furrowed as she struggled to remember the name Addison had chipped through the voicemail inbox with clenched teeth. "Seattle... Seattle Faith? Uh, something... Seattle...Seattle Grace?"

She watched his face light up for the second time in this conversation.

"What a small world," He turned in his seat towards her, "Me too."

It struck her, for a moment, how it really was a small world. Everyone was here. Derek Shepherd, Addison Montgomery, Archer Montgomery. They were all here, all in that hospital too. This city, Seattle, it didn't even know the weight it was about to be burdened with.

Were these streets aware of what it was about to witness? The people that it was going to house in it's buildings and on it's stairs? Didn't this city realise how this reunion, this homecoming, had been something she'd fought against for years–– that from the moment she set her feet down on United States soil, it would've been the first time, in a long time, that she'd ever allowed herself to acknowledge the past?

No, she thought to herself, of course not. No city knows when it's about to become a battleground. Seattle is no exception.

"Have you ever been here before?"

His question almost became background noise as she craned her neck, catching her first sight of Seattle as the seatbelt lights flickered overhead and her table was folded back up into the chair in front. She could see it faintly as the plane began its descent.

God, I'm really doing this.

God, I'm really doing this and I really don't want to be talking to anyone right now.

"No," She said, her lips numb and a sense of foreboding for what's to come, so deeply pulsing through her veins. "I, uh, it's been a while since I've been back in the States at all."

The man smiled softly and nodded almost knowingly.

"Well, I hope you like it here, it's a good place," He said and then extended a hand, "I'm Henry, by the way, if we ever cross paths again."

She looked back over her shoulder and did her best to make a least one good impression in the city she knew she'd grow to hate. A polite smile struggled its way onto numb lips. Her first introduction in what felt like years:

"Beth."

──────

The first thing that greeted her in Seattle was the sound of her cell phone.

It exploded as soon as she turned it on, a staggering form swaying on the other side of security, wondering when she'd be able to rest her aching feet. Once, it'd been a promising noise, the promise of work, of opportunity, of a message from the man she loved–– but now, as Beth raised her cell phone and saw the caller ID, all she could do was grimace.

And then there was the rain.

Standing underneath a crowded shelter with a suitcase and phone continuously ringing as she dodged the phone call of a man who you'd left hanging on a marriage proposal, was not Beth's idea of fun. 

A frown that was beginning to feel permanent made her think about her mother's proclivity to plastic surgery; if only Bizzy Forbes could see her youngest kid now, frowning with no botox in sight, oh the outrage and the drama.

Although, she guessed that if she had to compare to the other things she'd done over the years, maybe aging was the least scandalous thing Elizabeth Montgomery had done.

Addison, meanwhile, had been full of apologies, saying that there was no way in hell she'd be able to see Beth off of the plane herself. (It hadn't been amiss to Beth that out of all of the apologies her sister could give, that was it.)It'd come in a string of text messages once Beth had sent her own message confirming her flight.

Apparently, the eldest sister was resigned to sitting at Archer's bedside, counting the minutes away until he died or survived. (Even by Beth's standards, that was pretty sick.) She'd explained more things, but it had all become background noise. Beth recognised the tension behind the words, the weakness behind it–– Addison's nervousness matched hers.

She knew that the excuses were as shallow as they appeared. It was clear to even the untrained, Montgomery eye: Addison was as nervous about seeing Beth again as she was and a half hour car journey into Seattle was not to her liking.

Good, Beth thought to herself as she tried to restrain herself from purchasing cigarettes and smoking into the Seattle downpour, She should be terrified.

Hell, Beth was terrified too. It was something she'd never admit out loud, but she felt it and she felt it so deeply that sometimes, she couldn't breathe. The only that kept her going was the hope that Addison felt this too––

That made all of the flights, all the money she'd had to borrow, and all of the pep talks in faded airport mirrors, completely worth it. For years, that's all she'd focused on: seeing the whites of Addison Forbes Montgomery's eyes as she realised that, even four and a half years on, she'd have hell to pay for what she did.

Oh, Yeah, was Beth's thought, paired with a nod. Her nose wrinkled as she watched the rain grow heavier, Oh yeah, All that anger management therapy definitely paid off.

In Addison's absence, Beth could imagine herself being the sort of chore people would bargain over. She could imagine it, people stood in a room with rock-paper scissors between them as they passed around the task of collecting her from the airport as if it was cleaning the toilet.

(Picking up a Montgomery? You mean the parents? Oh, no, the crazy one. The estranged one. The one that took off four years ago and never came back.)

At that thought, a car pulled up on the curb in front of her.

"Are you Elizabeth?"

A face appeared, stretched over the car as the window was rolled down. A pair of doe eyes gleamed through the gloom over at Beth as she strained to hear what was being said.

There was a moment of chaos, a What? followed by the repetition of Elizabeth twice over. Elizabeth, Elizabeth Montgomery? A reluctance yes with the sour taste in her mouth of not having been called that for years. The driver nodded, a shaky smile as she gestured for Beth to get in.

Beth was fairly sure she wouldn't get kidnapped. Not today. She'd only be so lucky.

The suitcase was slammed into a tiny trunk, cluttered with clothing and odd shoes that filled Beth with nostalgia. She managed to wedge her belongings in a space between a pile of surgical textbooks and a box labelled FOR DONATION, sighing as she felt the rain soak through her clothes. It didn't take eleven months of body language training for Beth to deduce that her suspicion had been correct––

She was scut. Oh, she was totally scut.

Her chauffeur was a little less Upper East Side and more a teen carpool to prom. A frighteningly young face was what met her as she slipped into the passenger seat, soaked to the bone and shivering very slightly.

The woman was small, mousy and didn't hesitate before pulling away from the sidewalk and joining the infamous Seattle traffic. It was dry in here, in a cramped Honda Civic that made Beth realise she hadn't truly relaxed in a very long time. She found herself wedged in between a steamed-up window and what, from first glance, she could discern was a surgical intern.

She was getting too good at this, Beth figured. She could tell the woman's character type from the first dimpled smile: the intern who was dumb enough to come pick up the corrosive goods that had been airdropped into enemy territory.

"Did you have a good flight?"

Beth's head turned to survey the woman beside her. She was glancing between the road, steering wheel and passenger almost mechanically, desperately trying to keep her attention on all things at once. With a slight acidic taste at the back of her throat, Beth noticed the tiny scented dog air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror.

Her head turned to gaze out of the window as the rain came lashing down.

"Sure," was Beth's response, wondering exactly what it was with people starting conversations without actually introducing themselves first. "It was fine."

She cringed at herself as she heard herself say it. It sounded like such a non-answer, or the boxy sort of response a teenager would reel off to prying parents. It hadn't occurred to her until she was here, watching the city pass behind the window and hearing herself socialise, that she'd backed herself a very treacherous corner.

Her body had reduced itself to bones and flesh, a woman who could float into this hospital and out with nothing but her sanity and what dignity she had left. That resulted in this: sharp conversations with an even sharper tone, categorised by the tightness in Beth's chest every time she spoke.

"It was good," She corrected herself, trying to become a better person or whatever crap she'd vowed to herself the last time she'd stood in front of Addison Montgomery's intense look of disapproval. She grimaced at how hard it was to consciously be an approachable and friendly person when your whole body just wanted to scream. "Better than good, really, it was great."

Beth didn't sound too convincing.

The woman glanced over at her again. She seemed oblivious to the split-second kick Beth had given herself and just flashed a hazy smile.

Mentally, Beth was counting how many years it had been since she'd been so conscious of what she was saying and how she was appearing. She could almost imagine her mother stood behind her, encouraging her to sit straighter, engage in conversation and don't look so damn miserable when you speak, Elizabeth.

"The weather wasn't too much trouble?"

The Montgomery pressed her lips together, vividly recounting how the whole fuselage had shaken and trembled around her from the intense turbulence. Another shrug. It was the best she could manage–– Oh, but then a quip with a chuckle.

"I mean, I didn't die so that's got to be good for something, right?"

She didn't get a laugh.

(Rude, at least Charlie would have smiled fondly at her twisted humour.)

Beth's stomach lurched.

(Oh, fuck, Charlie.)

The woman's brow just seemed to furrow and her grasp on the steering wheel tightened. Beth watched it from out of the corner of her eye, drawn back to the surgical intern like a moth to a flame.

"Y-Yeah, Yeah," She stuttered slightly, seemingly caught off guard by the topic. Beth's eyebrows raised slightly as she grew flustered. "I guess? I guess so?"

"I'm not a very good flier," Beth sighed, feeling the coffee burn it's way out of her system and leave something close to exhaustion behind. Total exhaustion, yeah, that was it. "I try to avoid it––"

"But when needs must, right?" The woman said, nodding as if she understood exactly what Beth was talking about. The newcomer to Seattle faltered slightly, her turn to be taken aback by a nonchalant tone.

(I mean, sure, she's not wrong; flying home to see your older brother on his deathbed was, by all means, a need.)

She seemed to realise what she'd said. "I-I, uh, I'm really sorry about your brother, by the way." Then a pause. "He's nice."

Beth turned to the window, a fond smile flickering over her lips as she thought of him. 

He wasn't nice, but she appreciated the sentiment. He was just like the rest of her family, bitter and twisted beyond the normal. She knew that he was being an asshole to every nurse that dared to tiptoe into his hospital room and that he'd more likely given Derek hell.

The thought of it was almost enough to distract her, yet again, from that twinge in her chest when she remembered that her hours with Archer might've been numbered.

"Yeah," Beth commented idly, "At least my fear of flying seems to be the least of my family's issues, right? I mean... what kind of jackass gets brain worms from a fruit?"

She hadn't been able to believe the diagnosis as Addison had recited it down the phone. Her brow had scrunched, disbelief running through her as she played the voicemail over and over again. Charlie hadn't believed it either as she'd tried to explain it while packing. He'd had to search up using one of the centre's computers: Neurocysticercosis, a parasitic tissue infection in the brain.

"Well, I mean if you lay out the statistics, I mean... y-you're far more likely to get an infection like that than get into a plane crash..."

Beth was almost impressed by how quickly this intern could speak. Her attention was fully stuck on the road, words almost subconscious as if she was mentally reading them all off a page.

"I read in a journal once that there's been 45 air incidents since 1994 with a fatal accident rate of 0.005 per 100,00 flights..."

Oh, Beth's whole body froze.

"Compare that to the belief that more than 30 million Americans are affected by brain parasites every year. By those statistics, I mean, it's crazy... That's a lot of airplanes, y'know?"

Beth just blinked at her. The woman glanced at her, as if to come up for air, and noticed the slight look of alarm on her face. Immediately, she blanched.

"Either way," She added, "You'd have to be really lucky to be in something like... well, really unlucky. I don't think I'm that lucky, I don't... I don't think that you'd be that..." 

She cut herself short, shaking her head. A pause and then she realised the awkward anonymity between them. A slightly nervous smile as she came to a halt at a stoplight. 

"I'm Lexie, by the way."

Hesitantly, Beth smiled, eyes wide and voice painfully dry. She didn't intend for it to sound as sarcastic as it did:"Nice to meet you, Lexie."

"You too, Elizabeth."

Ah.

"Don't, uh," It was said with great distaste, a chin tilted back out to stare into the rain, "It's just Beth."

"Sorry."

"Sure."

There was a stretch of silence filled by the sound of the radio rolling out hits that Beth didn't really recognise. She almost didn't recognise these streets either, the methodic squares that stretched for miles and miles, interlocked with tiny cars fighting to push through. 

If she squinted, this almost felt like it had five years ago, her shoulder pressed up against the door of a Manhattan cab on the way to JFK.

Her eyes, very shortly flickered to the radio as a new song broke through the quiet. As if reading her mind, the opening of Empire State of Mind filled the car and she felt something inside of her deflate.

Of course, she couldn't catch a fucking break today.

"So, do they always make you drive out and pick strangers up from the airport?"

It was polite conversation thrown in the face of needing to drown out the repetition of NEW YORK...CONCRETE JUNGLE WHERE DREAMS ARE MADE OF... THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN'T DO... from her hearing.

(She guessed that, in a way, the song was right. For example, Beth had been able to accomplish something she'd once considered impossible. She'd completely ruined her surgical career, gotten addicted to practically every narcotic and alcohol she could get her hands on and watched her on-and-off-again boyfriend leave her for her older sister. Truly, what dreams were made of.)

Lexie seemed happy to speak, probably wavering anxiously in the ticking over silence.

"Not usually," She said, head-bopping along absently to the music as she concentrated on a motorcycle trying to weave its way around them. "Doctor Shepherd doesn't usually ask for personal favours but I'm happy to help where I can."

"Derek sent you?"

Beth's eyebrows raised. She was guessing that, from the laws of logical deduction, when Lexie said Doctor Shepherd, she was not referring to Amelia; although, Beth kinda really wished she was. When Addison had thrown Seattle up in conversation and explained that the reason Archer was there was simply for Derek, Beth had not had the energy to be surprised.

She'd known that Derek had left New York, just like she had, and despite being surprised to hear that the (presumably) divorced couple was still in touch, she'd just been too exhausted to do the mental gymnastics. All she knew, was that Derek Shepherd was her brother's doctor and that must've been tearing Archer up inside.

"He didn't send me," Lexie reasoned, although Beth was, for the tenth time in the past ten minutes, amused by the fact that she was definitely something that no one wanted to deal with. "He asked... He... He actually asked really nicely."

"He's letting you assist on Archer's surgery, isn't he?"

She knew how surgical politics worked. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. Quid pro quo. It was funny, to Beth, to think now in retrospect, how she'd spent months of her life fighting for something that would just get taken away from her. It'd even cost her so much too.

It was the reason her hands had shaken at the prospect of a glass of wine or her eyes had glazed over very slightly when she'd seen snow on the Vancouver mountain ranges.

Lexie didn't meet her eye, "I really like neurosurgery."

Yeah, Beth thought to herself, So did I.

"I still can't really believe he's doing all this,' Beth said, saying some of the most candidly honest words she'd said in a long time. "Addison must've been really persuasive–– I don't know if you've heard about my sister––"

(That's what she'd said to Charlie. She'd stood there with disbelief and said that if she were Derek, she would not have wanted anything to do with the woman who had cheated on him. After all, that's how she felt about both her sister and the other half of that equation.)

"My half-sister told me all about her," Lexie said, shrugging and, at the confused expression on Beth's face, she continued. "Meredith." She said a random name as if expecting her to know it. It was only then that the concept of lost contact really seemed to hit Lexie. "She's um... she's Derek's girlfriend."

Oh?

Beth paused for a moment, suspended in surprise.

Good for Derek.

"She told me all about the affair thing," She continued on lightly, as if the affair thing hadn't been one of the worst things that had ever happened in Beth's life. The psychiatrist just stared at her, her heart heavy. "Your sister slept with Derek's best friend and everything didn't turn out too good––"

"Yeah," Beth mumbled, "It went to shit."

Somehow, shit felt like an understatement.

"It's nice to know that we're a popular topic as a family," Beth cleared her throat, watching as traffic congested and congealed like blood platelets around a wound. Her mouth went dry again.

That's what she was now, right? Hot gossip. She knew how hospital politics worked as well as she knew surgery; rumours were going to fly from the moment she stepped into that building.

"You are at the moment," Lexie admitted with a precarious nod. She looked sad for her. Beth didn't need nor want her pity. "You probably know what's it like."

Beth nodded absently, lips pressed in a thin line, "Of course, the Guy with Brain Worms, the ex-Shepherd..." (Or, more appropriately named, Satan.) "And then me."

Laying it all out like that made Beth's stomach roll in a way she hadn't felt since the planes wheels had hit solid ground. Call it the dramatic flare in her, but she could've swore that she felt the city sing to her, almost in warning–– Archer, Addison, Her... and then Derek... and then who else? Who else would come crawling out of the debris of Manhattan island, ready to strip Beth bare and ring her sanity dry––

Would he be––?

No. 

She shook that thought out of her immediately.

No, don't be stupid. No. He wouldn't be seen dead in a place like this. He ruined Derek too. He wouldn't... He wouldn't dare... Derek wouldn't let him...

And then the car stopped.

"Good luck," Lexie said tentatively as Beth stared out of the slightly fogged window. In the corner of her eye, Beth saw her wary, vaguely hopeful and almost sad smile. 

She knew the sentiment there, the premature condolences and all of the shit that Beth had had to study–– she knew, from the look in Lexie's eyes, that the surgical intern didn't think that anything good would come out of this either, and Beth swallowed that fear. She locked it away at the back of her throat and refused to let it scream as loud as it wanted to.

Instead, she just cracked a smile. A defensive smile, a beautiful distraction from the way Beth just wanted to tear her own skin off––

"Luck?" Beth said, light and musing, and she inclined her head out of the window, "I don't need it... It's just a little rain."

And a little deathbed, too.

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first rewritten chapter!
god, i've missed beth sm. my little ray of mean pessimistic sunshine.

i feel the need to give a warning that beth is not a happy, shiny lil plastic character. on the contary, she's shamelessly human and flawed and if you hate her for it, idk what to say! this might not be the book for you. i'm a massive advocate for flawed characters so,, here is my manifesto,,
but i promise i'll be (and beth will be) nicer to lexie this time. (and i totally promise that i don't totally have my fingers crossed behind my back) they're gonna have a cute lil friendship,, at least for the meantime.

if you're rereading, please feel free to leave more comments, they make my day! 
and if you're tuning in from tiktok, give me a lil wave! i'm interested to see if anyone comes along!

i did, however, lie about this being the only update,,
see you tomorrow for another one ;)
soph x

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WORDS : 6446
REWRITTEN NOVEMBER 3RD 2021