❛ 𝐅𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐄 . . . ❜
003.  this is going to hurt
SEASON 5, EPISODE 15

━━━━━━━━━━━

Beth met Derek Shepherd, for the first time, on a Thursday in August.

She'd been in New York City for exactly three days, having come off the train at Grand Central and into her sister's open arms. She was a symptom of the academic season, of thousands of students that would descend on the island for their studies.

The diagnosis for Beth? A medical degree at Columbia, a focus in surgical study that was going to lead her towards her career as a surgeon, completely eclipsed by the first thing that Addison said as she watched the last Montgomery sibling make it to the city, her heart swollen beyond description in her chest:

    "Oh," She said, holding Beth so tight that she figured Addison would never let go, "You're going to have so much fun here."

(Yeah, Beth would think in retrospect, Fuck that.)

Apparently, according to Addison, a city like New York had to be broken in like a new pair of shoes.

Restaurants had to be visited, town cars had to be ordered, and Beth had to stand in Addison's studio apartment with a glass of Chardonnay and listen to an old Carole King record as Addison ordered takeout from her favourite Thai place around the corner. As Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? filled the room, Beth had to find her place in Manhattan.

Did she fit in the tiny Bloomingdale apartment she was paying too much for? Did she fit in Addison's closet, in between her shirts and shoes? Or, did she fit somewhere bigger? Like the streets that like veins between buildings and pumped the lifeblood of a city that had once been the true heart of the nation––?

Beth's head turned towards the foyer as the front door buzzed.

Her sister appeared from the kitchen, a hurried mess of limbs as she thrust herself towards the security release. It made Beth's brow fold, not used to a moment of sloppiness from a woman who had made herself in their Mother's image.

Up-tight, performed, put-together. Not a hurried smile and the angry clack of heels as she insisted, through painted red lips 'I've got it!' and lunged for the door.

Slowly, Beth took a sip of her champagne. Her nose scrunched and her face contorted, eyes flickering down to study the glass in her hand. She didn't like the taste. She wasn't really a big drinker.

   "Hi."

   "Hi."

The visitor, of whom Beth hadn't been warned of, was standing in the doorway.

She couldn't see beyond Addison and her greeting; Beth's eyebrows raised as she watched her sister hug an unfamiliar man, drawing him closer, closer than what she considered particularly friendly.

It was that 'Hi' too, it had never occurred to her that 'Hi' could somehow, mean so much more than just 'Hi'. It was as if it was a secret joke between the two of them.

The two strangers met eyes over Addison's shoulders.

   "Beth," Addison finally said her name after what had felt like a private moment between them. She looked back at her sister and beamed. Beth was almost taken aback. The clarity of Addison's smile almost caught her off-guard. "There's someone I'd like you to meet."

Yeah, Beth commented silently, I can see that.

And then another thought as she internalised the look in Addison's eye:

Escape while you still can, stranger. I think she's in love with you.

The man Addison presented to her was charming in appearance. Blue eyes, perfect hair. And, just from the look of him, Beth knew they'd have annoyingly perfect babies, the sort that would become Gap models in the early two-thousands. In fact, this introduction would be the first of many Manhattan men, some who could shake your hand and then keep then keep said hands to themselves, and some that couldn't.

He was one of the first half, although, just as he dropped Beth's hand, he reached for Addison. With a lazy smile, he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulling her into him in just the perfect way, that it made Beth's chest ache for someone to hold her like that too.

   "You must be Elizabeth," He said, and Beth's grimace was something that she just couldn't restrain.

A light chuckle fell past his lips and he nodded, getting the memo that he would purposely ignore for years. He'd forget about it to annoy her, he'd forget about it when he was mad and he'd forget about it just for the hell of it.

"Sorry... Beth."

But, what neither of them would ever forget, was the friendship that began that day in Addison's little apartment on the hem of the Upper East Side.

    "I'm Derek Shepherd," He introduced and Beth would never quite wrap her head around how, a single introduction, could change her life and drag her towards people that would change both of theirs. "I've heard so much about you... Welcome to New York."

And then, she watched him look over towards her sister as if she were the sun and he were just an asteroid caught up in her orbit.

──────

Remembering Mark Sloan, Beth found, was like choking on a peach pit.

She knew it was there. How could she not? A bearing pain at the back of her throat, one that almost felt like an imprint of him. Sourly bittersweet with a burning aftertaste.

It pressed on her windpipe, squeezing tighter and tighter until she was gasping for air. She was not brought to her knees, but excused herself to go to the restroom.

A psychiatrist had once asked her, if you could say anything to him, what would it be? And Beth had to stop and think for a second. He'd smiled hazily and shaken his head, and told her that she didn't need to think about it –– he just needed her first thought, whatever came to mind as soon as he proposed the scenario ––

But, in reality, Beth had just been wondering, for a moment, whether psychiatrists in Canada could report murderous intent to the police like they did back in the States.

   "Oh, you motherfucker," Beth said to her reflection.

She ran the faucet on its coldest setting, running it with fingers that wouldn't still no matter how hard she tried. Her head was full of warning bells, of red flags and ringing alarms, (Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.) and she couldn't catch her breath. There were so many panicked movements, everything from the wobbly stride that had brought her here to the handful of chilled water flying in her face––

The peach pit tasted sweet too.

Bitterly sweet, the sort that bought tears to her eyes.

The lump in the back of her throat had grown over the past few years and bought her nothing but grief. The same therapist in Toronto had told her that she would do no favour to herself by avoiding it. (Yeah, Beth figured, yeah, he was right.) She would've been able to write a dissertation right there, all on the feeling within her, of the hate that overwhelmed her from the moment she'd left Archer's room.

She'd waited exactly five minutes before excusing herself to go to the restroom, five minutes of tight-lipped, stoic conversation with a whole war inside her head–– she knew this war, she'd studied this war. It was a biological weapon that was driving her, very slowly, insane.

Fight or flight.

Every doctor knew it, a whole mechanism that was kitted specifically for survival. It was the response that kicked up her heartbeat, dilated her pupils and made her feel, just the tiniest bit, nauseous.

No Wait, maybe a tiny bit was a lie. Maybe that was a lot? A lot nauseous? And maybe she felt as if her whole body was screaming?

Or maybe she didn't know how she felt at all.

All Beth knew was that she hadn't been on this edge in years. There was something about just the mention of his name, as it had been for years, that had made her blood curdle. It was the repercussions of the pain of it, of something that hadn't been resolved or spoken about outside of therapy sessions.

Just his name, for far too long now, had been enough to kill any conversation Beth had been in–– the last person to mention it to her had been Charlie, sat in the car outside the airport suspended in the breath between the car skittering to a stop and Beth opening the door. He'd looked over at her, knowing the gravity of what she was walking into.

What about Mark?

He'd asked her that question and it'd struck her like lightning. It'd been the juxtaposition between his kind lips and that unkind name. A conductor right down into her blood. Her skin prickled and her throat had tightened. These bones had ached so strong.

What about him? What if he's there?

Charlie... it's... He won't be.

But what if?

He won't.

I'm just thinking out loud.

It's Derek... he fucked Derek over too, do you really think he'd––?

Beth, are you sure? Are you sure he won't be there?

It'd been something she'd dismissed.

So why, for all reasons in the universe, would Mark Sloan be in Seattle?

She hated the fact that she knew him well enough to definitively say that he hated the West Coast. He was an East Coast guy, New York State born and raised and could not, for the life of him, stomach the pep and hipsters of anything West of Vegas. Vegas he could do, the dirty lifestyle, the dirty money, the dirty hands– But, Seattle, however?

What the fuck?

Charlie had offered to get on the flight with her. He'd looked her in the eye and squeezed her hand over the middle console and told her, that he'd feel better if he came with her. He'd said that he knew she was strong and that she could handle Archer's illness and whatever storm came with Addison, but that it would've given him peace of mind if she let him come.

She'd stared back at him, the insistence that Derek would've never let Mark anywhere near him on the time of her tongue, and shot him down. Charlie had work, he had patients and he had a community clinic in three days that he couldn't pass up.

Now, thinking about how the universe seemed to fucking hate her, Beth tried not to think about the disappointment on his face as she left him behind.

And God, wasn't she good at leaving things behind.

That was the problem with finding out that your ex-boyfriend who had left you for your older sister and had completely bulldozed your surgical career in the process, was in the town. Beth wanted to leave. Just as she had done a million times before, whenever things got too bad and she couldn't envision any other option: she wanted to leave.

Run. Catch the next flight out of here, despite how badly she hated those deathtraps.

Her fight or flight response had been stuck in flight for years now and she didn't exactly know how to flip it back–– just standing there, bowed over a sink in a public restroom with hell on heels, Beth imagined how easy it would be just to go back to Charlie, back home.

She sighed, rolling out the muscles in her shoulders.

She could feel the weight she'd been carrying for years. Every part of her body was tense almost beyond recognition. In a way, Beth couldn't recognise her life at all; she'd once been so kind, so optimistic and so light. Now, her whole being broiled with the fact that she was standing in the same building as a man who had thrown her aside like she was a piece of trash––

Jesus fucking Christ what the fuck was he doing in Seattle?

It didn't make sense.

What had happened? What had transpired? What had Mark said to Derek Shepherd to convince him to let him stay?

(In retrospect, Beth would figure that that was the main problem with flight. It was a long term solution that made things complicated and raised all of these questions. She didn't know anything, hadn't settled bad blood that still stained unclean hands, and conversations had predominantly gone untouched.)

(What she felt, standing in a public restroom in Seattle Grace Hospital, was as strong as it had been nearly half a decade ago. For a moment in time nothing had changed.)

And then fury came.

Archer had once made a joke about Montgomery rage.

It'd been a comment chipped over an overcast dinner table on the Upper East Side. She'd had a glass of wine in her hand and a lovers hand on her thigh, and her brother had joked Hell Hath No Fury Like a Montgomery Scorned.

Beth was unable to remember the context of what had happened, what he'd been referencing and admittedly remembered the feeling of a thumb tracing patterns on her skin more than the actual conversation, but that had stuck with her.

He was right. While everything else had fallen away, the man that she'd interlace her fingers with to stop things from going too far, the city and the family sat at the table, this feeling had stuck within her.

Huh, so much for anger therapy.

Beth watched her knuckles peak with pale bony precipes of knuckles like the tops of mountains. Fire burned somewhere, she couldn't pinpoint it, but it was there. It burned through her shallow breaths and turned her thoughts into wildfire.

Why did she have to be the one who left?

Screw him.

No, not screw, Fuck Him.

She'd promised to be on her best behaviour, but Mark... it was Mark. The twisted sycophant who had used her, drained her of everything she had and then... and then what?

Tossed her aside for a shinier version? He'd taken her twenties, taken her insecurities, her love and her kindness and he'd just––

Fuck it. Fuck Him. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. FUCK. FUCK——

Beth knew that she couldn't leave.

She couldn't. She had too many reasons to stay.

With an idle glance up into the mirror, she wondered whether Mark could tell she was in this city. Could he feel her thinking of him like a shiver down his spine? Would the hairs raise on the back of his neck as he stepped onto the same hospital floor? Would they know each other by the weight of their footsteps, from echoes of bare feet against floorboards? Or was everything just lost to time––?

Well, She looked down at the faucet as the water was cut off, Not exactly everything.

Four and half years. Four and a half fucking years, and Beth still wanted to watch the bastard bleed.

Mark had been her greatest adversary. Not in the way she hated him, but in the way she'd loved him. Too much, too soon, too fast, like a match falling out of hands that hadn't been able to guide it.

She'd watched New York go up in flames, watched buildings catch alight like trees in a forest first, and she'd felt it–– she'd been burned alive too.

Oh fuck you, she thought to the man who now stood without a single scratch, I'm not going quietly. Not this time.

──────

Her resolution to stay sealed with the sight of Samuel Bennett stood in the empty doorway of Archer's room, an arm aloft and a security badge swinging between his fingers.

    He flashed her a devilish smile, "How about we pay our old friend a visit?"

──────

The last time she'd had contact with Derek Shepherd, she'd failed to register his voice.

She'd hung onto his words, to every single syllable and letter. He'd been a messenger of bad news, of crushing news, events that had scattered them across the North American continent like a hand of dice–– but standing there, loitering in the radiology department of Seattle Grace, she'd been able to remember and recognise him from sound alone.

The Head of Neurosurgery had never been quiet, he reminded her of Amelia in that way, always the sort of voice that carried out in a crowd. But even now, as he stood in the radiology department overseeing Archer's first MRI consultation of the day, she could faintly hear him above the pulsating drone of the machine in the next room.

He was standing before a wall of windows, staring at his patient as they slowly disappeared into the nether of technology and wiring.

    "Your wife is in the hospital chapel... She's praying."

It was Sam's greeting after all these years of radio silence. A wry smile, a statement that made even Beth's eyebrows raise. They filed in, one behind the other, and Sam lead with a bold opener that, too, caught Derek off-guard.

His head snapped over so quickly that Beth, for a moment, was surprised his neck didn't snap clean in half. But then she watched the expression that moved over his face, bewilderment into a warm, friendly smile that reminded her of biweekly restaurant meals and evening strolls through Central Park.

Beth stood back, watching as they reunited. A chuckle passed between them, two men locking shoulders and clapping each other on the back. The sight of it made something shift in her chest, something warm and non-destructive. Beth just shook her head, rolling her eyes.

    "Addison doesn't pray," was her contribution, and Derek's eyes flew to her like a moth to a flame. She watched his smile transform, a look of surprise briefly flickering over his face. Beth tried to digest it. "Too many sins, would get a little bit messy with the big guy upstairs, don't you think?"

None of them had ever been good, honest church-going people. They had too many sins between them, too many betrayals and Beth was fairly sure that if Addison ever sat in a confessional, a priest would be driven to charge by the hour.

While Beth had definitely done her fair share of promiscuous acts, she knew that Addison could make any angel weep–– if praying in a church was a phone call straight to God, the Montgomery sisters were forever sent to voicemail.

    "Yeah," The neurosurgeon chuckled, shaking his head with eyes full of light. But then, just before he swept Beth away into a hug, he added to his exhale, "And she's not my wife,"

The hug felt a lot like Archer's had. Distinctively familial and brotherly in the way that her bones had ached for sometimes when she'd been trying to rebuild her life. Charlie was a notoriously good hugger, but this, the way that Derek squeezed her tight and joked about not letting go as she went to pull away, it satisfied that need at the back of her chest.

Derek looked the same in the same way that Sam did. Older, slightly, but happier, visibly happier. His hair was still the same, his eyes were the same, and so was his crooked grin as he looked between his two old friends.

As Beth stuffed her hands into the pocket of her hoodie and tried to make the ghost of Manhattan leave the room, he placed his hands on his hips and sighed contently, as if the appearance of them was proving to be the best part of his day.

   "How are you both?" He asked, looking far more interested in them than Archer as he laid on cold plastic in the room next to them. Beth's head, very briefly, turned to look over at her brother, chest swollen as she reminded herself of why they were here. "It's been too long."

   "It has," Sam agreed, a sheepish smile on his lips as he nodded, "But hey, y'know between the midlife crisis, the clinic and the book––"

   "And the divorce," Beth interjected, snapping back to the room with the fanfare of Derek's chuckle. Sam rolled his eyes, displeased with the topic change, "Yeah, you still haven't talked about that––Neither of you, actually––"

  "I was getting to it."

  Derek looked deeply amused but bailed him out of his relationship talk, opting to address something that had caught a lot of attention, "Yeah, I heard about the crisis, Doctor Feelgood."

It was the title of Sam's book on internist health, the one that had made people's heads turn as he led Beth through the radiology department. A bestseller, as he'd told Beth when she'd awkwardly admitted that she hadn't heard of it. It hadn't exactly made it into Archer's monthly messages.

He was established now, a household name with a book to flash, just like the inscription of Chief of Neurosurgery on Derek's lab coat. Her eyes flickered between the two men, watching as Sam shrugged as if it wasn't a big deal.

Not a big deal? A nurse had asked for him to autograph a receipt she'd had from the coffee cart in the foyer.

Yeah, Beth didn't exactly have a book deal or a flashy office to show what she'd done with the last four years.

    "I read the book, by the way," Derek added, "I thought it was good, well researched. I did drop you an email about it, just a little congratulations but... but you, uh, you must've been been too busy to respond to it––"

    "Yeah, I got the email," was Sam's response. Beth watched his head bop lightly in a response as she took a spare technician's chair between them. "My assistant sent you a reply––"

   "They did," Derek said, nodding too, "The automated 'thanks for your correspondence' message."

Beth's eyes bounced between them, suddenly aware of a very subtle tension that had turned the conversation into a new territory.

Jesus, this switched up fast.

There was a prolonged pause, the sort that almost felt like the four years of silence that had played between each of them. Derek and Sam stared at each other for a prolonged moment. Sam cleared his throat.

God, at least kiss if you're going to look at eachother like that.

(Beth didn't feel like it was the appropriate time to say it, but she definitely had not had an assistant answering the messages she didn't want to.)

(On the contrary, she'd paid for a cell phone forwarding service to a certain Amelia Shepherd, who had taken great delight in answering every single phone call on Beth's old number. She hadn't asked for the specifics, but she knew that Amy had served her fair share of fuck-you's on Beth's behalf. Not quite as professional as an automated thank-you, but arguably more cost-efficient.)

    "What can I say?" He said, and then laughed almost awkwardly, "Doctor Feelgood has bills to pay."

Sometimes, Beth forgot that she wasn't the only person who had left their old life in the dust. Derek had too, he'd been the first out of the city, the first to flee the intricately tied relationship as it burned to the ground around them. She'd almost followed his lead.

It became clear to her as Derek flashed him a strained smile: this wasn't just her reckoning, it was his too. While she was facing all of these people from her past, Derek was doing just the same.

Beth felt the overwhelming urge to change the subject.

    "So," She said, causing both men to look over at her. She wasn't used to being so quiet in conversation. These were old friends, and yet she felt as though they were strangers to her. Beth flashed Sam a wide, long grin, "What was the crisis?"

   He sighed, "We don't––"

    "New car?" Beth suggested, leaning forwards in her chair and feeling her sneakers slip against the floor. (This is a nice distraction, let's keep this conversation going. The longer I talk about Sam's collapsed marriage and shiny life, the less likely it'll be for me to think about my brother's near-corpse in the next room.) "No... not that... new house?"

    "It's not..."

   "Tattoo?" Derek supplied. Unamused, Sam sighed again. Derek just laughed, a wide and crooked grin transferring onto his face from Beth's blatant amusement. "I bet it was a tattoo."

   "No," Beth said, head tilting to the side, "Not a tattoo... I'm getting motorbike... Was it a motorbike–?"

   "No, he's more of a car guy."

   "Could be a bike?"

   "Not with Californian traffic."

   "You didn't divorce the clinic too, did you–?"

   As if struck by a divine source, Derek clapped his hands and pointed right at the man who had once been his best friend, "Dating profile! It was a dating profile! C'mon... It's gotta be a dating site or something."

Their guesses did not amuse him.

The internist appeared vaguely pained, seeming to internalise the fact that Beth and Derek were stood in a room with him, shamelessly teasing him over the briefest mention of a mid-life crisis. Beth just watched him, lip twitching as she watched the ego that had been build over every charming smile and 'fan' interaction crumble––

Derek met her eye across the console between them. It'd always been their job to keep everyone humble. That's how it felt, for those fleeting moments: as if nothing had changed. They could feel New York in the room with them, back before everything had gone bad, before Sam had left with Naomi for California and prefaced the beginning of the end.

   "C'mon," Beth said, despite the fact that her good mood felt very plastic. Everything was forced: the light tone, the wide smile and the light elbow-nudge she pressed against Sam's leg. It was all manufactured with the knowledge that, under ten minutes ago, she'd been on the verge of tears in a public restroom. "I'll tell if you do."

   Sam's eyebrows raised as he looked over at her, "What have you got to say?"

   She just smiled, "That's not the deal."

He seemed to seriously consider it for a few seconds, curiosity drawing him to completely disregard the grin on Derek's face (of which Beth could only describe as shit-eating if asked). After a few moments, he shook his head and let out another exasperated breath, as if he couldn't believe that he was admitting to it.

    "I got an earring," Beth wasn't sure whether it was worth the hassle of the past minute of teasing, but it made her feel warm. As her and Derek chuckled in unison, both taken aback by the revelation. "It closed up after a day or so but... but it happened..." A pause, he looked over at her, "And you?"

With her tongue between her teeth, Beth tried to envision it: Samuel Bennett with diamonds flashing in his earlobes as he strolled down Rodeo Drive.

Yeah, she wasn't sure about that. When she thought of Sam, she thought of how sensible he was, of how he didn't eat highly processed foods and tended to use the safety buckles on rucksacks more often than not. He, Derek and Addison were supposed to be the sensible ones (with Archer being demoted from the list due to the whole worms-infection-from-fruit issue) and Beth had to keep reminding herself that it definitely wasn't true anymore.

And Addison? If you considered sensible acting like that, then sure, she perfectly fit the bill.

In response to Sam's question, Beth just shrugged.

    "I got clean."

That answer didn't satisfy him.

    "That doesn't count."

     Beth just rolled her eyes, "My ears were already pierced, Bennett––"

    "That doesn't––"

    "So it's not a big deal?"

    "Of course it's a big deal."

   "So why doesn't it count?"

She was hard work, it was one of her charming qualities. Beth liked to sit there and watch tempers simmer as she leaned back in her chair. It was her mischievous streak, why she'd been called a bitch through clenched teeth too many times to count, and exactly why she'd gotten along with Amelia Shepherd so well.

Sam had his charm, Derek had that hair and Beth had the resolve to sit here and watch someone squirm for her own enjoyment.

With a slight smile, this time almost genuine, she watched Sam do the mental calculations.

It was another party trick of hers, throwing in sobriety into a conversation just to see how it went. She knew that it tended to go one of two ways; people either knew how to address it (whether it was to comment on it in either a negative or positive way) or they just seemed to stumble with it completely. From her history, she'd found that people tended to want to avoid it all together. It was the equivalent of throwing a time bomb at someone.

Sam, however, seemed to be trying to do all options all at once.

    He grasped onto a very reliable string of doubt: "You know what I mean."

Did she?

Luckily, she did.

He didn't mean life changes like that, but small little fixes and patches that were supposed to improve your life for the long run but never did. If he was asking for big life changes, Beth would've had a list, but of course, those weren't pretty. It wasn't what he wanted, he didn't want the gritty stuff, he wanted the trivial.

Sam and Addison had that in common. They couldn't deal with the real stuff, so they buried it out of sight.

    "I got a tattoo," It was her honest answer as she gestured to her rib cage, "Just along here. It's not quite botched earlobe care but... but I actually have something to show for it. Mid-life crisis completed and I, uh, can still touch my toes."

Sam delivered a sharp jab to the back of her chair with his dress shoe.

    "Mid-life crisis?" Derek echoed, brow folding very slightly. He was seated now too, gently twisting on his chair from beside the radiologist, of whom was doing their very best to not listen to their conversation. Nonchalantly, Beth nodded. "Beth, you're... what? Thirty-five?"

She was. She almost felt the need to remind him how many birthday cards he'd missed.

    "And it's a miracle I made it this far," was her response, eyes lowered so she could chip at the edge of her cuticle, trying to clear the nail varnish that had bunched. "What was it you said to me when I was in the rehab, Derek? That I'd be lucky to get my surgical license before my own obituary? Sometimes, even seventy feels a bit of a push. "

She'd meant it as a joke, but Sam seemed completely caught off-guard.

He stared at her, as if he'd forgotten her humour completely, and she looked up just in time to see his brow fold as he, for the second time, seemed to silently debate what he was supposed to do with that information. In the corner of her eye, she watched Derek smile to himself, chin dipping down as he recalled that yes, he had said that to her–– and look where she was now.

    "I don't know what Addison and Archer are going to say about that tattoo," The neurosurgeon said, eyebrows raised. "You tell them yet?"

     "I don't really care what my sister has to say," Beth responded, a sharpness flickering under her words as she mentally recalled a look of disappointment and outrage on Addison's face. "And something tells me Arch has something more important to worry about right now."

Humor was good. Joking about it was good.

She interlaced her fingers to stop her body from giving away how it trembled. The fact that she couldn't stop herself from speaking, from silently begging for a distraction, that wasn't exactly good.

Her whole world was slowly unfurling around her and she just needed someone to laugh at one of her goddamn jokes.

    "I'm guessing you haven't..."

    "Seen her?" Beth could tell where Derek's sentence was going. Her head tilted the side. "The building is still standing, isn't it?"

She watched his lip twitch and felt that kinship, the same that had stretched down that phone line as the two of them had processed what had happened. For all intents and purposes, they'd had to weather the same storm, feel the same things and risk the same changes.

His smile said all of that, that he knew the bitterness under her words as surely as he knew his own. It was designed the same; albeit, Beth knew that hers was stronger.

    "I, uh," He cleared his throat, looking over at Sam, "I met Meredith."

His midlife crisis had a name, the same name that the intern who had dropped Beth off at the hospital, had said over the sound of the radio. And, it was under that name, that Beth and Sam both watched Derek's cheeks slightly flush.

    "You named your new car?" Sam teased, arms crossed strictly over his chest.

    "She's not a midlife crisis," Derek denied, head shaking as he tried to play it all off casually. Briefly, Sam and Beth's eyes met, a silent message passing between the two of them; oh, poor fucker, he was whipped. "She's not an earring... or a tattoo... She's the real thing."

Beth stared at him. God, she fucking hated romance.

He appeared so sheepish, shrugging as if it wasn't a big deal at all, despite how intense his words were. She watched him, watched as Sam clapped him on the shoulder and told him how he was happy for him.

Beth guessed she could be happy for him too; she'd never asked what had become of Addison's marriage when they'd all left Manhattan, but she'd always assumed that they'd broken up. She knew Derek, knew how much his marriage had meant to him; he'd loved Addison just as Beth had loved Mark.

To think of Derek in love with another woman, meeting someone, moving on, Beth's brain ached. It had always been Addison and Derek, until, for the past four years, it wasn't.

It hit her, sitting there and watching the room settle, how much things had changed.

But then, Derek sighed.

    "I should have called."

His admission was the sort that made the mood shift again. She could feel the weight of absence again, the crushing shift as Derek bought it up. It was as if he couldn't help it, as if it just needed to be said–– Beth pressed her lips into a thin line and stayed silent as Sam shook his head.

    "No..."

    "I should have stayed in contact..." Derek said, combatting Sam's solemn interjection. The only woman in the room just squeezed her own fingers tighter. "It's my fault... y'know––"

    "It's not your fault," Beth said, although she felt her heart dip at the implication that these awkward pauses fell to the fault of the two people that had been forced to leave everything behind.

She really hoped that they hadn't chosen it. They'd had to do it.

Derek's head turned to look over at her. She just gave him a very weak smile and cleared her throat once again.

"I did the exact same."

She had.

He inclined his head over at her.

They'd both abandoned everything.

They'd both been displaced into the world. Derek had settled in Seattle and Beth in Toronto. He'd found Meredith and Beth had found Charlie. They'd both had to make the hard calls and the hard decisions.

They'd both been surprised when Archer had fallen ill, both tragically out of the loop in the personal lives of people who had once been in the inner circle of their social lives. They'd both taken their fight or flight responses into their hands and acted selfishly to preserve their own sanity.

    "I should've checked in on you too," Derek stared at Beth and she wondered whether he noticed the way her bones would shake if she stayed still for too long. It was almost like a shiver, but she wasn't cold. She was just on edge, straining as if she was holding everything together at all times. "I should have called, made sure that you were okay."

She gave him a weak smile, one that told him that here she was, all in one piece. She would've said 'it doesn't do well to dwell in the past' or thrown out any other shrink rhetoric, but that would've made her hypocrite. All she seemed to do these days was hold onto things that had happened so far behind her that they should have been hazy, like landmarks driven past on the highway.

Only problem was, as Beth had found from the moment Archer had said a certain name, the past seemed to be more in focus than the present.

    "People move," Sam said after a pause. In unison, they both looked over at him, lungs aching from the scald of memories that often felt too hot to even touch. "People change... it just happens."

It felt a little bit too official for Beth's taste. It was as if Sam was presenting the whole situation as completely textbook, as the sort of thing that Beth would've read in a scenario leaflet while she was retraining in Psychiatry.

People move, people change, things just happen. It's all just life––

    "Mm," Beth hummed, massaging the back of her hand as she shuffled in her chair, trying to dispel her own discomfort. "People move... people change... and your wife sleeps with your best friend while his own girlfriend is in rehab and then... just life, y'know?"

On the other side of the room, Derek snorted. She watched the smile pick at his face, wrinkle by his eyes and drop his chin as her frank and nonchalant tone made Sam sigh in exasperation.

The internist looked over at the youngest Montgomery sibling, a very familiar expression on his face that made Beth's skin almost tremble from an electric shock; it seemed to be the very delayed realisation about what was going to happen here.

Tell me about it Sam, Beth thought to herself, We're all fucked.

    "I get it," Sam said quietly, "You don't have to apologise, either of you. I get it."

It was a nice sentiment, Beth guessed, but she knew that not everyone would share it.

As Archer's brain very slowly rendered on the screen in front of them, Sam frowned down at his cell phone, before realising what phone call he'd just missed.

   "That was Maya," He said, referring to his daughter's contact information as it appeared and faded away. Beth smiled faintly as she remembered the teenager, of whom had probably grown a lot since she'd last seen her. "I was supposed to let her know how everything was..."

    "Go," Derek waved him away, "Go be a good Dad."

The half-nod that he chipped towards the neurosurgeon was the last they saw of him, disappearing through the door to take his daughter's call. That left Derek and Beth, shoulder to shoulder, seated in a silence that seemed to be a long time coming.

Her chin turned to look over at him, over at the profile of a man she regarded as a brother. Sam was almost the same, although he'd always been more Addison's friend than hers. Derek, however, Derek had always been special.

    "It's good to see you," He said, breaking the pause as Archer's brain appeared very, very slowly pixel-by-pixel. Beth tried not to watch it, instead giving him a light smile and nodding as if you say 'you too'. "I meant it about not checking in––"

His own smile faltered very slightly and he appeared so frighteningly brotherly that Beth almost tripped over the memory of Archer in that hospital room.

   "Amy checked up on me," Beth said, shrugging as if to say she understood, "She used to send me these long emails about her boyfriends and... and about the rehab your Mom put her up in."

Derek nodded slowly, but his look of vague discontent did not fade. Beth, however, couldn't stop speaking.

"It was symbolic really... y'know, we'd always said that we'd do rehab together..." She shrugged, get clean and it was kinda like we did... just, uh, just over email... and of course, Archer would send texts and... do the whole 'brother' thing."

He seemed to study her face for a moment.

She just stared at him, trying to gauge what exactly was going on behind those baby blue eyes. He'd always had the uncanny ability to make seem as though he was staring right into your soul. But, Beth knew that he didn't read her mind to know exactly why she was dismissing him dropping out of her radar–

It was the same reason Derek hadn't kept in contact with Sam.

He didn't want to be reminded of certain people, trying to put the past behind him and, by proxy, all of the people associated with it. Beth knew that three years ago (hell, maybe even two) she would not have answered Derek's call, just as Derek wouldn't have answered Sam's. After all, as Beth had said, both Sam and Naomi had always been Addison's friend more than theirs.

Beth didn't want to think about Derek's ties to her person. It made her brain ache.

    "So," Derek said, their ears filled with the dying buzz of the MRI machine, "Sober, huh?"

He knocked her shoulder with his own and managed a wry smile. Beth couldn't help the smile that appeared in response. She nodded her head, almost bashful as she spoke so gently and softly:

    "Three years."

This was where Sam and Derek differed. He didn't seem intimidated by it and Beth knew that it was from what they'd all seen, both her and Amy and how Derek had stood in the centre of their storms. (Although, Beth knew that Derek's approach to addiction and recovery was more of a curse, oftentimes than a blessing.)

He squeezed her arm, a brief gesture of congratulations that didn't taste as sour as she thought it would.

   "That's amazing, Beth," He said but then Beth saw the expression that crinkled over his face. It was as if he was withholding something, a low warning fell past her lips, a Don't that was more tentative than it was cautious. His eyebrows raised, "What? I'm not going to––"

   "Don't, Derek," Beth warned.

    He pressed his lips together and shook his head as if trying not to laugh, "I'm not going to say it."

   "Don't you fucking dare."

   "I'm just really––"

   "Don't," Beth said tightly, "Don't do it––"

   "I'm just really proud of you, Beth."

Motherfucker.

She closed her eyes, feeling the word clink through her body like a coin going to the bottom of a well. It was that sentiment, that word that weighted her to the floor and kept her in place. A muscle in her chest twinged, small and painful and somewhere near her heart.

A slow, choppy chuckle fell past her lips and she shook her head.

    "Oh, fuck you."

It was an exhausted exhale, the sort that made Derek laugh too–– little did he know that the breath that left her body along with those words came from deep within her, smoke from a fire that was burning up all of her blood.

    "I mean it," Derek said.

    "I know you do," Beth said, and that was true.

When she opened her eyes and saw the warmth in her face, Beth didn't doubt it. That was always Derek Shepherd: he was either proud or disappointed, there was never any in between. But even so, she didn't want it. She didn't want his pride. She rejected it like she'd once watched a skin graft peel itself off of its recipient.

Her lips were numb as she spoke:

"I just think you should keep your pride to yourself."

Derek paused for a second. He took a single glance at her face, seemed to gaze right into her inner turmoil and let it be.

But Beth wasn't at peace. Her thoughts were too loud. As Derek stared at his MRI scan and waited to see how bad the damage was, Beth was thinking. She couldn't stop thinking. It's why she'd drowned herself in Bach and Debussy on the flight over, never once allowed her brain to rumble a single word into a sentence.

But it did, in the pause filled by the hum of Archer's head being rebuilt into pixels and code, her mind wandered over it's chaos. Mentally, she was back in that restroom, hands grasping the sides of the washing basin so tightly that blood had pounded in her finger tips.

    Her loose lips betrayed her: "Why is he here?"

    "It's a favour," Derek responded without hesitation, as if he'd expected the question from the moment he'd seen her standing in that doorway. His head inclined over towards Archer's feet as they peeked out of the bottom of the machine. "Addison needed someone she trusted... she needed someone she knows is good and I think I'm the best shot that Archer is going to get. That's why he's here. That's why she's flown him out––"

Beth's face went numb.

    "I meant Mark."

The neurosurgeon stilled at that.

She watched the muscles in his jaw clench very slightly, like emergency brakes in a car. His temple shuddered as the words came to a collision on the edge of his tongue. When his eyes flickered over towards her, she swore that she could see the brake lights in the depths of his irises, a flash of red that almost worked more like an emergency alarm than a stoplight.

(In his peace of Seattle and five years spent move past the past, Derek was just taken aback by the sound of Mark's name on Beth's lips. It was sharp, like how he imagined it felt to sit underneath the blade of a scalpel.)

In the silence left from Derek's silence, Beth found herself still, almost calm, the thud of her heartbeat low like the slipping volume of a car radio.

She still felt sick, but there was a comfort in that–– she'd been sick for so many years that it was almost comforting.

   "Why is Mark here, Derek?"

She repeated the question.

There was no room for misinterpretation. His name tasted of soot to her, of hot ash straight from a fire. Her skin burned and curdled, leaving the sort of scars that he was used to in his professional career. The wince got trapped at the back of her mouth.

Beth wondered whether Derek could sense it, the slight beg behind it–– why is he here, in this city, in your life? Why isn't this man in exile for what he did to us?

The neurosurgeon just sighed.

    "He just turned up," She saw the recounted scenes flicker in Derek's eyes, a continuation of the red lights and the screeching brakes–– but this time, it was the drive-in movie, the hot popcorn and the heavy projector light stretching over their heads. "He came here and then he wouldn't leave."

That made her brow crease, almost thoughtfully, cheek turning away as she tried to imagine it–– She couldn't. He wasn't the type to be persistent, at least how she knew him.

If she had to remember Mark Sloan, she'd remember him in pieces, in the fractures of times he'd decided to try before he'd inevitably leave. When things got tough and trying got too hard, he would always give up. Beth wasn't sure whether she could ever recount a time where he'd stuck around.

Maybe he'd taken to Seattle? Or maybe, and this was Beth hoping he'd realised how badly he'd fucked up.

Mark had always been the prettiest when he'd been on his knees, anyway.

    "You forgave him?"

She spoke as if she had blood in her mouth, as if she was bleeding very slowly from a wound neither of them could see. She could taste it faintly too. Derek didn't answer her question, and Beth felt the deepest grief she'd ever felt in her whole life.

It was a Yes.

She knew it just from his body language alone.

Here she was, sat beside a man who was capable of forgiveness, while her body was just bitter and bruised. She'd thought that he'd understand her, recognise the pattern of her pain and tell her that it matched his own. But he'd forgiven him, forgiven Addison probably too–– Beth didn't know why she'd even... She'd been foolish to even...

Jesus fucking Christ. Forgiveness can suck my fucking ass!

Beth didn't care if that made her less of a person.

She didn't care if that made her horrible woman capable of horrible things.

She wanted misery, she wanted pain and hellfire for the people who had practically torn her limb from limb. While Derek was some divine image of peace and charity, Beth just burned. She could feel the flames in her toes and her in bones.

    "I punched him," Derek said after a pause, but he'd left it too long, "When he showed up I punched him square in the nose. He tried to hit on Meredith and I just..." He heaved a sigh and Beth could imagine it as the woosh of his fist against cartilage. "I was pissed, Beth. I saw him and I saw red and I didn't just let him walk back into my life without––"

   "I'm angry."

She felt like she needed to say it at least once.

She couldn't say it to Archer and Sam seemed too kind for the heat of her words. Beth needed someone to know, someone that could, even for the tiniest amount of time, understand.  He looked over at her and Beth knew he did, just for that split second.

    "She didn't tell me," Beth said next, "I found out fifteen minutes ago..."

    Derek's face contorted, amusement now long gone, "You gonna punch him?"

A vindictive grin picked at the corners of her mouth.

    "It'd be pretty fun to watch him put his nose back together, wouldn't it?"

She knew her fury was intense, she knew that handling it sometimes felt like that shit metalworkers did with the sparks and the heavy suits. She knew that she didn't particularly knew what to do with it, how to swallow it and digest it like she would've told one of her patients.

If her patient had been in this situation, sat in front of her and shaking from pure, unadulterated fury, Beth would've tried to get them to compartmentalise it, breathe through it and stop themselves from doing something stupid––

Fuck that, Beth thought, Yeah, fucking fuck that. She wanted to tear skin.

She didn't think she was a particularly good Psychiatrist anyway.

She supposed that she would've said something else, something naturally and witty about watching Mark Sloan breathe, but a loud buzz bought their attentions back to Archer.

But Beth looked at Derek, as surely as staring right at your worst fear, and watched him watch the brain scan render in front of him. She couldn't bring herself to stare at the screen, knowing that what little surgical training she'd retained would be enough to either inflate her hope or completely crush it––

No, she needed Derek to tell her. She needed this man to deliver the news as if he was just Archer's surgeon. Not a friend, not a brother, but the man who, in three hours time, was destined to crack his skull open and fish through it like a child reaching for coins at the bottom of a well.

    "Addison's praying," She said quietly, watching as the surgeon part of Derek's brain kicked into gear. His expression wasn't hopeful. Her heart clenched. "We don't pray in my family... we don't even fucking go to church–"

    "She's expecting a miracle," Derek breathed out, his voice equally as hushed. Beth felt the muscles in her temple sting, blinking quickly as she averted her eyes back down to her hands. Again, she interlaced them to stop them from trembling. "She's expecting... I don't know."

    "She's expecting divine intervention," was all that Beth said, "It's Arch... Derek... it's... It's Archer..."

I just got him back is what she didn't say.

It was that feeling in her bones, the conscious, heavy thought that she'd wasted all this time. She'd spent years cowering on the other side of the globe, hiding away from the people she loved all because of what?

Because of an asshole who couldn't keep his dick in his pants?

Because of a sister who had always made her question her self worth?

Beth felt sick to her stomach at the thought that she'd wasted it all–– and now she was here, and from the look on Derek's face, she knew Archer was going to die.

    "I know," He said, "I know."

But he didn't, how could he? This wasn't a dry joke between them about how they'd watched the people they loved throw them aside–– This really was Archer, this was her big brother, her big biological brother and he was going to die.

   She was hesitant to ask, but she had to:  "How bad is it?"

(Beth didn't see the grimace that flickered over Derek's face, the intense draw of his brow as he stared right into Archer's brain. She didn't see the pause that he took, the hesitation and the way that his next breath shuddered. His eyes flickered between Beth and the screen in front of him, a brain scan that was slowly establishing itself as a death sentence.)

   "It was a good call to get on that flight," was all that Derek said.

──────

　　AUTHOR'S NOTE ! . . . 
i wasn't going to update today, but i figured i might as well update until mark comes in, right? can't just leave you guys hanging that'd be rude
see you tomorrow 🤓

ALSO...
i'm currently looking for translators for flatline so, if you know anyone or have experience with translating, please get in touch!
preferably looking for experienced translators that already have translations on their profile! tysm!

　　WORD COUNT ! . . .  8820
REWRITTEN ON 23RD JANUARY 2022