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chapter seven ━ holidaze (part one)
season six, episode ten

❝ nothing can be as bad
as thanksgiving '03. ❞

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THE DAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING
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Most surgeons always say this, but the OR has its own separate time zone. Depending on the surgery, it could either feel incredibly slow, or incredibly fast, and with rare interruptions from the outside world, a surgery can feel like a matter of minutes when in reality you've actually been operating for hours on end.

Surgery was escapism to most doctors.

The cool, chill of the operating room, the constant smell of antiseptic. Surgery can become an addiction. An obsession. It's the euphoria. The complete relaxation when you are at one with a scalpel, when the surgical procedures and techniques become muscle memory.

The thing Aliya liked most about surgery was the fixing. The joy you get when you tell a person that their loved one is okay. The smile on their faces. The endless waves of relief washing over their shores. That's what the majority of surgeons lived for.

Aliya guessed she was that weird kid in science class who would voluntarily cut open pigs hearts, even though she didn't want to be. She didn't want to live under the bright, shiny glow of her family legacy, but no amount of rebellion could ever free her from the shackles.

As a kid, she was never squeamish, something you need when you dedicate your life to becoming a surgeon and staring at the inside bodies for hours on end, maybe even all day. She gawked in awe on the school playground at kid's with cut open knees, bribing them with candy to let her stitch them back up.

She knew how to do it anyway, it was just the way she was raised.

Now, years later, Aliya had spent more time in an operating room looking at open body cavity's than being in a committed relationship.

Even in med school, with the guy she dated on and off for five whole years, her OR time would still manage to outrun him.

It was all pretty tragic, growing up precocious.

"Levine, surgical stitch." Bailey pointed into the body cavity in front of them as Bohkee quickly handed Aliya a pair of suture scissors and a needle with a long line of thread.

Aliya whispered a 'thank you' as she rapidly stitched along the internal incision, quickly tying it off as she reached the end, pulling up the forceps to tighten the stitch and passing the instruments back to Bohkee.

"Good, Levine. You've really perfected your subcuticular suture, well done."

"Thank you." Aliya grinned at her from underneath her mask.

Bailey eyed her from over her own mask, narrowing her dark eyes. "Now stop smiling and remove the clamps."

Aliya nodded, removing the clamps and the pair watch intently, waiting to see if any blood appeared.

"Okay looks good, we can now—" Bailey begun, but was interrupted by a phone vibrating aggressively on the table.

The brunette stared into the body cavity guiltily, as Bailey brought up her face slowly, looking directly at her. Aliya lifted her eyes as Bailey narrowed her own.

"I thought you put the phone on silent."

Bailey tried to ask calmly, thought her voice was cracking in anger because, that had marked the seventh time Aliya's phone had rang.

In the last hour.

The scrub nurse began to stutter, scrambling for Aliya's phone with the brightly coloured sticker on the back.

"Should I just—"

Bailey raised her eyebrows at Aliya from the other side of the patient.

"Yes, Levine, go answer the damn phone before I throw it across the room! I'll close up here." She pointed her scalpel at the scrub room door, placing it down on the metal tray and taking a suture kit to close the incision.

"Sorry!" Aliya squealed, pulling off her gown and gloves in a hurry, slipping them into the waste bin before taking her phone from the nurse and quickly scrubbing out, before ringing back the number that called her fourteen times in total during the surgery.

"Aliya! Fina—"

"Mom!" Aliya snapped into the phone as she walked down the corridor. "I was in surgery. You rang me fourteen times in surgery."

"Aliya, don't snap, it's not pretty. You know I hate it when you snap. And when you speak too quietly, you know your father has trouble hearing you when you do that." Molly Levine replied critically from the other line.

"Do you know how embarrassing that was? I had to be excused to answer you." Aliya ranted, ignoring her mother's less than subtle digs at her own daughter.

"Well, what surgery was it?" She asked, seemingly interested for once in her life.

But, Aliya knew that was too good to be true.

"Liver dissection on a thirty eight-year-old non smoker." Aliya declared, weaving along the hall to get to the skills lab, hoping to steal someone's food seeing as that was their new lunch spot, ever since the merger.

Molly fake yawned into her microphone far too obviously. "You should really ask to be put on the cardio service. How long has it been now? Three weeks and you haven't been on the cardio service. Have you even seen a heart? You have, I showed you one when you were a child but, you know Aliya, you've never know adrenaline until—"

"You have a beating heart on your hands." Aliya finished, her voice drowsy as she spoke the words her mother had said on a number of various occasions. "Yeah, I know the rest of that sentence."

A sigh cracked through the speaker. "Anyways, you're still coming tomorrow for Thanksgiving dinner."

"Yes, I am." Aliya said with a begrudgingly sigh (Molly Levine would come for Aliya's head if she missed Thanksgiving dinner). "Have done for the past nine years."

Much to Aliya's dismay.

But, escaping Thanksgiving dinner was harder than escaping prison. Though, Aliya has never escaped prison, let alone been in prison.

Every year, Molly Levine emailed the Chief of Surgery as if he were a fourth grade science teacher. Being a well known surgeon in Los Angeles, she managed to grapple with Richard to get Aliya the day off. Every single year without fail.

It got to a point where Aliya pleaded the Chief, rather unprofessionally, to say she had to work but, Richard Webber is quite frankly scared of her mother.

But, Richard would never admit that. The power Molly Levine held over the surgical world was undeniable.

"That wasn't a question. Be there, okay? Your brother and sister are coming. And some other members of the family." She said flatly, her mood reverting back to boredom, likely induced by talking to her least favourite daughter. "And, Aliya. Wear something presentable." She ordered, before ending the call rather abruptly.

Aliya rolled her eyes and collapsed into the chair next to Alex with a groan, tilting her head back in the seat. "Someone please punch me in the face and knock me out so I don't have to go to LA." Aliya pleaded, her hands dropping from the chair.

Alex quickly swallowed a bite of his sandwich, raising a fist. "I volunteer."

The Karev man hadn't spoken about Izzie's departure, still mourning their short marriage and trying to ignore all of his feelings with Aliya in Joe's bar after work most evenings, playing darts (pretending the board was Izzie's face) and drinking mass amounts of beer (that Aliya bought for him).

He himself knew Aliya was a safety net for him. He knew she wouldn't push him on the subject to talk anymore, force him to spew emotional word vomit. They just sat and drank, chatting and laughing about things they wouldn't be able to recall later, but it kept his mind off of his heartbreak.

And, it ket her mind off of her mother.

Aliya pulled a face. "Don't seem too excited."

"I have been wanting to punch you for many things over the years, why not now?" He retorted, picking up a chip and shoving it into his mouth. 

"That makes two of us." Aliya agreed, a smirk on her face.

Lexie snorted. "I think Aliya has more reasons to hit you."

"Exactly, thank you." Aliya said with a clap of her hands, because Alex had done some pretty dumb shit over the years.

The Syphilis outbreak for starters. 

"Are you working Thanksgiving, Aliya?" Meredith asked from across the table.

"Oh, I wish." She said with a sigh, running her hands through her hair. "Dinner. With my parents."

The group all groaned in unison, understanding her pain. It seemed all the doctors had family issues.

Mainly mommy issues. From Molly Levine to Ellis Grey, mothers were a sore subject to the women at Seattle Grace.

Cristina however, slurped on her straw, rather unsympathetically. "Ha! Good Luck with that."

"I have to go to my parents house. Alone." Aliya pressed the back of her palm to her forehead. "I need a bucketful of luck. A truckful in fact. Enough to fill a decent sized house."

"Why don't I come with you?" Alex questioned, casually, causing all of residents at the table to spin around towards him.

"You hate parents. You hate my parents. You met them once and you nearly fainted with rage." He shrugged, popping a chip into his mouth. "I had to hold a wet rag to your forehead and sing 'My Heart Will Go On' so you'll cry instead of scream."

Lexie choked on her lunch.

Aliya was only half joking about that statement, she really did tend to over exaggerate.

"You hate fancy dinners." Meredith chimed, eyes widening in disbelief that Alex Karev would ever voluntarily go to a Thanksgiving dinner.

"You hate everything to do with family and life, in general." Cristina added to the conversation as Alex rolled his eyes and stretched in the chair. "I do too, but still."

"It's a two and a half hour flight." Aliya stated, adding to the list of reasons Alex wouldn't want to go so he didn't resent her later on, though the Karev man simply shrugged, as if it wasn't a big deal at all. "Swear it."

Aliya was not quite believing him as they looked into each other's eyes, narrowing them at each other in a sort of unspoken challenge.

He raised his hand in the air as if he were about to give the pledge of allegiance. "I, Alexander Michael Karev, will go with Aliya Juliet Levine to her parent's annual Thanksgiving dinner for one night, and one night only. No repeats. No refunds."

And, just like that, a wild grin spread across her face, because at least she could have at least some back up for dinner. "You can't back out now or I will hold it against you for the rest of your life, do you understand?"

It really was starting to sound more like a contract.

"Deal." He offered Aliya his hand to shake, and she took it.

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THANKSGIVING '09
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"Okay, what are the three rules?" Aliya interrogated as they walked to Aliya's childhood house.

She had asked the cab driver to drop them at the end of the cul de sac so she could at least prep Alex some more before he had to enter through the burning gates of hell. It wasn't as if she didn't spend the two and a half hour flight to Los Angeles explaining her family to him and giving him the lowdown.

"Don't mention surgery unless they ask," Alex began, reciting the rules Aliya had given to maintain the peace. "Don't mention where you live, and under absolutely no circumstances don't mention past boyfriends."

"And the student becomes the master." Aliya poked his arm, giving him an encouraging thumbs up.

"Aliya, it's going to be fine! It won't be that bad, surely?" Alex defended, stuffing his hands into his pockets as he walked beside her.

Even he knew he was lying through his teeth.

"Liar." She scoffed, her heels clicking along the sidewalk as they moved through the metal front gates. "Just you wait and see, it happens every time. It all blows up in my face and—"

"Holy mother of crap!" The Karev man exclaimed in awe, looking up at the building in front of him with his mouth hung wide open.

In the centre of the driveway, there was a tall stone water fountain with about five cars of various sizes and colours parked around it. The entrance lights were on, lighting the porch with a warm glow that looked menacing to the trained eye. The untrained eye may even call it welcoming.

The arch of the door was in a dark matte wood, with wild ivy and wisteria growing up the sides of the house, around the dark window panes, the off white tinted walls and the dark slated roof.

It towered over the rest of the neighbourhood in all of its ivy clad glory, palm trees growing over both sides of the house with even more trees around the back, casting shadows on the windows as the Malibu sun began to set.

"Aliya, how long have I known you?" Alex asked, though he really didn't mean it as a question seeing as the brunette was slowly advancing up the drive way. "Three years! I don't know it feels like a lifetime but, why didn't I know you were this rich. Like, I knew you were rich but not this rich!" He exclaimed, and now Aliya was dragging him by his jacket past the cars, clutching hold of the material as if it were some sort of stress relief, not even able to process all of Alex's words.

The pair entered the archway, stopping before they rang the doorbell, and that's when Aliya finally took a breath, casting a glance toward Alex for one final check — a regroup.

"This house— it's not— I— It's got a lot of bad memories." She paused, swallowing back the lump in her throat as she looked towards Alex closely. "What is that on your face? Is that chocolate? From the plane?"

Aliya quickly pulled the sleeve of her coat up, rubbing at Alex's cheek vigorously, the kind of way a mother would do to her toddler, desperately trying to get rid of the dried up chocolate, or whatever it was.

"Oh my god!" Alex protested, swatting her hand away. "Aliya, stop it! Stop!"

"Alex! Stop moving." Aliya replied back, readjusting her coat after she finally managed to wipe away whatever he had on his face. "I'm protecting you from my Mom! I'm being nice! I think you'd prefer me doing that than her."

The door clicked open, and Travis Levine poked his head through the door, a grin spreading across his face.

"Ladybug!" His grin intensified as he opened the door wider. "I thought it was you!"

Aliya dropped her hand from Alex's cheek, where now his face looked as if Aliya had just slapped him, judging by how bright red it was now.

"Hey, Dad." She smiled as he brought her into a hug, though her heart still felt as if it were exploding in side her chest from the inevitable stress this evening would cause her. "Happy Thanksgiving!"

"Happy Thanksgiving to you too, did you have a good flight?" He inquired, pushing a strand of dark brown, greying hair out of his face. His hazel eyes, the exact same as Aliya's, widening underneath his glasses which were propped on the top of his nose.

"Yes, it was—"

"Is Aliya here yet?" The sound of a voice echoed through the entrance, and Aliya recognised the sharp tone almost immediately. "I swear that girl is always late. Oh, Aliya, you're here."

Molly Levine blinked at her daughter, as if not fully expecting her to be here, then looked at Alex, regarding him for half a second, her expression unreadable as she cleared her throat. "I see you bought a friend. You didn't tell me you were bringing a friend."

She gritted her teeth.

Aliya watched closely as her mother's facial features began to crack piece by piece, all from the twitching of her lip to the crease by her brow.

"Yes, Mom, you've met—" Aliya started, gesturing to Alex whose mouth was pressed into an incredibly forced smile.

"Adam?" Molly crossed her arms, taking a wild guess. She stood a few millimetres taller with small heels hidden by her black cigarette trousers, the same heels Aliya stole from her when she was younger with her sister, waltzing around the house with their mother's entire wardrobe on, which would always inevitably end in tears.

When Eliana would push her down, or her mother would lecture her on the merits of expensive footwear.

"No," Alex shook his head, about to open his mouth to tell her his actual name. "It's actually—"

"Xavier?" She guessed again, her head tilting slightly.

Aliya didn't even know where she had gotten that one from.

"—Al —" He began.

"Alan! Hi, Alan! Nice to see you again." Molly offered him her hand to shake with a grin, showing rows of pearly white teeth.

Alex took her hand, begrudgingly.

"Actually, Mom, it's—"

"Alan! Aliya! Don't just stand in the doorway, come in, come in!" Molly quickly cut in, and Aliya sighed deeply as Travis gave his daughter an encouraging smile his wife didn't see before shaking Alex's hand and taking their coats, leading them into the foyer of the house.

Molly turned back around, her heels digging into the tiles, her hair bouncing around her shoulders, and eyes widening almost immediately as she laid them on Aliya's dress.

"Aliya!" She gasped like she had just seen the ghost of their dead cat. "I told you not to wear something so, so slutty!"

"Mom!" Aliya hissed, looking down at her black dress that went below the knee — she was even wearing a light blue, sheer cardigan over the top, covering the places her mother would say should be covered, only leaving her chest exposed.

Unless Molly had developed a problem with ankles in the space of a few months.

Alex's eyes widen, fists clenching before Molly sighed in dismissal, shrugging as she wandered off before anything else could even be said.

"Don't take what she says too much to heart." Travis told his youngest daughter, like he had done for many years, a reassuring smile on his face. "She's just stressed, she doesn't mean it. You know that, don't you? You look beautiful."

He kissed Aliya on the forehead, patting her shoulder before trailing off after his wife, a little like a lost puppy.

That was the problem with Travis.

He loved Aliya, but not enough. Not more than his wife.

Because, with every hit Aliya took from her mom all throughout her life, her dad was stood next to her, never uttering a single word in her defence.

"How many minutes?" Aliya asked, watching the space where her parents had disappeared into the other room.

"Two." Alex replied, shuffling behind her as he adjusted the collar of his dress shirt.

"New record." Aliya shook her head, following her parents into the room Aliya never really knew what to call when she had lived in the house.

It was just the room where everyone went when it was Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or any other major holiday, or one of Molly's little events.

"Everyone this is Alan!" Molly announced to the group of Levine's, gesturing towards Alex, whose cheeks were now the same red as Aliya's cousin's dress.

"It's Alex." Alex and Aliya corrected in unison, glaring at each other with their eyebrows raised.

"Alan!" Aliya's aunt, June, greeted, bouncing up from her chair and pulling him in for a hug, where he was sure to smell like her perfume for the next three days.

"Nice to meet you!" Another family member chimed in, though it was more from a place of sarcasm, rather than being genuinely serious.

"Are you Aliya's boyfriend?" One of the many children in the room, asked as they began making fake kissing sounds, like kids usually tended to do.

Aliya simply tutted at them, screwing up her nose as she went over to greet her cousin's newborn son.

"Just a good friend." Alex explained awkwardly, pursing his lips at the kid who asked, who now wasn't too bothered as he started playing with his toys.

"Alan, that's my mother Evelyn and my father, Marcus, my sister June, her wife and their children Ciara and Stanley and then their children. My brother in law Edwin, his son Isaac and his wife and kids, my daughter Eliana and her fiancé Arthur, my son Trent and his son James. Then that's Juliet, my mother in law." She pointed around the room rapidly, giving Alex the lowdown of the Levine family which was sure to cause some overwhelm.

"Hello." Alex waved awkwardly as they all responded with hello's, already forgetting all of their names in the space of one second. "Big family."

Alex knew this previous, as Aliya gave him an in-depth diagram of the family tree on the plane. It took up a lot of her notebook, and a few aeroplane napkins.

"That's not even all of them." Aliya whispered, returning to his side with a baby in her arms.

"You know," Alex peered down at the baby, as his voice lowered to a whisper. "I was really hoping for an appearance from Aunt Peggy."

"Shhhh!" Aliya prodded him with her elbow to silence him. "Don't mention that name in this household, or my mom will whip out her antique steak knives."

Aliya grinned, staring down at the very peaceful, innocent baby bundled in yellow blankets in her arms.

"Well, isn't it Little Miss Seattle!" Marcus, Aliya's grandfather, approached her. "We miss you in LA, when are you moving back? You're the only one I can have an intellectual conversation with, Eliana has nothing but air in her head. Don't tell her I told you that." He added quickly, as if she even spoke to her sister that regularly.

"Grandpa!" Aliya chuckled, smiling widely as she passed the baby over to Alex, pulling her grandfather in for a hug.

"Aliya— I—" He held the baby, gulping as his eyes widened. "Um—"

"You're great with babies." Aliya whispered to Alex, encouragingly as she withdrew from the hug. Because it seemed, with all of the initial stress of the evening, Alex had forgotten how to hold a baby.

"So, how's the residency going? You know, back in my surgical residency days, I delivered three babies in a day! Pushed me to becoming an OB." Marcus grinned, raising his glass of wine in the air as if he was toasting himself.

One thing you should know about the Levine's, was that they ate, breathed and lived surgery.

They never talked about anything else.

"What you experience now will push you into choosing your surgical field! Isn't that exciting? I've been excited to see what you'll pick since you grabbed ahold of a stethoscope at age one—"

"Aliya! That dress is gorgeous! Is it a Dior?" Evelyn, her grandmother who had a severe vendetta against her ex-husband, stroked her granddaughter's arm, barging in front of Marcus using her elbow.

"No, it's—"

"Need a refill, Marcus?" It seemed Evelyn really didn't care what Aliya had to say, she was more interested in bickering with Marcus. "We all know how you can neck back a whole bottle of Dom Perignon."

This was going to be a long night.

Aliya thought as she now found herself directly in the middle of her grandparents, who had a tendency to fight about anything and everything under then sun, with Alex no where to be seen.

"Aliya, honey, who do you think wore it best, me or Beyoncé?" Evelyn questioned, and the brunette in question couldn't tell if she was being genuinely serious or not.

It seemed Marcus really believed it to be Beyoncé, but Evelyn looked as if she was going to stab Aliya in the neck with a fork if she sided with her grandfather.

"Definitely you, Grandma."

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"I wonder if Mom's gonna stick me at the kid end of the table." Aliya wondered, glancing towards her brother, Trent Levine, who was stood at the bar as she went to pour more much needed wine into her glass. "She did last year."

"Nah," Trent shook his head, finishing his own glass of wine in one quick swig, seemingly needing as much alcohol as possible. "You're gonna be replaced by me. You should've seen her when I was trying to help out with the meal, it was worse than Thanksgiving '03."

Reaching over, Trent took the wine bottle from her, topping up his own glass.

"That's where you're wrong," Aliya informed, sipping her wine happily. "Nothing can be as bad as Thanksgiving '03."

"Can I have some?" A voice from behind her called and Aliya's head snapped down, meeting the bug eyes of one of Stanley's children, Zach.

The child looked up at her, his mouth slightly open with some sort of chocolate smudged across it, snot surrounding his nose that made Aliya physically want to puke.

"No, go drink your juice box." Aliya replied, pressing her lips together.

"Why?" Zach titled his head to the side, dark curls falling across his face.

"Because—"Aliya looked at Trent for help (seeing as he was the only one out of the two with a child), but he just swigged his wine, gesturing to the child for her to handle it. "It's an adult only drink. You can have it when you're my age."

"Ugh, but Aliya! You're ancient!" The demon child groaned, stamping his foot on the floor and running out of the room, leaving Aliya shocked and Trent laughing into his glass.

Aliya crossed her arms, pushing her hair back over her shoulder. "I've never been more offended in my entire life."

"That's just made up for Mom being a complete psycho." Trent grinned in amusement.

"If I'm ancient, what does that make you?" Aliya brought her glass to her lips as her brother frowned at her.

"ALIYA! TRENT! COME HERE!! I'VE BEEN CALLING YOU FOR TEN MINUTES!" Molly yelled, manically, as her head poked around the door of the dining room, her blonde hair falling around her face as she locked eyes with two out of three of her children, waving for them to follow her.

"You definitely haven't been." Trent muttered to himself, trailing off to follow the noise of Molly's frantic sighs, that could be heard from a good few miles away.

Aliya inhaled heavily, striding after him. She stopped in the doorway, staring at the table. It was huge, to say the least. Enough to sit all twenty four of the Levine's.

In the middle of the table, there was an exceptionally large centrepiece with autumn leaves and feathers, intermingling around auburn and red coloured flowers. Each place was set with labels, and glasses, and three different sets of cutlery, with the turkey was placed just in front of Molly's usual seat at the head of the table, the vegetables scattered about the table in an orderly form.

Aliya noticed the small little name tags for each place, all hand written in cursive, swirly fonts, her eyes wandering over to the kids end of the table, where the decor still remain elegant.

The brunette had to choke down a laugh, which was purely out of shock and surprise, as Alex (aka Alan) sat in the middle of Zach and Harriet (Ciara's daughter), a tiara placed on top of his head.

The man turned to Aliya, his murderous stare latching onto her as he mouthed get me out of this mess.

Aliya cleared her throat, taking a mental image in her mind as she approached her mother.

"Hey, Mom." She said, her voice breezy as she leant one hand against the table.

Molly stared at where Aliya's palm was from above her glasses, her mouth pressed in a small line, her hand braced on her hip.

Aliya took her palm off of the table instantly.

"Yes." Her mother replied, returning back to organising the cutlery.

"Why is Alex at the kids table?" Aliya questioned through gritted teeth.

"Alex?"

Aliya sighed, scratching the side of her jaw, because the only way for her to understand you was to talk to her as if you are in a fantasy land, more specifically, her fantasy land. "Alan."

"Oh, yes, Alan!" She looked to the end of the table where Alex was sat and smiled, giving him a thumbs up. "He was an unknown guest, and that was the only seat left."

"Well can't you just swap him with whoever's next to me?" Aliya suggested, but Molly whipped her head up, shocked, like it was the most obscure suggestion ever.

"You— you're suggesting— changing the—" Her mother cleared her throat, placing a hand by her heart for dramatic effect. "The seating plan?"

Aliya nodded her head, not really seeing the big
deal. It wasn't as if Aliya had requested for her to sacrifice her Jimmy Choos.

"Aliya! I've spent months formulating the best seating plan to ensure no arguments— that is—"

"Absolutely fine my dear!" Travis stepped in beside Molly, placing an arm around her shoulder, tightly and smiling. It was almost as if he was holding her together. "I'll swap the cards around a bit."

Her father wandered off, moving Alex's card (which was noticeably not in cursive but in Travis' scribbly handwriting), placing it next to Aliya's, all while Molly watched, her jaw tensed.

"Everybody! Food!" Travis called once he finished the swap, and the family began to file in for the meal instantly, like a pack of savage animals.

Molly picked up the carving knife, gripping it so hard her knuckles began to turn white. She pointed to Aliya's seat (with the knife still in her hand), where Alex had moved quickly to sit next to, no longer wearing a tiara on his head.

"Get to your seat Aliya."

The brunette eyed up the knife and side stepped away from it, retreating back to the safety of her seat.

Molly had been reading crime novels lately, Aliya saw it on her Facebook. She probably knew how she could dispose the body of a girl who had just ruined her entire seating plan.

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—✩—
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"Please can you pass the potatoes." Aliya asked Eliana, who placed down her fork, patted her mouth, and passed them over. "Thanks." Aliya replied over the idle dinner chatter, and she began sifting through the bowl, trying to find the best ones.

"Aliya, did you read the report I sent you?" Molly inquired, popping a piece of turkey into her mouth, over the conversations of multi-organ transplants, stem cells, and Lego's (coming from the kids table).

"Yes. It was interesting." Aliya answered, nodding her head as she popped a roast potato in her mouth, not really wanting to start a conversation with her mother.

"I know. That clinical trial they did to treat femoropopliteal lesions was absolutely enticing." She marvelled, swirling her wine in her glass, her eyes closely pinned on her youngest daughter, watching her every move, every reaction. "It makes you consider cardio thoracic surgery, hm?"

Aliya passed the potatoes down the table, knowing exactly where the conversation was headed. "Yes, Mom." She spoke robotically a — she said those two combinations of words so many times they didn't even sound like words anymore. She was just blindly agreeing.

"Hey, what's wrong with cardio?" Molly protested, putting another bit of turkey into her mouth as Travis shifted uncomfortably in his seat, eyes darting about the table at the many other different pairs of eyes watching the two women, ready for whatever might be brought up at this dinner.

They had placed bets and all. Ciara had forty bucks on Aliya being a disappointment.

Even Zach had a bet with James about it.

You get all my lego's if Aunt Molly yells at Aliya.

Deal.

"I heard there's a new tv show being shot in LA! How cool is that?" Arthur, Eliana's fiancé, announced to the whole table, trying desperately to change the subject as he had been in the family long enough to know exactly where it's headed, even though he never understood all the occasions when Molly had called him dumb.

"Yes! I heard that too! It's called Modern Family isn't it? I saw them shooting in a Target!" Ciara added to the conversation, though she cursed herself seeing as forty bucks was riding on the next few minutes.

"Nothing will ever be as good as Friends." June mock sobbed, placing her head in her hand.

"It's been five years June." Heather shook her head, rubbing her wife's shoulder. "You need to let it—"

"How did your surgery go yesterday?" Molly changed the subject once again, like she always did despite the upmost efforts to keep chatter away from medicine. Something about Molly was she was always determined to turn it into an interrogation, in another life, she was an FBI agent.

"I thought you said it was boring." Aliya stabbed her broccoli, pretending it was one of the expensive paintings (Molly's pride and joys) that hung mockingly on the wall.

Molly chose to ignore her, now turning the conversation to Alex, choosing a different angle of approach. "How about you Ala—"

"Alex." Aliya corrected.

Her mother pursed her lips and continued without a care in the world. "What surgical speciality are you thinking about?" She asked him intently, her eyes pinning him down.

"I'm thinking about general." Alex said with a nod of his head. "Or, maybe paediatrics."

Travis smiled, broadly. "Good choice, my boy!"

"Yes, very good choice!" Molly spoke, almost sincerely, and maybe a little too enthusiastically for once in her life. "I wish Aliya would make good choices."

At that statement, Molly stared reflectively at her plate with a sigh, pushing her food around with her silver fork.

Instantaneously, the alarm bells sounded in the back of Aliya's mind, screaming at her to stop, to not react. To not ruin the dinner. But, sometimes she couldn't help myself.

Even though every single red flag was blazing in her mind, her brain initiating a full blown lock down.

"And, what's that supposed to mean?" Aliya questioned, setting down her own fork and staring directly into her mother's cold, blue eyes.

She was never all that good with self control.

"Molly—" He tried to stop her, but he looked desperately at Aliya, willingly her to not say anything, when it was Molly that started it all.

"I won a Spelling Bee at school last week!" James announced in the silence, making a desperate attempt to break the attention, even for seven year old child, he could at least read a room.

"Well done, buddy! That's amazing!" Alex congratulated, having met James and Trent before when they visited her up in Seattle.

Aliya cleared her throat, pushing back the lump that had just formed before grinning, enthusiastically at her nephew. "I knew you could do it!"

Trent caught her eye, giving her an encouraging nod, to keep going, to stick it out for the next hour or so.

"Would anyone like anymore cabbage?" Molly asked, the bowl of greens in her hand.

"Oh, yes please!" June reached her hands out, accepting the bowl with a cheesy grin. "Don't mind if I do!"

As she was passing the bowl, Molly looked over at Aliya, beginning to analyse her face in an incredibly alarming way, which only caused the hairs on the back of Aliya's neck to stand up straight, as if sensing that her eyes were on her.

Aliya noticed this and exhaled heavily. "What is it?"

Superstitiously, the Levine woman bought her hand to her cheek, as if her mother had noticed something on it, which would only explain the look she was giving her.

Molly sighed, playing with the gold charm on her necklace. "I just don't understand why you aren't with that nice boy from Columbia. You were engaged and everything."

Aliya dropped her fork, Alex choked on his broccoli, reaching for his glass to take a large swig from his beer, but instead he made a very loud spluttering noise as he descended into a coughing fit, where Travis had to give him one hard slap on the back.

"Elijah Beck." Molly clarified to the room, as if Aliya didn't already know exactly who she was referencing. Seeing as there really was only one nice boy from Columbia, who Aliya was with on and off for nearly five years. "He was perfect for you. And, handsome—"

"If you loved him so much, why didn't you just marry him?" Aliya muttered, bitterly at this sudden mention of her ex-fiancé.

"—Training to be a surgeon. You could've been like me and your father, it would have been perfect."

Trent froze, and even Eliana's head shot up. James even tensed next to his dad, and Travis stared in complete awe at his wife. The other family members didn't even know the full story, so they just sat there, dumbfounded.

"That was over three years ago. I don't see how that's relevant now." Aliya pointed out, her mouth suddenly feeling incredibly dry, so she reached over for the water.

"This is a nice— uh— leaves. These are nice leaves." Alex tried to desperately change the subject, reaching to point towards the centrepiece.

"It's about you not being able to keep anything stable in your life." Molly swirled the wine around in her glass like she always did, as if that would seem to give her the upper hand in the sadistic games she enjoyed to play. "What about that other man you were seeing too? In Seattle. The plastic surgeon, or whatever. Nothing in your life is stable, Aliya."

"Stable? I've been studying medicine for nearly ten years I would say that's pretty stable." Aliya retaliated, sipping the water to try and get rid of her dry throat.

"Where are you even going with that anyway? I would rather go backpacking across the world than watch my daughter go into a medicinal field like Trauma. Or worse Plastics!" She spat the words out, curling up her nose as she shuddered rather dramatically at the thought.

"It's not up to you." The brunette retorted, placing down her water glass with her jaw clenched, leaning her elbows on the table. "It's up to me. And, if I want to do Botox's and boob jobs all day, I will. I'm the only one that can choose that."

Molly Levine looked completely, downright horrified. "Who payed for your medical school, Aliya?"

Aliya's breath caught in her throat, and she looked down at her plate. "I'm paying you back though aren't I?"

Aliya didn't even know what she was expecting, and she felt stupid in believing things could ever be different, lured into the fantasy of actually having a normal relationship with her family. Her mother always somehow managed to throw her kindness back into her face, using it as a surprise attack. Weaponising things that other mothers should do out of the kindness of their hearts.

So, anyone who owed her something is forever in her debt, even if it was paid off in full.

"That's not the point. I invested—"

"Invested?" Aliya interrupted the complete idiocy coming from the head of the table. "I'm your daughter, Mom, not a piece of property."

Molly scoffed, ready to argue back. "Did I say that? I was just stating a fact that I paid for your college tuition, you should really be more grateful, Aliya."

"In front of everyone here?" Aliya snapped in return, gesturing towards the table of very awkward looking guests, who were finding the decor of this room very interesting. "When are you going to stop embarrassing me?"

"I don't see how she is embarrassing you? She's a doctor. Just like you. You should be proud of each other. And besides, you both were doing sutures when you were seven years old!" Evelyn spoke, earning a look of warning from her very own daughter, even though she was trying to play the devils advocate.

Evelyn failed to mention the fact Aliya still had scars on her finger tips from when she was seven, and Molly forced her to sit at the table for six hours doing them to get them perfect, until her fingers bled.

She used her thumb to runs lines across them, feeling the tiny marks of where the scars lay around her nail beds and finger tips, unnoticeable to the untrained eye.

Marcus put down his fork, nodding in agreement with his ex-wife for once in his life. "Our girl was doing the running whip stitch when she was twelve!" He beamed with pride, smiling fondly over at Aliya.

Though Aliya didn't feel all that proud of herself, remembering how long she cried after all the times Molly screamed at her when she didn't get it right, every single look of disappointment from her mother was etched into her brain chemistry. And, the tricky thing about memories is they never really fade, even when you were that young.

Molly shook her head, moving her tongue across her teeth. "I just expected more from you Aliya. Look at you," She gestured, theatrically. "No idea where you are going. Unmarried. You're here with him. He looks like he's just got out of jail—"

"Hey!" Aliya warned. "You don't get to—"

"Aliya. I'm not done." Molly slammed her fist down onto the table.

Aliya flinched at the noise, gritting her teeth to stay calm. "What more could you possibly say, huh?"

"Every single time." Eliana muttered from across the table, resting her forehead in her palm.

"Elle, that's not fair." Trent responded to his sister, shooting her a look.

"I'm sorry? What? Every time?" Aliya responded to her sister's murmurs and mutters of resentment. "Yeah, it does happen every time but who is the one that deals with it, Eliana? Me."

Eliana flared her nostrils, opening her mouth to start some form of argument before their mother got there first.

Molly brought her hand down onto the table, the vibration echoing in the room, the rattle of plates and cutlery. "Don't speak to my daughter like that!"

"I'm your daughter too!" Aliya's voice cracked, and the tears that had been threatening to fall finally slid out from her eyelids, burning trails down her cheeks."Thanksgiving '03 has a run for its money." She whispered into her wine glass she had bought up to her lips, to attempt to mask the stain of her tears.

Trent turned to her, placing a hand on her shoulder, the only one that heard her muttering under her breath, other than Alex.

"Don't comfort her! She's the one who's come into my house with him and starts abusing me!" Molly cried, earning a scoff from Aliya.

"Dr. Levine," Alex cleared his throat, his hands clenched around his cutlery, resisting the urge to hurtle it at her head. "I really think you should look in a mirror—"

"Who do you think you are!" Molly hissed back, looking at him as if he were some trash on the side of the highway.

"That's it!" Aliya laughed hysterically, pushing up from her chair so hard it began to fall back, though Alex managed to catch it as he got up too, setting it straight. "I'm not just going to sit here and let you insult me and my friend who you bearly even know, let alone bothered to know. Insult me all you want, Mom, but how dare you insult him!"

"All I did was say Alan—"

"Oh, for the last freaking time his name is Alex!" Aliya screamed, her throat protesting as she grew tired of her getting his name wrong purposely, though she didn't entirely mean for her voice to get so loud. 

"There's no need to be so vicious!" Molly snapped back, jumping out of her seat in a power move, sending her chair flying without anyone to catch it for her.

"Well," Aliya scoffed, digging her heels into the floor. "There's no need to character attack me every single family gathering with the same old shit!"

The children gasped.

"Hey! How come Auntie Aliya can say that word and not me?" Zach questioned, crossing his arms in a tantrum.

"Aliya!" Molly reeled in disgust at the woman in front of her. "Watch your language."

Aliya stood still, clearing her throat as she fought the urge to throw what was left of the turkey at her mother's face. "I think we should leave. Happy Thanksgiving."

With a new found sense of calm fuelled only by the prospect of leaving the prison that was this house, she moved around the table and into the hallway, hearing Alex's 'uh— I wish I could say it was nice to meet you' as he trailed behind her, unhooking his own coat from the rack where Aliya angrily tugged off her own on, not bothering to button it up as she strode to the door, throwing it open for Alex, and slamming it as soon as the pair were through.

It was only when they are half way down the street Aliya dropped to the side walk, her head falling between her knees as she sobbed. And, Alex's arms were around her instantly, pulling her head to his shoulder as he used his other free hand to call a taxi.

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The flight back was silent. Luckily, there were a few tickets left for an immediate flight back to Seattle. Which was pure dumb luck for Thanksgiving.

Aliya couldn't stay in that state any longer, no matter how beautiful California was.

So, the pair just sat next to spluttering in comfortable silence. They didn't need to talk.

Aliya didn't need to explain because he understood.

He knew her.

It was as if their brains were automatically set on the same wavelength, and they always knew what was going on in each other's minds without even having to use any words in the English language. Their own form of telepathy, in some way.

"Didn't you have the day off?" Jackson noticed Aliya hurry past the front desk, the black of her dress floating around under her coat as she was on her way to locate a pair of scrubs.

No one could do surgery in heels and a dress, especially when that dress was covered in the stench of insults and belittlement.

Aliya only thought of one place she wanted to be. She didn't want to wallow in bed, or go to the bar. She wanted — needed — a distraction.

Maybe, after all this time, she was her mother's daughter, turning into the exact person she raised her to be.

She didn't even know what to think at this point.

"Oh, it's not Thanksgiving anymore." His laughter died down after he checked the clock, his eyes slowly returning back to her, noticing the troubled expression on her features.

He didn't know the woman stood across from him very well, but you didn't need to be a detective to read human expressions.

He couldn't explain it— hell, he didn't even know why he was feeling this way.

Why that just the very look on her face, the way every bone in her body was tense, her vacant eyes, in total contrast to her usual demeanour, made him want to take away her pain, whatever it was.

He had only known her for two months, and most of it was spent with her hating him, therefore he was in no position to be feeling like that.

"How was your Thanksgiving?" He managed to get out, recovering from the shock of seeing her this way.

"It was great." Aliya replied to him quickly, moving faster down the corridor, though his footsteps quickened behind her in a hurry, jogging to meet her long strides.

"So, why are you here?" He inquired further, taking interest in her in this particular moment, seeing as it was so different from all the rest.

Aliya stopped abruptly, causing him to nearly stumble into the back of her.

"I would rather not talk about it. I would rather just work." Her voice carried an edge she didn't usually have, though it was effective at conveying how she couldn't just casually talk about how every waking moment in her life felt like a competition.

"Okay." He responded, slowly, studying her closely all the way from her wide, grief-stricken eyes, from the twitch in her upper lip. "I need a consult for a twenty-year-old frat boy, injured at a party when he fell from the balcony."

What was it with men and falling off of balconies?

"You might want to put on scrubs because he's incredibly drunk and might try flirting with you. Especially looking as good as you do right now." He grinned at her and the side of Aliya's mouth curled up involuntarily. "See, there we go. It's better when you smile." He spun around on his heel, walking back the way he came.

As the brunette watched him leave, she realised that for a brief moment she had forgotten what had happened just merely four hours ago.

⠀
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( notes! )

and with that, you've officially met molly levine!! winner of los angeles' lousiest mother award twenty seven years running!! she's a reigning champion

therefore molly levine slander = accepted

aliya's family is a little crazy and that's all i'm going to say on that topic, but here's a little family tree for you so you know who i'm referencing:

mother = molly (dirt bag)
father = travis (less of a dirt bag but still a bit of a dirt bag)
older brother = trent
older sister = eliana (another dirt bag!)
eliana's fiancé = arthur
trent's wife who passed away = louise
trent's son = james

molly's side of the family:
mother = evelyn
father = marcus
sister = june
other sister = iconic peggy (left because she had enough of molly's shite)
june's wife = heather
june & kids = ciara and stanley

travis's side of the family:
mother = juliet
father (who passed away) = philip
brother = edwin

justice for aliya and alan 🫶💓😪

( word count! — 8,300 )