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chapter forty three ━ what is it about men
season eight, episode four

❝ i'm done with building houses
on the sims, i'm ready to
get a real one. with you. ❞

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Aliya yawned into her palm as she sat on the deck of the house Derek was currently in the middle of building.

And by in the middle of, he was actually building the house around her, hammering screws into the wooden planks from where he was on his knees, his hair unusually messy with fragments of dust and specks of dirt.

The Levine woman brought her travel mug of coffee to her lips taking a sip before setting it back down on the deck, leaning back on the palms of hands as she took in the view before her.

She could see why Derek was so attached to this place. The view was beautiful — complete with trees, mountains and lakes, stretching out into the distance. It felt like something out of a Disney movie, where little birds would help you get dressed every morning before eating breakfast outside.

It was the kind of place you could easily come to clear your head.

Though, the sound of an angry man angrily hammering nails in the background kind of ruined the tranquil effect this place usually had.

"I can see why you like it out here. It's—" Aliya winced at another loud bang. "Peaceful. No neighbours. Though, thinking about it, it would be quite lonely with no one around for miles. Except the park ranger, of course. Wait, is there even a park ranger here?"

"It's not a national park." Derek replied back, his voice gruff as he concentrated, only half-listening to what Aliya was actually saying.

"I kind of like having neighbours to gossip with." Aliya mused, the morning breeze sending a chill across her cheeks, her eyes watering only slightly from it. "Linda from number eight is always telling me about these kids who live at number fifteen who always throw eggs at number sixteens windows on Halloween."

"You can see why the whole prospect of having no neighbours is looking good right about now." The Shepherd man said, rising to his feet and retrieving a few screws from the box on the other side of the deck.

"I don't know," Aliya shrugged, disagreeing with him, because neighbours always seemed to make things a little more exciting — when they weren't complaining about the slightest bit of noise, or a car parked one inch over. "It's always quite funny hearing about Sarah's son who changes his career every week. Last week he worked at Taco Bell, but then he burnt himself on melted cheese, so now he's working as a lifeguard at the community pool."

The neurosurgeon simply grunted in response to Aliya's rambles, because it was too early in the morning to talk about anything, let alone Sarah's thirty year old son with cheese burns.

"Have you heard anything about Zola?" Aliya then changed the subject.

"You know, I really did come out here to clear my head—" Derek said, matter-of-factly, though he then stopped what he was doing, holding the hammer still in his hands. "—Nothing yet."

"I have a good feeling about this." Aliya swivelled her body around to look at Derek, instead of the trees in the distance. "They can't keep Zola away from you, you're her parents. Whether it's says it in writing or not."

Derek nodded slowly, his jaw tense as he ran his fingers through his hair, shaking out the minuscule bits of wood.

Aliya rose to her feet, peering into the house, though it was only just a house frame at the moment. So, essentially she was peering in between to wooden pillars. "Why are we even here anyway?"

"You got in the car, Levine." Derek deadpanned, taking a nail out from behind his ear.

The brunette raised a brow, dropping back down onto the deck and crossing her legs. "I thought we were going into the hospital?"

Derek checked his watch, narrowing his eyes at the time displayed on the face. "Not for another hour. You could help, you know. Instead of just sitting there?"

"I could." Aliya shrugged her shoulders, closing her eyes to shield from the sun that had just made its guest appearance.

"And?"

"I don't necessarily want to." Aliya replied back simply, reaching up to grab the sunglasses perched on her head so she could slip them on to cover her eyes.

"Fine," A small surprised chuckle escaped Derek's lips as he dusted his jeans off, moving on to another part of the deck. "Suit yourself, but if you mention Sarah's son one more time, I'll jam this screw driver through my skull."

Aliya grinned. "Make sure you don't hit the hippocampus."

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"Wait up!" Aliya yelled after the Avery man as she finally arrived at the hospital, her travel mug freshly filled up with coffee at the cart, one hand holding a paper bag with croissants, her bag slung over her shoulder.

Jackson's face broke out into a smile, the way that shared passing resemblance to the way Reese looked at her when she gave him kibble. "Hey, sweetheart."

He hooked his arm around her shoulder, his hands tangling in the soft length of her hair as he leant down to kiss her lips softly, seeing as he had been at the hospital for several hours already, it was nice to see her.

"Okay, I've just been at Derek's house," She cleared her throat to begin, walking alongside him as they moved up the steps. "Well, it's not really a full house yet, it's more of a structure but anyway— Oh, I got you a croissant."

As she always did, she got effortlessly side tracked as she dug into the bag, retrieving the freshly baked croissant and passing it over to him, stuffing hers into her bag for later.

"Thanks, you were saying?" He asked, taking a bite from the croissant. "Derek's structure?"

"Ah, yes, so—" She reached to swat away a piece of pastry on his upper lip. "I was thinking, 'cause the married couple are moving into Barbie's dream house when it's actually built, we should get our own place."

Jackson almost spat out his croissant.

Because, he didn't even quite believe what Aliya had said was real, or if he was just simply imagining it.

So, he raised his hand, pressing the back of his palm to her head.

"What are you doing?" She frowned at his hand, narrowing her eyes in suspicion

"Just checking your temperature," Jackson replied, dumbfounded by Aliya's sudden declaration that she actually wanted to get a house with him. "To see if you're feeling okay, 'cause I've been hinting at getting our own place for two whole months."

Aliya commitment-phobe Levine shrugged her shoulders, lifting her chin up to give the effect that she was actually being serious about this, for once in her life. "I'm done with building houses on The Sims, I'm ready to get a real one. With you. But, before you say top floor apartment with floor to ceiling windows, I'm saying house. With a garden."

"A house with a garden." Jackson slowly nodded, taking in her request. "So, those shiny new apartments are out of the deal?"

"I'm afraid so." The brunette spoke a little too formally than she initially intended. "Oh! And a fireplace! And a porch. I've always wanted a cute porch with a cute porch swing, and cute porch potted plants, and cute porch wind chimes.

Aliya was practically jumping up and down with excitement, tugging on the edge of Jackson's lab coat as she listed off her requirements for a house.

It was only when she was saying them out loud did she realise how picky she was on what kind of house she wanted.

See, she wouldn't care where she lived, as long as it was with him. But, it would be nice to have some added benefits of a separate laundry room, and maybe even a kitchen island.

She just wanted a house that was theirs, not anyone else's. All her life, she had lived in places that weren't necessarily her own. Sure, she loved Meredith's house, but it would always be Meredith's house. And, before that, she lived in Elijah's apartment. And before that, the campus at Columbia, and before that her parent's house.

She just wanted a house that felt like her own.

"You know, adding 'cute' and 'porch' in front of everything doesn't make those things exclusively for a porch, but I like your enthusiasm." Jackson chuckled. "Where has all this come from?"

Aliya grinned, pulling out her cellphone and opening up her messages with Jackson, sending him the list she had just curated. "I woke up on the right side of the bed this morning."

"You sleep on the left." He pointed out with a smirk that still managed to single-handedly turn Aliya's stomach upside down.

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"And, this is the residents' lounge." April gestured around the room as she entered with the new fifth year resident — a tallish man with sandy blonde hair, and a pair of dark blue eyes that could only compared to the ocean on a rainy day.

He moved into the room, staring around it with his hands buried deep in his new lab coat pockets, where his name was embroidered neatly onto it.

"It looks nice, way better than the one we had at Florida General." His tone of voice was light, moving off of his lips and into the world softly.

April chuckled, lightly, pointing over to a locker at the far corner. "Here's your cubby, I've put some handbooks, pager codes, fresh pairs of scrubs and some other bits and bobs to keep you going. And, I'm your Chief Resident, so if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask."

"Thank you," The blonde man smiled, picking up the book of pager codes, slipping it into his pocket next to his new pager. "I appreciate it."

"It must be hard transferring in your final year, huh?" April offered, a sympathetic expression on her face.

He hesitated slightly, wondering which locker belonged to her, before returning his attention back to the doctor showing him around. "Yes, and no. Seattle seems like a place I need to be at—"

Though, he couldn't continue his explanation, seeing as the redheads pager and his own erupted from their pockets.

"Oh, big trauma in the ER! That's next on the tour?" April beamed, clapping her hands. "Shall we?"

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"That guy's a freakin' genius!"

Cristina and Aliya heard Alex exclaim to Jackson as the four met on the way to the emergency room after being paged in for a trauma.

"Who's a genius?" Cristina and Aliya both questioned in unison.

The two men exchanged a look as they all reached for a yellow trauma gown.

"You look nice today." Jackson quickly and suspiciously changed the subject, slipping his arms through the gown, and reaching up to tie the back of it.

"You saw me like, ten minutes ago." Aliya deadpanned, knotting up her own gown with a raised brow.

She didn't know how to feel about her boyfriend and best friend "in kahoots".

"What can I say," Jackson's eyes reflected in the light above, illuminating the green of his pupils. "I like a girl in scrubs."

Now, he really had to stop smirking, and even simply looking at her at work, otherwise it ran the risk of Aliya actually ending up in the ER, instead of actually treating patients in it.

"Human stampede at a comic convention." Owen Hunt, the newly appointed Chief of Surgery announced as he passed them.

"Which means crush injuries." Richard Webber added from where he was walking alongside Owen, now left trolling for cases, seeing as he was no longer the Chief. "Lots of them."

"I have admin on the phone," A Nurse manoeuvred around the doctors to get to Owen, a clipboard in her hand. "They say it's urgent."

Anyone would think that the stampede was actually happening in the emergency room, seeing as the Levine woman could barely make out who the hell everyone was.

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It was in amongst the chaos of the ER when he caught sight of her, standing next to two other doctors standing taller than her.

As soon as she had entered the ER, he spotted her, as if it was some sort of magnetic field. That even, after all these years, his eyes still longed to be on her.

But, she had always had that effect on a room, on a group of people, it was never just reserved for him.

She seemed to harness the solely natural ability to catch the attention of a dozen people all at once, from the soft edges of her cheeks, flushed a shade of pink that seemed as if it belonged to her, to her smile that spread her lips out so wide that the only natural thing to do was to smile back.

A part of him wanted to ditch whatever he was doing (treating a deep head lac) and run up to her, desperate to hear whatever she would say to him after all this time, though she would most likely either slap him across the cheek, or ignore him completely, walking off without another word.

A part of him didn't want to find out, because in his fantasies, he hadn't screwed up as bad as he did. He wouldn't have made the biggest mistake of his life. And, she would be in Florida, with him.

Instead of in a city that always seemed to rain.

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"It was crazy!" A unnamed guy carrying a tardis exclaimed as he walked alongside the gurney where his friend and roommate was lead on. "Five hundred people trying to fit through this one little door."

Aliya quirked a brow, moving around the paramedics who were pushing their patient into the trauma room. "Did no one even think to, you know, stop stepping on people?"

"It was crazy!" The guy repeated yet again, even though Aliya could depict just from the pure chaos of the ER how crazy it actually was.

"Hell, that kid in the Borg costume tripped me on purpose!" His friend on the gurney accused.

"They just kept coming and coming!" Tardis guy said, following them into the trauma room. "Like they didn't even realise they were running over a human being!"

"All right guys," Jackson cleared his throat, standing on the other side of the bed. "We got neck tenderness, so we want to be careful on this."

"Okay," Aliya nodded, setting down the chart and readying to transfer Keith, the patient, over to the bed.  "On my count, one two three."

The paramedics carefully lifted him over, setting his down gently so Jackson and Aliya could examine him, accessing the multitude of injuries he had, just from trying to get his hands on a limited edition tardis.

It seemed like actually getting the tardis had been a success, though now he was pretty banged up.

"The worst part was when Keith's head got caught on this one guy's costume—"

"And it ripped off his ear?" Jackson raised his voice over the chaos, peeling back the bandages, revealing Keith's very earless face.

"What?" Aliya's eyes widened as she quickly peered across, away from where she was taking a look at his abdominal wounds, supposedly minor until she got an ultrasound on them. "Oh, sweet mother of—"

"That's bad, isn't it?" Keith questioned, his teeth gritting from the pain.

"Well, buddy, you don't have an ear, so I'll let you be the judge of that." Aliya patted his shoulder lightly, quickly reaching for the portable ultrasound to check his abdomen.

"How did nobody mention that your ear is ripped off?" Jackson called out to the paramedics, but it was no use, they had already rushed off back to their respective ambulance.

"Well," Unnamed Tardis guy stuttered. "We looked around on the floor for a while, but it's probably like, stuck to some Stormtrooper's boot."

"At least we got what we came for." Keith breathed a sigh of relief, looking at the bigger picture in the form of a Tardis in Tardis guys hand. "We got a Tardis!"

"Way to look on the bright side, Keith." The Levine woman smirked, putting away the ultrasound seeing as it showed no signs of abdominal bleeding, therefore she then began her neurological tests.

"Well..." Keith's friend looked at said Tardis, before looking as back at Keith — poor, earless, Keith who had no idea what was gonna come out of his mouth. "I got a Tardis."

"Dude—" Aliya shook her head, and Jackson looked up from the ear, or rather the lack of an ear.

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"Give me my Tardis!" Keith yelled from where he was now sat upright on the gurney, with the added testosterone of Derek, Alex and Mark.

Aliya was very much suffocating in a room with six men.

"It's not yours! I fought for it!" Traitor guy snapped back, the Tardis still gripped firmly in his hands, showing no signs of giving it up.

"I lost an ear for it!" Keith's voice raised in volume as he lurched forward.

"He has a fair point." Aliya murmured to Jackson, crossing her arms as she watched the pair fight with intrigue, like she was watching some sort of reality tv show.

Jackson nodded in agreement, swaying on his feet. "If you lost an ear over a Tardis, I would let you keep it."

The brunette placed a hand to her heart, accepting the general sentiment Jackson was implying. "That means a lot."

"Karev, please." Derek sighed, and Alex took Traitor Guy by the shoulders, pushing him out of the trauma room.

"No!" He resisted, struggling against Alex. "He's stealing my Tardis!"

He's really not. Aliya thought to herself, rolling her eyes.

"Let's go." Alex continued his battle of pushing him out of the room, and back into the chaos of the ER, out of the way from the people who were actually trying to help his friend.

Seeing as he insisted on putting more stress onto the guy without a right ear.

Jackson turned his attention back towards Keith, now that the other guy was now out of the room. "Your ear has lost all of its soft tissue, but—"

"We'll be able to construct an entirely new ear." Mark quickly cut in, his arms firmly crossed as he stopped Jackson mid sentence — ultimately stealing his thunder. "We'll take cartilage from your ribs, and match it to the exact same size and shape of your existing ear. It's a long process, but when we're finished, that ear will look good. Anything you want to add, Avery?"

Mark then looked at his supposed mentee, his voice condescending as he finished his speech.

"No." Jackson clenched his jaw, and Aliya narrowed her eyes at his balled fists. "You covered it."

"Mr. Hitchens," Derek spoke from where he was performing a neuro exam on his feet, after receiving Aliya's page. "What are you feeling right now?"

"Hurt, betrayed—"

"Physically, Keith." Aliya prompted him.

Keith furrowed his brows, eyes widening as he realised that he couldn't in fact feel the neurosurgeon performing tests. "No, nothing."

"All right." Derek stood up straight, turning to the only woman in the room. "He needs an MRI right away, okay?

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"Jackson, check this out." Aliya held Keith's MRI scans out for him to see, pointing at where the damage was.

"Woah," Jackson marvelled in awe, his hand holding the other side of the scans. "C-6 is totally shattered."

"Cool, right?" Aliya grinned in amazement. "Well, not cool for him, but you know what I mean."

She then tucked the scans back under her arm, before turning back the way she came down the corridor, making a sharp left and hurling directly into someone's chest, sending whatever they had in their hands flying across the floor in all directions.

"Oh, god!" Aliya dropped to the floor instantly to start to pick up the gauze that had fell from their grasp. "I'm so sorry, I had no idea—"

The Levine woman paused instantaneously, her words catching in her throat, like soldiers stopping on a battlefield, or how the rain stops pouring down unexpectedly, all of a sudden.

Totally unplanned, totally unpredictable.

The puddles of rain water stop growing in width and depth. The droplets stop hitting the concrete.

The world simply and suddenly stills.

Because, it's only after the rain, where there's a single moment of silence.

Her initial survival instinct was to scream, to hurl an interrogation his way because—

Why the hell was Elijah Beck, her ex-fiancée, in Seattle?

Dressed in light blue Seattle Grace Mercy West scrubs.

Wearing a Seattle Grace Mercy West lab coat.

Oh, this had to be a hallucination.

Some sort of sick trick her mind was playing on her.

Because, why was the man that she hated almost as much as she hated herself stood across from her, looking the exact same as he did four years ago.

Only, his face was a lot more punchable now than it ever was before.

He almost looked smug by successfully catching her off guard, but she then noticed his expression crack, his eyes widening at her as if he hadn't exactly planned out what he wanted to say to her yet, the kind of shock.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Aliya snapped out, her nostrils flaring, her knuckles whitening from how hard she was gripping a hold of the gauze in her hands.

The tone of her voice caught him totally off guard, but who could blame her?

Elijah regained his composure, a smile breaking out across his face. "Aliya—"

He said her name, and she hated the way it sounded on his lips, because as much as she had loved him, all that love was gone. It had wilted, left without water of oxygen as it simply died. The kind of death that couldn't be revived, that couldn't be saved.

Because, no part of her would ever and could ever love him again.

And, if he came to Seattle to get her back, he had another thing coming.

"You know what," Aliya held up her hands at the man, shoving the gauze into his palms and moving out and around him. Because, she simply did not have the mental capacity to deal with his shit. "I can't do this right now, I have a patient."

And without any further explanation, Aliya bolted off down the corridor, her head pounding as she left him, watching her storm away and thinking maybe it was a bad idea after all.

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ELIJAH'S APARTMENT
new york city, new york
( 16th february 2007, four years ago )
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"Can't I just break into his apartment when he's out of town?" Aliya spoke into her cellphone, voice muffled by her ginormous scarf wrapped several times around her neck in an attempt to stay warm in freezing cold New York.

The city was still in fully fledged Winter, not even a whisper of Spring could be heard. From the still leafless trees, and the multitude of layers New Yorkers still had to wear, it was very much still in the depths of what felt like the longest season of Aliya's life. 

"I don't see why not," Summer replied from the other end of the call. "And, besides, it's not breaking and entering, your mail gets delivered to his address, it's basically your apartment too."

Aliya nodded slowly, considering Summer's words as she paced the sidewalk outside the apartment building she had lived in for the past year and a half. "So, the NYPD would have no case against me?"

"The NYPD would be scrambling to build a case against you." Summer eased her worries of a potential court case. "And, are you wearing that cute outfit I picked out for you? To show that little dick what he's missing?"

"Scarf. Trench coat. Skirt." Aliya looked down at herself, just to double check the clothes her friend had chosen for her was still on her person. "I've cried for one whole day on the sofa, I'm ready. And, I'm getting my TV back, I don't care if he paid for it to be fixed after I dropped it, it's mine."

"You go girl!" Summer enthused, and the brunette could even hear Mae whooping and hollering in the background.

"Okay, I can do this. I'll pack up all my stuff, and I'm gonna get out of there." She spoke with courage, mainly to herself than to Summer. "Why am I nervous? He was the one who called off the engagement, or whatever it was."

"And, he's a dick for not wanting to marry you. and an even bigger dick for telling you that on Valentine's Day." Summer said, matter-of-factly, and it was obvious what word was her new favourite in her vocabulary. "I would totally marry you in a heartbeat."

"Thank you," Aliya grinned, looking like a maniac in public from how her lips curved like the cheshire cat. "I would so marry you too."

"Oh, wait— ouch—" Summer incoherent muffled noises flooded the line like some sort of static white noise. "Mae wants to speak to you— hang on— OW!"

"Aliya, hey." Mae's voice sounded, leaving Summer protesting in pain in the background from whatever Mae did to her to snatch the phone out of her hands. "Remember you have all the power here, how many times have you broken up with him over the past four years? Eight? Ten?"

"Six, actually." Aliya corrected, dropping her head, suddenly finding a cracked piece of concrete to study to distract her from the fact Mae had pointed out that Aliya had an oddly specific talent of quitting when things got too tough.

That was in relationship-specific though.

Surgery and medicine was a whole other scenario seeing as this July she was starting her internship.

"Well, you have all the power." Mae clarified, her voice triumphant. "6-1. You're winning."

"You need to stop watching soccer, it's taking over your life." Aliya replied, kicking the brick steps leading up to the door of the apartment building.

"Now, go. Crush his heart into a million tiny pieces. That's an order." The Park woman said, her voice stern, taking the whole tough love route. "Love you."

"I love you too." Aliya pressed her lips into a smile as Mae hung up, though as soon as their voices left, the nervous settled into her stomach, bile rising to her throat.

Though, she quickly pushed that feeling down, telling herself that she would be damned if she never got to see the clothes she had left at his apartment, in the wardrobe they shared together.

After she had cleared out her stuff, there would only be half of an apartment left for him. Half of his closet would be empty, the other night stand too.

And somehow knowing that he would feel that emptiness all the way until he left for Florida allowed to muster her strength to take her all the way up the front steps, and unlock the door.

She passed Bridget in the hall, who was holding onto her Siamese cat, Rick.

Rick, the evil bastard, hissed at her as she passed, though Aliya gave him a tight smile, saying hello to Bridget, dressed in neon pink trousers and a bright yellow shirt as she dashed up the stairs, taking all three flights up to the top floor, then descending the hall to apartment eleven before she had a chance to go all the way back down the steps again.

Before she could even chicken out (because if she did, Summer and Mae would drag her back her by her ear), Aliya balled her fist and pounded on the door, shoving her hands back into her pockets and waiting the most painful ten seconds of her life for Elijah to answer the door.

"Oh—" The sandy blonde haired man answered the door in shock as it clicked off the latch, his eyes swollen—

Wait.

Had he been crying?

Aliya stood there in shock, her eyes fixated on his scruffy pyjamas, and what she gathered were jam stains down the front of his shirt, but she was too scared to guess.

The truth was that Aliya had never seen him look like this.

Maybe it was because the last time she had seen him, he had been clad in a shirt and dress trousers breaking her head, instead of the disheveled, heartbroken look he was going for this afternoon.

"Aliya?" He breathed, as if he couldn't quite believe she was standing before him.

She straightened her shoulders, pushing her chin up, wanting to seem uninterested in the reason behind why he looked so dreadful. "I've come to get my stuff."

"Oh, yes, err—" He held the door open for her, letting her into the apartment. "Come in."

Aliya stepped through the door, the apartment she once loved felt so alien to her now. "I left my suitcase here, I'm just gonna use that."

"Okay." Elijah said, simply, standing awkwardly in the middle of the room as she watched her stride into the bedroom.

As she shut the door, he heard her footsteps across the hardwood floor, followed by the crash of her tugging down her suitcase, and then the sounds of her clearing out the wardrobe, the coat hangers thrashing against each other as she hauled them into her suitcase.

It all felt wrong. To him anyway.

Which is why he threw open the door to the bedroom.

Because, God, he made the biggest mistake of his life. The most stupidest mistake.

Letting a woman like Aliya go surely made him eligible for an award reserved especially for morons.

"Don't go."

Aliya paused her packing, her eye brow raising directly at him her stomach churning at two very simple words. Two single syllables. "What do you even mean?"

Aliya knew exactly what he meant, but it was as if she needed some sort of clarity, some verbal confirmation that he was implying exactly what she thought he was implying.

"Don't move out. Move to Florida, with me. I made a stupid mistake—" He now made his way to his sock drawer, and Aliya was truly at a loss for words as he pulled out the ring he had given her— the ring she had given him back.

The ring she did not want, or ever want again for that matter.

"Move to Florida, and marry me Aliya." Elijah's voice pleaded, and he opened the box, displaying the shiny bright diamond ring he had bought for her, that wouldn't surprise Aliya of a few years from now, she would see it on another woman's finger, instead of her own. "We can be a family there—"

"No." Aliya shook her head, blinking back into reality and resuming her packing by opening her sock drawer and stuffing the contents of it into her case.

Elijah took a step towards her, trying so desperately to get her back, like all the times he had before (six to be exact). "I should never had ended it, I don't know why I did it, I was stupid, it was a lapse of judgement—"

"A lapse of judgement?" Aliya scoffed, shaking her head as she disappeared into the ensuite bathroom, placing all of her toiletries into a wash bag.

"Aliya?" Elijah questioned after a minute of Aliya opening all the doors in the bathroom and slamming them back shut.

"A lapse of judgement is adding more salt into the tomato sauce, not ending your engagement." The brunette emerged from the bathroom, placing her wash bag into a duffel bag, now that her suitcase was full to the brim. "You can't come back from that. This is it this time Elijah. We're 6-1."

Elijah looked at her, totally baffled by what she had just said. "6-1?"

"Nevermind." She shook her head, hoisting the duffel bag over her shoulder and pulling the suitcase behind her, entering the living room with Elijah trailing behind like a lost puppy with a tail tucked in between his legs.

Not knowing what to do know, not even knowing what he could possibly say to get her to stay.

"Aliya, please, just hear me—"

"No! I said no!" Her voice came out louder than she had intended to, but she kept on going, relentlessly. "I don't want to be with you! I don't want to move to Florida! I don't want to do this anymore! I don't want this life anymore! Okay? So stop, stop trying to get me back, I will never put that stupid ring back on because it all meant nothing to—"

"It meant everything to me!"

"No it didn't! Because if it did, you wouldn't break up with me on freaking Valentine's Day!" She cut him off with a wave of her hand, on a speed run to get everything in her bags so she could get the hell out of this apartment.

Damn, she loved this place.

Maybe that was why she was mad as hell.

"You're just scared." Elijah told her, he told how she should feel. 

But, he was so far from the actual truth, she was anything but scared.

"You're scared because this is real, and you've always been scared of that." Elijah continued, his voice straining as he felt his heart physically ache for her.

Aliya shook her head, struggling a throw into her duffel bag and zipping it up, now she was sure she had everything she owned inside three bags in total. "I'm not scared. I'm the opposite of scared in fact."

"Then admit it." Elijah said with a sigh of defeat, because now he wasn't sure he was ever going to get her back. "Admit that you're running. Admit that you don't want to take the time to fix this."

The brunette shrugged her bags over her shoulder, her fingers gripping around the handle of the suitcase. "You can't fix something that's broken like this."

Her voice didn't break as she possessed an unknown strength she didn't even realise she had.

"Aliya—"

"I'm done." And against all odds, Aliya smiled, as if she was at peace with all of this. "I'm done with all of this."

"You're going to be alone forever if you don't stop running! You do know that right?"

She heard his yells as she moved out of the door, letting it close behind her.

And, as soon as the door shut on the latch, and she stepped out onto the streets of New York, she could finally breathe.

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present day
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Keith's surgery provided a much needed distraction from the person who was currently sauntering around the hospital, inserting himself into her life, meeting all of her friends, stealing all the good cafeteria food.

"Alex, thank God." Aliya sighed in relief, having finally found the person she was searching high and low around the hospital for.

Though, that guy had his shoes and socks off, bare feet spread out leisurely across April's desk as he used her computer to write his Africa paper.

"Oh, that's just gross." Aliya curled her nose up, looking away from Alex's disgusting feet and dropping down onto April's comfy sofa, letting her head drop to the pillow as she shaded her face with her forearm.

"My feet are cramping up." Alex defended as he wiggled his toes, and he watched in his peripheral vision as Aliya quickly rose back to her feet again, beginning to pace the length of April's office, her hands braced on her hips as she focused on taking deep breaths. "What's wrong with you?"

"Totally hypothetical scenario—" Aliya managed to get out between taking deep breaths, that were now more like manic gasps for air. "But, if your ex-fiancée randomly showed up after four long years, what would you do?"

"No freaking way," Alex's jaw dropped all the way down to the floor. "Elijah's here?"

"No—" Was Aliya's first reaction, but then she realised that it was very much real life and it wasn't actually a nightmare. "Yes— ugh— I don't know!"

Alex nodded slowly, taking his hands off the keyboard, and pushing the article out of his mind, seeing as he had a more pressing matter on his hands. "So this totally hypothetical scenario—"

"Is totally not hypothetical." Aliya finished for him, with a gasp of breath, hunching over from the stress. "What am I gonna tell Jackson?"

She clutched at her chest, her erratic breathing causing her chest to rise and fall rapidly, because even just the thought of losing him—

She couldn't even think about it without feeling sick to her stomach.

"Oh, crap." The Karev man said with a sigh, frowning across to his friend in crisis, before pulling open April's snack drawer and retrieving a packet of doritos to hand her way. "This is bad."

Now in an upright position, Aliya placed her hands on her hips, turning down the doritos for once in her life. "I was really hoping you were gonna say something uplifting, Alex."

"Sorry, but, this is really really bad." As you could probably tell, Alex wasn't exactly world renowned for his comforting skills. "What good ever comes from an ex-fiancé who's back in town?"

"See, Alex, the thing is, this was never his town! It's my town! He needs to get on the next plane out to Florida, or god knows where he actually lives." Aliya ranted, wishing time travel was an invention so she could rewind time and find some way to stop his sudden arrival back into her life.

"What's he even doing here?" Alex said through a mouthful of doritos, the same exact ones he offered to Aliya. "Seattle always rains, Florida is always sunny. It's a given."

Aliya clapped her hands together, pointing at Alex's very useful and very validating thought. "Exactly what I was thinking!"

"So," He dragged out the syllables, twisting back and forth in the April's desk chair like some sort of criminal mastermind. "You don't know why he's here?"

Aliya scratched her temple. "He was wearing scrubs."

"He was wearing scrubs." The Karev man nodded at this piece of information. "Like, he works here now? Or, I got so bloodied up at a comic convention that I needed to change my clothes."

"He was wearing a white coat too." Aliya moped, her expression gloomy as she dropped into the armchair, burying her head into her hands with a very loud groan.

"What are you gonna do?"

"Well, I have to tell Jackson, right now. I can't let him find out from anyone else." She mumbled into her palm, her voice strained from the amount of talking (and screaming in a supply closet) she had done in the past ten minutes. "I just don't understand why! Why is he here? Why can't he just go? I don't want him here!"

"I can get him to leave." Alex piped up, raising a hand to volunteer. "Just give me two minutes, a quiet storage closet, and a baseball bat."

"Sure," Aliya shoulders shook as she laughed, purely at how ridiculous this situation was. "Beating him with a bat sounds like a great idea."

It really was a great idea. But, violence and bodily harm was never really the peaceful answer.

"The baseball bat is just an intimidation technique." Alex cleared up.

"So, Teddy is totally in such a good mood after all the marriage sex—"

"Oh my god!" Aliya physically leaped out of her skin as Cristina then suddenly entered the room with Jackson, halfway through whatever conversation they were currently having.

Jackson chuckled at Cristina's comment, not bearing witness to Aliya's shock as he lowered himself onto the sofa.

Aliya pinned her eyes on Alex, angling her head at Cristina, begging him to help her out, because she needed to tell him now. Not in ten minutes, not in an hour, now.

One thing she had learnt about the whole miscommunication thing was that it was hard to come back from, and if Jackson found out about Elijah before Aliya could've explained it to him (even though she had no idea what he was doing in the state), who knew what would happen.

"Cristina," Alex cleared his throat abruptly, startling everyone in the room. "I need to see you outside, it's urgent."

"I just sat down, Evil Spawn." Cristina spat out, kicking her feet up onto the coffee table to get comfy. "What is it?"

"See, I have to show you something," Alex stuttered — he was a terrible liar. "And it's not in this room, it's in another room—"

"Fine," The Yang woman sighed, getting up from the sofa and making her way to the door, Alex in tow. "But if it's lame, you owe me a twenty." She informed him as the pair slipped out the door, and Alex shot her one final good luck look.

Or, that's what she had thought he meant by whatever look that was.

"Are you okay?" Jackson questioned her, a brow raised as he shovelled chocolate pudding into his mouth. "You look—"

"A nervous wreck?" Aliya let out a nervous burst of laughter to further prove her point, and the rash that had grew across her chest and up her neck could also account for the stress she was undergoing.

"I was going to say disturbed," Jackson smirked, waving his spoon around in the air. "But yeah, sure nervous wreck's fine too."

"Funny, very funny, very very very funny!" Aliya rambled, her words coming out in a somewhat jumbled mess as she tried to pull herself together, before her pager would inevitably go off, before they were interrupted.

"Hey," Jackson found it a suitable time to put down his chocolate pudding, because he probably should be sat up for this conversation. "Are you okay? What's going on?"

Aliya steadied herself, taking a deep breath before facing him. "I need to tell you something, but when I do, I need you to stay calm, okay? And remember that I'm being totally honest with you, okay?"

"Of course I will." Jackson replied back quickly, searching for clues across her face that could hint at the possible news she was going to share with him.

"Remember when I told you I had a fiancé? Back in med school?" She questioned him, returning back to her routine of pacing around the room.

Jackson's eyes traced her steps, and he almost feared the worst, that she was going to tell him that she still loved the other guy, and that she was gonna leave him again.

"Yes." He spoke, cautious, his own anxiety levels rising, not knowing what to think because, he had no idea what this unpredictable woman was going to say next.

"Well, surprise!"

Yeah, she really shouldn't have led with saying "surprise!" like she was hosting a kid's birthday party. That was a mistake.

"He's in Seattle, well— in this hospital, in fact. Working here. He's got a job working here." Aliya stuttered through the sentences, waving her hands about as she explained, studying careful as Jackson's expression morphed into shock.

"Oh?" Was the only sound he could actually make out.

"Yes, oh—" Aliya snapped her fingers, trying to find a way to convince him that she really had nothing to do with this total mess the universe had decided to put her straight in the middle of. "And, I want you to know that I feel nothing for him, okay? Nothing at all. No part of me will ever love him again. And, running the risk of sounding like every female protagonist in a romantic comedy, you're the only one I want, okay?"

The Avery man quirked a brow. "Sandy from Grease?"

"Yes, I went as her for Halloween one year." Aliya nodded her head, gulping back the golf ball sized lump in her throat — she should really get better at staying calm under situations like these.

Though, how many times do ex-fiancés show up out of the blue?

She only had one so the likely answer is only once should this ever happen to her.

And, now Jackson's lack of words coming out of his mouth was sending her mind in a very downwards spiral.

"Say something."

"I'm just processing." He said, slowly, his forehead creasing into a dozen lines, a hundred different unidentifiable emotions passing through him all at once. "So, he's here? What's his name?"

"Elijah—"

"Oh god!"Jackson shot up so quickly, he kicked the coffee table, knocked over a plant again, and sent his half eaten chocolate pudding flying across the room.

"What!" Aliya burst out, because now it was his turn to pace back and forth around the room, traipsing soil from the fallen plant around April's once clean floor.

"He likes the Mets!" Jackson said, very obviously devastated by this discovery.

"What?"

"I had lunch with him and we talked about the Mets! He's the new fifth year!" Jackson exclaimed as he made the discovery he would rather not have discovered.

"Oh God!" Aliya clamped a hand to her mouth, unable to believe what she was hearing. Because, first her ex-boyfriend was mentoring him, and now he was bonding with her ex-fiancé over baseball. "You had lunch with him? What did he do? Did he spit in your food?"

"No, no, no, nothing like that." Jackson denied, waving her off and circling back around the coffee table to pick up April's plant (and kick the soil underneath the sofa, seeing as it was most definitely an issue for another day. "He was a nice guy— No! Your ex-fiancé is a Mets fan!"

"You had lunch with my ex-fiancée."

The couple stared at each other, now that they were both at a stand still, unsure of what to do about this newest revelation.

Jackson seemed to be handling it very well.

If handling it well meant he was now staring at a random corner of the room, his eyes so wide they started to line with fluid.

"Are you okay?" Aliya asked, softly and gently, afraid she might spook this statue of a man before her.

Jackson raised his hand to his chin in thought, which bared a loose resemblance to an evil mastermind. "Has he come to Seattle to get you back, or something even more moronic?"

The brunette scratched her head, scrunching up her nose. "And, even more moronic would be—"

Jackson shrugged, obviously unsure what could be more moronic than trying to get Aliya back after she repeatedly told him no. "Because, he actually enjoyed insane amounts of rain."

"I actually find the rain to be therapeutic," Aliya said, her voice perking up a bit, until she caught Jackson's raised brow. "But that's totally beside the point of the conversation, my bad."

"Did he say anything to you?" He questioned further, still grasping at straws to make this make sense. 

"He said 'Aliya' and then I said 'I can't deal with you right now' otherwise my reflexes would've punched him and that's totally out of my control, 'cause the last time I saw him he said I was gonna be alone forever." Aliya admitted, a fact she had told no one before, not even Alex or Summer, because, back then a part of her was terrified he was right. "Ha! Proved him wrong that asswipe. What are we gonna do about him?"

"Key his car?" Jackson offered the very first thing that came to mind.

"Yes!" Aliya clapped her hands together with enthusiasm. "Now we're talking, I've always wanted to key a car."

"Great, I'll get my keys—"

"But, first, debrief okay—" She stopped him by his elbow, pulling him closer to her so she could place the palms of her hands gently onto his cheeks, so she could look at him directly in the eyes before she told him, so he knew she meant every word of what she was about to say. "I love you, not him, you."

He smiled into her palm, placing a small kiss on one of her thumbs that was tracing lines across the skin on his cheek. "I love you too."

⠀
—✩—
⠀

"The procedure went well," Derek informed Keith after he woke up from his surgery from the day before. "But, your spine is still very fragile."

"Good news. We found the ear." Jackson announced as he entered Keith's room, followed by Traitor Guy from before.

He placed a metal dish onto the table, where the ear had been placed in ice to keep cool.

"Oh! Great!" Aliya enthused as she peered into the bowl where the very maimed ear was.

"I found it." Traitor Guy said, hovering by the safety of the door frame. "I went back to the convention centre. stayed there all night, looking through dumpsters and trash. But, guess where it was?"

Keith didn't look very impressed at the prospect of him finding his detached ear, instead he looked up at the ceiling, his lips pressed into a fine line.

"The lost and found, hooked on to some crazy helmet!"

"Where's my Tardis?" Keith asked, pointedly, finally looking over at his roomate.

"Okay—" He moved further into the room, breaking away from the safety of the doorframe. "How about a thank you, Greg, for finding my ear, in the trash?"

"I don't care about my ear!" Keith answered back, and Jackson looked over at Aliya, where she was writing in his chart after doing his post-op neuro exam. "I care about the Tardis."

He zeroed in on the lines on her forehead, the way her fingers were clenched around the pen, how her jaw was set into a tense line across her face.

The way she hadn't fully relaxed since Elijah's arrival the day before.

The truth was that she had been avoiding him like the plague, because she didnt necessarily even want to see him. And, if there was one thing Aliya was good at was avoiding her problem.

So, that's what she was going to do with this, for as long as humanly possible.

Keith started to try and sit up, but Aliya and Derek quickly settled him back down.

"We care about the ear, Keith." Jackson corrected, because attaching an ear back onto someone's face sounded pretty darn cool.

"Keith, try not to move, okay?" Derek requested, hovering over Aliya's shoulder, watching her write carefully onto the chart.

"Fine," Keith muttered with a frown, looking back over at Greg. "Can you at least keep it in the living room so I can look at it?"

It was a fair ask, it wasn't as if he had just asked Greg to throw the Tardis out the window.

"Actually..." Greg trailed off, trying to figure out how he could break the news.

"Oh my God," Keith's eyes widened. "You sold it, didn't you? You sold it!"

And, going against every instruction the doctors have given him, to stay calm and not get up, Keith did the opposite of things.

"Keith settle down!" Aliya caught his shoulder, trying to steady him but, instead he screamed in pain.

"I'll stabilise the neck—" Derek said, his hands already there.

"All right, move your fingers for me." Jackson asked, but Keith was still recoiling from the pain of moving too suddenly — all because of a limited edition tardis.

"Keith, I know it's hard," Aliya placed a hand on his shoulder to steady him, looking down at his fingers and toes. "But, you need to try and move your fingers and toes for me, can you do that?"

"Is he okay?" Greg questioned, timidly.

"I don't know." Derek answered back.

"His lower extremities just went limp." Jackson called out to them.

"Keith, try and move your feet for me, please." Derek ordered, watching Keith's foot. "Now wiggle your toes."

Keith stayed quiet, focusing hard but, his toes were frozen completely still.

⠀
—✩—
⠀

"I had a meeting in the conference room on nine." Ben Warren announced to Derek and Aliya as they left the operating room after they finished the epidural decompression on Keith. "I couldn't relax."

"Oh!" Aliya said in surprise, a short laugh coming out of her mouth at the mention of the room where Bailey and Nurse Eli gather, for a lack of a better word. "You're talking about Bailey's escapades, or rather sexcapades."

Ben's face contorted in disgust, and Derek nudged her with his elbow, shooting her a look as if to say stop, I've already talked him down once today, I can't do it again. "Levine! Don't remind me! I'm gonna have nightmares for a week."

The anaesthesiologist groaned, digging his head into his palms.

"It's fine, it's totally fine. I mean, Eli hasn't even met her son yet—"

"Levine—" Derek tried to quickly interrupt, cutting her words short, but it was no use, the brunette just kept talking.

"And, they're not even that serious, and if you ask me, she totally still likes you, she's just not ready for you." Aliya finished, finally catching her breath.

Ben, however, stood there, stunned from this brand new information, and the prospect he might actually have a chance with Bailey again.

"Tell me why I've never asked you about Bailey sooner." Ben chuckled, a victorious grin on his face.

Aliya narrowed her eyes at him. "Because, you buy me lattes so you can avoid her?"

"Oh, I forgot about that."

⠀
—✩—
⠀

"You guys always get worked up like this?" The Avery man questioned Derek after hearing Owen Hunt and Ben Warren venting about their women troubles whilst hammering nails into Derek's deck.

"You should give it a try." Derek suggested, looking up for his work and silently prying to see whether he and Aliya had anyresiding issues as of this point.

"No, I'm good." Jackson replied back simply, though his lips were now pursed into a very straight line. "Just hammering."

"Okay." The neurosurgeon replied, cautiously, returning back to his own hammering.

"Thanks for this, by the way." Jackson spoke up after a few seconds of silence, where the only sound of tools clattering could be heard. "I know Sloan's my boss, and he's your friend. I wouldn't want to overstep."

Derek nodded in acknowledgment, though he now noticed how the Avery's man knuckles were clenched around the handle, now putting all of his strength it to getting a singular nail into the wood.

"Not that I ever get a chance to overstep with him." Jackson added, bitterly, the sounds of his hammer hitting the nail growing in volume once again. "Since he was me in training wheels—"

Then, the very loud, very intrusive banging (and the beginning of Jackson's rant) caught Ben and Owen's attention as they stopped their work, turning their heads in his direction.

"Which is fine most days, except when I get home, and it turns out that my girlfriend has just got out of surgery with you where she did everything." He hit another nail into the wood, sending an echo around them. "I'm obviously very proud of her—"

He paused for one millisecond of breath, then continued, because he was definitely not finished with his verbal montage.

"—But, then she asks me how my day went, and my answer is 'Great, sweetheart. I just spend the last nine hours standing around watching your ex operate. And, now I just had lunch with your ex-fiancée!'"

And with that, one Jackson Avery took out all of his anger and frustration out onto a single piece of wood.

"Aliya has an ex-fiancee?" Derek said in surprise, obviously not hearing about it before.

"Yes." The hammering only appeared to grow louder, yet again.

And, as if on a level of unspoken communication that only men get, Owen handed Jackson a large mechanical object, otherwise called a saw.

"Yeah." Jackson took it from him, and continued to take out the built up irritation on Derek's deck.

⠀
—✩—
⠀

"I was thinking we could get chines food tonight." Aliya suggested to Jackson as she stopped next to him, where he was charting at the front desk.

She was oddly cheerful, despite the fact that her ex-fiancée was in the exact same building as her.
But, she had successfully avoided him for a full twenty four hours.

"You only want Chinese food every night because you like reading the fortune cookies." Jackson smirked, because every single time that had Chinese food, Aliya would open every single one of the ten fortune cookies they got (because the guy who serves them always puts in extra), then the couple would proceed to divide the fortunes up between them via drafting.

It was like fortune cookie basketball, even though there was no real sport involved, only the drafting part.

"You find fortune drafting fun, don't lie." Aliya accused with a smile, taking her own chart from the nurse behind the desk.

"Hey, come on Avery, let's go." Bailey ordered as she and April emerged from a set of double doors, ushering Jackson to follow, seeing as he was helping out with a skills lab.

"Actually," Jackson cleared his throat abruptly, turning to them. "I forgot, I have an appointment, so—"

"An appointment?" Bailey repeated, cutting him off before he could say anything else. She took a step towards him, eyes narrowed as his eyes darted left and right suspiciously, avoiding the attendings glare. "What appointment?"

It certainly caught Aliya's attention, seeing as she never heard of him having any so called appointment. "You didn't tell me about an appointment?"

"Hm?" Jackson murmured, shifting on the balls of his feet. "Uh— with Mayfield, in 22."

Then, the three women's face dropped, and Aliya flushed the deepest shade of red someone's cheeks could ever go.

The brunette stared at Jackson, her eyes dropping down—

Cause, now Bailey and April were looking at her as if she had single handles cause this. Whatever this was.

"Oh, okay." April stuttered out, eyes darting between Bailey and Aliya, not even looking at Jackson. "Um— that— sure. Yeah, that's fine. Right, Dr. Bailey?"

"Some things, Avery," Bailey curled her nose in disgust. "I just don't need to know."

And, with one final sympathetic look towards Aliya, Bailey descended down the corridor with April in tow.

"Jackson!" Aliya hissed, using a he back of her palm to swat his forearm. "Why didn't you tell me you have a— Because I'm pretty sure it works just fine down there!"

"Huh? What?" Jackson whispered back, equally as confused as she was seeing as he didn't in fact know what Mayfield in 22 actually meant.

"Mayfield. 22."

"Yeah—" Jackson straightened, pointing behind him as he gathered his charts up into his arms. "I gotta go to that."

"You just told Bailey you have an erectile dysfunction!" Aliya snapped, her voice hushed at the sheer embarrassment of it all. "I'm pretty sure you don't have a damn erectile dysfunction!"

Jackson's heart hammered in his chest, though he shook his head, because surely not? "What? No I didn't—"

"You most certainly did!" Aliya quickly retorted, her arms crossed around her chest.

And, that was the moment Jackson well and truly wished the ground could swallow him up entirely, so he could be well and truly put out of his misery.

He gasped, eyes growing wide as the realisation hit him like a tidal wave.

"I just told Bailey I had an erectile dysfunction!"

His chart fell from his hands, landing with a crash on the floor.

Yeah, and Aliya was labelled the dramatic one.
⠀
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( notes! )

and they nicknamed her THE BOLTER!!!!!!

meet elijah beck!!! aka aliya's ex-fiancé!!!

i was going to write an elijah & aliya flashback chapter after this one but i recently wrote a trent & april flashback chapter, and to be honest i would rather just get into the main storyline rather than doing another flashback chapter, but if you'd like to see an elijah & aliya chapter, just let me know because i could definitely write one further into this act!!

also wp user aanatomy updating TWICE in one week????

( word count! — 10,000 )