Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or the their back stories in any way shape or form. Although life would be much more entertaining if I did. So, in short, don't sue me because all you will win is this story.

A/N: I now realize looking back that this may need a disclaimer of its own. It is not much fluff and deals with death/dying process. I hope to bring justice to those topics and not pain. Also, I have attempted to revamp this after a request, and I know it did look rather daunting to read.. so hopefully the paragraph breaks help out with that. Review me! I makes my whole day :)


It has been five years. Five years since she hauled everything into a ridiculously small trailer in the woods. Five years, since the defining moment in her life, her divorce. Five of the worst years of her life. She wishes more than anything the constant pain would stop. She remarried. She has the great looking husband who loves her more than anything. It isn't enough. It isn't what she wants.

She married Mark four years ago. She wanted to have a small wedding, or better yet to just elope. But he wouldn't have it. He had to show off. So she reluctantly threw on the white dress, the smile and said some vows she knew her heart would never mean. She wishes she didn't light up when he was around. She wishes she didn't see him with his new wife everywhere. But that is the part of being the chief she tells herself. Her sanity is the price. This is proven by the "happy pills" her darling husband recommended she try. They don't work, she knows why. She watches his surgeries because she loves to watch him to work, always has. She tells everyone it is because she is the boss and she has to make sure he is on the straight and narrow. She hopes they buy it, but it doesn't matter because she is the chief, they don't have a choice.

Four years ago she married Mark. Two years ago, by the grace of some god she has never known, she became pregnant. Her second abortion was about as fun as the first one. She rationalized by saying she didn't have time for kids. The truth is she doesn't want kids with him, never has. She didn't tell him this time; after all it didn't go over well the first time around. Three years ago they almost had a moment in the locker room, but she is the chief and they are both married. These days she is watching what has become her best friend battle an awful cancer. She feels bad, but secretly she wishes it was her with the disease. Her only desire in life is to disappear. Two years ago, they tried moving back to New York, but she was called back out to Seattle for this position. It has become her own personal hell. She questions everything, every feeling. She has no idea when she lost herself. Or maybe she knows the exact instant, either way it doesn't matter. She got everything she ever wanted for her life, except him, and her happiness can't be found anywhere. As she signs Addison Forbes Montgomery-Sloan to the endless stack of papers in front of her she decides being chief of Seattle Grace Hospital is significantly overrated.


It has been five years. Five years since her wedding. She can't believe it. So much has changed in such a short amount of time. She now truly understands what a 180 means. If someone would have pulled her aside and told her, Cristina Yang-Burke, that she would be a mother she would have laughed in their face and then probably slapped them. But here she was sitting in their apartment with their 3 year old son, and another baby on the way. She remembers her wedding vividly, so much so that it hurts. She didn't run, she thought she might have tried to make a break for it, but she didn't. She glided up the aisle, took his hand and smiled what may have been the first real smile of her life. She loved him, he got her in a way no else could understand. To others she was a hardcore surgery addict. Some things never change. She was still that person, but with a ridiculous amount of hormones. That was unfortunate for whoever her interns were but she couldn't care less.

Two years ago if someone would have pulled her aside and told her that she would be the most unhappy person she knew, she may have beat the shit out of them. But it was true. There she was sitting with their son, in their apartment, with their daughter on the way. She hated it, hated everything about her life. In the beginning it was fine; they had Spencer and hired a nanny. She went back to work, and loved every minute of life. Now she hates seeing her son, she hates everything he represents. He embodies his father. She is relatively sure that if the great state of Washington would allow late term abortion, she would do it in a heartbeat. She knows he would understand. But he isn't there to understand anything. After four years and 6 months of marriage her life effectively ended at 3:46 am on a Wednesday in late March. She blamed herself, there was no one else to blame. It was her crazy hormones that needed Thai food at two a.m. And it was his good nature to get his wife whatever she needed. It was her fault.

She thought at first that she might miscarry and go into pre-term labor, but their daughter seemed to be a stubborn as her mother. She dreads the day she will give birth, having to stare down at her last piece of him. She spends everyday with her son now, and hates how he asks where his father is all the time. She thinks that if she has to explain how daddy died in a car accident one more time that she may actually die herself. Most days she wishes she could disappear. She has nothing left except her children, and the constant aching reminder of how life used to be wonderful. She will never willingly set foot in that hospital again, and she hates him for it. He ruined her favorite thing. He ruined her.


It has been five years. Five long and torturous years. He can't understand what the hell he is still doing in this god forsaken city. Five years ago he was an intern. He meant nothing to anyone and he loved it. He didn't have any obligations other than his job. He, Alex Karev, defined what it meant to be truly alone. He disowned his family and moved a few states away. He had decided that after a horrible childhood he was going to do better. He would not be defined in terms of his past. Try as he may, he was dead wrong. He thinks about his family all the time. He misses his sister, and mother everyday of his life. He wants someone to be around, someone to talk to. Everyone has moved on without him. Sure they are all still around, except the late Preston Burke, but they aren't really there for him. If he thought about it for a second he would come to realize that they never were there for him anyway. But this was all his own fault.

He once had Izzie, for a short but glorious week. And since then, he had what became his boss, and various other hospital personnel. No one is the right one. He hates that she turned out to be right, he is nothing more than a mini-Sloan. Two years ago looking at the happy married Sloan he figured it might not be such a bad thing. But these days looking at a despondent, miserable Sloan he thinks that he should probably get a grip on his life. He never planned to fall in love with a patient. It was an unimaginable thing to do. He saw what happened with the whole Denny debacle, and wanted nothing to do with it. In the end, he lost her. He lost her by choice, because he thought it was the right thing to do.

Now he wants nothing more than to go back five years ago and give her a reason to stay. He loved her daughter more than the father ever could, and he constantly finds himself thinking of them during surgeries. He switched out of the vagina squad after she left. It was too painful, not that he would ever admit that to anyone. He now does plastics, his original plan and for all of the same reasons. Sometimes he thinks he should just disappear, Chief Sloan is the only one would notice, because it is her job to notice. He questions his entirely unprofessional behavior with her, and wonders how the hell she can still stand to be near him, when he can't stand himself. He can't remember a time when he had hope in the recent past, and decides it is time for a change. So next week he will move on to his new job in Chicago, but for now he downs beers at Joe's and debates on whether or not to tell anyone goodbye. He mostly hopes that someone will miss him, but he'd quickly settle for someone remembering him.


It has been five years. Five wretchedly boring years. She has thee kids, in five years. She should be anything but bored. The day that Dr. Montgomery-Sloan told them about the triplets she wanted to kill her husband and make it look like an accident. 3 years and 6 months ago she made, what she has deemed the worst mistake of her life thus far. No one knew, she looked happy enough on the outside. She made the right choice for her children, it was the only choice. Kids need two parents, she thought almost four years ago. From her own personal experience she knew they deserved that chance. He was nice, she could stand to live with him, for her children. 3 years and 10 months ago she was an aspiring second year resident with serious promise. Now she is a house wife wishing she had some sort of excuse to get out of the kitchen and go back to work.

The day she said "I do" is the day she now realizes that her life came to a crashing halt. She took the Dr. from the front of her name and replaced it with a Mrs., talk about regret. As a general policy she, Izzie Stevens, tries not regret anything. Not even that one drunken night with George. However, Isobel Walters regrets the entire last five years. She regrets her husband, her mundane everyday routine, and on bad days even her children. Her children, that tie her permanently to a man she has grown to hate. He isn't anything short of wonderful. He is a great father, a dedicated lawyer, and an amazing husband. But she doesn't love him. She wishes that she could, for the sake of her own daily sanity, but it is a lost cause. She had always planned on going back to work, after the kids were a little older. Her husband thinks differently. He wants Susie homemaker, and that isn't Izzie. She even hates baking now. Isobel is what he calls her, he says Izzie is immature. She misses the sound of her old name, the way her friends say it. She hasn't seen most of them in a few years due to the unrelenting schedule of having three children under the age of four.

She is bored with life. Her kiddos, she calls them, stopped being entertaining as soon as they were mobile and destroying everything. She wants to disappear and not look back. She voiced the opinion of divorce once but that was quickly squashed after he mentioned how easy it would be for him to get sole custody. He has friends in high places, she only wishes she had some in low places. So to feel better (or maybe worse, she isn't quite sure) she drives to the hospital and watches the action from the inside of her car. She misses her life, she craves the excitement and adrenaline that used to course through her body. But she is stuck. Stuck in her boring life, stuck in the hell she created. There is no one to blame but herself, which she does daily. And as she sits there and watches the ambulances she thinks of running inside and asking whoever the chief is if she can come back, but she knows the answer. She can't, she is stuck.