Chapter 1: Beginnings
"The carousel never stops turning. You can't get off."
Where had she heard that before? It kept bouncing of the walls of her mind and she couldn't quite place it and if there was anything Maggie hated, it was a puzzle she couldn't solve. She definitely didn't read it somewhere, so where did it come from? Who said it? Mum, dad, Amelia, Richard, Mer...it came to her. Meredith. Of course. She remembered how Mer used to say it, just after she came back with Ellis on those quiet nights when they were family but still strangers who hadn't learned to live in the silence together and Maggie wished Amelia was there because there was barely any silence with Amelia. Amelia always said something, even the wrong thing and Maggie never could tell whether Meredith wanted her to speak or not, but then Mer would break the silence. "The carousel never stops turning. You can't get off." Meredith hadn't said it in a long time, not since before Riggs and Maggie wondered why it came back to her now.
Maybe she should text it to him like some ominous warning, and it could bounce in his head too and they could both be miserable. It almost made her laugh, the thought of him reading those words his face confused and he could add that to his list of whats and whys and how's. How appropriate the phrase was of their relationship too, of them.
He would probably send it to Kate too, and add it to the list of Things He Talked About With Kate. To be fair though, it wasn't a very long list. Judging from the texts, his conversations with Kate mainly focused around his crisis, his divorce, his grief and worse of all her. Why on earth did Jackson Avery feel the need to discuss his girlfriend with some random woman? Did he not get how inappropriate it was? It was nothing too deep that he had told Kate at least. She had seen that Kate had asked about her, what she was like, what she did and Maggie's reaction to Jackson coming back. Jackson could play dumb as much as he wanted but she was not fooled. Kate had a bad habit of sending those annoying heart emoji's and Jackson had a bad habit of ignoring them altogether. Was he that desperate to open up to somebody that he would ignore the signs of a huge crush? She wasn't even being subtle, Maggie had seen a couple of "Hi hand some's" thrown in. And all he would say back was lol before following up with some long deep question. No, what had even thrown her off more was the revelation that he was talking to April.
She sighed. The April conversation. They had never really had it and at some point she had thought they never had too. She'd thought enough time had passed since their divorce for that to not affect this. Honestly, she didn't know too much about Jackson and April's relationship. When she arrived at Grey-Sloan, they had been married. Maybe that was why she had been so surprised when April told her about Jackson's feelings for her. It wasn't that she didn't think it was possible. It was just that she had never thought to look at Jackson like that. Sure he was attractive and smart and driven and kind, she wasn't blind. But he had been married when they met, and then he had a newborn child so she had put him in a box marked unavailable and it wasn't until April pointed it out that she realized that it didn't matter because feelings didn't care about hypothetical boxes. And now whatever happened between April and Jackson was completely relevant to Maggie, because Jackson Avery was hurting and that hurt her, and she couldn't ignore it. This carousel ride was never-ending.
Damn it she should have seen it coming. He was so out of it, the way he was talking the night of the accident with Cece and Nisha, about trusting it and being embarrassed and she didn't think he entirely knew what he was talking about, she didn't either. And then the night he told her he loved her, he had been so confused, so torn, so upset about Nisha, but then she had seen it in his eyes, the clarity, the assuredness when he said it and so she had thought that he was going to be fine. Jesus, he had been through so much. And then came the Harper Avery stuff, then the April almost dying stuff and then the accident coming with the guilt of Nisha dying. This was all so much and they were still new and she wished she could do something, anything, but then if he wanted her to he wouldn't have left with a voicemail behind. How did they even get here?
She had thought they were fine. Sure he had left and it had hurt but he had come back. And then today had happened and now she was here and Meredith and Amelia weren't, and she could hear the kids laughing upstairs and she was so lonely.
The tub of ice-cream was empty and the bottle of wine was half empty. He was probably drinking now; they had that in common at least. He was always drinking whisky, and she had always been a tequila girl, just like Meredith, but they always drunk so much wine together, like last night. It had been the first night they had been together since he came back one week ago. It wasn't that she hadn't wanted to get together sooner, but she couldn't stop thinking about what Cece had said to her. "What are your big questions?" Cece was right of course. And so she had spent five consecutive nights in the lab, working on her hearts. It made her so happy to be so focused, so grounded in the science she had known and loved for so long. She had missed this high of being so immersed in something, her mind lived for it. She was getting closer and closer to perfecting the science of her rechargeable hearts, and it wasn't until he had come in, kissing her goodnight that she realized how much she had missed the smell of him. "Dinner?" He'd smiled that confident inscrutable smile of his but she had seen how his eyes lit up and suddenly she couldn't wait to get out of the lab.
Dinner had been great. Not much eating, or even talking, just kisses, tongues, skin. His hands were everywhere, on her face, neck, breasts, running down her back, pulling down her panties, grabbing her ass, spreading her legs for him to drive in, lifting her body as he kept thrusting, flipping her on her stomach, steadying her on her knees, firm on her hips holding her in place as she moaned into the mattress, gripping her so tight she was sure there would be marks, hard on her back as she pushed back against him, pulling her against his chest as they both came, arms bunching, muscles flexing, pushing her hair to the side so he could kiss her neck, holding her close as their breaths steadied, one hand interlaced with hers, the other tickling, thumb rubbing against her lower stomach. She loved it when they were like this. She had missed this. She loved going to sleep in his arms and waking up to the feel of him all around her. Always had, from the very first night, laying there first on his couch then in his massive bed, so much space but they had gone to sleep legs intertwined, face in his neck breathing him in. She had never liked spooning. Or cuddling. Usually after sex she couldn't wait for the guy to leave and if he insisted on sleeping she would get out of bed, shower and then creep back in. It had taken her so long to even learn to fall asleep with another person in the bed. But with Jackson? She could sleep like this forever. It had shocked her given how weird it had felt with Dean, then Ethan, then Deluca, then Clive. The she had realized it wasn't her, it was them. Or maybe it wasn't them, it was him.
She had thought everything was ok, you know? Yes he had gone without a word, but he had come back and apologized. And then he had reminded her last night just how much he missed her and they were fine. They had moved on. They were laughing and kissing and she was so happy to see him happy and things had been perfect. Until there was a text, and glass in her foot and again, the carousel sucked.
Jesus Christ she couldn't believe this was happening. She should have known better. She had known better. This had terrified her. It had thrown her when April pointed out that she and Jackson had feelings for each other. This was Jackson. They were friends and they had something good going and she was perfectly fine ignoring all the signs, how he looked at her, how good it felt to be around him, how the sought each other out for everything, how he was always just there, always around her, sometimes more than Meredith and Amelia. She was not going to read into anything, not after Deluca, not after the Riggs humiliation. No, she and Jackson had something good, precious even, and she had been happy to continue like that until April opened her big mouth and said it. And then everything changed once those words had been spoken out loud, it was like the air changed and she desperately wanted things to stay the same. But Jackson was still staring, being around, being everything she needed and she needed him to stop so they could go back to familiar ground. So she had told him what April said and tried to laugh it off, except he wasn't laughing, he was staring more, and grabbing her hand in a helicopter and telling her about his dad. And then he was asking her to drinks, and he was trying to sound casual, but they both knew there was nothing casual about this, not after he'd sat there in his towel, half naked, and told her that they could do anything they wanted with each other. So she had been terrified to give in, and so she'd gone with Clive but he'd smiled that smile, confident, knowing, and she'd tried her best with Clive and if he wasn't a cheating son of a bitch, they'd probably still be together. So really, it was Clive's fault.
None of this mattered, of course. She could blame everyone she wanted, Jackson, Richard and Catherine for not stopping them, even Ellis but the only person she had to blame was herself. Because when he came back knocking on her door after that awful game night, putting his hands on her neck and waist, voice so low he was almost whispering, she had understood that she was so afraid of this because of how much she wanted it. He'd kissed her and it had set her blood on fire. They'd kissed and she had looked into his beautiful eyes and she had seen how much he wanted this too.
Had she really read everything so wrong? Maybe that was it, she had seen what she wanted to see. But she had believed Jackson Avery, every kiss, every touch, every word he said. But then came the disappearing act, the voicemail left behind, the stupid pics of trees, the texting with other women. None of these had hurt as much as those words though. "You want to know the reason I don't tell you things? Because you don't talk to me. I never know a damn thing you're feeling. I find it easier to open up to people who open up to me."
Hearing that had hurt. It was unnerving. She felt exposed and vulnerable. It made her want to jump out of her skin and flee for the hills. He had read her like a book. She didn't know what was worse, him bringing it up as a counterargument when he had clearly done something wrong or the knowledge that he could see some parts of herself that she wasn't sure she wanted him to see. How quickly he picked up on that. Her seeming inability to connect. Her less than stellar relationship skills. The huge experience gap between them. And how all these things had worked against them. God it was mortifying. No matter how wrong he was though, he was also right. He had called her out and they air had become heavy and all of a sudden things were intense. There they were seated at his dining table and he was saying these things and asking her to open up and she didn't know what to do. Nobody had ever said these things to her. They just figured that she was too weird, too young, too smart, too aware and moved on along. Dean had been content with the surface level relationship they had. He would have married her, even if she slept on the couch every night like she had for the two tears they had been together. Ethan had been little more than great sex, even after six months. And Deluca had turned out to be a complete disappointment. Nobody had ever asked her to give more of herself. And there he was asking her to give things she didn't know that she could. So she had tried and told him her reasons, and he had told her what he told that Kate. It was entirely too much.
Honestly, maybe she shouldn't have asked. Maybe it was a good thing that he was talking to April and Kate. This was why people had best friends and lovers. Look at Meredith and Alex. Bailey and Webber. You told your best friend your deepest darkest secrets, things you couldn't possibly tell your lover. Like how conflicted you felt that you suddenly found the faith that would have kept your family together, but you had fallen in love with someone else. She hadn't wanted to hear that, ever. She didn't want to be part of his reasons for not going back. How did he think that had felt? To know that had they not fallen in love and everything else had stayed the same, his life might be completely different now? What was she supposed to do with that? Were they strong enough for this? Where did they go from here?