AN: The only things that are really different are the facts that Lexie and Meredith were, by no means, close, but they did, if fact, know each other before Lexie arrived at Seattle Grace for her internship. Meredith had stayed in semi-contact with her father over the years. And the biggie. Ellis and Thatcher had another child together, Logan Grey. Logan's 31 to Meredith's 34, Lexie's 25, and Molly's 23. Set after 'Disarm'.
Logan Grey played by Justin Hartley
Parker Mertuil played by Allison Mack
Savvy Mertuil played by Molly Burnett
Tavia Mertuil-Diaz played by Elizabeth Hendrickson
Aiden Diaz played by Channing Tatum
Bella Mertuil played by Shirley Maclaine
Chapter One
To say that they were a dysfunctional family wasn't only redundant. It was down right uninformed. They were hardly a family. The only things that connected Ellis Grey and her children together were genetic markers and classic good looks and an unrivaled surgical sense. A mother, that she was not born to be, but a surgeon? They didn't come more dedicated, ambitious, or brilliant than Ellis Grey.
Children only held her back, and she took every opportunity to remind hers of that little fact. Meredith rebelled with pink hair and gothic clothing and a nose ring that would have mortified her mother if she had bothered to pay attention. Logan wasn't the type to rebel. That would have required him to give a damn what the likes of Ellis Grey had thought about him, and he hadn't.
He just didn't give a damn. He was reckless and charming and nothing at all like his mother or his father. In fact, their step-mother Susan used to say that she thought that Logan had sprouted from the water. He was almost eleven when he told her that that made absolutely no sense and was entirely impossible. She replied that nothing was impossible and how did he know that the ocean wasn't his mother? After all, he was as dangerous and endless and bold as the Pacific herself, wasn't he?
Meredith had been a know-it-all 14 year old that didn't believe in anything or anyone, but she hadn't laughed. In fact, she smiled slightly. Not really enough to even warrant the title smile, but it was there at the right corner of her mouth with just a slight tick. She had never heard it put better.
Logan was like the ocean.
Over the years, every time he came and went from her life, she compared it to the rising tide or a hurricane or a tsunami, depending on the amount of havoc he reeked during his short intervals into her adult world. It helped when he left because he always left.
But the tide always came back.
Still water was dead. To have life in the ocean, you had to move. Logan had to move.
And Meredith … she needed roots. She couldn't write off Ellis the way that he had. Never mind the fact that she never was much of a mother. She just couldn't do it.
She was dark and twisty, but her brother was dark and twisty times 10.
And so he stayed gone and phone calls turned to emails that turned to sporadic post cards from the far corners of the earth - wherever Doctors Without Borders took him.
And she missed him. Sometimes so much she didn't think she would be able to breathe, but she did. She always did. For the first twenty years of her life, Logan was constant. The only constant, and him being gone so long somehow made her life seem surreal sometimes. Like if he wasn't in it, it was just a twisted daydream that refused to end.
But she had Derek and Cristina and Alex now. She did have Izzie and George, but they've gone. Izzie ran away and George was in the ground. Both lost to her. She and Lexie had never been closer.
She wasn't alone, but somehow she felt that way. No one else could understand what it was like to grow up with Ellis Grey. No one except Logan.
She shook her head, straw-colored bangs whispering over her cheeks and cobalt eyes filled with a melancholy nostalgia. Well, wherever he was… Happy birthday, Logan.
She remembered, and she knew Lexie did, too. Somewhere with her young husband and baby, Meredith also knew Molly remembered. His sisters remembered even if no one else did.
And the sad part was… he had no one else to remember. No family, not a lot of friends. Typical Grey behavior, she mused, almost chuckling. Typical Grey behavior with no McDreamy to be his knight in shining whatever.
She felt sorrier for him over that than anything else.
Because as dark and twisty as she would always obviously be… she had let it go and she had lived her own life without the decisions of Thatcher and Ellis and Richard hanging over her head every damn day of her life.
Logan never did. He was angry and lost, and he ran. He was a runner. A damn good one, too. Even his sisters didn't know where he lay his head down at night these days.
And she missed him, dammit. Swallowing, she shook it off, looking back down at the chart in her shaking hands. She could feel Derek's eyes on her from across the nurse's station, but she couldn't be whole just now. She couldn't let him look at her and fix her. It would feel like a betrayal to Logan to do so.
"Mere?" Lexie hesitantly asked, coming up on her sister, almost wary. She usually was when it came to possibly discussing their past. The present? Perfectly fine. The future? Even better.
But the past? She and Meredith just weren't there yet. Maybe they would never be. She didn't know.
She hoped.
Meredith felt closer to Lexie now than she ever had when they were children because she could see now that Lexie was, in her own way, just as dark and twisty as she and Logan were. Didn't make her crazy though. Made her a Grey.
"Yeah?"
"Um, have you, um, hear- well, have you -"
"Spit it out, Little Grey," Mark gently chided, sidling up to the two Grey sisters - Little and Big, respectively - and handing the charge nurse back the chart to 1343 aka Big Bird aka his 9:00 nose job tomorrow morning.
She shot him a quick glance before refocusing on her older sister. "I need to get in touch with Logan."
Meredith's shoulder's straightened. "Why?"
"He's my brother. It's his birthday. Isn't that enough?"
"Lexie -" Meredith warned, wanting the truth. Lexie's eyes shifted to the floor before locking on Meredith's.
"Parker's here."
"Here, as in Seattle, here?"
"No, here, as in the hospital, here."
Meredith swallowed, almost audibly. Her too wide, all-knowing blue eyes narrowed as she thought of the young blond who had once been the center of Logan's world. Why they broke up… she didn't know. Didn't care really. All she knew was that Logan had been devastated by the sudden loss, and Meredith had hated seeing him to lost to his emotions, so heartbroken.
"Why? Is she looking for Logan?" Meredith questioned. Lexie shook her head.
"No, she's sick. She told me she doesn't want to see him."
"Then why are we getting involved in this at all? She'll slaughter you if she finds out you were trying to tell Logan she's in the hospital. Seriously. Slaughter. Like a pig." Meredith told her, completely deadpan which was verbatim for her. "Seriously."
Lexie glanced down at her tennis shoes, bottom lip caught between her teeth as she debated with herself on what the truly right thing was to do and to whom her loyalties truly lay.
And every time the answer came up the same: Logan.
He was her brother, and to her, he was who mattered. And she knew that no matter what had happened between them that Logan would want to be there for Parker. Especially in this.
"She's dying, Mer. She's more than likely never leaving this hospital again, and if we don't call him right damn now, he will never look either one of us in the eye ever again." Lexie swallowed. "He will hate us. More then than he ever has and I can't face that."
"Lexie -"
"He's our brother. He's who matters."
"Lex-"
"He's our brother, dammit."
"Fine. Fine." She reached in the pocket of her lab coat, pulled out her phone, and dialed. "Pia, it's Meredith. I'm looking for my degenerative brother… He is? …. Thanks."
She hung up the phone and look speculatively at Lexie, thoughts stampeding through her head on what she should truly do.
"Well?" Lexie asked.
"He's in Pakistan. Kashmir, actually." Meredith didn't say more. She didn't need to.
Mark, who the two had forgotten was even present, could see that Lexie knew exactly what that meant. Whatever that was.
"Since when is he climbing again?"
"I don't know, Lexie. I don't know. She said he was working with Red Cross in Ethiopia until climbing season started and he's been at base camp on K2 ever since."
"Red Cross? Last we spoke he was with Doctors Without Borders." Lexie said, disgruntled, incredulous, disbelieving. Meredith didn't understand why. It was typical Logan.
He was like the ocean. He went everywhere, touched every corner of the earth, crashed against land, nicking and weathering and tearing and caressing sand from Antarctica to the North Pole, from the shores of China to the cliffs of Ireland.
He was everywhere. He was everything.
Meredith didn't understand why she couldn't see that. Logan was like the ocean, and apparently now he scaled mountains.
And Mark just didn't understand… period.
He had been standing, eavesdropping he supposed. Not that he gave a damn.
Whether they were together or not, in his mind, everything to do with Lexie was his business. And right now, they were together and he loved her and she loved him.
And he was nosy. Seriously, seriously nosy.
"Brother? Wait, I didn't know you had a brother."
Lexie rolled her eyes. "If I ever needed proof that men don't listen, there it is."
Meredith would've laughed or at least smiled, but all she could muster was a quick quirk of the left corner of her lips. Her cool blue eyes met sharp mocha ones as they exited the elevator, chiseled eyebrow lifted and lips pursed in response to spotting Meredith and Lexie.
Tavia, Parker's sister and the biggest bitch Meredith had ever had the pleasure of knowing. Logan had thought it was hilarious that Lexie couldn't even form complete sentences around her.
Lexie hadn't seen the humor in it, and now neither did Meredith, because she was here and Parker was here and Logan wasn't. She was so damn mad at him for being gone while all his old baggage landed on her doorstep for her to clean up. It would be a damn shame if it wasn't so typically Logan. Even if it wasn't his fault.
"Tavia's here."
"T-t-tavia?" Lexie turned and Mark's eyebrows narrowed and Meredith chuckled. The petite brunette made right for them, her hair meticulously done and her designer shoes clicking against the tiled floors. She was a beautiful woman, ferocious and precise, but Meredith could see the hopelessness and the desperation lurking in her eyes, and she wondered how long that Parker had been sick and she wondered how in hell they were supposed to tell Logan that he was going to have to live in a world where she didn't.
"Meredith. Lexie." She glanced down at her clasped hands before glancing back up at the two sisters. "Parker's really sick."
Lexie nodded slightly, sympathy written all over her face. Meredith just looked at her and felt for her.
"She's really, really sick, and she won't admit it. In fact, she's forbidden us, but… she needs Logan."
"We called Pia. He's in Kashmir."
"K2?" Tavia asked, incredulous. "Dammit, Logan."
"She said she would have Taj call me back. He'll be flying into base camp tomorrow. I'll brief him and he'll brief Logan. He'll come."
"Will he? After everything… will he?"
"She's the love of his life. He'll come."
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