Title: We won't be leaving by the same road that we came by
A/N: Title taken from Keane, My Shadow
At a red light, she starts thinking about specificity. How she ran tests at med school. The false positives were more likely in their screenings, and predictably, she always fell for those. But the false negatives were what worried her the most. Just imagine she sent a seriously ill person home as healthy, taking away all their chances at fighting. Possibly imposing a death sentence. It was always a relief to remind herself of the odds of that happening.
But then, all predictability left her life on the day Mom died, of course. Just what are the odds that it was to be, of all people, her patient's husband, whose desperate entreaties upset her so much in the first place. This should have told her something. But she let him down. She didn't get him the help he would have needed.
She thinks about how she cried that night, and how Alex left the room and went to sleep in her bed. She couldn't tell him what was up with her, specifically, could she? How likely, for god's sake, could it ever be that Mark had shown up just in time to add an entirely unexpected dose of something entirely undisclosable to an already overwhelming mix of commiseration and guilt? What made her shake her head at Alex's inquiry and shut him out, lest she talk too much.
Type II error? Whatever. She does wrong every day.
She is trying to make up for it, she is. First step, sit by Alex's bed for days on end, praying for him to regain consciousness. Not thinking much at all. Just all the eventualities. The likelihoods. The wrongdoings she needs to atone for. Like, she needs to slow down right now, for she's well beyond speed limit. Again. She didn't do a lot of thinking before, and it's not much more lucid now.
Just imagine Mrs Clark had been a false positive.
Just imagine it would have been Mark that lay in the elevator to be found by her and… if not Alex, maybe nobody else at all. It would have been her fault.
It is her fault. She sees what she has done. Thank god Alex came around finally, exactly 57 hours after they sent him away in the ambulance. 4.5 hours ago. She is so grateful for that. And she's grateful that he tried to hide the disappointment as he realized that it was all along, only Lexie. She is sorry about that, too. She's never enough. But he is getting better. Her prayers have been heard. If they weren't, she wouldn't be driving home now, of course. She is to blame for all of this, but she is not going to let him down again. She won't shut him out again. She's going to be back first thing tomorrow, for she is … reliable. She is.
It's things like this that make her believe that she managed to come out of this with her sanity intact. God knows that she tried her best to remain rational.
She's just having difficulties with defining things at the moment. How can she specify elusive concepts like wishing and hoping? How can people expect an answer to that?
She regrets things. A lot of things. All of the time.
She should not have been so eager to bring Gary Clark the good news. She should not have tried to distance herself, once the news turned bad. She should have cared more. Maybe that was what he was trying to tell her. And how can she ever care even more, and yet do her job, be a surgeon? Cut people? Cause pain? In order to save lives?
But it wasn't enough. For Gary Clark, it wasn't enough. And it wasn't enough to protect all these people from Gary Clark's revenge on her.
And of course he shot her boyfriend, by sheer instinct. Or plan of the universe. She wonders whether Mark would have been shot instead, if she had given him an answer. Yes. No.
If it had been her and Alex that would have found Mark, he would be dead now. She still wouldn't have known what to do. And Karev, he would certainly have dared to cut, but he's not that much better than her really, is he. Mark would be dead. She needs to turn right at the next light. And clear her dry throat.
He saved Alex's life. As hard as she tried to help, she failed big time. He alone saved Alex Karev. She should thank him. She will say a thank you on behalf of Alex, as well. She's sure Alex won't mind.
And she should apologize. For it is her fault, really, that the three of them got stuck together in maddening awkwardness. It was so predictable. Gary Clark meant to shoot her. And predictably, Mark's protective instinct went wild, getting much too close, perfectly predictably, and then something predictable made her say things. Which she regrets.
If only she would have been shot in the first place. Would have saved so many people. That's everything she wants, save lives. Would have kept Alex and Mark safe. Maybe even Derek.
She is so sorry. She's fighting back tears as she is waiting for another traffic light to turn green.
It doesn't help that to be honest, she is not only sorry, but also mad at all of them. And mortified about that.
She should not feel mad at Alex that he called for Izzie Stevens. She knew it, of course. She's not dumb. Plus, she only got her just deserts. He probably heard what she said just fine. And she feels guilty now that she has been sleeping with him. It wasn't okay to take advantage of him when he still loves his wife. And they aren't divorced yet, are they? Did he ever sign these damn papers that he wouldn't even have mentioned to her in the first place?
And, oh, she's still fucking mad at Mark, too, for refusing to sign this damn attending approval straight away, as he should have. And a million other things. He should just leave her alone with his big mouth and totally bewildering challenge, dragging it out for six days now and insisting and cornering her at every opportunity. He should remember that he is the one that couldn't look at her, just when she was about to apologize and try to go on record with what she was really feeling. Or thought so. Back then. She can't even think about it now. Thank god she managed to get rid of that frightening feeling along the way.
Fuck, he certainly got what he deserved when she said things she had not seen coming herself.
She's a bad person. He did not deserve that. He saved Alex. And if she recalls correctly, he was the one who got her through all that panic right to Alex's bedside. He must have been. She remembers an odd feeling of safety, and if she thinks about it now, it does seem as if there had been handholding. However that came about. Maybe she was too humiliated to notice once she was thrown out of that ambulance.
Old habits die hard. She still falls into him blindly. She would trust him with her life anytime. Alex's life. Everyone else's, too. She should not have abandoned him like that in Presbyterian. Pretty ungrateful, wasn't she? After he had saved Alex, from the gunshot wound that was all her fault in the first place.
Why did she just park her car? This is not home. Anymore. She does not know anything anymore. She feels very tired suddenly, and allows her head to sink down on the steering wheel and her eyes to close for a minute. She should not be driving in a daze like that anyway.
She thinks about Mark Sloan. How he has always confused her. Amazed. At times, she could not quite grasp the enormity of surprise he had in store for her. And she likes surprises, really, she does. But she likes them the most when they don't overrule every plan she has ever had.
It kind of says it all that through all of this and leading to right now, the pull he exerts on her still confuses her indefinitely. He made her surprise herself, time and again. Act irrational as if it's in her nature.
If she is reasonable, indeed, there is nothing that she should do less than enter this building. But on the other hand, she is going to have to face him anyway. She's due back for work on Monday. She could do it now. On her own terms. She could be okay with that.
Still, inside, it takes a while to become aware of the fact that she keeps staring at the elevator without calling it. In the end, she just takes the stairs. Because she is a coward like that. And her feet seem to know her destination of their own accord. She touches the blue wood with her fingertips, softly, almost not at all.
This didn't work once before. Though she did not know this then. She remembers the moment when she brought her toothbrush and panties. She surprised herself with that, too. She's never been good at admitting she was wrong. And he handled it well, at the time. She felt … it felt good. That happy smile just, beyond her grasp, really. Too good to be true.
And she forgets why she is here at all.
He looks at her with big incredulous eyes, and she makes the most of his surprise by swiftly entering and placing herself in the middle of the room. This feels familiar.
The look on his face does not. He shouldn't look as if bracing to meet his death sentence calmly.
And why is she here again? She does not remember a purpose.
She remembers pictures. There are many pictures of Mark. Cutting Alex while she was holding him down, gagging him. Before, dragging her along in a swirl of motion and fear, pulling her to the floor. Before, suturing her finger. Before, tying her up, blindfolding –
And words spill out, "You know, that time after the surprise party?" And as soon as the words are out, she means them, somehow. Although she can't look at him. "Could you please do it again?"
"Lex," he says softly. She should probably look at him, for he's stalling.
Fine, she will strip. She is not sure it is enough, but this has worked before. Fuck, he doesn't do all the right things, too. There goes her shirt, but the clasp of her bra is offering some resistance. "Please, Mark. Let's do it."
"Lexie." He sighs and turns away. "That game was about trust and surprise. This is not why you are here." She feels her face heat up with shame at the dejectedness in his voice.
And of course he is right. She doesn't know what made her say that. Give it all up to him. Utter abandon. Oh, she gets why. As the memory envelops her, though, there is something else she wasn't aware of half a minute ago. Maybe he was, then. If he meant what he said. The hot blush spreads to her neck. What was she thinking.
Of course, she has no right to lose herself in Mark's unrivaled skills. Serves her right to be rejected. She needs to be punished, that's for sure. And he, Mark… he's… he's got nothing to do with things like that.
Fine, she needs to do penance, as good as she can. A good start, obviously, would be the explanation she still owes him. Some kind of answer. She really wants to give him what he wants, so he can move on. Forgive her. Forgive herself.
If only she could return to that point in time when everything was going according to plan. When she still had a heart. Maybe she could even have said it back then. She should have.
"Mark, I…." She tries. She does. "I, I didn't mean… I don't… " She looks at him, and he's staring back. Try harder. "I mean to say that, I… what I said to him was … I, I can't…" She does not finish, because she honestly does not know what she can and cannot say anymore.
She is not enough. She has never been. She looks at the floor and wishes the ground would open up and swallow her. Predictably, tears well up in her eyes, and she tries and blinks them back furtively.
He notices, and with one swift move, he is close. "I know."
And it must have been the way his arms cradle her, or the way his scent urges her lungs to inhale greedily past that choking lump in her throat, or she doesn't know why –
she just gives in to the hole in her chest. And almost stops being, with all of her fears and regrets ripping her open, spilling her pain all over.
And she's on her knees, as she should.
She remembers a time like this, a linoleum floor, and it makes her cry even harder. She can't even say why, because he is here.
He is alive. She is alive.
And she's crying herself out into his embrace until there's nothing left.
And the surprising thing is, that the black hole in her chest begins to feel a bit lighter eventually. Or rather, a semblance of sensitivity returns, when the nerves in her skin start reconnecting to her brain. When her skin starts tingling from the touch of his breath.
Eventually, it's plain inescapable to turn in his arms. Look at his eyes. Watch him gaze back, as if… Look at his mouth. Which looks very… very… Damn it all. She's on fire the very second his hold on her tightens in all the right places. And she remembers everything irresistible about him when he's kissing her back as if she's all he ever wanted. How could she ever not want him?
How could he ever kiss her like that, and not mean what he said last week? Though one thing's certain, she certainly does not deserve this.
And then he proves her both wrong and right, as he abruptly skids away from her. "No, Lexie. Stop." His arms fall limply to his sides, and she's leaning against nothingness. She has to wrap her own arms around herself to keep from falling apart all over again. Bite her throbbing lip to confine the sob within. Grab her damn shirt already.
A million miles away, he addresses the floor. "You know where this is going, and you're not… I won't …" He swallows, and then his voice returns far angrier than she is prepared for. "You will feel sorry about this tomorrow. And I won't be that guy." He looks up at her, and she wishes she were dumb and blind, anything but able to realize that he is on the verge of tears himself when he adds, "I love you." As if this explains everything.
And in a way, she even understands. She didn't get that before. He's not as invulnerable as she thought. And not as unforgiving. Make that another surprise.
And he is right. She needs to go slow on this. Leave as fast as possible. For in all honesty, the feeling that has just been uncovered still scares the hell out of her.
And she's probably in shock. Maybe it's good that she has a lot of time to slowly get used to the alarm signals that echo around her body, while she's fleeing down the stairs, to the car and on to the roads, away from this.
As if she could.
She forgot to thank him. Alex forgot. Mark forgot. So foreseeable, really.
And while she's staring at another stop light, she wonders whether she belongs into the category of false positives or rather false negatives when she just doesn't love anybody at all. When she can't forget. When she can't forgive so easily. Herself. Him.
For all his talk about love and husbands, he never … She never … They never discussed it, period. Okay, he did bring up marriage. But he was joking then. Whim of the moment. And then George – it all got brushed aside in the aftermath. Though, she did move in with him. Out of this house. Her sister's home. Home, finally.
She moved out. In. After she had dared to deduce from Callie's words that he could have possibly only been half joking. Of course she found out later that she was credulous in making assumptions on his feelings. She cannot read his mind. And she wouldn't have to, because he lets people know when he likes them, right? Life's too short? Remember how she had to fight in order to get him to acknowledge their relationship in the first place? How he always only complies when she withholds sex? She just can't rely on him. And she better get that into her head for real, instead of falling into his arms every chance she gets.
She will never know how close he may have been to falling in love with her before that fateful day when Sloan Riley arrived. They were at the liking stage for all she knows. Sexy part of things, as Arizona put it. Miraculous. Breathtakingly stunning. So good, in all honesty, that there's just no getting over him. Her, that's another story, Cristina's right.
They were still getting used to living together, back then, doing questionably sexy things like shared laundry. She was still feeling somewhat uneasy to remove her makeup and apply overnight skin care, before going to bed. In the apartment that he still considered his not theirs. She still uses the same product. She stares at her puffy-eyed reflection in the mirror and wonders what he sees in her today. Why he said it.
Fact is, he chose a girl that he had less often talked to than she had, over her. Or rather, he chose his sudden idée fixe of wanting children. Not with her, mind you. That did not even occur to him. As if she had ruled out having children of her own. As if it would be too much to ask, to wait for her. That's what he does, moving on and on, maybe with her, maybe without her. Moving on with his plans, all the time.
Guess what, Dr Sloan. Fuck that. She has plans of her own. A very sensible, perfectly legitimate ten year scope. She is going to be super awesome, just like you, one day. She'll be a fantastic surgeon, and he'll have to acknowledge her one day. And by 2019, when she will have established her practice, she'll be in a perfect age for thinking about a family, too. It's basic demography 101. For someone like her, having a baby is not something one does on a whim.
A sense of control is just what she needs right now, and so she grabs some extra blankets and sheets from Meredith's wall closet and meticulously sets up a bed on the couch in the spare guest room, where she has never slept before. And never slept with anyone in. She can care for herself.
And when the right time arrives, she will invest some good and hard thinking into who is going to be her children's father. It would be her fault if she just drifted, acting on impulse. It should be a plan. More than sexy.
And look at what he did. He went and slept with Addison the first chance he got, more than once, of course, and then he went and screwed everyone else who would consent. All the while looking down on her as if she's a whore, for being with Alex. He couldn't even stand to be in the same elevator for fifteen seconds. It doesn't get to less love than that. And it hurt. She wraps the blanket more tightly around herself. His arms did a much better job. She missed his arms so badly.
The hurt. If only she could forget. Realizing that she was a good way beyond the liking stage hurt so badly. Wanting him back hurt so badly she felt it in her veins for weeks. Months. Didn't help that she had to keep it a secret, because he kept telling all the world in no uncertain terms that she never meant anything to him at all.
Luckily, Alex was willing to help her forget. Luckily, Meredith was willing to not blow her cover that day when she got almost caught. And she finally forgot, for real. Okay. She was about to forget, finally. She would have tried to move on with Alex, for real, because she had begun to believe that she meant something to him, and she'd learn to feel something real for him too, one day.
Predictable as it was, she still didn't see it coming. Serves her right, to not get chosen for the second time, in all public, at least, the relevant public for this particular humiliation. It hurt. But she also hurt for Alex. It's not right, what they are doing, it will only keep hurting.
And Mark, he's all about hurt, too. Count on him to make any recovery impossible. What kind of choice did he offer her last week, really? He is a walking, talking provocation. Still in love. In a husband kind of way. Commonly understood as a forever kind of way. However it was meant in a Sloan kind of way. She won't fall for it. It was just a clever comeback for sure. Definitely.
And how often has she now recapitulated these exact same thoughts about this un-fucking-believable encounter? A thousand times? She's still in the dark. How can she ever know? What the hell does that mean, still? What is the likelihood of switching from a subzero elevator ride to forever, and meaning it?
And there he was, talking as if all which happened, and all that never happened, between the two of them was just in her imagination, and it was somehow Lexie who was all about not loving him anymore in the first place, not the other way around.
And there he was, blowing her away with his dizzying open-mouth kissing… She feels pretty ashamed that she still craves him, in a decidedly sexual way. There's no denying it. Maybe she's really a whore. And he was gentle, that's what he was really. He gently held her all through her embarrassing breakdown. Embarrassed, she was, about what she demanded. And she felt… if she didn't know better, she thinks he really seemed to kind of treat her with a loving sort of care today… and then he sent her away, as if he is the one that gets to decide what she is feeling.
She is so angry all of a sudden that she has to hit something. Even if it's just her pillow. Which just doesn't work.
If she had any sense left after all that happened, she would be through with him once and for all. At long last. She has given up on trying to understand him a long time ago, she has.
And what is the likelihood that this scary feeling she remembers from way back, would even qualify as love? In a commonly understood sense?
It's right here in this bed with her. It's back, that feeling which got lost in the moment when he shamed her. It's inappropriate. Inexplicable. Insane. It's exactly like that cursed kissing. She feels slightly sick at the thought, and out of breath, and this high blood pressure makes her sweat. Her body should not react like this. That's not what love is about. She is a doctor, for god's sake. And she's bright, and has proper common sense. She does not do lovesick. She does not do madly in love with Mark Sloan. Of all people!
She meant to hit her pillow again, but missed. Her knuckles burn sharply from the contact with the armrest, and she presses them against her lips on instinct. The physical pain should block out everything else, if she concentrates hard enough. Then, she wipes at the tears.
And would it be a type II or a type I error? If she would just own up, admit that it is over, for real?
Gary Clark is dead. His wife is dead. Vivian is dead. Charles is dead. Reed, too. Dr Jackson, and Mr Keegan, and Mr Heart, and Mr Adams are dead. And Derek and Alex, thank god, they survived. Close call -
and there it is.
It suddenly occurs to her, she sees who she thought of, immediately, selfishly, disloyally, in that moment when the trigger was pulled. When justice was tempered with mercy. When she needed to eliminate the shocking enormity of her misconduct right away, and especially the fact that she had not felt surprised in the least about this definitive kind of an answer.