A/N: written for the prompt "Mark/Lexie, unexpected" for the Grey's Anatomy Drabble-A-Thon hosted by abvj on livejournal.
You wait two weeks before you say it.
The first week gets lost in shell shock and camaraderie and trying to dig some kind of routine out of the wreckage. You're worried about Derek and glad you didn't know he was hurt at the time, because either you wouldn't have been able to function, or you'd be beating yourself up now because Lexie would still have mattered just a little more.
The second week, you're reticent. It's a new thing. You're trying to deal with your personal life like you deal with your patients – calm, quiet, strong – and everyone seems to like you better for it, although they notice you a little less. Once you had no qualms about delivering the bottom line. Now, with her, it seems too delicate: you'll break her or you'll break yourself.
But the third week, when Karev's on his feet and brushing her off with an irritated whatever, you follow her when she goes to buy coffee (one for her, one for him) and finally say the words that have been on your mind since you stood by while she poured her heart out.
"He doesn't love you. You know that, right?"
She swallows, then does something with her head that could be a nod or could be denial. Maybe both. "He loved Izzie," she says. "Obviously, he loved her. She was his wife and . . . we weren't really there yet. The love part." She's half-defiant while she's speaking, but when the words run out she seems to deflate, as if she hasn't quite convinced herself.
She certainly hasn't convinced you.
"Well, you seemed to be there," you say. It's not bitter, even though it could be. It's just a statement of fact as you see it. "But . . ." You glance down. Now you've taken the risk, you need to press the point, but you still don't want to be the guy who hurts her. So your voice softens, grating a little with reluctance, when you look up again and finish, "He doesn't feel the same way."
She lifts her eyes to look into yours then pauses, locked there, the duration and intensity something you would have avoided once but really, now, after everything that's happened, there's nothing out there bad enough that it's worth avoiding.
"I wasn't," she finally says. "I'm not. I'm . . . with him." She nods again, once, as though for backup. "I'm with Alex. But it's not love. Not exactly. It's . . ." She falters, eyes sad and pleading, then says very softly, somewhere in the back of her throat, words catching on the emotion, "I thought he was dying. I thought he was dying and, right then, I loved him enough to say it. You can't . . ." She breathes in. "It's awful when someone dies and you don't tell them. It's awful when you can't say goodbye."
It takes you a moment, but then you get it. "O'Malley," you say quietly, chastened that this is the first time you realize she's living in the aftermath of an aftermath and how much that must kill her.
"Yes," she confirms. Then adds an almost inaudible, "And my mom."
There's nothing to say after that. Everything you can think of seems out of place, outclassed by her grief and her shot at redemption; you'd comfort her, but you don't think she wants that from you. So you both stand there, uncomfortable, until she raises the coffee cups as a gesture of escape.
Then you panic, because this is not a conversation you can have twice and, suddenly not caring if she wants it or needs it, use her words as a template to blurt your truth. "We were there. The love part. We were there, Lex." You feel so hopeless, but you add, "I still am."
Her eyes find yours again. "I know," she says, her voice firm, gentle, unambiguous in understanding, then slowly turns and walks away.
It's not much. Not anything at all, really. Just an acknowledgment. But she's not angry, she's not hurt, and it's nothing like you expected. Nothing's broken; if anything, it's mended a little. And, for now, that's enough.