Set following 11x24, an honest discussion ensues that could make or break them as a couple; April has a decision to make and Jackson has pride to protect.
Hopefully this is good. Enjoy! :)
She finds him sat at home that following morning, when it's two a.m. and she's tired and wounded. It hurts, the honest truth and the open door.
He's awake, with sleepy eyes and a half-loose tie. His mother just got married to the man she loves and he should be happier for her but he isn't. He isn't happy. But he's free of guilt, of hiding.
He told her how he felt, he laid his cards out on the awaiting table. He left her with two options, an ultimatum that could either end in his favour or misfortune.
The trauma surgeon takes steady steps before approaching him calmly, hands by her sides and eyes nervous. She blinks more than her usual, but less than his. She licks her lips and clicks her tongue before stopping dead in front of him, knees to the back of the coffee table and eyes focused in on his head.
"I want to talk."
"I'm sure you do."
She rolls her eyes slightly at his comment, choosing to let it slide and continue on.
After Arizona had gone to fetch some drinks, Meredith had tried to talk some knowledge into her. Offering a hand to her shoulder and some wisdom to impart.
"Remember the shooting?" Meredith had started, arms folding over her chest as she waited for April to nod, confirm her recollection. "I told you that it took me a long time to realise that Derek was the one, right?"
April had simply listened, caught on to her every word.
"It took me years to realise that I wanted a life with him, April. That I wanted kids, a house, a marriage. I wanted to be a surgeon, and save people, and be extraordinary."
She had smiled, recalling her mother's words.
"I wasted time on myself when I should have been focusing on us as a pair, as a couple, instead of focusing on our potential future apart. And it all happened, and it was great. But then he died. He died, April. I had everything I wanted. The marriage, the kids, the house, the job, the miracles. I had it, and when he died, I knew I regretted those years I'd spent wasted on everything else. Don't put Jackson on the back burner because you want to further your own agenda. Don't waste your years with him. Do it all at once. Be kickass, have a house, and a family, and a husband. Have it all, don't settle for one thing as opposed to another. Don't take a long time to realise that you want him. You might regret it."
And then it had hit her. She'd regret whatever she chose.
"I'm not going."
Jackson looks up at her after a second's thought, eyes squinting and stare burning her soul.
"Look, I'm not saying that it's gonna be easy, because it won't be. Nothing is anymore. But I'm gonna try, we need to try. Okay? We're still here, and I'm still here, and I'm willing to give this a shot if you stick around."
"April-"
"No, just-" She pauses, takes a deep breath and closes her eyes for the briefest of seconds, "You made an effort, you put in the work, you fought for me, and I- I haven't stepped up. As a wife, I haven't been here. Since we've been married, you've sacrificed a heck of a lot more than I have, and I love you for that, I do, but I know that it wasn't fair to you to have to put your feelings on hold while I dealt with my own."
Jackson lets his head drop into his hands then, elbows pressing into his jean-clad kneecaps and pads of his fingertips creasing into the skin of his face. He sighs, clears his throat before looking back up at her, at his wife, at the woman who'd decided he was worth it.
April fidgets with her hands for a moment, twirling the wedding band around her finger and shamelessly allowing a small smile to graze her lips.
"We've suffered, and I've healed and you haven't, so we need to work on that. I need to help you, now." She crouches down in front of his seat on the couch, knees scraping the ground and dropping her hands to the front of her lap.
The redhead licks her lips, darting her hazel eyed gaze up at the ceiling for an instant of pause.
"I'm not asking for some guidance from your guilty conscience, April. I'm asking you to not go off to war. Again. For another year."
"I know." She frowns, feeling her shoulders drop and voice lower to a whisper, "I know that you want that, and I can understand it, I can, because if it was you- I wouldn't like going to sleep every night not knowing how you were. I would hate it. So I can understand it. I understand what you want, and why you want it. You want me here, safe, with you. And I love that."
"But…?" He begins, trailing off because he's sure she'll finish it.
April sighs, "But, while I'm choosing to stay for you, for us, I can't promise that one day I won't regret my decision." Her voice softens, her brows knit and her nostrils flare, hands clasping in her lap as she stands up before him.
She closes her eyes with a deep breath before moving to sit down on the couch beside him, legs stiff and body rigid.
"I feel like it's my- my calling, Jackson. I know that you won't understand that because you don't want to, or can't, or-"
"I want to, April. It just doesn't make much sense to me."
The green-eyed man glances down at his watch though he has no intention of moving, of going anywhere, though he has no plans to keep track of.
But he does it, and he blinks repeatedly, once, twice, turning his head to face her directly. "I just can't for the life of me understand why you'd want to witness all that suffering when life's already pretty crap back here." He frowns, unsure if he even understands his own words, if he even makes any sense himself.
"Okay." April nods, biting the insides of her cheeks, teeth almost piercing her flesh, "Do you want me to-"
"No. No, I don't need another explanation, okay? I'm not an idiot. I know you think this is your purpose, or your calling in life, or- God's plan for you, or whatever, but it doesn't make sense to me. And no matter how many times you wanna explain it all to me, it never will. I can respect it, okay? Your opinion, I can understand that you want to do this. That part's easy. But I don't want to understand why, or how you could possibly think this is a good idea."
"Because I-"
He shakes his head, pulls his gaze from her own and feigns a chuckle with a heavy breath, "Don't do it, don't explain it. I don't wanna know. Look, you- You either want to be there, saving lives, kicking butt or whatever you say you're doing over there."
Jackson takes a second to lick his lips, rubbing his hands together before continuing, still ignoring her intense stare.
"Or you want to be here, saving lives, with me. At the risk that I'm not enough anymore."
"I want you, Jackson. I've wanted you since you made me feel like I could, since what feels like forever. But I- I can't promise that I don't also want other things."
"You can't have everything April." He rolls his eyes, tucks his bottom lip between his sharp teeth as he breathes out, "I'm being selfish for once. I know that, but you need me to be. If you want to go back to Jordan, then do it, please. Don't stay here just for my sake, do it because you truly want to. I'm not gonna be that kind of husband, okay? I'm not that guy." He shakes his head, standing up from his seat and walking past her tense form into the kitchen area.
"Then what kind of husband are you?" She mumbles under her breath, eyes cast across the room at their television, blank and turned off. Much like their hearts right now.
He doesn't reply at first, instead just grabs a bottle of beer from the refrigerator and pops it open, spinning back around to stare at her as he raises it to his lips.
"The kind who's given you everything."
"Oh."
She parts her lips, rubs her hands down her thighs as she copies her previous stance, getting up and walking into the kitchen.
She stops on the other side of the counter, tapping fingertips against the dark marble. "Thanks for that."
"What do you want me to say, April?"
"That you're the kind of man who loves for life, who feels for me what I feel for you, that you want me. That you need me."
"You already know I do!"
"Then show me!"
"There's no way of showing you without you hating me." He perks a brow, takes a long sip of his beer before placing it back down and keeping his palms flat against the island worktop. "What exactly do you want me to do? Do you want me to be selfish? Do you want me to keep you here against your will? I know. Shall I tie you to the bed, keep you there for my own amusement? Shall I lock all the windows and doors and hide the keys? Because I'm not going to do that."
"I want you to tell me why you need me here."
"So you want to hate me?"
"Why would I hate you?"
"Because this thing is vicious circle, April! I could give you thirty reasons that I need you here, and one of those will always be our son. And then you'll use him as an excuse, as some kind of reasoning behind your need to leave. Like you aren't over it, like you haven't moved on, like you didn't leave last time and come back a whole new person."
The redhead blinks back a few tears at his words, keeping her throat tight and her lips pursed, "I don't use that as my excuse."
"You did, last time. As though you needed to get away from me to clear your head, as though I couldn't make you happy anymore and you needed space to gather yourself, to realise what you wanted. Look, it's- It's simple, April."
"No part of this is simple! Either way, I lose one half of my heart. I don't want to lose you. But I-"
"Go, and be happy. Or stay, and risk regret."
April hiccups, shoulders erupting in goosebumps and cheeks flushing in desperation, "I'm gonna regret it either way."
He nods slowly, dragging the bottle of beer across the counter and licking his lips dryly. "Then I guess we're screwed."
"We're not screwed, we're just- We need help, counselling. We need therapy, we need reso-freaking-lution. You need to grieve and I am willing to help you, okay? We can do it together." She rounds the island quickly, peels the glass bottle from his hand and places it back down by their side.
Her smaller hands clasp around his own as she steps closer, feeling the heat radiating through his body and into her own.
"I'm not gonna lie and say that'll be easy." She starts, copying her recycled speech from earlier. "It won't be. It'll be hard. And we'll probably get worse before we get better, but we need to fight. We need counselling, Jackson."
He wants to laugh, to scream, to cry in frustration all at once. Avery's don't need counselling. They bury their emotions and hide their feelings so nobody can see them, can hurt them, can break them.
"You have given me everything, I know that. I'm grateful. And I love you, for that and for so much more. And I know that I haven't given you half as much of me as you have you. I know that I need to work on some things. I want what I want and I don't handle rejection very well. You know that." She raises a brow, lifts a hand to his chest and messes with the few top buttons of his shirt. "I'm selfish, and so are you. Everybody is. Everybody suffers. But I don't want to be the reason you never move on."
Jackson finally lowers his gaze to her own, feeling hazel eyes burning brightly up into his green ones. There are tears behind her words and he's tempted to hold her, pull her into him for just a moment or lifetime longer.
"I need to be here for you the way you were for me. You let me go last time, and I already regret letting you. If I hadn't left, I wouldn't want to go back. If I didn't know what it felt like, then I wouldn't want to relive it. It's like us, okay? If I never went into this with you, then I never would have come back. But I did. I came back. I kept coming back. Because I loved you, and because I wanted you. And you need to believe that I always will. I'm always gonna come back to you. I can't not."
She can feel her eyes watering, blinking back tears, and her nose running as she talks, sliding her hands up his chest to his neck, fingers wrapping around the base of his neck smoothly.
April wets her dry lips, stare flickering back and forth between his eyes, mouth curling up into the faintest of shy smiles.
"Believe me."
"You're killing me." He mumbles his quip of questions beneath his breath, eyes drifting shut and leaning down to rest his forehead against hers. "Honestly, really killing me. If this- If we- Don't leave."
"I'm not going anywhere. And without your approval, I'm never going to. My vocation is never gonna be as strong as my love, okay?" She knows he has abandonment issues, so her leaving in the past year has obviously brought those emotions to surface, and she regrets it immensely, despite her passion for the job.
It was rewarding, but wasn't her marriage worth so much more in the long run?
They wouldn't be here forever, wouldn't get endless chances to mend their broken hearts. And if Meredith's story had told her anything, it was that she needed to appreciate what she had while she still had it.
"Counselling?"
"Counselling." She confirms with a bite of the corner of her lip and a slight nod, dragging her nails up his neck, thumbs plucked beneath his chin. She raises his head to peer directly into his eyes, reminding him of the adorability of her shorter height.
"We can do this."
"We can at least try."
I imagine some lovely guest reviewers will have some harsh words to say about this because it doesn't feature rape, or unicorns or rainbows, and well, it's by me. Excuse me for actually being able to write something good, of substance, in-character. Feel free to read and review something else if you already know you don't like me. Leaving anonymous hate is laughable. Have fun.