Character/Pairing: Alex/Ava, Alex/Izzie, Izzie/George
Rating: G
Spoilers: Season 3 finale
Word Count: 630
Prompt: "So Small" by Carrie Underwood

"It's so easy to get lost inside / A problem that seems so big, at the time / It's like a river that's so wide / It swallows you whole"

Written for the round 5 challenge at http://community-livejournal-com/prettystickers/ (replace - with . to enable link)

Izzie and Alex are waiting in the on-call room, lying in the bunks opposite each other. Alex and Izzie are upset. Izzie and Alex are frustrated. Alex and Izzie have fallen in love with someone they can't have.

Alex loves Ava, even though she no longer exists. Her name is Rebecca Pope now, he knows, but she will always be Ava to him. He's mentally punching himself in the gut, wondering why he didn't convince her to stay. He wanted to do the right thing for her, to let her go back to her husband and let her have a family, because with him, it would inevitably end, no matter how much he loved her.

Izzie loves George, even though he is married. She of course she still loves Denny, and there will always be a part of her that is his fiancé, but she can't help but realize that she loves George too. When she heard that he and Callie got married, she was still too devastated from losing Denny to realize what her feelings really meant. Now that she knows, it's too late, and she knows it.

"Why does everything get blown out of proportion? Am I going to be alone for the rest of my life?" Izzie wonders aloud.

"Don't ask me. I'm a perennial screw-up." Alex looks at her for a moment, and adds, seriously, "I've messed up every good relationship I've ever had."

She looks back at him and they lock eyes—for a moment they can't look away. She knows he's apologizing, and she forgives him; he knows she's almost wishing to fall back in love with him, just so they won't have to be alone. They both wonder if they had just worked a little harder, if things between them would have turned out all right. The truth is, they would have been perfect, and they both know it.

Alex looks away first; he goes back to staring at the ceiling, and Izzie goes back to playing with her hair.

She muses on the difference between Alex and George. Everything always comes back to George. She can't help it—he's her best friend. She needs his opinion on everything, from the color of her new dress to the taste of her latest recipe. Not because she is in love with him, but because she trusts him. He knows more about her than almost anyone else, and Izzie wonders why she can't open up more to her other friends. Especially since Callie doesn't want to have her around, and George is so moral he won't want to jeopardize his marriage for friendship. She feels like she's going to drown in this sea of unrequited love because she can't tread water.

While Izzie wonders about Alex and George, Alex thinks about everything he knows about Ava (which is relatively little), compared to everything he knows about Izzie (which is a lot). Granted, he's known Izzie for close to a year, and he met Ava only a few months ago. He doesn't care. The only thing he can think about is how he just wanted to be honest with a woman, with Ava, for the first time, and he messed it up. She would have given up her family for him, and he's not sure he wanted her to. Especially since he knows what it's like to have a broken family, and he doesn't want to be "that guy". He feels like he's going to lose himself in this place; it's like a maze and none of the exits lead to happiness.

Alex and Izzie are alone in the on-call room, waiting for someone to love them. Izzie and Alex think they're going to be waiting for a long time. If only they would look across the room.

fin.

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