Part of a series of drabbles based off a prompt list on tumblr, characters assigned by my lovely friend V
Prompt: Exulansis
Character(s): Jackson Avery
Warnings: references to the hospital shooting, slightly descriptive references to the deaths of Reed and Percy
EXULANSIS: The tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it.
Jackson knows they watch him. He knows they think he doesn't, that he's oblivious to their eyes tracking him down the hallway, their whispers following him into the OR. They think he doesn't notice, just how everyone always has. Jackson Avery, people think, mutter to each other, shaking their heads.
Jackson Avery, pretty and dumb.
Never mind that he made it all the way through his undergraduate degree and medical school – on his own damn merit, thank you very much – something you can't do if all you have to show for yourself is a pretty face and a charming smile. He'd double majored and double minored, internships during the summer, and the looks and whispers hadn't stopped.
Jackson Avery, always got something to prove.
A couple of times he tries to talk about it, when Mercy West is Mercy West and Seattle Grace is Not Jackson's Problem, with a mixed bag of results, none of them at all helpful.
Reed scoffs at him and says "poor Avery" with the same emphasis on his last name he's felt from the world all his life, April makes her Sympathy Face and says nothing, and Charles just looks confused, completely incomprehensive of what he is saying.
He shuts up about it after that, and then the merger affords him the rare opportunity to, to an extent at least, start over. Until fate steps in his name is a coincidence. At least now, despite that first label still on his back like a goblin clinging there, pretty and dumb, at least the legacy doesn't come into it.
For once, he is on the inside of the whispers in that respect, hears what they say about Meredith Grey, medical royalty, practically the Chief's daughter. He wants no part in that, no piece of it to be directed towards him.
Jackson Avery, never talks about his family.
(Then again, around these parts, he muses, who does. Plenty of skeletons in plenty of closets here, and nobody wants to turn on the light.)
People find out, because people always find out, but soon enough individual drama overtakes his twice blessed, thrice cursed last name, his mother the legend.
Time passes, Seattle Grace Mercy West absorbs into the monotony of his life. People come and go. Stories in the hall, Izzie Stevens's hair, a sacrosanct locker stall, the name George O'Malley, these are the first signs that this place and its luck are going to chew up and spit out everything they touch.
He finds out later how they died, from April, how Reed didn't even have time to scream, all that blood coming from that one tiny body, how Charles caught a bullet in his chest, took long, many-numbered, excruciating minutes to die. They decide Reed was the lucky one, Jackson and April do, drunk enough to have the conversations no one else will.
People look at him different after the shooting, but at least it's a different kind of different.
Jackson Avery, I heard he wakes up screaming for his dead best friend.
If there's one thing Jackson knows, it's that the whispers won't ever stop. His face, his name, his family, his history, it all means people talk, and they aren't slowing down. The talk itself though, Jackson is surprised to watch that change, hearing the comments around corners, and through open doors.
Mark Sloan, "His hands are amazing, they're incredible. Plastics hands. You can't teach that."
Miranda Bailey, "You're in good care with Dr. Avery. He's a good doctor, you can trust him."
Richard Webber, "Jackson is a great student, one of the best and brightest that I've ever worked with."
People talk, but let them. This talk, he can live with.