AN: Okay. So I know this is huge. Sorry. I got the idea and just started writing and wanted to finish off one last little bit before I published. Here you go :)
It's late Wednesday night when Lexie wakes up. She's not sure what it is at first, and then she sees it. The light coming from the kitchen is the culprit, and when she rolls over Mark isn't there. She reaches around on the floor for something to wear because she's been so hot lately she's had the thermostat below freeing and she can't feel her toes.. Her fingers grab the bathrobe on the floor and she pulls it around herself, the cord barely reaching around her expanding waist. She takes one last deep breath before she stands up, and that's when her water breaks.
She's only eight and a half months. She only knows because she had an appointment that morning and the OB had said that she shouldn't go into labor for at least a week. Obviously he'd been wrong. She only knows because Mark reminds her every day, tries to get her to bond with the fetus inside of her. Because that's all she can call it, think of it as, the fetus. If she calls her the baby or any of the names Mark picked out, she might realize that she wants the baby and doesn't really want to give Mark full custody like they agreed when she told him she was pregnant and wanted an abortion. She only knows because she's been counting down the days until she's due, until she can have her body back, until she can look forward to waking up in the morning and thinking about something other than how uncomfortable she is. But for once she's glad she knows, because at least she knows that she's not premature and she's not overdue and she won't be going to extreme health risks for a baby she wanted to abort in the first place.
She calls out his name and doesn't even worry about waking Sofia because he'll have to drop her at Callie and Arizona's before they leave anyway. He hears her right away and stumbles exhaustedly into their room, arm flailing for the light switch. He finds it and the room lights up, and she's standing there in a half closed bathrobe and her pants are soaked. "I'm supposed to have my C-section on Saturday," she says. She got a scheduled C to avoid any pain possible, to keep her from feeling like the baby is her prize for the possible 24 hours of labor she's now going to have to endure. He tosses her a new pair of sweats and a t-shirt and says, "I don't think that's going to happen now."
He tells her to sit, not to worry, and runs Sofia back over to Callie and Arizona's. He'd taken her because he didn't think she'd pop this quickly. She just dropped a day or two ago and it was so unnoticeable that he might not have seen it if she hadn't said something. He knew that meant the baby was coming soon; he just didn't think it meant this soon. They're at the hospital within minutes and Meredith is already waiting for them there. He sits in the waiting room while she sits in on the exam. She fills him in because Lexie won't, because the last time he was that close to her vagina she got pregnant and they haven't done it since.
It's not until almost half an hour later that Meredith comes out and say that she's not even having contractions yet, that they were thinking of sending her home but her water broke and they're worried about infection. He asks if he can see her, and Meredith denies him entrance. She lies and says that Lexie's tired but her not wanting visitors is for the same reason she won't let him in the delivery room. She's afraid she might change her mind, that he might change her mind and the thought of loving the fetus like Meredith loves Bailey scares the crap out of her.
It's not like she hates kids. She babysat when she was a teenager, and now for Derek and her sister. And she loves April and Jackson's baby, Oliver. She just doesn't want kids. It's nothing psychological. She wasn't beaten up as a teenager or puked on by a baby. She's just a second year attending and she doesn't see kids in the direction her life's heading. The only difference is that Mark does. He has Sofia, he almost had Sloan's baby. He loves kids, and so does she. But she only loves other people's kids. That's how he convinced her to keep the baby. He said that he'd do it, all of it. Birthdays and recitals and tea parties as long as she skipped the abortion. He even said that she could see her whenever she wanted but they both knew from the very beginning that it wasn't going to happen.
Connie tells them that because her labor hasn't progressed too far, she can still do a C-section if she's up for it. She reminds all three of them (with Mark standing in the doorway) that there are more complications and a longer recovery period. Lexie just looks away and asks her to get it over with. An hour later, he's standing in the corner of the OR as Connie passes the baby to Meredith and she asks if her sister wants to see her. "Could you just give it to Mark?" she replies, looking away from the baby in a way that makes Mark almost hate her. He takes the baby without hesitation and goes with the nurse to get her weighed and measured.
A few minutes after she gets back to her room, the same nurse brings the baby into her room and rolls the bassinet up next to her bed. "I can get you a lactation consult so we can get you breastfeeding right away," she says cheerfully, obviously unaware that the scene in the OR wasn't just a scene. She quickly explains that she wasn't planning on it, and the nurse just passes her the baby with one hand and a bottle with the other. She shows her how to feed her and then says to press the call button if she needs anything, so she asks her to send Mark in. He shows up rather quickly and looks almost relieved to see her holding the baby, but she tells him he has to take her away. She can't sit here and feed the baby she's resented for the last eight months just because she's afraid of looking like a bad mother in front of the nurse.
He asks if she's thought of names, and she practically burns holes through her skull with her eyes. "I don't want to name her, Mark. Call her whatever you want." He says that it's not the way it works. He says that one day she might look back and wish she'd suggested something. He says that maybe she could want the baby too. "You don't understand, Mark," she replies. "I'm not heartless. I don't hate her. I hate the situation. I hate that I let you talk me out of an abortion so you could try to force baby names down my throat. I don't hate her. I just don't want her. You knew that."
"I thought I knew you, too. Things change," he tells her.
"This doesn't," she says.
Derek drops by in the morning to see Lexie and the baby, but never at the same time. Connie discharges her the day after. Lexie goes with Meredith and Derek and Mark takes the baby back to his place, where Callie and Arizona will probably be waiting with balloons and banners and Sofia, who she's honestly going to miss now that she's not sleeping at Mark's place. It's not like she hates other people's kids.
It's hard the first night to fall asleep because she reverts to her stomach-sleeping with the absence of a belly to avoid. She can't even get comfortable for the first ten minutes because her breasts are so tender she feels like she might explode. She has to get up and waddle to her sister's room to ask if she has a pump and if she'd mind taking it to Mark. "How are you going to take the breast milk to him?" her sister asks in a sleepy haze, and that's when she realizes that she doesn't even have a bottle. She shakes it off and goes back to bed, vowing to look up ways to ease the ache for new moms who don't actually have a hungry baby to feed.
One morning after she's back at work, she gets caught in the elevator with him and the stroller. He tells her that the baby, who he named Charlotte because it went with Sofia, doesn't sleep through the night and that he and Callie and Arizona are co-parenting and that she left her toothbrush in his bathroom. Then the elevator dings and she leaves him there without even so much as a glance in his direction. One morning she offers to drop Zola and Bailey at the daycare and runs into him at the same time. He offers her the baby and she declines. "We had an agreement," she says, and he says that their 'agreement' means shit. "It's your baby, Lex. I figured you wouldn't mind helping out once in a while," he tells her, even though they both knew she'd mind. One morning she wakes up and even contemplates calling in sick because she knows that if she goes in, she'll end up on a case with Mark, and he'll try to talk about the baby again.
It not until a few days after she's back at work that Derek asks if she needs to talk. Mer has a late surgery and the kids are asleep so it's just them in the kitchen when she finally admits that she may have misjudged their baby. "I didn't want to hate her. I just didn't want her. I didn't want to mess up and have her whole life reflect on me," she cries. She says that she's not getting enough sleep and her boobs still hurt and that every night she wants her baby back. He says that maybe she should talk to someone. "Like a lawyer?" she asks, but he shakes his head. "Like a therapist." So what if she's got a touch of post-partum? It's not like it makes her incapable of doing her job. It's not like she can't be a surgeon because she have away her baby. It's not like she's one of those women on TV who sit around and cry all day. It's not like it's affecting her.
Only it is.
Because one day she goes up the daycare and thinks about taking Charlotte and running. And it's not that she doesn't know she shouldn't, because she does. It's that she's wondering if she should, if she'd be better off with her mother than Mark. If she could get up at night when she cries. If she can change a diaper. She doesn't even know how to make formula. So instead she runs, and leaves her baby where she's sleeping. Maybe it's better that way.
Mark's never been much of a party planner. Since the only parties he's ever been to were Derek's or something with alcohol, he's not entirely sure how to plan a birthday party for his three year old. They can't have beer (or a lot of beer) because Charlotte's three but it's not like he's going to give everyone juice boxes. And beyond the booze, he doesn't see much of a point in having a party, except for his daughter's sake.
So he lets Callie plan it instead. He gives her his credit card and tells her to go crazy. There's no way he's doing the guest list because Char might look up and ask him to invite Jake, her friend from daycare who's some nurse's kid and he might almost be tempted to say yes before he remembers that she's too young to be dating. He's no good at decorating, either. Even after three years he's never quite understood the pink princesses and unicorns faze that all little girls go through around her age. Callie gets it, because she's a girl and since Charlotte was born she's had more time with Sofia than him, so he gives her the go ahead to do whatever she wants.
He's genuinely surprised when Lexie shows up. She says that Meredith got stuck in surgery so she promised to help with Zo and Bailey, but deep down he knows she's making excuses and that she really does care. Charlotte, who doesn't even know that Lexie's actually her mother, asks if she can play with Bailey, who turned five a few months ago. Without her niece and nephew to keep her busy, since Zola ran off with Sofia the moment they walked in the door, Lexie goes off to find Mark. It shouldn't be so hard in his house, which isn't massive but isn't tiny either, but he moved when Charlotte turned two to the same street that Callie and Arizona moved to the year before. She's only been here once, to talk about giving him full custody (which he declined) so she's never even been past the living room.
He's hiding in the kitchen while Callie and Arizona finish icing the cake on the counter, but they both leave when she comes in. Maybe it's to give them space or maybe they just don't want to have to witness the tension between two people who used to be in love. Mark starts a conversation as he grabs himself a beer, which Callie told him they were getting even though it's a three year old's birthday party. He offers her one as well, but she shakes her head. "I got a job offer a couple weeks ago," she begins. "Cleveland Clinic's looking for a new neurosurgeon when theirs retires after Christmas."
Mark downs his beer in one long gulp. "So you're leaving, then?"
"I don't know," she admits. It took her forever to even start looking for a job elsewhere, and now she's not even sure she wants to go. "My contract was up in July but I only renewed for a year. If I tell Hunt now, I could get it cut shorter."
He looks at her. He knows Lexie. She's not the kind of person to pick up and leave without even so much as goodbye. She wouldn't leave without a reason. She wouldn't move twenty-five hundred miles away from her sister and her family. "It's because of Charlotte, isn't it? That's why you're looking."
"Molly and Eric live on the base in Devens. I'd be close enough to fly there and visit once in a while. And my dad still lives there, so it's not like I wouldn't have people there," she sighed. "I can't sit around waiting here, Mark. She was my baby, I carried her for nine months. And now she's not, and I don't know if I want her to be. But I can't stay here because Charlotte may or may not realize one day that her Aunt Lexie is actually her mother."
So he backs off. Grabs another beer from the fridge and then glances to where she's leaning against the cupboard just a few feet away. He puts the beer on the counter, opens it, and then turns around and kisses her. His strong hands frame her face and hers go to his biceps, not pushing him away but pulling him in instead. His leg slips between her two and holds her to the cupboard, the strong taste of beer on his lips mingling with hers. Then she squeezes his arms and he pulls back. "We should stop," she says. "You're drunk and it's Charlotte's birthday."
"I'm not drunk," he insists.
"It's her birthday," she repeats, and he backs off. "I should go see if Meredith's here yet," she whispers, and when he opens his eyes, she's gone.
Callie films Mark bringing the cake out a little while later and he places it on the table in front of his daughter. As he watches her blow out the candles with her classic three year old smile, he can't help wondering where all the time went. Fast forward ten years and she'll be wearing makeup and talking about boys. Twenty-five and she might be married. It's hard to believe that only a few years ago he was bringing her home from the hospital. Those first few nights with her, he didn't sleep more than an hour. Now she stays in her room through the night and doesn't need his help tying her shoelaces. She can count to thirty because he always wanted her to be smart and some nights she helps with the dishes since he taught her to use the faucet. His daughter's turning three today and Lexie's missed it all.
He'd almost be sorry for her if she hadn't chosen to skip out on their kid. Charlotte's perfect and she's all his, and sometimes he's happy that it's that way. But other times, he's not so sure. Other times, he wishes Lexie could have been there. He doesn't even know what he'll do when she gets her period or starts sleeping with boys. Hand her over to Callie, maybe. He'd take her to Meredith but until he tells Char that Lexie's her mom, Meredith won't really be her aunt. Thirty years from now he'll be walking her down the aisle and he's not sure he's ready for that yet.
Callie cuts the cake and gives the first piece to Charlotte. She gets icing on her face within the first two bites and it's so adorable that he has to pull out his phone and takes a picture of her. She's so content just sitting there, eating the chocolate frosting that he knows is her favorite, that he can't even imagine her ever being any other way. Since Char was born, he's thought about telling her the truth about Lexie. About why she doesn't have a mom. About why Lexie left and didn't want her. About why she might be moving across the country to get away from her daughter. Then he thinks about that one time she cried because Jake wasn't at the daycare and she only had Bailey to play with. He hated seeing her so sad. He hated how her voice got when she cried. He hated how she looked just like Lexie when they found out about the pregnancy.
As the crowd starts to thin out, he catches her in the kitchen with her hands in the sink. Dumping the dishes on the counter next to her, he rinses his hands in the soapy water with his arms draped around her. "She looks like you," he whispers.
"Mark," she warns, but he shakes his head. "She looks like you and you're willing to move across the country for a job. She's got your eyes, Lex."
"I know she's got my eyes!" she shouts, and then lowers her voice. "I gave her those eyes. You don't think I know that? You don't think I hate that I even started looking for a job? She's got my eyes and my hair and my freaking face because she's my daughter, Mark. And she's never going to know because how do you explain to a child that her mother didn't want her? I didn't want a baby and you made me have one and now we've got quite the problem, don't we?" He's stepped back from her by now, his hands dripping soapy water onto the tiles. In all the years he's known her she's never yelled at him. Not when Sloan or Sofia showed up, not during her pregnancy, not even after her C-section when he wanted her to consider keeping the baby. He's never done nothing to make her this angry but when it comes to their daughter, suddenly she gets protective.
"You love her," he sighs. Everything clicks into place. She wouldn't look at Charlotte or feed her after she was born. He thought it was because she didn't want her but he'd always known she wasn't heartless. It was because she had spent eight months convincing herself that she didn't want a baby. Eight months that all went to shit in that one moment when she looked at her face and knew that it was what she wanted. That it was who she wanted to spent the rest of her life with. With Char and Mark. Everything clicks into place when he says those three words because for the first time in three years, she acknowledges it too. "Of course I love her, Mark. She's my child." She balls the cloth up in her hand and tosses it half-heartedly across the room. It misses him by a couple feet but he steps back anyway. "She's my baby."
"You didn't want Char when she was a baby."
"People change. I changed."
"You told me this doesn't. You told me that you would never want her. I'm not going to let you back in her life so you can leave and screw her up." He chucks the dish cloth back in the sink. "Not this time. Not with my daughter on the line."
Lexie stands up a little straighter. "She my daughter too."
"You lost the right to be her mom the moment you decided you wanted an abortion."
They end up in the same situation as they did twelve years ago. Ten minutes in Meredith's linen closet at Thanksgiving and they've got another baby on their hands, another decision to make. Charlotte, whose parentage Mark accidentally let slip when she was seven, assumes that Lexie's going to keep the baby and asks if she can decorate a nursery in Mark's house. They let her, and it ends up with pink walls and a pink crib and pink stuffed elephants and bunnies. Lexie thinks she might throw up when she first sees it but after a few days she starts to adjust.
Her job in Ohio goes down the drain when she finds out. The contract she was on expired that January so she quits and moves back to Seattle. Her, Mark and Charlotte all share his house and this time instead of running, she sticks around for the baby. For Mark, who told her he never stopped loving her. For Charlotte, who's called her mama ever since she found out the truth. For herself, because she had a touch of postpartum when she left Char behind twelve years ago.
She starts eating everything around four months. Celery and peanut butter, olives, pasta with ketchup. He makes fun of her for the first week and then realizes that he has to do twice as much grocery shopping to keep the fridge even moderately full. Char comes home and walks to the corner store with Jake because her mother ate all the chips and cookies and even the vegetables for breakfast that morning. It gets a little outrageous when one day he finds her in the attending's lounge half way through a jar of pickles.
One night they're sitting in the living room all watching a movie and she can't help but look around at how her life turned out. She has one - two - kids with her brother-in-law's best friend. The daughter she resented turned out to be the best thing that happened to her. Now she had another to make up for the mistakes she made the first time, and she's not going to let this one pass her by.
They found out that it's a girl at her last appointment. Mark hadn't wanted to know for once, since with Sofia she was born early and they found out as soon as they could with Charlotte. The OB resident, however, had given her a 3D ultrasound which didn't leave much to their imagination. Mark had been angry at first that the resident could have been so stupid, but Lexie reminded him that she used to be an intern too. "At least you were a good one," he grumbled, and she laughed it off.
Charlotte loves the idea of a baby. She babbles incessantly about names and who she'll look like more and tells everyone she meets that she's going to be a big sister. As Lexie rounds the seven-month point, Char goes to the store to pick up ice cream and Sprite and in exchange gets to watch whatever she wants on the tv. She and Lexie have the whole system worked out so that when Mark's late, they order pizza. Somehow looking at the beautiful woman her daughter's become, Lexie's twice as excited to watch their new baby grow up.
It's a black tie event.
Charlotte gets her sister ready herself but leaves Derek to deal with her father. He's been in his room since eight o'clock last night and even she don't have the energy to force him into a suit. Not today. Two black dresses later, they get in the car and drive to the church for the mass that none of them, not even Sydney, will ever forget.
Four rounds from a silver handgun was all it took. A man who wanted her purse and her keys and then shot her mother right in front of her in broad daylight. Mothers are invincible, she'd always thought. Aunt Callie got in a car accident and lived. Aunt Meredith had to have her spleen out when Bailey was born. Uncle Derek was shot. But not her mother. No one ever even dreamed of it. At least not until last week.
Her father's completely passive the entire ceremony. She stands next to him with Syd in her arms, vaguely listening to what the priest is saying but more focused on everyone around her. Her Aunt Meredith, sobbing quietly next to her. Her grandfather who, for some reason she never actually met, is almost as void of emotion as her dad. Her little sister with her face buried in her hair. Everyone is grieving and she's the sixteen year old who saw her mother get shot.
There's a visitation afterwards and she sits off to the side with her sister while people she never knew come over to tell her that they're sorry for their loss and offering to bring over dinner like she doesn't know how to make a casserole. The only person she's willing to listen to is Sydney, because she's so young and seems so utterly confused by everything that it makes her heart ache. So when she asks where mom is, Charlotte almost starts to cry. She tries to explain that she's in Heaven and that she's happy now, but it only seems to make things more confusing. "Wasn't she happy here?" Sydney asks.
But Charlotte takes her sister to the casket and shows her. "When's Mom going to wake up?" she asks, but can't comprehend when Charlotte says that she won't. "She has to wake up," Sydney cries as Meredith takes her to help calm her down. "Why isn't she going to wake up? I want Mommy to get better."
Charlotte doesn't know where Meredith takes her but after a few seconds, she can't hear her sister crying anymore. Finally she can be alone again, without anyone there to worry if she's okay or how she's feeling or if she's going to one day need therapy because she watched her mother bleed to death on a sidewalk. Finally she can breathe.
One lone tear rolls down her cheek and she brushes her fingers across her mother's face. "Mama," she sighs. "I'm sorry I couldn't save you."
The limo pulls up just after the bell chimes. Her platinum watch, sparkling in the sunlight on what must be the most gorgeous day of the year, reads two minutes past three. It's her wedding day and already she's two minutes late.
Charlotte yanks her dress up and sprints to the door, where her father is already waiting with her bouquet. "I thought you ditched," he chuckles nervously, and she just grins. "If you're nervous," he begins but she cuts him off.
"I'm not."
Her bridesmaids, Sydney (of course), Katharine and Ella, are already beginning to walk down the aisle when the music starts and suddenly her heart starts to pound. She grips her father's arm tighter and takes her flowers in her other hand. It's her wedding day and already she's nervous. She wonders for a second if her mother was this freaked out on her wedding day, but then she's not so sure. Her parents were't actually together until Syd was born, and she can't remember them ever getting married. And since her father was an only child, she's the first Sloan woman in a while to get married. She takes a breath and the world feels a little bit smaller.
A few breaths later, it's her turn to walk down the aisle. She could do a craniotomy in her sleep but suddenly it seems impossible to keep her feet pointed toward the altar and not out the door. When she sees Jake at the end, though, her lungs seems to open up and her father has to remind her to slow down. A grin forms on her face and for the first time in a while, she forgets that she's the girl who never got enough time with her mother. For a moment, she's just a simple neurosurgeon who's about to get married.
It's her wedding day and she's not worried one bit.
They bypass all the stupid stuff and just get to the kissing and that's when she knows she's sure that he's the one. He's Jacob Alexander Matthews who she's known him since she was three. He's the love of her life who kissed her under the maple tree the summer after graduation. He's the one.
She knows exactly what her mother would say if she were here. She'd be happy, of course, because her daughter just got married and she always wanted to see that, Charlotte's sure. But above all, she would have told her to be sure. Be sure she loved him. Be sure she wanted kids. Be sure this was the life she envisioned for herself because once she decides, there's no going back. It brings her comfort to know that even though she only got eleven years she still knows that her mother's proud of her.
Her father gets the second dance and then almost cries when they announce that she'd due in December. She hates leaving him after thirty-two years but sometimes she feels like the wife instead of the daughter when he talks to her. She knows he's lonely and that he'll be even lonelier once Sydney gets married in February, but that's how the world changes. She's moved on and maybe he never will, but the least he can do is try. She tried and now she married with twins.
It's not like she doesn't miss her mother. She misses her every day. But she can't spend her days locked in a room crying. She didn't go to school for a month and almost didn't graduate but she figured it out. Now it's her father's turn.
A year later Sydney has her baby boy. Two years and she has a girl. Charlotte never quite understood how she could give up nursing at the hospital, how she could so badly want kids when they could get shot walking down the street. Henry and Isabella were a surprise, and even then Jake stayed home so Charlotte could go back to work early. How two sisters' priorities can be so different just doesn't make sense to her.
Then again, not a lot does.
On his eighty-fifth birthday, her father has a heart attack in his sleep and dies. Everyone cries, even Uncle Derek, who she knows was his best friend even though his ex-wife slept with her father on numerous occasions. Even Isabella, who's almost too young to comprehend what's happening and has her mother convinced that she's just crying to go along with what everyone else is doing. Even Sydney, who only knew her parents as the loving couple they seemed to be. It's like no one realizes that her mother and father are back together. If it means he can be happy, that would be her birthday wish too.