Title: Sorry About All The Death
Author: Maggiemerc
Rating: T
Summary: In the woods Arizona tries to provide Meredith with cold, hard comfort. Post-8x24 "Flight."
Author's Note: Guuuuuuys. It was intense. I anticipate me writing a whole thing out of it. But for now. THIS.
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Left to her own devices and told simply to "stay awake" Meredith sat perfectly still. Sometimes she'd go into a crying jag. Staring straight ahead and just expelling all the grief her body could no longer contain. Derek and Cristina, surprisingly the most able bodied among them, had gone to look for more wood and supplies amongst the wreckage.
"We need to build another fire," Derek had muttered before disappearing into the darkness. Sheer determination moved his feet when he should have been passed out from the pain.
So it fell to Arizona and Meredith to keep them all awake. Jerry remained conscious. Fear over his loss of mobility kept him awake. But he wasn't a good person to talk to. The fuselage limited his ability to hear and he constantly asked them all to repeat themselves.
Mark was worse off. He could barely muster words. Breaths came laboriously. Arizona kept letting her hand fall to his neck. She found comfort in the slow beat of his heart. He was still alive. Which meant she was still alive. Her leg. Her leg was a constant source of agony. Every movement, every thought devoted to it wrought up pain so severe she wondered if she could stay awake through it.
And across from her sat Meredith. Looking every minute more like a victim of trench warfare and less like the savvy doctor she knew.
Slowly Meredith's face crumbled again. Sympathy welled up in Arizona. It was a pain she knew all to well.
"I'm sorry," she swallowed compulsively, it kept the metallic tang of blood at bay, "about Lexie."
Dull blue eyes turned from staring into the darkness to look at Arizona. "What do you know," they seemed to ask. "How can you understand," they accused.
"I had," she coughed, "I had a brother. Timothy—Tim. We did…we did everything together." Another coughing fit. She caught the glob of blood in her hand and surreptitiously smeared it on her jacket. Out of sight and out of mind. "He died."
Meredith blinked. The point of the story slowly sinking into her traumatized mind.
"It won't go away. It will never stop hurting. But one day—one day you'll realize that for the first time in a long time you didn't think about her. It'll be the worse feeling you've ever felt."
A dark laughed bubbled from Meredith's lips, "Worse than this?"
"I grew up with my brother. We were so close in age we were—we were practically twins. We moved a lot because of the Marines—sometimes," she leaned back against the fuselage and her head clanged against the paneling, "sometimes I still cry. In the shower."
"My sister's dead."
"I know," the tears. The ones she used to reserve just for Tim. The ones that she thought she'd only shed for him and then for Nick, welled up, "Lexie was amazing. She was going to be great."
Silence.
"I'm sorry about your brother."
"I'm sorry about your sister."
In the darkness feet cracked on wooden branches. Arizona thought of hide in seek in a forest outside the base. Just her and Tim. She thought of Lexie's smile. How giving she was. She'd had a bigger heart than any of them.
And now she was dead.