Title: We Were Here Again Today
Author: NiennaTru
Disclaimer: Grey's Anatomy and its characters belong to ABC, Shonda Rhimes, etc. I make no money from this.
Spoilers: Up to 7x08, "Something's Gotta Give"
Author's Note: There is a passing reference in this story to something in another story I've written, Bound to Happen, but it is not necessary to read that fic in order to understand this one.
When he appeared, standing in the doorway of her hospital room, she didn't immediately recognize him.
She supposed that was to be expected, though, since the last time she'd seen him she was wearing t-shirts with glitter on them and enjoyed covering the walls of her bedroom with pictures of horses she'd cut out of magazines.
She self-consciously ran a hand through her hair. It needed to be washed—badly. It had been dirty to begin with, but the dried blood in it wasn't helping matters any, and since the doctor had needed to shave some of her hair in order to stitch the gash on her scalp, she was also sporting an awkwardly placed bald patch on her head. Her face was greasy from day-old makeup and her lip was swollen and painful from where her tooth had nearly gone through.
And every time she moved, flakes of dried blood from her scalp fell onto her shoulders and lap, like some kind of gruesome confetti.
She squirmed under his scrutiny, and her face started to burn with embarrassment even as she told herself that this was her brother, and it was, therefore, stupid to be worrying about how she looked. She doubted he cared anyway.
She wasn't quite sure what to do. He hadn't moved or spoken since she'd looked up to find him standing in the door, watching her. She thought it was strange that she felt at a loss, because she'd pictured this moment dozens of times in her head.
But in her head, he always appeared in the distance, walking toward her in order to sweep her up into a hug and tell her he was there to take her away with him to live in Seattle. In her head he told her how much he'd missed her and how he was sorry he'd left her. In her head he said all the things people said on T.V. shows, things she thought were corny and stupid, but wished she could hear anyway.
In her head, he never just stood there and stared at her in silence, as if he didn't know what to do or say. In her head he didn't look small and broken.
Of course, she'd also never pictured herself seeing him for the first time in years while lying in a hospital bed, bloody and bruised, because Aaron had just joined the ranks of the crazy and pushed her down the stairs of their home.
It wasn't until she said his name, quietly, like the invitation he obviously thought he needed that he actually walked into the room. His eyes slipped away from her as he approached the bed, however, and she saw that he was doing his best to look at anything but her. He scanned the readings on the monitor by her bed and checked the IV drip.
She watched him and was surprised and more than a little unsettled to see tears in his eyes. She looked down, and saw that his hands were clenched into fists. She remembered that.
He stood next to the hard, plastic chair next to her bed. "You should have told me Aaron was acting…" he started to say, but trailed off as if unwilling or unable to use the word 'crazy.'
There was no mistaking the hard note of anger in his voice, though. She remembered that, too.
Her hands gripped the blankets that covered her legs, as her own anger rose fast and hot, and made her voice shake. "He wasn't acting like mom, if that's what you mean. I'm not stupid, Alex."
His head snapped up then, and he finally met her eyes. "No? You just decided that I needed to hear all about your school crap and what you did at the mall instead of the fact that something was wrong with Aaron? I'd call that pretty freakin' stupid, Amber. You could have—"
He cut himself off from whatever he was going to say and breathed hard. She could see he was shaking.
"I'm not an idiot and I'm not a baby. So stop talking to me like I am." She spit the words through clenched teeth, furious that he had ruined this for her.
"It wasn't like mom, okay? Aaron didn't stop talking or moving or whatever. He just acted annoyed a lot, like stuff was bothering him, but he acted like that a lot anyway, so I didn't think this was anything different. Not until—"
She stopped, not wanting to add the rest, not wanting to add that she'd noticed Aaron's irritability, noticed that he wasn't sleeping much, noticed that something was coming.
She had tried her best to ignore it, though, because she was good at that, good at pretending everything was fine when it was anything but. But no amount of pretending had helped her when Aaron had chased her, raging, through the house, screaming words she couldn't understand, before pushing her down the basement stairs.
She'd always heard that people with head injuries didn't remember the events leading up to their injury. She wished she were one of those people. Her hands shook, and her head throbbed with nauseating intensity. She thought if she threw up, she'd aim for his shoes.
She looked away from him, and stared at the far wall, breathing hard. She pretended to be fascinated by the cheap-looking print of an English garden hanging there.
The silence between them dragged on, but she was perfectly willing to stare at that ugly picture until he gave up and left.
It wouldn't be the first time. Or the last, she supposed.
"Look, I'm sorry, okay? I shouldn't have yelled at you. I guess I'm just…I know I'm being…I'm sorry."
She could still hear the anger in his voice—so familiar, so part of what she remembered of him that it made her wonder if it ever really went away.
"Your apology sucks, you know."
He made a noise in his throat, not quite a laugh. "Yeah, I know."
Her own anger started to leak away, but the nausea, already constant, rose as she felt the beginnings of fear.
"I'm sorry." He said it again, and took her hands in his.
She looked down at his hands, wrapped tightly around hers, and thought they didn't look like surgeon's hands at all. She'd always heard that surgeons' hands were supposed to be delicate or dexterous or elegant or whatever—like the hands of a concert pianist she'd seen in a PBS program she'd had to watch in art class in the seventh grade. Long, white fingers that danced over the keys, fingers that looked like they'd never done hard work in their life, and only touched beautiful things.
His hands didn't look like that at all. His hands had stolen food, and served booze, and beaten their father so bad he left and never came back. His hands had rocked her to sleep at night when she was scared and tickled her feet to make her laugh. His hands weren't delicate or elegant. They were sturdy and strong and safe. She gripped them hard and looked up at him.
He would leave again, soon. She knew that and hated him for it. Hated that he would leave and not come back and go to Seattle and leave her and she'd be alone.
But she also hated that she couldn't really blame him, couldn't resent him for it, because she'd leave, too, if she could.
"I missed you," she whispered. Her throat felt too tight to do otherwise.
He smiled at her then, the half-smile she remembered so well. The smile he always wore in her memories, and in the stupid, pretend scenarios she created in her head. He smiled the smile she thought of as uniquely, and exclusively, 'Alex.'
She started to cry, horrible, gulping sobs that hurt her throat and sounded awkward and embarrassingly loud in the small room. She hated this, hated that people might look and stare, but she was no more in control of this than seemingly anything else in her life.
He sat down on her bed, and pulled her into his arms. He smelled the same as she remembered and the familiarity of his arms around her made her cry even harder. She clung to him with a bruising grip as he rocked her, as if she were still a little kid.
She almost didn't hear him when he spoke.
"I missed you, too."