Hi, guys!
First of all, a gentle WARNING: This is about Jackson, and contain Japril but isn't about Japril. Other pairings are heavily featured. It's my way to express what feels like moving on, forgiveness and having a family who loves you no matter if you share blood or not (that's one of the few qualities I still like about the show).
I've been working on this idea for a year, since Japril divorced. I wrote like seven versions of this but there was always something missing, until a couple of days ago when I was feeling angsty and I was able to finish it.
Song featured: Unbroken by Birdy.
I'm always open to criticism and debate, as long as you're polite.
P.S. If you're following my Japril/Jolex fic, I've not forget about it. I'm working on it. I promise.
Unbroken
Everything you once loved
Like your own blood
Comes crumbling down
Could you keep your head up?
"Doctor, Avery," the head nurse from the ER called.
Jackson turned around, slowly. He knew he was about to get bad news.
"What's the matter?" he asked trying to remain friendly. The head nurse from the ER was with arms crossed on her chest and an angry stare. The ER nurses' rarely went to the surgical floor to look for him… Unless there was trouble.
"It's Doctor Kepner," said the nurse almost choleric.
"Again?" Jackson was already feeling defeated.
"Again," she confirmed.
When Jackson arrived to the ER the scenario was even worse than he imagined. Last time he was called to intervene, she was screaming to an abusive father who had beaten almost to death his teenage son. Jackson was ready for that kind of scenario, but this time was different.
She was in the middle of the ER exchanging heated words with her Chief Resident, the last person he would have expected to see her fight with in the middle of her work place. Every member of the staff, patients and people present in the ER were staring at them with concern. Jackson quickly approached them.
"I'm telling you. My patient needs the TC scan," her tone of voice was treating.
"No, he doesn't need it, Doctor Kepner," Doctor Vasquez said, more calmly than her, but still angry. He crossed his arms over his chest and that gesture seemed to infuriate her even more.
"You know she needs it, you're just being a jerk with me," she said and took a step forward.
"Enough!" Jackson called them at the same time he placed himself between the two doctors.
Doctor Vasquez flinched but she stared at Jackson, defiantly.
Jackson spotted an empty trauma room and ordered both to follow him. Vazquez followed him without hesitation, but she stepped back and attempted to leave. Jackson noticed it and turned around to face her.
"I'm giving you an order," he said, trying very hard to not lose his temper. He was giving her a silent warning: here, I'm your boss.
She opened her mouth, ready to reply, but changed her mind in the last second and followed them into the empty trauma room.
"Can you tell me what was that?" Jackson asked.
"Doctor Vazquez is getting in the way with my patients," she pointed at the Chief Resident.
"I'm not," he took a step closer to her. Things were getting heated up again. "You're the one who's been acting irrationally lately."
"If two are having troubles fix them outside your work," Jackson intervened before she could open her mouth and fight back. This was going to be a never ending story if he let them continue fighting. "This is exactly the reason why relationships between residents are discouraged."
She turned towards Jackson and faked a sarcastic laugh as she crossed her arms over her chest, "Hypocrite much?"
"This isn't about us," Mark Vazquez said. Jackson raised a brow at him, unbelieving. Something in Mark face changed. He looked surprised at her. "You haven't told him yet, haven't you?"
In that instant her defiant attitude changed. She stared at the floor, avoiding Jackson's stare by all means.
"What's happening?" Jackson asked to her.
"Of course, you haven't told him," Vazquez accused.
"Mark, stop it, please," she begged in a whisper as she twisted her hands nervously. Jackson noticed the ring on her left hand was missing. "I told you I was going to tell him when the time was right."
Jackson didn't know Mark well enough but he could tell he was disappointed on her. "Does your family knows?" Mark asked while she kept quiet, staring at the floor. "Elizabeth, does your siblings knows?"
Elizabeth Kepner raised her head and stared at Jackson. Her eyes -an exact replica of her mothers- were begging for his forgiveness even before she could explain herself. "Of course, Harriet and Joshua know."
"Beth, what's going on?" Jackson asked in an authoritarian tone that he only used with his children were teenagers.
She looked at him embarrassed, like when he caught her grabbing condoms from the clinic, "Mark and I are not engaged anymore," she confessed.
Jackson didn't expected to hear that, only four months ago he had witnessed first-hand the exact moment when Mark proposed. And he must certainly must have looked puzzled, because Mark added an explanation to their break-up: "Elizabeth joined the army."
"I'm leaving in three weeks," Elizabeth explained while seated in an examination bed and Jackson was with arms crossed in front of her. She was still having trouble to look Jackson at the eye but at least her voice was serene and calm. Jackson had ordered Mark to leave them alone and take care of Elizabeth's patients while they talked. Mark had hesitated but ultimately followed Jackson's order.
Jackson didn't know what he expected from his conversation with Elizabeth. He knew beforehand that she was not changing her mind. He already knew the reason why she was leaving and it was not going to be an easy fix.
"My godfather is Owen Hunt," she said trying to sound light and casual, although her body was tense and her arms crossed over her chest, ready to fight back.
"You're only a year away to end the program and got very high chances to be Chief Resident," Jackson enlisted as he tried his best to stay calm. "You can enlist the army after you finish."
"You know I've to leave," she said fiercely.
"Elizab—"
"No," she interrupted him as she raised her hands and waved to made him stop talking. "I've already made my decision. I'm not asking for your permission."
Her determination made her resemblance to April beyond belief.
"I'm worry about you."
"Don't be," she snapped as she stood up. "You're not my father and I don't need you to be worried." She was staring defiantly at him with her dark-brown eyes, the only feature that she owned that was like her late father.
"You're right, I'm not your father," Jackson said in a tone that would have made anyone to think Webber was speaking. "But you and Joshua are Harriet's siblings and I promised your mother and your father I would keep an eye on you. So, I'll not apologize for worry about you."
His words resonated in her, "I'm sorry, Jackson," Her eyes watered but refused to cry. "It's just...I need to leave. I don't find myself here, I need to leave."
Jackson stared into her eyes. He saw her desperation and depression. She was not the perky and rebellious girl she had been in the past, before her father died. She was speaking nothing but the truth. She needed to go.
"I know," he finally recognized.
She grinned, pleased to have him on her side. "I'm gonna miss this place, though," she admitted.
"I'm gonna miss you, kiddo," he sadly said.
Elizabeth stepped forward and without notice, threw her arms around his chest, hugging him tightly. Jackson took her in his arms like he used to protect Harriet in his arms when she was a kid searching for comfort in his daddy's arms. Feeling needed as a father was a sentiment that get rusty as children grow.
"Will Mark ever forgive me?" she asked while she hide her face on his chest.
Jackson was taken by surprise by her question but he knew the answer by heart. "He'll understand," he said softly and patted her head. "Eventually."
He thought his words would comfort her but they had the opposite effect. The tears who had been fighting to leave her eyes started to fall abruptly. She was not longer holding her back her pain.
Jackson let her cry in his arms for several minutes, until she broke the hug and apologized for the tears in his labcoat.
"You know what's funny?"
"What?" he asked confused.
"I used to hate you," she confessed. "You were this terrible man who took Harriet every friday night and kept her away from me on weekends."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"But when I was like seven, I asked my dad who was his best friend and he said it was mom," she said. "When I asked her, she said you were her best friend. When you're seven you didn't really think over why your mom says her ex-husband is her best friend. Her answer somehow stuck in my mind and I decided to give you a chance."
"I'm glad you did."
"You need to admit it's weird that your best friend is also your ex-husband, though."
"Your mom and I came from a long way back," Jackson explained, unsure of where she was going with that conversation.
"I know," she nodded. "I know all your history."
Jackson wasn't surprised by that information. Elizabeth was always asking questions, since she could talk. She was very curious and sometimes a little unwise. He was aware April was very candid about that information with her children, just like he was with his twin boys. After all, April and him decided to never hide the truth from Harriet.
He waited in silence while Elizabeth continued, "Maggie was the one who helped me to cope when dad was diagnosed, remember? One night, she told me about her experience, how you helped her through that difficult time, how she left you help her...how you two felt in love. That's when I get it."
Jackson remembered that particular night very vividly. He remembered the panic in April's voice when she called him and asked if he had seen Elizabeth that day. Her little girl was missing.
It had been a tough year for Elizabeth since Harriet and her brother, Joshua, were already in college and Elizabeth was feeling left behind by her older sibling. By that time, April and her husband were planning to move to Chicago, where April had been offered a position as Chief in the trauma department and given the opportunity to start her own trauma training program in the Avery Foundation. Everything was already falling apart in Elizabeth's world, and then her father was diagnosed with lymphoma. The fifteen year-old couldn't take it anymore.
The night before the moving to Chicago, she decided it was a good idea to hide in the hospital (the perks of being raised in a family of surgeons) inside the gallery of an empty OR, to be precisely. Maggie wasn't even aware that Elizabeth was missing, but she just happened to found the blonde girl hiding, crying silently.
"Get what?" he asked without understanding what her point.
"You and mom were best friends but she wasn't what you wanted her to be. You never understood why my mom didn't let you help her when Samuel died."
Jackson felt judged. "I've never wanted to April to be someone she isn't."
"Yeah, but you never really understood and I don't think Mark will," a lonely tear rolled on her cheek and she quickly cleaned her face with the back of her hand. "I'll be fine, though. Mom move on, right? She found my father and you found Maggie. And you are happy, right?."
"Yeah, I'm happy," he sincerely said.
"Good," Elizabeth said with a smile. "I'll be fine, then."
After the conversation with Elizabeth ended, Jackson stayed in that trauma room alone, thinking. Memories from distant past were violently coming to his head. The exact moment, after Montana, when April and him decided to end up their love relationship for good, kept chasing him. They decided it was better to be best friends than have a marriage. It was hard to understand for the outsiders but not to them.
To them it was simple, marriage jeopardized their friendship and the only way they could love each other without hurting was when they were not romantically involved. It hadn't been an easy decision, for him it was even harder than divorcing, but he knew it had been the right call.
Of course, seeing April marry someone else, being called darling by someone else and having his babies, broke his heart and made him realize that a primitive part of him would always be in love with her. Even when he had been the first to move on and fall in love with someone else, Maggie.
He had not lied to Beth. He was happy, truly happy. They were all happy in the most cheesy way possible. Harriet grow up being known she was loved not only by her parents but also her extended family.
April and Jackson were happy.
So, why he was moved by Beth's words?
Did he never understand April's motivation to leave?
What if he truly had tried to understand her?
His phone vibrated inside his lab coat pocket and made him came back to reality. He grabbed it and looked at the screen, it was Maggie asking when he was coming home. One of the twins were coming to dinner that night. He put back the phone into his pocket without answering back.
He needed to do some things before he headed home.
Mark Vazquez was at the nurse station, pretending to fill some charts but it was obvious he was too immersed into his own mind to pay real attention to his surroundings.
"Hey, Mark," called him. The resident jumped.
"Doctor Avery. I'm sorry for, well, everything," the man apologized. "I'll make sure to not lose my temper when Beth is around. After all, she won't be here for too long, right?"
The tone in his voice let Jackson know that resident hoped that maybe he had made Beth to change her mind and convinced her to stay.
"Listen, Mark," Jackson sighed. There was only a way to make him try to understand what Beth was going through. "Everybody says Beth looks like her famous mother but she also shares her temper. Both are kind and compassionate but also doesn't like to be told what to do or think. Believe me, the only person I ever knew that April and Beth have had in consideration when it came to decisions was Beth's father."
"And he's not here anymore to make Beth change her mind."
"He was a good man," Jackson said without hesitation. "To be honest, I was kind of jealous about how he could made April think twice and reconsider her actions."
"I'm maybe a jerk but don't get why she's leaving me. We are supposed to be best friends. She's cutting me out of her"
Jackson profoundly empathized with him, but he didn't want his feelings to compromise what he was trying to say to him. "I know," he calmly said. "I'm afraid you can't help her but you can try to understand and wait for her. I truly hope you can do it before is too late," Jackson said with passion.
"I want to," Mark said defeated.
Jackson smiled at him. "Good night, Mark."
"Night, Doctor Avery."
Jackson was already in his car when Maggie texted him again. This time Jackson texted her back to let her know he was on his way home. But before turning on the car, he did one last thing. He took out his cellphone and dialed her number.
"Hey," he said when she picked the phone at the third ring.
"So, I'm assuming she told you." April always knew what he was thinking, even before himself.
"I tried to make her change her mind, unsuccessfully."
"I don't want her at a war zone, either. But I get why she's doing it. I would join her if I could."
The last time Jackson had seen her was at her husband's memorial service, a couple of months ago. She looked calm and at peace, but Jackson could feel the big hole in her chest and the pain she felt. He knew her. If it were not because she was already the grandmother of two beautiful girls, and because she was the head of the trauma program at several Chicago hospitals, she would be flying with her daughter to the war zone.
"I know," Jackson agreed with her.
"I'm more concerned about Mark, though. Harriet told me Elizabeth called off the engagement," she confessed. "He's a nice boy. Do you think he's going to be, fine?"
Jackson took a long pause before answering her question. "He will," he finally said.
Now it was time for April to meditate what she was going to say next. "Tell him I'm sorry she's breaking his heart."
"He knows."
"Good," her voice sounded relieved.
There was nothing else to say between them but remained silently for a few more minutes.
"Good night, Jackson," April said at last.
"Bye, April," Jackson responded.
If you get until here, thank you very much! Please, let me know what you think :)