Chapter One: death and all his friends

April got home to an empty apartment.

She wasn't sure why she hadn't been expecting that. Even when Reed had been alive, April had always beaten her home. Reed dawdled in the residents' locker room, chatting with everyone, and always missed the first carpool to their neighborhood.

Not that there was a carpool for her that day. Most the staff that lived near them hadn't been stuck in a hospital with a shooter all afternoon.

Taking the bus was an out-of-body experience. No one around her could still sense dried blood in their hair. No one around her had had a gun pointed at them at close range. No one around her had watched friends on the operating table, watched a friend miscarry. No one around her was shaking. No one else had tripped over the bloody body of their best friend.

Reed.

Empty apartment. Reed's cup on the counter, with a lipstick stain on the rim.

Suddenly April couldn't breathe.

Her instinct drove her to pull out her phone, fingers numb. Her fingertip trembled across the screen clumsily, scrolling through contacts. She couldn't call her family; they wouldn't have any idea what to say, and they'd only worry. But she couldn't call anyone at the hospital; no one liked her, or knew her.

Except Jackson. Whether or not he liked her, she wasn't sure, but he knew her, and he knew Reed, and he had lost Charles today. Weber told them all before they left: the body count for the day. She was sick to her stomach.

And he would be too, she realized. He lost his best friend too.

Hesitating, April's eyes met Reed's handwriting on the message board by the phone: April – one of your many cousins is asking about trading a goat for a couple of piglets? I don't think they realize you've left Ohio…

That was it. April stumbled backward out the door, pulling the door shut. She forced herself to press Jackson's name and call.

Three rings, four, five—

"April?"

His voice was unreadable.

April tried to be clear, and concise, and not ramble on about pig slaughtering. "I... I'm at my apartment but I just can't stay here, and I know you probably—well, maybe you can—but since Charles was your roommate too, so I was wondering if maybe you wanted to be together somewhere… neutral."

She sounded like an idiot, she knew it.

"Okay," he said without a pause. "Yeah, that would be… Listen, I'll get us a room at the Mariott on the waterfront. Can you get there?"

"Yeah, I'll just take the Link to Pioneer Square." Directions, and light rail maps, and train stations, she could do. That part of her brain was functioning.

"Thanks for calling, April," he said, and hung up.

She didn't bother trying to go back in to get a bag together. She couldn't possibly need anything that badly.

It was a bit of a walk to the Capitol Hill station, but she was used to it, and in fact had just walked it a few minutes before, in the opposite direction. Walking gave her something to do at least. The sun was setting, but it wasn't beautiful anymore. It was harsh and blinding.

Riding on the Link was worse. She had to stay still, because she was surrounded by people, but every nerve in her body rejected the idea of stillness. She settled for fiddling her hands and tapping her foot like a jackrabbit.

She got out at Pioneer Square and could tell even before she got to the staircase leading up to street level that it wasn't light out anymore. That sucked. She hated walking by herself in the dark.

You'll be fine. It's not even late. People are everywhere. It's not like anyone's going to shoot you.

She couldn't breathe for a second. She remembered how and climbed the stairs, keeping in time with the person in front of her.

At the top she stepped out, turned the corner, in the direction of the water.

"April!"

Her heart stopped for a moment, in the way it kept doing, until her brain registered that voice.

"Jackson?"

"Behind you."

She turned, and there he was. Unlike her, he'd changed out of his scrubs. "I thought I'd meet you. It's kind of late to walk alone."

"Thank you," she said, a little surprised. Of course, Jackson was a good person, but they were not especially close, beyond the natural friendliness that came with proximity after so many years.

He didn't try to say anything else. They walked together, through the bars and shops and rushing people, making their way to the waterfront then walking along the water for about fifteen minutes until they got to the hotel.

It was at this moment, walking into the beautiful lobby, that April considered the cost. "Oh, Jackson, I can repay you. I just realized you paid for this."

"You know my family's rich, April," he said back, holding out his hand to stop her. "This is the kind of thing it's good to have money for."

He checked them in while April paced the lobby.

"Come on," he said, just loud enough for her to hear and no louder, and she stopped her pacing and followed him to the stairs. They didn't take the elevator, and April knew why: everyone knew what happened to Alex.

Their room was on the second floor, so the stairs were easy anyway. April used the key he'd given her to unlock the door, and when the door closed behind them, she turned around and locked the deadbolt immediately, and Jackson didn't say a word.

She could breathe a little better with the door locked.

"I tripped on Reed's body. That's how I found her. I landed bad and got a bloody nose, and I saw I was covered in blood, and for a second I thought a pint of blood had spilled out of my nose without me noticing, when I looked down at my coat. But then I looked and saw her, staring at me, eyes glassy."

It came out of nowhere. Jackson watched her carefully. She wasn't pacing anymore.

"I ran to Derek's office, and I was a babbling incoherent idiot, and he called security, and then he left me there. And I stayed for a while, but then I couldn't take the sitting-duck feeling anymore and I went to find him. And I found him with the shooter. And he shot him because I came in."

Jackson sat on one of the beds and kept looking at her.

"And I was so scared because now his gun was pointing at me, so I went on and on about details about my life because I saw that on TV, so he let me go, and I ran. And I was sitting in the hallway till Cristina got me, and we were trying to find someone to save Derek, and then we found you. And you!" she pointed at Jackson, eyes wide. "You operated on Derek Shepherd with a gun to your head, with Cristina leading you in cardiac surgery."

Finally, he spoke. "And then it was over. It's over."

She scoffed. "It wasn't over. Then we had to get out of there. Then they told us Charlie was dead. And I saw Reed's body on a stretcher—under a sheet, but her arm was hanging off with the nail polish I painted on yesterday. And then I had to get home, which was ridiculous, and go into my apartment that I'm supposed to share with my dead best friend."

"It's over though. The worst part."

April stepped back. "Really? 'Cause for me the worst part was Reed and Charles dying, and as far as I can tell, that's never going to be over."

"Sit with me."

Without a counter proposal, April sat next to him. "I just don't know how to do anything. I keep failing at breathing."

"Me too."

"I couldn't even walk into our apartment more than a few steps."

Jackson considered this. "At first it wasn't really a problem. I walked past his shoes in the hallway, I changed, I showed, I went to make a cup of tea. Then all of a sudden it hit me, that he wasn't going to walk through that door ever. And I left and I sat in the laundry room down the hall. Then you called me."

"So we're both disasters."

"We're both disasters," Jackson confirmed.

They gravitated toward each other without noticing, sitting in silence, upper arms and knees barely touching.

April didn't care for the quiet, not with all the thoughts swarming in her head, so she picked something mundane. "I have a cousin back in Molene that breeds goats."

He turned to her, half-surprised and half-amused. "Okay?"

"Like, he can't stop breeding goats. It's genuinely concerning. His property is overrun with all these goats, and he just keeps thinking he needs more. And he tries to barter with them—everywhere he goes, he's like, 'Would you take a goat in exchange?'"

Jackson smirked at that. "He's pulling through the drive-through, gesturing to a backseat full of goats when they ask for his five bucks."

"Well, if they asked for bucks he'd have to redirect him to my other cousin that takes in almost-roadkill deer."

"These cannot possibly be real Kepner family relations."

April nodded. "On my Mom's side, actually."

"Did you ever hear about Izzie Stevens and the deer?"