A/N: written for the prompts "shame" and "evolution" for ga_lfas on livejournal.
You're not gonna lose this one
You don't have to cut and run
I think you can choose to love and what is more
That is how you survived the war
How You Survived the War, The Weepies
Unloved kids find ways to protect themselves. Mark's way was making out he didn't care. It let him exist until he grew up, moved out and disowned any family he hadn't chosen for himself.
He doesn't miss his parents. He can't remember ever really loving them. Not like other kids seemed to. Actually, he can't remember all that much about his childhood before Derek's mom took him under her wing, and even then there are gaps. But he was a little kid and little kids need love (even if they're going to grow up to be Mark Sloan) and, underneath the denial, he knows there was a time when he tried.
They didn't want him. Okay, they never came out and said it, but every silence, every absence, every cold, distracted "Not now, Mark," drove the message home.
In hindsight, more than thirty years later, he knows all the fault was theirs: they were the adults; he was just a kid. But he developed the habit of taking the blame early (he did it to survive, to feel he had a little fake control) and the habits you pick up as a kid have a nasty way of sticking (a nasty way of hurting, too). Now, in his mind, love is always linked with rejection. He's not enough. His love is never enough. It's a refrain that haunts him whenever he starts to hope for something more.
They didn't want him. When he lets it (he doesn't if he can help it, but darkness and solitude have a tendency to bring it on), it still has the power to bury him in loss and humiliation.
"I'm bad," he once told Lexie. He doesn't know if she got how deeply he meant it (doesn't know if he did at the time). But she stuck around anyway and things are slowly working out. He's learned to screw stuff up as soon as feelings start to mean anything, but this time he's doing his best to break the mold. She likes him and it feels good. The little kid inside his head feels safer around her. Safer and a little less bad.
Sometimes he watches her and it's just beyond his reach to acknowledge what he feels for her is love. It's there, though, and he tries to show her, not ready for the exposure of words. Sex, coffee in the morning, putting the toilet seat down, making a few demands to show he's serious about what they have, holding her when she cries.
Bit by bit, he's dropping his protection. It scares the crap out of him, but it's time he tried again.
