A/N: So I watched the shooting episodes and kinda had a breakdown. Haha, that's an understatement, but I'm sure it was for all of you when you saw it for the first time... or the fourth. Anyway, I thought everything would be completely different if Owen didn't come in the the ER, Derek died and Meredith didn't miscarry. I hope you guys like it.
Jackson and Christina were elbow deep in Derek's chest, trying so hard to find the bullet and trying to fix the shredded threw the aorta. Jackson was pretty sure she was crying, he wouldn't blame her if she was. He wasn't sure how we was standing, let alone working right now. Then a cold voice stopped them dead in their tracks.
"Stop working." They only looked up long enough to see Gary Clark standing a few feel away, the gun he used to kill people- people they knew pointing at them. They kept going though because it was Derek Shepherd on the table. There was no way in hell they would let him die. "I said stop working."
Christina was crying now, there was no doubt in his mind she was. He wanted to as well, but he was clear headed in bad situations. "Stop working!" He yelled and they could only hope to God that Meredith or April didn't hear. That was the last thing they needed.
He unplugged the wires connecting the surgeon to the heart monitor. "Lift up your hands." He told Christina. She looked at him, eyes confused and sad and he just repeated. "Lift up your hands!" She did Without a fight. Mr. Clark had scared the fight out if her with the gun and the bullets that could kill them in a second. "In a moment, Dr. Shepherd's heart will pump all his blood into his chest and he will die."
Soon enough, the monitor flat lined and Mr. Clark watched it for a second Almost as if he was making sure he was dead. "I am sorry for the trouble," he said and walked away, right out of the OR. Then they went back to work, hooking him back up to the heart monitor and trying to keep him alive.
Then he flatlined. They tried for almost a half hour to revive him before they knew he was gone and wasn't going to come back. Christina ran out of the OR before Jackson could even call time of death. That was the hardest thing he ever did, until he told Meredith her husband was dead.
...
Jackson Avery went threw a lot during the shooting. He lost two of his best friends and the other one nearly lost her mind. He had a gun pointed at him and he had felt Derek Shepherd's heart stop beating. He had to tell Meredith because Christina went MIA for a whole 43 hours and she wouldn't of been able to do it anyway.
Sure, a lot of bad things happened to a lot of good people and some of them even lost their lives, but Jackson was kinda forgotten about just because he didn't go crazy. Well, he didn't go that crazy.
Alex Karev still has the bullet in his chest because there was no need to get it. Whenever he's in the bathroom he stares at the scar and Jackson can tell it hurts him sometimes. He's offered to take it out, but Alex always shoots back, "yeah right. We all know what happened last time you had someone with a bullet in their chest under the knife, Avery. No thanks." The comment stings, but so does the question he thinks. Alex is still his best friend. He can't take the elevator alone either. Jackson has gone out if his way a few times to ride with him when no one else was using the elevator just like Alex and April run out of surgeries to talk he and Christina out from under OR tables.
April Kepner still can't sleep alone. Sure, now when their dating or whatever it's not a problem, but at first when she would come crawling into his bed after Lexie kicked her out if hers or Lexie wasn't sleeping (she barely did anyway) it was awkward. Then one day it became a ritual and she moved into his room. Then one night he kissed her and it got awkward again. That was until he realized he couldn't sleep alone either and they became a 'thing' as Alex calls it. She hasn't been back to her family's farm in years though. Every time she did a gun shot scared the crap out of her or some animal would need to be slaughtered. She couldn't handle seeing that much blood again.
Christina Yang still occasionally hides under OR tables. They can't be in the same OR together, him and Christina. Every time they are alone the patient become Derek, a loud noise becomes a gun shot and Christina is under the table and Jackson is just standing there, hyperventilating until she pulls him down with her. He's the only one that can get her out because he's the only one that was there. They were the only ones to feel Derek's heart stop beating and do everything they could to save him, only they didn't. She was to broken for Owen (he was a fucking trauma surgeon in a war. He saw broken people first hand. How the hell could she be to broken?).
Lexie Grey had to be committed to psych a few weeks after the shooting. Mark had moved into the frat house with them, they all moved to the frat house just so they weren't alone- but was kicked out soon after by Meredith. Apparently seeing her dead husband's best friend was to much for her. (Mark had lost it as well. He lost his best friend and Lexie and Callie and Arizone moved to fucking Africa to be as far away as possible from the hell hole they used to call home. He was alone). It was shortly after that, that Lexie lost it. Alex and Jackson had to drag her in the next day and chain her to the bed and she slept for thirty something hours before she was returned home. Even after that she sometimes lost it, going off about spree and mass shootings.
Then there was Meredith Grey. She had fallen into such a deep hole of depression after Derek died, they were happy when she kicked mark out because she showed some feeling. She locked herself in her room, eating the food April prepared for her and only living enough to grow her baby. It was her only piece of Derek. She wasn't about to loose that piece. Then the baby was born, about eight and a half months after the shooting. It was a girl and she named her Della. It was the only name she could think of that started with a 'D'. Everyone thought once the baby was born she'd be more like her own self, but she wasn't even a shadow of the dark and twisty Meredith that sat in the scrub room while two of her friends tried so hard to keep her a wife.
Meredith payed no attention to Della. April asked her why once and Meredith didn't move her eyes from the drawing of Isaac's spinal chord tumor and the framed blue post-it-note hanging above it. "It hurts to much to look at her," was all she said and April left the room. Alex, Lexie and Jackson stood outside and she shook her head. That was the moment they became Della's parents.
It wasn't official until three days later that Lexie walked into her sister's bathroom to borrow some shampoo and found said sister hanging with one of Derek's blue ties used as a nose around her neck and hanging from the shower head. They rushed her to the hospital, tried their hardest to save her, hoping like hell she wouldn't die on them because they have had ENOUGH people die on them recently. Jackson and Christina couldn't go in the trauma room because it was Derek all over again.
Meredith Grey died at 7:53. She was Gary Clark's last victim.
In her Will, Meredith said Della would be placed in Lexie's care of anything happened to her. Alex received the house and nothing really changed. April, Jackson and Christina stayed because Lexie couldn't take care of her niece by herself and Alex couldn't afford to keep the frat house without roommates.
In retrospect, the five of them weren't the most qualified or SANE people to raise a baby, but who would she go to? Meredith's drunk of a father or one of Derek's many crazy sisters, none of the doctors could let go of her like that. They became her parents or aunts and uncles or whatever. The whole situation wasn't normal and it would be crazy as hell if this little girl who had been given so much crap before she was even born to turn out slightly normal.
It was so much that lead to this moment, the moment they had been regretting and wanting to put off since they had gotten their first weird look and over heard the "poor child, no parents and only a few doctors to take care of her." But it happened.
She was six, sitting at the table and eating a plate of pasta with Jackson and Alex. The girls were at the hospital for at least a few more hours so it was just the tree of them. "Uncle Alex?" Della asked, her fork picking up the sauce covered noodles and watching them fall threw the gaps in the utensil.
"Yeah, two feet?" Alex asked, using the pet name he came up for the little girl when she was born. She was a tiny baby and an even tinier 'little human' as Arizona would call her if she was here.
"Why don't I have a mommy or a daddy?"
Both forks clattered against the wooden table that's been in the house forever. Jackson's blue/green eyes met Alex's brown ones only to find them filled with as much panic as his.
Jackson kneeled down in front of the small girl (much like he is thinking of kneeling in front of April, only with a ring). He pushed some of her long dark hair behind her shoulder and sighed deeply and slowly explained, "Before you were born, a very, very bad man brought a gun to the hospital where you're aunts, uncle Alex and I work. That bad, bad man killed your daddy and a lot of other good people."
"What about my mommy?" That's the question he didn't want to answer.
And he didn't because he was to broken for that. It was one thing to relive that day every single day, but to tell a little girl what he had seen- what her mother had seen that made her want to take her own life. That was something he couldn't do. He was way to broken for that.