Burke glanced down at the box of his belongings that he'd gathered on his desk and let out a long sigh. Webber hadn't accepted his resignation as well as he'd hoped that he would. He felt like his own father was disappointed in him from running away from him problems.

The truth was that he wasn't running away from his problems. He was trying to prevent hers.

He thought about the previous night and how she seemed to cry harder each time he whispered I love you and he realized that he was only hurting her. He couldn't let her go, though. He had to see her through her tears before he would leave her alone.

He wasn't going to leave her hurting again.

There were many places he could go that he'd be able to pick up a career quickly. It would only be a couple of weeks before he could get his medical license transferred. He thought of hospitals that would probably hire him as chief of surgery. He wanted the hours. He wanted to drown himself in paperwork and other people's issues so that he would not have to face his own.

Going home was not an option. The once close relationship he held with his mama had dissipated a bit in the shadows of disappointment and avoidance.

No, he would start a life someplace new. He would start a life where he knew nobody. This time he would not form attachments. There would be nobody to impress, because he would already have a position of power. There would be no relationships to destroy, no obligations to disappoint.

Preston Burke would merely exist.

He gathered the box into his arms and pressed on through the halls, avoiding curious stares and tuning out hushed assumptions as he made his way through the front doors of the hospital. There was a feeling tugging at his soul, something whispering to him to stay for just a few moments longer- he brushed it off as lingering feelings for her that would eventually fade.

Rather, he hoped that they would eventually fade.

He settled the box into the back seat of his car and walked slowly to the driver's side of the car. He did not turn and look back at the hospital before sinking into his seat behind the wheel. He did not turn his eyes up to observe the concrete and glass edifice before pulling away.

Seattle Grace meant so much to him at one time. It was a venue for him to prove himself. It was a container holding the things most precious to him- a coffee cart where he bought her coffee, the call room where they came together, the office where he realized that there were challenges to dating an intern, the hospital bed where he lay when he first realized that she loved him.

Now it was just a building, it was just another hospital. Another place where people die and hopes die with them.

Burke felt like a fool. He was not used to the amount of self-loathing and pity he'd felt for the first few weeks and made a solemn vow to himself that the second he began his new life that he'd snap out of it. He blamed it on the lingering effects of being in the same city as her.

She had already moved on from him, and now it was time for him to move on as well.