A/N: Hello all, sorry it's been a while (though by now I'm sure you're used to it from me). Things got really crazy – my roommate was in the ICU for a while so I haven't been writing or doing much of anything – everything is okay now though, alas I am back.

WARNING: Lots of bad language.

This is going to get a little darker for a while, I can't help it it's my favorite kind of fic, so here's your warning.

Amelia

My cheeks were instantly hot the first time I saw Owen that next afternoon. We weren't close, not really. He was down the hall. But I was in front of him and he saw me, which sent a chill down my spine. Of course, he had to stop to put his chart away right where I was standing.

"Dr. Shepherd," he nodded curtly.

I rolled my eyes. "Yup."

He sighed. I was about to walk away but he grabbed my arm. "Amelia,"

I shook him off. "Don't touch me. Don't even look at me."

"You really think that's practical?" he called after me as I stormed down the hall. Maybe I wasn't being practical, but I didn't feel like I owed him anything after he betrayed me in one of the worst ways possible. I was still so mad; as much as I loved spending time with Meredith and Alexa, it did nothing to solve my problems.

I guess maybe admitting that much was a step in the right direction. Ignorance was usually my solution.

I was walking so fast that when I barreled into the attendings lounge I slammed the door against the wall. Oops. Why wasn't there one of those things that stick out of the wall to stop the door from scraping the wall?

"Woah," Arizona said. She and Callie were on the couch, legs entwined, going over some notes and picking at a bowl of grapes.

"Shep, what's going on?" Callie asked.

I put my hands up to my eyes. "I can't be here anymore. It's Owen. H-h-he…" I couldn't get my words out. "He's been cheating on me."

"Wait, what?" Callie stood. "You mean Taylor?"

I practically heaved. "I guess so. I didn't ask her name. I probably would have killed her if I saw her face."

"We're too pretty for prison, remember?" Arizona joked.

I sighed and looked her in the eye. "Might be worth it."

"Well you can ask Derek, he's spent some time there himself," came Meredith's voice as she entered the lounge. "What's wrong?"

"The usual," I rolled my eyes. Believe me, the melodrama of it all was not lost on me.

"That son of a bitch," Callie said. "He told me Taylor was a consulting surgeon from Seattle Pres. It seemed weird to me but he said they were planning on moving a patient from there to here for a procedure."

I could see Mer in the corner of my eye moving her finger across her throat as a sign for Callie to stop talking. Hey, at least Callie was being truthful. I have always appreciated honesty in its rawest form. "Well, it turns out she's more than a colleague." I collapsed onto the couch seat Callie had vacated. Arizona moved to put her arm around my shoulders. "We were engaged…" My words hung in the air for a while. Nobody knew what to say to me, and at this point I understood. It seemed like the past few months have been everyone trying to comfort me over this, that and the other, and I was getting tired of it so by now they all must have been basically done.

"Is it too soon to say you dodged a bullet, then?" Mer broke the silence.

I glared at her. "Yes."

She chuckled and I couldn't help but smile back. I knew she wasn't saying it to be unsupportive or talk badly about Owen or my choices in men. In all honestly, she might have been right.

But, given everything, maybe a cheater is who I deserved.

I stood. "Thank you, guys, but I have a surgery to get to and we all have stuff to do. We can sit and mope another time. Or not at all would also be good."

"I thought you were just on call?" Mer asked. It was hard to keep what I was doing from her, considering we lived together and worked together.

"Uh, nope," I covered. "A case came in and anyway, April wanted to take my shift tonight. She's traded with me so much she screwed up her sleep schedule, she said."

I got out of the lounge as quickly as I came in. Yes, of course I appreciated my friends but them wanting to coddle me all the time about Owen and everything was starting to get old. I just wanted someone to let me be mad.

Maybe that someone is Dr. Wyatt. I was going to my first appointment with her; I had scheduled it this morning.

"Hello, Dr. Shepherd, please sit down," Dr. Wyatt gestured to a couch across from her. I was perched on the edge stiffly. I was always uncomfortable with therapists, even the ones I had to see as a kid after my dad died. Even more so now that I have a fairly complex understanding of the brain.

"Thanks," I nodded.

"I have to be honest with you from the get-go," Dr. Wyatt started.

Brownie points already. "Yeah?"

"The reason I was open for you this morning was because Meredith had called me early last week and tried to schedule an appointment with me, for you. It's highly unconventional… not to mention confidentiality and all of that… but she insisted she would be able to convince you to schedule yourself an appointment before today and that you wouldn't have to know I kept it open for you. But part of the process is building trust with you, so there it is."

I rolled my eyes, crossed my arms, and sat back into the couch. "That sounds like Mer."

"Does that bother you? Make you mad?" She started taking notes on a white notepad across from me.

"No. I know she's just looking out for me. Sometimes I wish she wouldn't meddle so much, but I probably wouldn't be here without her."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Come on, Wyatt. You've read the chart," I spat.

"I have, but I want to hear it from you. This is all someone else's perspective. I want to hear yours."

"Do you think that changes what happened?"

"Do you always deflect questions you don't want to answer?" she leaned forward.

"Yes," I admitted. "Usually."

"Well, I'm not up for that crap, so why don't you just tell me."

I sighed. "I like to mess my life up and then feel sorry for myself with illegal substances. Happy?"

"Are you? Happy?"

I pondered. "Overall? Yeah. Right now, probably not."

"But you don't know?"

"I do. I'm not."

"How come?"

"Let's see… my boyfriend proposed to me and then compared me to his ex-wife when I didn't want to tell the whole world… I tried to tell him there are things he doesn't know about me, things that might be deal breakers, and he heard it all from my asshole brother, we fought… my daughter who I gave up at birth ended up in Seattle and we connected, only to have her go back to her old family for winter break until her adoptive mother threw a baseball bat at her and broke her nose, gave her a concussion and scar her for life… Oh! And then there's the Owen cheating on me thing… I'm sure that's not all of course, but it's a start."

Dr. Wyatt seemed totally unfazed. I wondered if Meredith had already filled her in or if it was just part of the job. "Quite a lot then," she joked.

I chuckled. "Yup."

Alexa

It was kind of weird to be in an empty house, especially one that wasn't my own. I wasn't totally used to where everything was yet, and I had messed the TV up trying to find the right input more than a few times now.

Still, it was peaceful. I loved Meredith's kids but they were a handful, and loud. It was nice to sleep in, especially now that I had a concussion and wanted to sleep more than ever. Peaceful quickly turned into boring, though.

I was mindlessly clicking through the channels, somewhat wishing I was back in school, and somewhat wishing I had made better friends in Seattle last semester so that I could actually do something with my life, when my phone started buzzing on the table.

Oh boy, I thought. A caller.

Except the name on the screen made my heart stop in my chest. Mom.

"Hello?" I answered quietly.

"Alexa July Lane. You listen to me. If you do not come home immediately, and I mean immediately, you can kiss your bank account good bye. And your school loans. And your sister for that matter."

"What?!" I spat. "That money is mine, and I worked for every penny myself. As for school loans, Dad cosigned on those, not you, so there's nothing you can do about that. And what do you mean by my sister?"

"Oh, honey, that bank account of yours is directly connected to mine. I handed you everything you needed to hold down a job, and without me there would be no money, so it's mine. And your father is in agreement with me. If you don't apologize and come home, we are cutting you off. And that includes your sister, you will not be allowed to speak to her anymore."

"Apologize for what?"

"For going behind our backs and betraying us. Among everything else you've done to make my life miserable."

I felt my shoulders raise. "I don't have anything to apologize for. You're the one th-that physically assaulted me! I didn't do anything wrong."

"Oh, you stupid little piece of shit. It's a good thing you've got some looks, though nothing remarkable, but you certainly don't have brain. That's for sure. You think you've done nothing wrong? Are you really that much of an arrogant little bitch that you can't find a single fault in yourself? Well then, let me break it down for you. You do realize that people just tolerate you right? Anyone who you thought loved you… well you were wrong, and so were they for daring to ever get that close to you. You're an imbecilic waste of space who needs to do the world a favor by killing yourself already before you use up any more of our oxygen."

My hands shook around the phone. Who was this monster saying these things to me? Certainly not a "mother" figure. I passively registered a thunk as my phone hit the ground.

Long after I dropped the phone, her words were still spinning around my head. Haunting me. Threatening me. Daring me to do something about it.

I could barely breathe as I dialed Amelia, but her phone went right to voicemail. I tried Meredith and Derek too, but nobody answered. I felt the walls closing in on me.

I shakily scrolled through my contacts until I reached Jo, who had given me her number before. She picked up on the first ring. "Hello?" she asked, confused.

"It's Alexa…"

"Oh, hi! I forgot to save your number. What's up? Where's Dr. Shepherd?"

"She… I can't… No one is…" I was swallowing big, ugly sobs but I knew they would come loose eventually. "Can you… I don't want to be alone right now."

"Alexa? Are you okay?"

"No," I broke.

"Hey, hey, hey, listen, I'm going to come right over. You're at home, right? I'm at the hospital, but it'll only take me a few minutes to get there, okay?"

"Yeah," I said.

"Alright, hang in there."

"Thanks," I managed.

"Of course. See you soon."

Amelia

I was relieved to be out of Dr. Wyatt's office when I finally pulled into the driveway. I had worked a short day but the appointment took a lot out of me. Dr. Wyatt wasn't like any other therapist I'd had before, for one I actually liked her. But she wasn't trying to talk me into feeling better or coping with things in a better way, which always pissed me off to no end. Instead she was basically just a sounding board for everything I had been feeling. I was angrily ranting about Owen's latest actions, saying things I didn't even know I thought until they came out of my mouth. It was definitely beneficial, but I was done with introspection for the night.

When I opened the door, I heard Alexa's voice in the living room. "Hey," I said. "I want to talk to you about a couple of things…" I trailed off as I put my stuff down by the door and stepped in.

Alexa was on the couch, crying, sitting across from none other than Jo Wilson.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"I'm sorry, no one else was home, and I just didn't want to be alone…" Alexa half explained.

Wilson looked at me. "I'm sorry, Dr. Shepherd, I can go-"

"No, don't be sorry. It's fine, Wilson. Jo. Please stay." I sat down next to Alexa on the couch. Jo looked to me and shrugged. "What's up?"

Alexa began crying harder. "My mom called. Oh my god, she was so mad, I just… I can't do it anymore. She's so awful, why did I ever tell her…"

"What'd she say?" I asked, but it was clear Alexa wasn't going to be able to tell me. I looked to Jo.

"She told Alexa that they were cutting her off, both of them, and that she wouldn't be able to see her sister anymore unless she came home and apologized. Alexa said she didn't have anything to apologize for, but then her mom starting calling her names… awful, awful stuff. I…" Jo shrugged again like she didn't dare repeat the names. "She called me right after, she said no one was home but she didn't want to be here alone so I came right over."

My heart rate increased and my blood started boiling. "Alexa, we have to do something about her…"

"Like, sue?" she asked between sobs.

"Yeah. I mean, maybe I could get custody of you, and that way you could be under my insurance and stuff like that… and you wouldn't need either of them, and I'd be able to pay your school bills and do your financial aid…"

"What about my sister?"

"Well, she'll be 18 soon, right? They can't stop her from seeing you once she's 18."

That answer didn't seem to comfort her. And why would it? She was basically going to have to decide between the sister she's known her whole life and the family she has out here, at least for a while until her sister turned 18.

Alexa was breathing normally again, but tears were still running down her face. Seeing her so upset mad me sad, but I was also so mad at her mother that I couldn't seem to think. I was trying to focus on what was important but I was blinded by the pure evil her mother was.

Well, if her mother was going to play the part of the villain, I guess that left me to be the superhero.