A/N: I just want to say that y'all really know how to make a girl feel special! Thank all of you so much! I'm in the process of moving, so updates may not be as quick as before for a little while. But I'll definitely keep them coming!

Chapter 21: Memories

Alex had stormed out of the conference room, leaving Arizona puzzled and calling after him. Interns and patients alike scattered out of his path as he walked. His jaw was set and his eyes were narrowed in anger. He threw on his lab coat, which he had snatched from the back of Arizona's chair when he stormed out, and the sides of it billowed behind him as he walked.

Dr. Bailey, who was standing in front of a portable medicine cabinet, was keying in her entry code to the cabinet when she saw Alex storming her way down the hall. She knew that look - everybody who knew Alex knew that look.

"Karev! You better slow that race car down," she said as she stepped in front of him, "there won't be any ass kicking on my watch. Not today," she finished, still blocking him.

"Dr. Bailey, I'm not being disrespectful, but move," Alex growled, trying to go around her. She blocked him again.

"Karev, you are working my nerve, trying my patience, and wasting my time. You know you're already on my list 'cause you're hiding Izzie away and now you wanna up and-"

"Izzie didn't get hired! She didn't get the job," Alex interrupted her with exasperation.

Bailey looked like she wanted to tear into him again because he interrupted her, but then she softened.

"And do you really think me letting you go after Jackson is going to help?"

"Yeah, it would help me kick his ass," he growled.

"Uh, Karev! That'll help you, maybe, but it sure won't help Izzie's case if you go around whoopin' up on the figurehead of the hospital. On the son of the Harper-Avery foundation," she said, looking at him in disbelief. She knew Alex had a rough upbringing, but she sometimes wondered how he had dodged prison with his habit of wanting to throw fists.

Alex relaxed a little, shaking his head quickly in annoyed agreement.

"Yeah, yeah. So what then, I just walk in there and calmly ask why the hell Izzie didn't get hired?"

Dr. Bailey threw her hands up in a "duh" gesture and then turned back to finish entering her key code into the medicine cabinet.

Alex took off to his original destination, but this time he wasn't so angry.

"I better not hear that you hit that man, Dr. Karev!" Bailey called out to his back.

Alex kept walking.

Izzie sat on the bottom stair in Alex's house, holding her head in her hands. She looked down at her bare, tanned feet and didn't really have any thoughts in her mind. Maybe she felt disbelief or disappointment, but she was blocking everything out of her mind. Blocking all feelings. She didn't want to cry. Not now, sitting in her old house, in Alex's new house, where she had finally started to pick up the pieces of her life with him.

Sighing, she looked up at her surroundings. There was a creaky floorboard in between the living room and the front door, and she remembered bouncing back and forth on it one night when Derek and Meredith wouldn't stop laughing in their upstairs bedroom. Her plan hadn't worked.

The chandelier above the dining room table once had a pair of George's underwear hanging off them for who knows how long. Everyone knew the kitchen and the bathroom were communal areas, so they didn't use the dining room all that often. They had all laughed at George when he realized that the piece of cloth hanging in the air belonged to him, and Izzie could still remember how scarlet his face turned with embarrassment. They had never figured out who had done it or why.

She thought of her old bedroom, girlish and pink, and how she had complained about not wanting to go to work one morning. Alex had come in and tried to pull her out of bed by her feet. They hadn't even been together then, but he had clearly been flirting with her.

This house held some of her best memories, but it also held some of her worst.

Lying in the bathroom floor, numb about Denny.

Sitting outside on the porch swing, feeling gloomy after making an ass of herself by helping to ruin Callie's and George's marriage, wondering how she had ever gotten to a point in her life where she had no one.

Watching Alex parade girl after girl through his bedroom like a revolving door when all she wanted him to say was that he wanted her.

But she loved this house. The mixture of good and bad memories are what make a house a home. Behind these walls, she had learned things about herself. Made mistakes. Made love. And now she was back in it - back in the city where she had first become a surgeon and back where she questioned if she truly wanted to be a surgeon or not - and her mind was once again trying not to go to a desolate place.

Maybe things had been going too well. She was one of the only residents in recent history to be considered for a fellowship before passing their oral boards. She had plenty of world-class surgeons rooting for her. She had great interviews with some of the top-ranking hospitals in the nation. Alex had told her he loved her again.

Maybe the universe was just trying to keep a balance or something. She still had the opportunity to work with an amazing staff at Mass Gen, so she was grateful. And maybe Alex would still tell her he loved her even if she flew across the country. Maybe they could make it work. She wanted it, needed it, to be true after everything she, that they, had been through.

She started to push herself up from the stairs when Alex came bursting through the door, breathing heavily but looking bright-eyed. He looked as if he was going to call out for her as he looked around, but then he locked eyes with her when he saw her on the stair.

"I know what to do, Iz," he said excitedly.

A grin broke out on his face.

"I know what to do."