"When feel you want to go, you just tell me okay?" Mark softly tell Lexie.
She was preoccupied with her attire. She'd chosen the dress he'd suggested and was currently making sure her cardigan was covering her sufficiently.
"Lexie" Mark squeezed her hand.
Her eyes jolted to him and she nodded distractedly.
"You look beautiful" He promised her but she didn't look convinced and he didn't wait for her to respond because he could see her lapsing, he could see her eyeing the car and wishing she wasn't here so he quickly led her through the back gate. The shrieks of children thrummed through her. It was chaos on the other side. There were hyper kids running a riot everywhere, kids in swimming attire, kids eating cake, kids singing, kids laughing.
This was her life. This was what she remember. She remember this garden, she remember countless sunny days and BBQ's shared with her friends, she remember Mark teaching Elise to swim in this pool, she remember nothing but good and that lost happiness swelled inside her. This is exactly where she wanted to be. This is exactly where they needed to be.
Multicolored helium balloons bobbed in their masses and buntings draped from the house to the fence.
"It's like a freaking circus attraction" Mark noted.
Slowly heads began to turn, people did double takes, familiar faces whispered in low voices at the unexpected arrival.
"Just ignore them" Mark said gently. He knew everyone was going to talk, he knew everyone was anticipating seeing the both of them but he wished they could be a little more discreet.
He was thankful when Owen approached them, serving as a much appreciated distraction.
"Mark, Lexie" Owen greeted. "It's so good to see you guys" Mark shook his hand and smiled.
"It's good to see you too Hunt"
Lexie edged closer into Mark's side and smiled sheepishly at Owen.
"I'm glad you're home safe Lexie"
She didn't speak or respond and Mark shrugged a shoulder and a apologetic smile in Owen's direction.
"We need to find the birthday girl, talk to you later" Mark excused them.
"Maybe we should go" Lexie murmured, her eyes on the ground, her heart thumping in her chest and butterflies swarming her stomach.
"You don't have to talk to everyone Lex"
She didn't have time to respond because Harriet Avery had just noticed them and raced over excitedly to greet them.
"Uncle Mark, Aunt Lexie!" she cheered. "You came. Dad said you weren't going to make it"
"We wouldn't miss your birthday for the world" Mark promised her. "Happy Birthday kiddo" He lift the little girl and groaned. "God you're definitely heavier"
"I've eaten lots of cake" Harriet admitted in a low whisper. "Don't tell mom"
"Your secrets safe with us" Mark assured her.
Harriet eyed Lexie nervously. She was an overly sensitive kid, she had always had a soft spot for Lexie. She was aware that something bad had happened, she's only four like Elise when she vanished. She'd taken Elise under her wing. She'd protected her in the school and playground. She's Elise's best friend. Through her eyes, through a child's eyes, Lexie's arrival home had been the end to the sadness, Elise was better and her Aunt and Uncle back home, reunited.
"I'm glad you came Aunt Lexie"
"Me too sweetie"
"Do you want to sit down? There's chairs over there, or you could go inside, there's not many people inside..." She trailed off and Lexie crouched down and took her hand.
"Thank you, but I'm okay Harriet"
"Harriet!" A boy interrupted them. Harriet looked after the boy, shifting her weight in her eagerness to participate in the game.
"Go, go have fun" Mark ordered. Harriet smiled and dashed off after her opponent.
Slipping her hand into his. Her butterflies had subside and she was actually kind of liking being here.
"Look Elise's in the water" Mark pointed out, his thumb unconsciously drawing circles on her hand.
Lexie's eyes averted to the pool. Elise was clambering up the steps with some help from Alex and once she was safely out of the water she made for the chairs and tables, her hair dripping along with her polka dot bathing suit.
Lexie cringed as she watched her run over the concrete paving slabs, anticipating her falling flat on her knees and her mouth opened, an instinctive warning at the tip of her tongue but someone beat her to it.
"Elise no running" Meredith scorned. The kid run turned into a hasty walk and Meredith met her halfway, wrapping her in a towel. "You must not run around the poolside, especially when its wet"
Meredith lifted her up and dabbed her nose affectionately and the little girl smiled.
"Uhuh, did you see me, I swam to the bottom"
"Yeah you're a little mermaid" Meredith set her down on the end of sun lounger.
Nathan scrambled from Arizona's lap to sit with her big sister, his mouth covered with red icing.
"Err Nathan" Elise turned her nose up as a sticky hand found it's way into her damp hair and Arizona and Meredith laughed at the pair. "Let go" She whined. Arizona was about to intervene when she noted Mark with Lexie hovering not so far away.
"Mark, Lexie, you came" She stood up.
"Mommy, Daddy!" Elise gave them a gappy grin, seemingly forgetting that Nathan had just gotten her all sticky. "I've been swimming" She stood up on the end of the sun lounger and held her hands out to Mark.
"I can see baby" Mark lifted her up and tickled her sides.
"Nathan made me all sticky"
"Did he?" Lexie scooped Nathan up. "Did you make Elise all sticky?"
"Ma-ma, ma-ma"
"Hello" Lexie laughed. "Have you been a good boy?"
"Good as gold" Arizona squeezed Lexie's hand. "I'm so glad you came" She added gently, her eyes narrowed a fraction at Mark's hand on the small of Lexie's back. It was something she never have thought twice about, but considering the anxious woman had completely isolated herself, from everyone including Mark, the affectionate display and the fact that she wasn't cowering away was a gigantic step forward.
The sight of the four of them standing there smiling had both Meredith and Arizona uncontainably happy.
"Thanks Arizona, me too" Lexie muttered self consciously, sitting down with Nathan on her lap.
"Hey Mer" Lexie greeted Meredith quietly.
"It's about time you showed yourself" Meredith smirked and then her face softened and her hand came to rest on Lexie's shoulder. "I'm proud of you Lex"
"You look pretty mommy" Elise informed her, oblivious to her mother's discomfort.
"She does, doesn't she?' Mark agreed.
"Uhuh"
Mark sat her down beside her mother. "I think I'm going to become an artist" She informed Lexie proudly, picking up a pencil and pad that had been abandoned on the paving.
"Were you?"
"Uhuh. I'm going to draw you, Nathan and Daddy so sit still"
Nathan wasn't in the mood for being a model though and had caught sight of Arizona's paper plate with a slice of cake sitting half eaten upon it. He dug his little hand into the icing and shoved an overly big lump into his mouth, smearing the racing red sugary substance round his mouth.
Elise giggled.
"Nathan" Lexie sighed with a laugh. "That's not your cake and I think by the looks of it you've had quite enough already"
Mark stood a few meters away, smiling at the display. He really felt like she was starting to fight back, that she wanted to fight back and he knew just coming here was hard for her and he couldn't have been more proud that she was sitting on the sun lounger surrounded by people, just a couple of days ago he would never have imagined he could get her into a situation such as this. Bailey had just greeted her and although she just smiled and nodded and not really said an awful lot, Mark knew it was a step in the right direction.
"You slept with her, didn't you?" Derek's low voice accused.
Mark's head jerked away from the happy scene.
Was it really that obvious?
"Derek" Mark took a swig of his beer, sighing heavily before turning around.
Alex reprimanded "God you're such a dick"
"What me and Lexie do isn't any of your concerns okay?"
"We know, it's really not but we both know that's not what she needs right now" Derek explained
"Just leave it" Looking at Derek and Alex "It's none of your business, she's not sixteen anymore"
"So it's beyond how you can't manage to keep it in your pants for more than five minutes" Alex mocked.
Mark snapped. "It, it just happened okay and part of me thinks it was a good thing"
"Of course you do" Jackson said and comes out of nowhere.
"I think it's important to treat her the same. The more I smother her like she's some invalid the more she pushes me out" Mark explained.
"And fucking her isn't smothering her?" Alex commented.
"You make it sound so crude, so wrong. She's my wife. I'm allowed to have sex with her"
The guys all looked at him. And it irritates him.
"Don't lecture me. It's none of your fucking business okay?" He hissed harshly, not giving anyone a chance to respond.
Derek could only feel he was doing exactly what he always did, avoiding the inevitable. Mark had a horrible tendency to ignore situations until they became unbearable enough for him to take action. Derek could only feel now was one of those times, he only hoped they'd hurry up and address everything before their relationship was altered forever.
It was Wednesday afternoon and Lexie stood at the school gate, Mark beside her, both trying to avoid the unsubtle stares from the other parents. Since Harriet's party last weekend Lexie had managed to make herself leave the house a handful of times. She'd gone to Meredith's, the park with Nathan and Mark and now she was at an overly populated school entrance.
Elise soon came running down the path. "Mommy, Daddy" She grinned. "You've come to pick me up" She stated delightedly and the picture perfect look on her face made Lexie's cold heart warm in a second.
"If you'd like, we're going to start bringing and picking you up from school again" Lexie announced quietly, she had to verbally promise this otherwise she knew she'd find a way of backing out.
"I like that"
"Me too"
Elise's smile soon faltered though and she edged behind Mark's leg, her little hands curling into his jeans.
"What's wrong?" Mark questioned her sudden need to be hiding.
"I don't like her"
Mark inspected the little girl stalking down the pathway.
"Why?"
"She says mean stuff"
"What did she say?" Mark squatted on the ground at Elise's level, encouraging her to open up.
"She said that her mommy said that I should have been put in a home and that it's no wonder that I've not talked when I have a criminal for a daddy and a whore for a mommy" Elise recited in one breath.
Mark's eyes grew wide. There were too many words in his daughter's recollection that he didn't like, that he didn't want her to hear let alone say. Whore. Criminal. Whore. Criminal.
He stared passed Elise to the woman with her daughter and he wonder how people could be so cruel and malicious. For the most part, people had been nothing but sympathetic and kind but there were a few that didn't seem to be willing to understand. Mark had refused to talk to the newspapers, refused any information to anyone that wasn't a close friend or family, he doesn't want Lexie to go through that, but that meant that the media had made their own assumptions about what had gone on, despite knowing that David Hall had been arrested there was still this confusion about whether Lexie had been having an affair and the part Mark had, had in all of it. There were people that saw Nathan and decided the truth of what had gone on themselves. It didn't matter if they didn't have the facts, some would inevitably make their own conclusions, regardless whether it were true or false.
His gaze drifted up to Lexie. Her brow was furrowed and he knew this was the last thing she needed. It had taken her so long to work up the courage to step beyond her house.
"What's a whore?" Elise garnered his attention. She deduced that it meant something bad by the horrible way it had been delivered to her.
Mark gulped, looking back into his innocent child's face. "That's a nasty word Elise and your mother most certainly isn't one. Sweetie there's a lot of people that don't understand what happened and they say horrible things but we just have to ignore them"
"I don't wanna put in a home"
"You're not going to" Mark shook his head adamantly. "Never. You're stuck with us" Mark smiled and pressed his lips to her forehead. "What do you say all four of us go get ice cream?"
"Lex the kids are in bed" Mark finished his sentence as he pushed open the door of the study room. She'd been spending a lot of time in here lately, a lot of time sifting through photo albums, photos of Elise, missed birthdays. "You want a glass of wine? We could watch a movie or something?"
She didn't answer straight away.
"Lex?"
"What is this?"
He stared at the USB in her hand and his stomach churned.
"Lex-"
"Why did you still got this?" She never yelled at him with such fury before. Her arm was swaying with the severity of her voice.
"Shh, you'll wake the kids up" He stepped forward and she stepped back.
"Did you watch it?" She indignantly growled.
Intuition told him to keep his distance.
"Of course I-"
"It's fucking twisted Mark. Are you that fucking sick? That's fucking depraved? Does it turn you on?"
His eyebrows folded over his eyes.
"You're turned on by him touching me?" She was hysterical, her eyes blazing and her hands quivering in a frenzy.
He heard plenty. He closed the hostile gap between them, snatching the USB. "This" He shook it in front of her. "Watching this, was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life"
She scoffed, shaking her head in disgust.
He slammed it down on the desk.
He needed her to believe him.
"Lexie" He reached for her but she shrugged him off.
"Don't do that. Don't pull away from me" He forcefully took her arms and she struggled.
"You're sick" She hissed.
His hands left her in an instant, like his skin had just been seared.
She retrieved the USB again, stubborn determination morphing her usually brown eyes so dark that they almost looked back.
He watched in horror as she recklessly shoved it into the computer.
"Lexie I don't-"
"I want to see it"
He closed his eyes in despair.
"Did it take you long to figure out it was me?" She crossed her arms, studying the footage that was quick to fill the computer screen.
"I knew instantly" He answered through his teeth, his eyes still firmly closed and his face a frown of anguish.
"Did you think I was having an affair?" She asked as she watched David's hand slide down her back, she could feel it, she could feel his fingers pressing against her spine. "Did you think I was fucking him cause I wanted to?" She looked at him expectantly.
His eyes sprung open at her words.
"You thought I was having an affair didn't you?" She smiled.
"Stop it. Of course I didn't" He focused on the carpet, refusing to watch.
"You didn't? He insisted we do it again and again until it was perfect" She tilted her head as she watched and he regrettably looked up to see David unfastening her bra and he felt sick.
"Turn it off"
"I think my performance is pretty convincing. See, I'm even kind of smiling there"
He pressed his hand to his temple. "Turn it off"
"Look, he can't keep his hands off my legs, can he? He loved my legs, maybe even more so than you, he said that there's no better feeling than having them wrapped around him"
Mark was repulsed by that sentence, repulsed by the fact that he agreed, there really wasn't any better feeling but it was only him, she was ever meant to have those beautiful limbs wrapped around.
David's hand toying at the waist of her underwear jolted him from his pain stricken gaze. He abruptly pushed her out the way and ejected the USB himself.
He didn't know what she was trying to achieve, if she was trying to make him mad, angry, jealous, guilty and sad, it was working and it was impossible for him to register that many emotions at once.
He closed his eyes and forced the offending object in different directions.
It splintered into two segments, flying across the room as he broke it.
"You think it isn't hard for me?" He shouted. "You don't think I feel like shit for letting this happen to you. For not protecting you? You don't think it's hard for me to know he made you do all this stuff? Because it is Lexie. It fucking is. It's all I can think about"
The frames on the mantel piece rattled with the severity of his voice and she pushed her tongue to the roof of her mouth.
"It's not your fault" She whispered.
"What?"
"I said it's not your fucking fault" She said a little louder.
He sat down on the leather sofa and she stood awkwardly.
"He never made me"
His eyes skittered across to her, she was looking down, fiddling with the hem on her top.
"He never made me"
"Lexie-"
"He didn't. He never held me down, he never forced me. He gave me a choice"
"Not physically forcing you doesn't mean he didn't force you, emotional blackmail is just as bad. I know it doesn't feel like it but he brainwashed you. It might have felt like you had a choice at the time but you really didn't. He was a clever fucking bastard. You did what you had to, to survive, to protect yourself and to protect our son" He stressed.
"Why do you still want me, a-after s-seeing that. The, the things I did with him, it's, it's disgusting. I'm disgusting"
"Lexie" He stood up and walked over to her, gripping her chin, angling her face to look at him. "You are not disgusting-"
"I slept with him, over and over and over, I did things with him that I'm only meant to do with you"
He swallowed audibly. "Lexie don't-"
"No Mark, you need to know. I'm not who you think I am. You don't get it. I, I hated it, every moment of it, at first I despised myself but then it just became -it became normal" She looked down. "It became more and more like I was actually in a relationship. I tried to do everything he liked. It was better to please him, he was in a better mood if I did. I, I'd kiss him without him telling me to, I'd initiate it. I, I encouraged him to.." A choked sob escaped her throat and he tried to embrace her. She tried to push him away. "Don't, I'm. Just don't I.." He forced her into his chest and her body involuntarily relaxed against him. "I, I think we should get a d-divorce" She blurted irrationally.
"What?" Mark's hands automatically clung to her even harder. "No"
"I cheated on you. I had an affair" She tried to pull away, pushing at his chest frantically but he wouldn't let go.
"No you didn't" He snapped. "You didn't" He shook her, trying to get her to see sense.
"Mark you can tell me whatever you want but I know you. Everyone thinks it and so do you. I'm a whore"
"That's not true Lex. That's the furthest thing from the truth"
"I feel like, I feel..I feel like I betrayed you"
"Lexie, please stop"
"My head tells me that it's not my fault but it doesn't make it go away"
"Lexie the only thing you're guilty of is being a victim"
"No I've done bad things"
His hand stroked her clammy forehead, brushing her hair away from her face.
"He killed her" She suddenly blurted.
Mark's hand stopped it's soothing motion. "Sally Peters?" He asked softly.
"How do you-"
"The police told me what happened, what they thought had happened"
"He just, he took her, I was in labor and he went and just took her. Nathan was breech. I believe that if she hadn't been there to help me I wouldn't have been able to do it"
He rested his head against hers and took a shaky breath.
"She stayed with me for three weeks and then, then he shot her, he shot her right in front of me" She paused swallowing thickly. "He killed her and if it weren't for me, if it weren't for me she's still be alive"
"You can't think that way" Mark held her face.
"But it is Mark"
"It's not"
"She had a family and, and.."
"And they deserve justice, like you do. He deserves to be in prison for life Lexie and he's going to be charged, he's going to be charged regardless because there's enough evidence from all your injuries but"
"I could make sure he stays there, if I- if I tell them about her" Lexie finished.
"You don't have to stand up in court, you can just speak to someone privately and it'll be recorded and I can be there right with you, if you want me to be"
Her shuddering breaths slowly regulated as Mark speak.
"I want to see him"
"What?"
"I want to tell him Nathan's not his, I want to tell him I don't love him, I want him to know that I never loved him, I want to be there when he's taken away, I do" She announced surely.
"O-o-kay" He rocked her. In the last fifteen minutes she let it all out, she broken down in a sense but as he looked down at her, her eyes closed, her hands around his neck, he was sure she looked more peaceful, more at ease. She's carrying this around, these conflicting feelings for too long and she feared talking about it all with anyone, especially Mark because she's certain it would only repulse him but she felt nothing but sheer relief. She wanted to get rid of David once and for all and she was going to make sure her family will never ever hear his name again. She wanted justice for herself, for Mark, for her children and most importantly for Sally and as long as she had her husband standing by her holding her up, she was going to get it.
Let me know what you think..