a/n: Sorry this has been a long time coming. Please leave a review. I really appreciate them.
"Tell me everything."
Everything. Alex thought about what Izzie had just said. What she'd asked him to do. Everything was a lot, a lot more than he was prepared to tell. He thought about asking what she remembered, maybe he could tailor his story around that. But he knew he couldn't do that. He couldn't pick and choose what he told her anymore. He couldn't protect her from her past. He couldn't pretend all the bad things never happened. She was remembering them on her own. They were coming to her scattered and without context. She was confused, she didn't know if she could trust him, she wanted to trust him, he could tell. She was giving him a chance to explain. He had to tell her everything.
"Alex?" They both looked up at each other. Izzie's eyes were red and blood shot, Alex looked away. He looked back down at his hands, at the photo he was holding. "Tell me."
He put the photo down. He couldn't look at Denny. He didn't want to think about Denny. There was something about that man which had been special. He'd swept Izzie off her feet in a way he'd never seen before. She fell for him so hard and so fast. It would have been beautiful to watch had it not been so painful. It had been like watching a rollercoaster ride when you know a part of the track is missing. She'd gone up and up, she'd been so in love and then everything came crashing down. Everyone knew Denny was going to die, everyone but Izzie that is. When it did happen, when he died she fell hard and fast, she hit rock bottom and it took her a long time to get back up. Alex took in a deep breath, they were about to go back there, but he was sure going to take as long as possible to get there.
"Are you ready for this?" he asked giving her knee a squeeze. "Our relationship hasn't exactly run in a straight line. Some of the things I tell you might hurt."
"Tell me everything." She nodded at him. She wanted to know so bad, she didn't care if it hurt, it hurt not knowing. If they'd got through it before they could get through it again.
"We met the night before we started working with each other. The hospital threw a mixer for all the new interns. We talked for a little bit but we didn't exactly hit it off. I was a real ass back then. Looking back I said and did a lot of things I probably shouldn't have. But at the time they seemed like great ideas. I used to call you Dr. Model and you used to call me Dr. Evil Spawn. Once I wallpapered the hospital with pictures of you in your underwear, you'd been a lingerie model. You were not impressed. You yelled at me and everyone else for that matter and stripped down to your underwear right in the middle of the locker room."
Her eyes widened as she heard the story. She couldn't remember this happening but she could picture it. "Why did you do it?"
He shrugged. It was weird talking about these things, being asked to justify why he did them. Most of the things he'd done weren't for any reason, not one that he'd thought about before that is. "It seemed like a good idea at the time." She smiled at him, she liked that answer. "Like I said," he continued, "I was a bit of an ass. You were going out with a hockey player then, I might have been trying to get your attention. I don't know. It just seemed like a good idea at the time."
"I bet it did." She smiled again, she almost laughed. This was going well Alex thought, but he hadn't even got close to the hard stuff. "How did we get together?"
"We had some on call shifts together. We had to spend time with each other and we flirted a bit. I liked you and you liked me. So when we both had the night off you tried to ask me out and I asked you out instead."
He paused for a moment, the thought of their first date made him shudder, it had been so bad.
"What was it like, our first date?"
"It was bad. I was distracted by something I couldn't tell you about. I treated you like crap and you got mad at me."
She nodded. This wasn't so bad she thought. She wondered why Alex had been so afraid to tell her.
"You wouldn't talk to me for days. I tried a few times and you just yelled at me. But I got you back. You were mad because I didn't kiss you goodnight so I kissed you goodnight."
"Really?" The smile that had been on her face slowly got bigger. She had a very vague recollection of the moment Alex was talking about. She wanted to here what he had to say about it.
"Yeah. You were at um…umm…" The moment had been right there on the tip of his tongue but suddenly he couldn't get the words out and the moment was gone. In his mind he couldn't separate their first kiss from Joe's but he couldn't separate Joe's from the shooting. He tried to shake those images from his head but they wouldn't budge. He must have sat there for a few minutes because he felt Izzie move closer to him and squeeze his arm.
"Alex?" She asked. "What happened?"
He shook his head again. He wasn't going to go there. "I got back in your good books and we tried dating for a while. I was still distracted though and I wasn't giving you what you wanted. When I was with you I had trouble…" His voice trailed off, he couldn't say it. "We were still okay, you took it in your stride but I started worrying. I made a mistake at work, someone died and I got depressed." He picked up the photo with Olivia in it and handed it to her. "You know what happened next."
She nodded slowly. "You slept with her and I walked in."
"Yes."
A silence hung in the air. They both knew this was coming. It wasn't new information but actually saying it out loud felt horrible.
"I hurt you and I never meant to do that. You wouldn't talk to me and you got mad at George and Meredith and Christina for talking to me. I'd been having a hard time with some stuff but I shouldn't have hurt you."
She couldn't remember any of this. She remembered what Alex had done but she couldn't remember why. "What stuff?"
He took a deep breath. For some reason he was still ashamed to admit he failed his medical boards. It was so in the past it didn't matter now but he still didn't want to tell Izzie. It was odd, he'd just admitted to cheating on her.
"I failed my medical board exams. I was getting ready to retake the test and the thought of failing scared the shit out of me. I didn't tell you until the day before the test. That was why I'd been so horrible. It was still no excuse. You started talking to me again but things weren't the same."
Izzie looked over at the photo of Denny. She wanted to know about him but she didn't want to flat out ask it. She knew he had to be coming soon. "What happened next?"
"There was a bomb in the hospital." Alex paused for dramatic effect. That wasn't quite what Izzie was expecting to hear. She closed her eyes and tried to remember a bomb. It sounded like a kind of big thing, she should remember it. "It was like an apocalypse had hit the hospital" He continued before his voice trailed off as he remembered what they'd done when there'd been a bomb in the hospital. "I don't know what came over you but you decided you wanted me." He looked up and smiled. She smiled back at him and gave him a little wink. She remembered what they'd done when there'd been a bomb in the hospital.
"Things were good between us again. You said it was a lapse of judgment that we wouldn't work if we were more than just friends. But I think we'd thrown away any chance we'd ever had to have just platonic relationship. That's what I thought anyways. I thought you'd forgiven me and maybe on some level you had but you didn't want to go out with me, you wanted to be with me but that was all. I didn't realize this until it was too late."
He reached down and picked up the photo of Denny. "He came a long and things between us ended."
Izzie took the photo from Alex and looked at it again. She could remember things about this man, she could remember how she felt about this man; boy could she remember that, and she could remember what happened to him, but she couldn't remember the stuff in between, she didn't know why she felt this way about him.
"Tell me about him?" She asked.
Alex didn't know what to say. How could he explain to someone he loved about someone else they loved. It wasn't right, it wasn't normal.
"He was a good bloke. He made you laugh, smile..." he stopped, he couldn't do this. "I'm sorry Iz. I don't know what to say to you about him. I don't know why you fell for him, what attracted you to him. He was a patient and you were his doctor. We weren't talking much when he was around. I tried to stop you falling for him, or him falling for you but it back fired in my face and only brought you closer. You became consumed by him but no one else noticed, until it was too late. You risked everything you'd worked for, for him. You crossed so many lines, you broke so many rules to try and save him, and he still died."
Izzie nodded, tears were starting to trickle down her face. Talking about everything was bringing back more memories. She could remember when he died. She could remember the feeling of complete devastation, confusion, and the absurdity of it. She remembered laying across his body crying and she remembered Alex lifting her off him and crying into his shoulder.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you about him before Iz. But it killed you when he died. You were so completely and utterly devastated. It took you a long time to move forward and I was afraid if I told you you'd go back there. We wanted to move forwards not backwards, I didn't think it would achieve anything to tell you."
Izzie wiped the tears away from eyes. She felt so empty and full at the same time. She moved closer to Alex and let him put his arms around her. She cried into his shoulder, she could remember losing Denny but she also remembered Alex lifting her back up again.
They sat in silence for a long time; the only noise was Izzie's sobbing. Alex tried to sooth her, he rubbed her back, he held onto her, there wasn't anything else he could do. He couldn't tell her it was all in the past, he couldn't tell her she'd already moved on because right in that instant it was just like Denny had died all over again.
After a while Izzie stopped crying. Alex used his hand to wipe the tears away from her face. She smiled at him and rested her head back against his shoulder. She liked being close to him, she liked feeling his warmth. As much as she wanted to be mad at him for not telling her she couldn't stay mad at him. She understood why he did it, the feelings she'd felt over the last couple of hours had torn her to pieces. She wouldn't have coped with it in the hospital; she barely coped with it now.
"Alex?" she asked not moving from his shoulder. "How did we end up together? After everything that happened, why did we get together?"
"I don't know." It wasn't something that Alex had actually thought about too much. "I guess it was just meant to happen." He paused, he could tell Izzie wanted to hear more but he needed to pick his words carefully. "After he died you went to a very dark place. You needed time to heal, you didn't want me, you didn't want anyone. But somehow our friendship became stronger. There were times when it seemed like I was the only one who could get through to you. But like I said you didn't want me. I tried to move on but no one else seemed right. And then one day you were ready. You came up to me at work and kissed me. You caught me completely off guard, but in a good way. That was the start of something amazing. We tried to take it slow but neither one of us was capable of doing that."
He reached over to the table and pulled off the photo album that was at the bottom of the pile. It was still closed; Izzie hadn't looked at it yet.
"These," he said, "are from after, when everything between us was going great."
He opened the album up and began showing Izzie the pictures. In every photo she was smiling, her eyes were lit up and she really did look happy. He looked happy too.
"Do you remember any of this?" he asked slowly turning the pages. Sometimes he'd stop and talk about when a photo was taken.
Izzie shook her head. She couldn't remember much past Denny. "I'm sorry I don't remember." She paused for a moment; she looked harder at the photos. "I will remember, I want to remember, but not tonight." She kissed his cheek and sat up. "I'm really tired now. I'm going to go to bed." She stood up slowly and walked to the bedroom. Alex followed her and tucked her in like a child, he kissed her cheek.
"We'll talk more in the morning." He said, but she was already asleep.
Alex walked back the lounge room and began putting away the photos. He closed the old photos quickly but he lingered a little longer at the newer ones, the ones where they were happy. He wished they could go back to the way they were but that was impossible. The shooting had changed them both. In their own ways they were still putting themselves back together. He wondered what tomorrow would be like; he wondered how they'd move forward from here. She seemed to have accepted what he'd told her but weather she'd forgiven him he wasn't sure.
