What was the point of living, when the only person who ever loved you was gone?
Mark Sloan had been alone until he met Lexie Grey.
He had dealt with loneliness ever since he was a child. His parents always left him by himself, and he would turn on all the TVs to feel like there were other people there with him. He could never fall asleep, no matter how hard he tried. It was hard to fall asleep when you didn't feel safe in your own home.
He met Derek when he was nine. Mark had spent a lot of time with Derek and his family. But Derek always thought he was better than Mark. That Mark was someone to blame for all of his problems. Derek always thought the worst of Mark, he would always be the messed up kid in Derek's eyes.
Then there was Callie. Callie had used Mark for sex. Mark never blamed her for it, but it was the truth. She appreciated Mark, he knew that. But she didn't love him, and there were always other people in her life who came first.
And then there was Lexie. The first person to tell him she loved him. At first he had been confused. Why would someone as good as Lexie love someone as bad as him? How could she? But Lexie chose him to love, and said he was good enough for her. He never believed her, but he didn't tell her that.
And they were happy, for a while. Before everything got messed up. They both made mistakes, and then they were done. He was alone again.
"I love you, and I am always gonna love you"
He thought that he had a chance.
"But I don't want to love you, I want to be happy"
His chance was gone. The only person who had ever loved him didn't even want to. So he tried other relationships, maybe he could start to love somebody else. But nothing worked. He didn't just want anybody to love him, he wanted her to love him. And she did, but she didn't want to. It would have been better if she had said she didn't love him, that would have been easier to handle.
And because Mark loved Lexie, and was always going to love Lexie, he told her to walk away. Even though it was the second-most difficult thing he had ever done. The most difficult was watching her die.
"I'm letting you go, that means you've got to walk away"
And she walked away. And then a couple months later, she came back.
"I love you. Oh God- Oh, my God. That just came flying out of my face. I love you- I just- I did it again. I love you. I do. I just, I love you. And I have been trying not to say it. I have been trying so hard to just mash it down and ignore it and not say it and Jackson is a great guy. He is. He's gorgeous, and he's younger than you, and he doesn't have any grandkids or babies with his lesbian BFF. And he's an Avery and he liked me, you know? He really liked me. But it was never going to work out because I- I love you. I am so in love with you. You're in me. You're like- it's like you're a disease. It's like I am infected by Mark Sloan, and I just can't think about anything, or anybody. And I can't sleep. I can't eat. And I just- I love you, all the time. Every minute, of every day. I love you. God, it feels so good to say that. I feel so much better. I love you."
And then he had another chance. And he screwed it up, like he screwed everything up. He walked away. Maybe if he hadn't then she would have been sitting up in the front of the plane, next to him. Maybe she wouldn't have been on the plane at all. She probably wouldn't have been dead, if he said something. He wouldn't be feeling as lonely as he felt right now, sitting in his hospital bed staring into nothingness. Before, there was always a chance, a chance to get her back. But now she was gone. And there would be no more chances.
He was alone again, but it was a different kind of loneliness. Now he had the experience of not being alone, and it made the loneliness so much harder.
"Hold my hand"
He didn't want Lexie to be alone as she died, people like Lexie didn't deserve to be alone. He held her hand and he stroked her hair, just the way she liked it. He told her how he felt, and he hoped she would believe him.
Maybe she didn't. He had walked away from her the night before, and it did look like he was only saying the things he said because she was dying. He wasn't. He hoped there was some life after this one, where he would see her again. Where he could prove that he was telling the truth.
"Lexie's waiting for me, I'll be okay."
And he decided that there really was no point in living, especially when you already felt like you were dead.