AN: I thought it would be fitting to do this from Alex's perspective. I do not own any of Olivia Rodrigo's music or the lyrics to Traitor.
A wave of guilt overtook Alex when Meredith told him that his things were on his way to Kansas. She was mad at him, he could tell even though she was polite over the phone. He also knew that Jo was ten times as furious at him. He remembered all the little white lies that he told them before he left. The worst one was the lie that he would be back, and maybe he believed it. He thought he could come back, but the moment he got to Kansas, he knew he couldn't leave.
He expected the boxes to trickle in, but they all came at once in a large moving truck that showed up. It was only half-filled with boxes and a bit of furniture. He wasn't sure what he expected when Jo finally sent him the rest of his things, but now that he stood in Izzie's house in Kansas, surrounded by a dozen boxes and his weights set, he let out a long sigh.
They started to open the boxes. Most of it was his clothing, books, and the little knick-knacks that he didn't bring with him. There was the stuffed animal that the kids at the hospital gave him, his wrestling trophies, and the one bowl from the kitchen that he claimed as his. Except it must have broken in the move as it was in two pieces when he unwrapped it up.
Finally, everything was unpacked. His entire life was laid before him in a dozen boxes. Now it all sat before him here in Kansas, his new home. Or at least he tried to make it his new home. Alexis and Eli were at school right now, so it was easier for him to unpack as he and Izzie slowly went through the boxes. She insisted on washing his clothes to get the smell out, claiming that it was dingy, but they smelled like Jo, and the Loft, and her perfume. It was so potent that he wondered if she had dumped an entire bottle in the boxes before she shipped them. He wouldn't blame her if she did.
"Have you seen the divorce papers? I thought Meredith said that she would send them with your things?" Izzie asked as she threw his clothes into the laundry basket on her hip, taking the t-shirt from his hands.
Alex let out a sigh as he looked around, he knew why Izzie was eager to get them. The sooner he and Jo divorced, the sooner he could file for custody of the kids. Izzie wanted him to do it this way as it would be easier for only him to be on the paperwork, and she didn't have to deal with some strange woman being tied to her kids. Her kids, always just hers.
Izzie pulled another shirt out of the last box and then he saw it. Jo's wedding dress, white fabric stained red, wrapped up in twine with her two glittering wedding rings tied to them. Alex couldn't bring himself to pick it up out of the box. He just stared at it until Izzie caught sight of it. She looked confused as she reached for it, pulling it out of the box before letting out a scream as she dropped it.
As quickly as she dropped it, Alex scooped it up before she could do anything else and held it to his chest as Izzie stared at him. "What the hell is that? Is that blood?"
"No, no, it's all fake. It was just Jo's wedding dress. For our second Halloween together, she stained it red with fake blood and dressed up as a corpse bride. She came to visit me at Pac North and pretended to be injured. She followed me around all day and helped me when the hospital was falling apart and then we got married, legally married. She made this joke about how she was pregnant and even though she wasn't and..."
Alex just trailed off as he remembered that day. He remembered their wedding days so vividly, but his favorite was their Halloween wedding, Jo in her red stained dress with pale makeup, how she insisted he wear fake vampire teeth using her adorable pout, and the way her eyes sparkled, but he remembered her smile best of all. He remembered how happy they were to be legally married to each other and how much it meant to have Jo's support as he turned the hospital of horrors into a functioning medical center.
Alex pulled at the strings of twine and captured her wedding rings in the palm of his hand as he undid the strings and unwrapped the dress. Tucked away in the dress were the yellow files of the divorce papers, but he set them aside as he held up the dress. It was just as he remembered it. It was soiled with the fake red blood and the fluids on the inside of the skirt from their coitus in the shed and the dirt they could never get out of the hem.
"Who would want to ruin their wedding dress like that?" Izzie said with a shake of her head as she moved to start breaking down some of the boxes around the room. "And then to send it to you, wrapped around their divorce papers, she sounds a little crazy to me."
Alex immediately stood up, clutching the dress in his hands as he glared at Izzie. "Don't you dare talk about her like that! She's not crazy! Jo is the greatest woman I've ever met. She is good, and kind, and caring, and amazing. She understood me like no one else did. She understood me more than you ever did! We're not the good guys in this situation. I'm the one who betrayed her, and if Jo wants to be dramatic and wrap up her wedding dress in our divorce papers, then she can because I deserve it! And if you would have given her a chance, she would have made an amazing stepmom to the twins, but no! You said it was me or nothing and I chose our kids! I did that for you! For them! So you don't get to say anything about Jo or the way that she deals with how I broke her heart. Just leave, just get out!"
Izzie dropped the hamper of laundry, letting it spill out onto the floor as she stomped away, but not before sending him a glare. They had done nothing but fight when the twins weren't around. Everything was so hard, they couldn't agree on anything, and the anger between them was just too great.
Alex was angry at her for making him choose between Jo and his kids. She had made it very clear that she wouldn't give him parental rights or even let him meet the twins if it meant shipping them back and forth between Seattle and Kansas. Alex understood that, and he chose to make it work with Izzie in Kansas for the sake of keeping his kids in a stable household.
Izzie was mad at him for coming here in the first place. When she had the twins, she went about it as a single mother. Her plan to have them never involved him and she resented that he was here now.
Feeling Jo's wedding rings dig into his palm, Alex took a deep breath as he held up the dress again. He remembered Jo's smile as she said, 'I super do,' and the way she shrieked with laughter when she scared him.
"I got you so good," Jo said as she laughed again, having successfully pulled a prank that had actually scared him.
But the truth was that he wasn't scared, surprised, yes, and a little excited, which led to a bit of disappointment when she revealed that she wasn't actually pregnant. They weren't having a baby.
He remembered the talk they had later that night after they thoroughly consummated their marriage and enjoying a little bit of a honeymoon together.
"Jo, are you scared to be pregnant and have kids?" Alex asked, and he remembered just looking at her, watching her face for an answer.
He wanted her to be honest, and he remembered how she looked away from him as a small smile spread across her cheek, and she shook her head.
"No, Alex. I'm not scared. I know you want kids more than anything, and I was scared to have kids before, but in the past couple of months, I've realized that I'm ready. I want kids with you. I want to start trying for a baby," Jo said as she smiled at him before looking down at her hands.
She twirled her wedding rings around her finger. It was something she always did when she was excited or nervous. It was why she loved them so much and never took them off. She loved having them on her finger so she could twirl them when she was nervous. They were also a symbol of their love and a physical reminder that she was loved.
"Really," Alex said as his heart swelled in his chest as he reached out to hold her hand and pull her close.
"Yeah," Jo said, but she bit her lip. "To be honest though, I'm still scared. We both had crappy childhoods, and I don't want our baby to end up like we did, feeling unloved and unwanted in the foster care system. I'm scared I'll have another depressive episode or that I'll develop PPD and I won't be able to bond with our baby or that I'll neglect them."
"But," Alex said, knowing there was a but as he remembered the things they had learned together in therapy.
"But I know that we have lots of family and friends that would take in our kid and love them if anything happened to us. And since you and I know the signs and I'm still in therapy, if I develop PPD or have another depressive episode, I can get the help I need to overcome it and be a good mom. And..."
"And?" Alex asked as Jo got excited and her smile grew.
"I think about having a baby all of the time," Jo said, and she had such a happy and excited smile that was barely contained on her cheeks. "I'm so excited, and I think about having a little girl or a boy and just giving them all my love. Love that I never had as a kid, so I'm gonna tell them every day that they are loved and that they are wanted. I think about the kind of things we missed out on during our own childhoods and giving them everything that we missed out on. We would take them to the zoo and the park, and on vacations, and to McDonald's for lunch, and we would make sure that they have everything that we didn't have. I want to do that for our child."
"I want that too," Alex said as he shared her excitement and smiled too. "And I'm a bit scared too, I know I'll never be a drunk or a deadbeat like my dad, but I'm worried I'll get lost in my work. And like you said, I'm scared that we're going to die, and then our kid will end up in foster care."
"But," Jo said with a knowing smile.
"I'm so excited to have a kid of our own, our own baby!" Alex said in excitement as he imagined it. "I know that I'll never not want to spend time with them and that if I do get lost and work, you'll be there to pull me back and remind me that our family is important."
"To be honest, I'm not worried about you getting lost in your work and forgetting about spending time with our child," Jo said with a smile as she looked down and poked his chest. "What I do worry about is you sneaking them out of daycare to go on rounds with you and interrupting their nap time."
"Yeah, that is something I would probably do," Alex said as they shared a laugh. "I think about watching them grow and learn and playing with them. I want that. I want to give our kids the best childhood that we can give them."
"I want to do that too," Jo said as she pulled him in and kissed him.
The rest of the memory slipped away from him as he held up the dress and stared at it again. He would never get to do that with Jo. He'll never get to go through the fears and the excitement of having a child with her. Instead, Alex went through it all alone on the day that he found out about the twins.
Here he was, in Kansas, being a father to them. More than that, he was their full-time Dad. He hadn't been able to get a job since he got there. The local hospitals weren't hiring for ped's or upper management and the one in Kansas City was an hour away. So for now, he was a stay-at-home dad, and he loved that he got to spend every day with his kids, but the hours that they were at school were long and boring, and the little town they lived in had absolutely nothing to do. To say he was miserable was an understatement, and to say he felt that he deserved to be miserable was the truth.
He looked around the room, the things of his life scattered around him. He put the dress over his arm and clutched her wedding rings in his hand so he wouldn't drop them. He searched through the piles of things with his other hand. He picked up a few special things. His Iowa State Hawkeyes t-shirt that was old and ratty. It had been Jo's since she first slept over at his house. Next, he grabbed the scarf that his mom knitted for him, the soft green fabric, was warm and smelled like his mom. He grabbed one of the perfume stain shirts. He sorted through his ties and grabbed the blue checkered tie that he wore on their wedding day and the red one that Jo gave him for Christmas that year. Lastly, he grabbed the divorce papers before he carried everything into his room.
Alex went to his closet, turning on the light and pulling out a box at the very bottom of it. When he left Seattle, knowing that he wouldn't return, he grabbed a few special things that he wanted to bring with him, Jo's things. He set the things he grabbed on the floor and opened the box. He pulled out her lab coat, the one he had grabbed from the attending's lounge, the white coat with the blue embroidered name of Josephine Karev. He remembered how excited she was to have his last name, and he was so proud that she took it. They were the Karev's. As soon as they said their names, everyone knew that they were married and that they were in love. Alex still had that love for her now, even if she didn't keep his last name.
He pulled out the next thing, the light blue scrub cap from when she was a resident. Jo had a couple of them, but this was the one that she wore during their last surgery together before she took her boards. She had handed it to him before she got on the bus to take her to the airport, and when she returned, a board-certified general surgeon, he presented her with her attendings scrub cap. The scrub cap had the design she had picked out, but hadn't ordered yet, and he remembered how she screeched in excitement when she told him she passed her boards and wrapped her arms around him. He remembered how proud he was of her. He was always so proud of her achievements. He always would be.
Then he pulled out one of her old sweaters, the one that was way too big for her but fit him just right. He wondered if she got it just for that reason. It was so warm and soft and it reminded him of her every time he put it on. It had been a little expensive and he remembered how Jo had to justify it when she bought it. Finally, he just put it in her arms and told her if she didn't buy it for herself, then he would, and she finally got it. She put it on the second they got out of the store and she wore it for the rest of the day. That was the last time she wore it as he stole it a week later and she never stole it back. Alex took a deep breath as he held up the sweater to his face, breathing in her sweet scent. He remembered how good she always felt in his arms and how right her body felt against his. They just fit together.
He put down the sweater and pulled out the perfume bottle. It was half empty and light in his hands as it clinked against the wedding rings that he still held. God, he missed the smell of her so much, and the perfume wasn't the same as having the real thing in his arms. Her own unique scent, mixed with the perfume and her shampoo into a scent that was just so Jo. He slept next to her for six years, and every night he used to tangle his nose in her hair. Now he couldn't sleep unless he could smell her, and her perfume was the next best thing, but it wasn't the same as sleeping next to her.
The last thing he pulled out was their wedding album, or at least a copy of it. The tiny little album was the size of a book with a dozen photos of the two of them together on their wedding day, including a few of his favorite photos of them that day. It wasn't a photo the photographer had taken but one that Meredith had taken herself. It was of them standing on the boat with Jo pressed up against him. The one on the opposite side was the only one they got from their Halloween wedding. It was similar to the one from their other wedding. They were pressed up against each other and smiling for the camera. It was a reminder of the days he had promised to love her forever.
But he had betrayed her.
He finally opened the divorce papers, but he didn't read through them. Instead, he just flipped to the last page. Jo's signature was at the bottom. Her name, Josephine Karev, was written out in her delicate handwriting. This was it. This was the end of their marriage.
She didn't write him a letter back, but he could imagine what she would have said. She would have talked about how she hated him. How she still loved him, but how she had seen this all coming. All of the times that she had expressed her insecurities about Izzie, he had never really understood why she thought he could choose Izzie over her. He couldn't even entertain the thought. Jo meant so much more to him than anyone, ever. But then Izzie had his kids, and she asked him to choose between Jo and their twins, and he finally understood why.
He could imagine the words that she would yell at him. She would ask him how he didn't think this through before he fell in love with her and the truth was that he didn't. He fell head over heels in love with her. He didn't even think about anyone else other than her. Maybe he should have, but he was glad that he didn't, because the years they were together, he got to love her with every fiber of his being and with his whole heart, nothing holding him back, and he didn't regret it for a moment.
He put everything delicately back into the box and he finally slipped off his own wedding ring. His finger felt so empty without it and he hadn't been able to bring himself to take it off until now. Until he knew that their marriage was finally over. He put the three rings into the ring box, side by side as they always should be, just not on the fingers of the people who made vows never to take them off.
He left the wedding dress for last, gently folding it and placing it in the box before he put the photo album on top. For the rest of his life, he would never forget the way that he betrayed her.