A/N: Hey everyone, sorry it's been SOOO long but I am one of those people who goes through writing phases and they don't always line up with when I have time being a student and all. Anyways, I ask one more time for your slight suspension of belief as this plot arc is more a means to an end than something I actually think is good writing. That said, R&R please and thank you! And check out my (rated M) fic, The Return.

Amelia

I couldn't believe my eyes.

"Lexie?" I asked, barely. I could barely speak.

"Amelia," she replied.

Kaleigh was looking between the two of us, confused. "You know each other?"

"Lexie… Well. She…" I shook my head, unable to form words. "Meredith…"

"No! Please don't call Meredith. She can't…"

Kaleigh must have been so confused by these fragments of sentences. I wished I could offer a better explanation but here was Lexie Grey. Back from the dead.

We had both been standing, but I was shaking so much I decided it would just be better to sit down. "How are you here? You were… Lexie, you were dead?"

Kaleigh's eyes widened but she seemed to pick up on the mood and didn't say anything else, quietly slipping into the chair next to me.

"I didn't die," Lexie said simply.

"Clearly," I retorted.

"Amelia…" Tears welled up in her eyes. "You weren't supposed to… I was waiting for the right time."

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"When the plane crashed, I didn't die. I lost both of my legs because I was trapped under part of the plane… I had a huge hemothorax and lost consciousness… and everyone thought I died. They left me there…" Lexie was sobbing now, her entire body trembling. "But I was found. By some hunters. They called for help. I was still unconscious. I couldn't tell them that there were others. They had no idea. It wasn't until the first responders got there that they started to look for the rest of the plane. But by then they had already been found. I went to a different hospital than they did."

"Mer said that Cristina said… she found the wolves eating your body."

"Not mine," Lexie gestured to her person, very clearly alive. "It must have been another wolf, or maybe there were other hunters and one of them got attacked?" Lexie's lips quivered with every word. I myself was white-knuckling the arm of the chair, trying to take it all in.

"So why didn't you…"

"I couldn't," Lexie cut me off. "I mean, they thought I was dead. And for a while, after I first woke up from surgery… I wanted to be." She paused. "I called to find out what happened to them. But when they asked me if I wanted to be connected to them… I just said no. I couldn't. It was just… I was in psych for a while. And I wanted to wait until…"

"Until you knew you weren't going to kill yourself?"

"I figured it would be better for them if they already thought I was dead." At this, I heard Kaleigh intake a breath sharply. Poor kid. This was a strange way to get to know your doctor, to say the least.

"What about after?"

Lexie started to cry again. "I just… When I was finally out of psych, I thought it would be a good time to come back. I didn't know…"

My eyes filled with tears. She didn't know about Mark.

"Mark was Alexa's dad," I said to Kaleigh. And then I realized Lexie didn't know about Alexa. "Lexie…"

She held up her hand and nodded. "I figured it out when Kaleigh came in yesterday. She mentioned you guys and Alexa. And even though I decided to stay hidden, I kept looking you guys up. I did last night. The court cases were public record… and Alexa's birth certificate had your names on it."

"You knew him?" Kaleigh asked Lexie.

She nodded tearfully. "We… were meant to be."

Owen

Amelia doesn't usually text me 910 (our step down from 911), unless it was for sex, but I knew she was with Kaleigh at the clinic so I was instantly worried. She asked me and Alexa to meet her at a restaurant nearby.

Alexa upstairs in her room, working on homework. I knocked and opened the door without waiting for an answer. "Amelia texted me, I think something might be happening with Kaleigh. She wants us to meet them right now."

"Oh, okay…" Alexa said, standing quickly and grabbing her jacket after slamming her laptop shut. I felt bad worrying her, but I didn't want to give her the illusion that everything was okay either.

We didn't talk for the entire way there. I fruitlessly tried to see Amelia and Kaleigh in the windows before we went into the restaurant. I searched the booths while Alexa talked to the hostess, and when my eyes landed on them, I parted the aisle in a rush to get to them, Alexa close behind.

We slipped into the booth across from each other and waited for the news. It took me a double take to realize there was a fifth person at the booth.

"Lexie?" I asked incredulously.

"Hi, Owen," she said.

"Lexie as in… Lexie Grey?" Alexa asked. Kaleigh nodded her head.

"Technically I go by Alexandra Silver now, but yes. It's nice to meet you Alexa." Lexie reached out to Alexa and shook her hand.

"How-"

"Later," Amelia cut in. "Lexie, this is her. Mark's daughter."

She smiled at Alexa. "You look kind of like him," she said wistfully.

"So… Looks like we have two 'Lex's now," I said, a laugh bubbling out of my chest. Lexie being alive was wonderful news, if not absolute shocking. I could tell Amelia was a little out of it, but when I was in the war, it wasn't rare to find people we had presumed dead.

Alexa shrugged. "I only ever go by Alexa, unless it's from Kaleigh. So you can keep Lexie."

"You are coming back home, right?" I asked.

"Yeah, I…" she strained. "Well, I suppose I owe you and everyone else an explanation."

"You aren't going to stay?" Amelia asked. Even though she knew more than I did about what happened and why Lexie hadn't come back all these years, it was clear they weren't on the same page about what was going to happen in the future.

"Amelia… they're going to hate me," Lexie whispered.

"No, no they won't. They're going to be relieved, Lexie, they'll be…"

Amelia reached across the table and grabbed her hand. "Meredith isn't as dark and twisty anymore."

"Exactly. She's better off without me. She's had enough surprise sisters for one lifetime, don't you think?"

Alexa surprisingly weighed in. "Lexie, I know I don't know you at all, but I know Meredith and everyone else and it's like… the more the merrier. You knew my dad… I'd like to know you."

Lexie started really crying now, and then after a few seconds, it turned to uncontrollable laughter. "They'd have to rename the hospital!"

I caught Amelia's eye and burst into hysterics.

"Huh?" Kaleigh asked.

"Grey-Sloan Memorial. The Grey is Lexie and the Sloan is Mark," Alexa explained, after it was clear that the three of us were down for the count on that one.

It was nice to be thinking about taking a name off of the memorial, instead of the other way around.

Kaleigh

This was all well and great, but there was still the matter of, oh, I don't know, me being pregnant.

I was going to have to get an abortion. I couldn't… I couldn't do that to these people. Amelia and Owen. Their lives were clearly busy enough without me fucking it up like that.

It wasn't just about that, though. I wouldn't be able to give a child a good life. I wasn't ready for motherhood. And after the past year, whatever my feelings about it may be, it was very clear to me that one thing you can't do is raise a child if you don't 100% want them.

Truthfully, I had known that this is what I was going to do since I took the test. Of course, I had wondered about raising a child, the possibility wasn't lost on me. I dreamed about it some nights, most nights it turned into a nightmare. I wanted kids, just not now.

Lexie, Owen and Amelia caught up about all the weird shit that's gone down since Lexie was presumed dead. Even hearing it for a second time, I still had trouble believing it. But there was Lexie, right before my eyes, living, breathing and existing.

I wondered how Meredith would react. The handful of times I had been with her, nothing substantial had happened. She seemed like she could be a stone-cold bitch if she wanted to be, so I hoped for Lexie's sake that she wasn't too upset with her for hiding herself like she was in witness protection. Though, I think if Alexa ever came back from the dead like that, I would have a hard time forgiving her.

When the conversation finally died down, I decided to bring up the sword hanging over my head. "Um, Dr. Silver, I…"

"Call me Lexie. OH! Your test! I never gave you the results."

"What test?" Owen asked.

"We ran a blood test to make sure it wasn't a false positive… It wasn't."

I inhaled sharply. "That's what I figured," I tried to play it off.

"We don't have to talk about this now," Amelia offered.

"Okay," I said, my voice breaking.

Our food came and I didn't say a single word for the rest of dinner.