Inspired by Dermot Kennedy's new album Sonder. Chapter titles are song titles in the album and are loooooosely based on the songs. I just love the word Sonder so much and I highly recommend looking up its definition in The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. :)

Anyways, I love you all. Here's a multi-chapter fic. Canon divergence. And I hope it will get us all through the hiatus.

Any Love

Her grip tightens on the wheel of her rental car. She squints at the road ahead of her. She doesn't really understand why she's squinting. Is it to see the road better? Is it to stop herself from crying? Who is really to say at this point? She realized she had also stopped breathing because maybe holding her breath will stop her thoughts from racing. If she stopped breathing, at least for a few moments, will that also stop her thoughts for also a moment, so her feelings can catch up. She is overwhelmed and embarrassed and more overwhelmed and more embarrassed. The anxiety creeping in makes her want to throw up, or crash her car on a side of a brick building—she's kidding, of course—that's not even a funny joke, but she wants to crawl under a fucking rock and never show her face to anyone ever again.

She tried to move on. For years. She tried to accept reality. Her brain? Has moved on. Has accepted. Her heart? That one has a brain of its own—metaphorically speaking of course. Her heart held out for hope. Her heart created scenarios of love and romance and fairy tales. But every day she wakes up convincing herself to move on. To let go.

But it hurts to hear the truth. To see the truth. That everything she made up in her head was actually just made up. They were fairy tales where she wins in the end. She gets the man. She finds a knight in shining armor. Or Camo. She laughs at her own stupid joke because it's stupid. The reality of the matter is every single person has a life and a reality that does not involve her. Every single person, including her Knight in Sandy Camo has his own thoughts and feels and ambition and dreams that did not revolve around her.

She wants to scream in embarrassment as she slowly stops at a red light. She hits the steering wheel and lets out one long and loud "FUCK". She clears her throat as the light turns green and gently steps on the gas. There was some relief. But not much. But enough to get her through the hotel. She forces a smile and hands her keys to the valet. She has no business staying in a hotel with a valet right now, but why not. Especially now that she's pretty much convinced herself she'll only be in godforsaken Seattle for a few days.

Maybe.

She gets to get room and removes all her clothes and crawls under the sheets. Enjoying the feeling of every fiber of the luxurious sheets, hoping it will erase her day and the embarrassment and the shame of actually finally telling him what she's been thinking for years.

It all started many years ago. She was lost and broken and alone. And she decides to be radical—okay, radical is a strong word. But a complete change from who she was. Who she was was this basically almost socialist attending at pretty big deal hospital in New York City. She lived with her two bets friends. And her life turned upside down. She's lost….everything. Every single one who had helped her and carried her through life. She was sitting on a park bench staring, disassociating, watching as people walked past her. Some still distraught. Some horrified. Some sobbing, still looking for family members. And she just sat there. Unable to move. Unable to think. Unable to process that her person is gone. And she has no one. And her city, her love, was under attack. She could not comprehend any of this information. Because it seems unreal. It's been days and everything still smelled like smoke. Everything is …. in disarray.

A man approached her. It seemed….strange…. But he asked if she would enlist in the Army. It was just some Army man randomly recruiting in a park. Maybe because the country is on a brink of a revolution. A war. A…. Retaliation. She looks at him blankly. She briefly wonders why this man would even ask her? Does she look like she want to enlist? Is he just asking everyone? Why the fuck would she want to join something that kills people. Then she hears a voice in her head. Because she has a gift. She has a gift to save their lives. The people who will fight for our country. The people who will fight the people who attacked us. She is good at saving lives. She is SO fucking good at saving lives. The man looks at her and takes her blank stare a rejection, so he moves on, he walks away from the catatonic woman sitting on a park bench holding a cup of coffee and a scarf with pictures of birds.

"Wait." Teddy says, standing from park bench. "Yeah? Yeah. I want to join the Army."

And that was it.

And she found broken-self alone in the desert. She had to learn everything about wars and weapons and…dealing with dying people without state of the art equipment or a sterile operating room. She had a mission. It's to save lives. To put things back together. Body parts. Her mind. Herself. She learned to be in a place where she cannot spend a moment thinking and wallowing. Where everything is too chaotic for her to stop for a moment. This is where she decides she will heal. She will heal herself here. In the desert. In the midst of a war.

And she met him. She didn't care much for the sunburnt redhead barking orders at everyone. She found him too macho. Too…..masculine. Too good and too obedient. She didn't care for anyone who has probably a few sticks up their ass, and are too uptight. She didn't care for him because he barely glanced at her when they were introduced. She had to remind herself that this is just another person. She is not here for anyone's approval. She is here to save lives. She is here to heal. She is not here to butter up the uptight man who had no time for pleasantries.

She didn't care for him until they worked together. Until it was seamless. That they barely had spent time together and suddenly they have a shorthand. Their minds worked the same. Their thought pattern. Their ethics. They were….seamless.

"Good job in there, Altman"

"You too."

Then he smiled at her. A real one.

Then they became best friends. The one who eventually healed her. The one who unwound her from everything that kept her in despair. Everything that made her alone and broken. She found a friend. She saw a side of him she would not have expected. He was playful and silly. And at night they would gather by the fire with their friends and he would play the guitar and they would dance under the moonlight. He was the one who showed her that they can enjoy the peace and the quiet the desert brought on rare occasions. They would sit and talk for hours and hours about things they missed in the States. About their family members. About there their lives before they found themselves in the midst of bloodbath and chaos.

She's not going to be pretend she did not fall in love with him eventually. Because of course she did. He saved her. He healed her. He gave her hope that everything is not over for her. That she can move on from everything and everyone she had lost.

But he had a fiancée. He had history before her. He had his dreams and ambitions. He had his own complexities. And he had someone waiting for him at home. Someone he was excited to start a family with. A life. She felt a lot when she realized she loved him and that she cannot have him. But she daydreamed that they will fall in love. And that it would be her. That he would feel the same way about her.

And for years they were family. Him. His sister. He was her family. They took care of each other. There was a lot of love and care. And she had to put her feelings aside because she cannot lose him too.

She would take any love he could give. Platonic or not. Any love. Because she needed it.

So many years later, when she found herself in Seattle, that hope and fairy tales and daydreams she created sparked back to life. That maybe this time, it's about her. That maybe they weren't just delusions and fantasies. Maybe he loved her too. Even though she—well, her brain—had moved on.

So when he puts that final nail in the coffin where her dreams and fantasies laid, it embarrassed her to death. For letting her think she had a chance. For letting herself tell him everything. Because she might have just lost all the love too. That was a risk she was willing to take now.

She should have known better though.
But she knows now.

This wasn't the ending she was hoping for when she flew to Seattle.

But then she remembers: Sonder.

That feeling of realization that every passerby has a life as complex as hers. That everyone is going through something. That she is just in the background of someone else's life.

And it gave her hope. That she doesn't know much about him anymore. About his new girlfriend. About Beth.

It gave her home that maybe they can move past the truth telling. And just be friends again.

She decides that tomorrow she will find a much affordable hotel and go back to Seattle Grace and she intends to find out if she's going to lose him too.

She really has nothing to lose at this point. So might as well be brave and change the course of their story. Because it doesn't have to end. Not yet.