A/N: Thanks for all the reviews and alerts for this fic! I hope you like this chapter. And thanks to idealskeptic for being the best beta ever and SKaylor95 for helping with the plot stuff! Also, a good song for this chapter is "Beauty of Uncertainty" by KT Tunstall. Also, this chapter has some swearing in it, just so you know. That's why this fic is rated T. For swearing. Aaand lastly I was going to post this on May 30th, but my account got locked until June 2nd because the list of alternate season eight endings called "Decisions, Decisions" that I posted that started this fic was a list and that's not allowed and blah, blah, blah. But if you read that before it got deleted, guess which option this is! I'm not going to tell you. :) But I will tell you that it was one people voted for.

Chapter Two: No Reason, No Reason At All

"I don't want to go anywhere." Cristina pouted like a little kid, she made the face and everything.

"That's nice and all, but you don't have a choice, we're going." Meredith narrowed her eyes and stood up. She was about to start walking, I think expecting that if she got up and went that Cristina would follow, but as soon as she took a step with her bad leg she yelped.

"You can't go anywhere." I walked out in front of her in an attempt to physically prevent her from going.

"I'm fine," she muttered. But she wasn't. She took another step forward and winced.

"You need to rest."

"Do not." She stared at me and for a second I worried she was going to hit me to get me to move.

"Yes, you do," said Dr. Robbins. "We'll go. You stay."

"See? It's already been decided. I don't have to go anywhere." Cristina gave this big, bright smile. That smile coming from her in any situation would have been uncomfortable. Now it was just spooky.

Meredith made a noise that sounded something like a growl and walked the few steps back to Cristina. She sat down delicately and flicked Cristina on the ear.

Cristina turned to look at her, completely shocked. "Did you just flick me?"

Meredith flicked her again. "I will flick you till you move."

"But not till we get back, right?" I said, trying to make my voice sound light and calm.

Meredith glared at me, so I guess it didn't work that well.

"Come on," Dr. Robbins grabbed my arm and started leading me away, "let's go before they both lose it."

Before we got too far away to see them anymore, I saw Meredith flick Cristina's ear one more time.

We walked out past the tree with the dead stewardess in it. I wondered if when we were rescued they'd have some way of getting her down from there. They had to get her down from there, right? Or maybe they'd come back for her later. They had to get here down but it wasn't like she was going anywhere.

But either way, we had to be rescued. They would have already been looking for us, I knew that much. It was just a question of how long it would take them to find us. Considering it had already been a few hours and we never reached our destination, they had to be looking for us by now. They had to, right?

I said as much. "They're looking for us, right?"

Dr. Robbins stopped dead in her tracks. She looked at me like it hadn't occurred to her either way. "Of course they are, Lexie."

And we kept walking.

Neither of us said anything for what felt like a very long time so I asked a question. "You're married, right?"

"Yeah."

That was it. One word. No details. I wondered if she thought I was asking like maybe I didn't know. So I asked another question.

"What's it like?" It was a dumb question, I know. But it was all I could think of. Anything to get rid of the pervasive silence of the forest. It was creeping me out.

"I'm really, really glad that my wife wasn't on the plane. I'm glad she isn't here right now. If everyone had died but me I'd be okay with that because she wasn't on the plane." She paused a moment, like she was considering something. "Does that make me a bad person?"

"Uhhh..." I opened my mouth intending for words to come out, but I couldn't exactly find any. What kind of a question was that? Where had that come from? Was that what she had been thinking about this whole time? "Uh... You know, Dr. Robbins, I really don't know."

"Please just call me Arizona. This is not a situation that calls for formality. But back to my question, what if you were married? What would you think then?"

I thought about it for a moment. What if I was married? Would I feel the same? I thought about that for a moment and answered as honestly as I could.

"I have no idea. I'm probably not going to get married. So I don't know." I probably wasn't going to get married not because I had no interest in it but because I just couldn't see marrying anyone other than Mark. I wasn't saying I'd never, ever get over him, but I couldn't see loving anyone else enough to want to marry them. But I wasn't about to tell her that.

"What if Meredith wasn't on the plane?" She paused a moment, then added, "What if Mark wasn't on the plane?"

I blushed red like a tomato the second she asked me that. I didn't want to answer that. And it really wasn't any of her business. "Umm... well..." How did she know, anyway? There was no one around when I'd spilled my guts to him. Unless... oh, god, had he gone around telling people what I'd said?

"Don't worry." She smiled. "He didn't mention it. But you know what that hospital is like. The second anything interesting happens everybody knows about it."

"That doesn't make me feel any better."

She shrugged and neither of us said anything for a long time. Honestly, with questions like that, maybe the silence was better after all.

After walking a ways we both decided that we'd probably cover more ground if we split up. We wouldn't go too far, and we'd call out every few minutes so we knew the other person was still within running and shouting distance.

I found myself wandering aimlessly through the forest and I was starting to think that maybe they wouldn't have gotten this far from where everyone else had been. But then it wasn't exactly like I had any idea of where exactly they'd landed, either. The more I thought about it I realized just how out of my element I was. I didn't know anything about planes. I didn't know anything about how far apart we all could have landed. I didn't know anything about how this could have happened. I knew how to cut people open. I didn't know anything about how to survive in the wilderness.

"Arizona?" I called out. It'd been a few minutes since I'd called out and it was probably about time.

"Lexie!" she called back. She sounded excited. "Lexie! Come quick! I found somebody!"

I started running towards the sound of her voice, she wasn't too far away. She hadn't said who she'd found, maybe she wasn't close enough yet to see exactly who it was, but I couldn't help but hope. She sounded excited, so maybe... maybe it was Mark. And if she was excited and it was him, maybe, just maybe he was okay.

But then I heard something else. Somebody was... I paused for a second to listen. Swearing. There was a lot of swearing. And something else. I couldn't quite make it out.

I started running again and I saw Arizona just ahead of me. She was running further ahead. I could see another clearing. Sort of. It wasn't really a clearing but the other part of the plane, the part that had split off had landed here and cleared a big chunk of space. There were trees everywhere. And not just in the way that they were all over the forest. They were actually everywhere. The plane crashing down had cleared a lot of space and as a result there were trees lying all over, some piled one on top of the other like dominoes. Others were split into two or three parts. Some of the trees that had snapped were absolutely massive and I could see from here the cracks where they'd been split from their trunks. Arizona disappeared into the clearing. I ran faster to catch up.

"Lexie, don't. Just. Stay over there," Arizona called out. She sounded... sad. "Just... stay over there." She sounded like she was crying. That did it.

"Arizona, are you -" I stepped out from behind the trees and looked out at her. And that was when I saw it. She'd found Derek. The thing making all the noise was Derek pushing at the wing of the plane. It had broken off, just like the trees had broken.

Confused, I ran towards them. What the hell was he doing? Had he lost his mind? I wouldn't have been surprised. Not because of anything to do with Derek, but just because of the situation. I was about to lose my mind too. There was no explaining how incredibly weird and awful this all was and I didn't know how much more of it I could take.

But when I got a little closer I started to wish he really had lost his mind. Because he wasn't just trying to move the wing of the plane for no reason, he was trying to move the wing of the plane because Mark was trapped under it. The wing had fallen on top of his legs and had probably crushed them. He looked so... I don't know. Not like himself. Usually he was this big, all encompassing force. Or at least that's how it felt to me when we were in the same room. But now? He looked wrong. He looked... Oh, god, he looked...

Dead. He looked dead.

I stopped running. Stopped moving. Stopped thinking. Stopped functioning at all. He was dead. He was dead. I could repeat that as many times as I wanted but it wouldn't make it any different.

And then Derek looked over at me. He looked at me and he didn't need to look at Mark. He knew. He just knew. He didn't say anything, but tears started streaming down his face. I don't think I'd ever actually seen him cry before.

Arizona cocked her head to the side, like she didn't get it. She took a few steps towards Mark and then she saw it. She didn't say anything. She didn't cry, either. She just stood there, staring at him, like she expected him to wake up or something.

"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" I spun around, away from the person that used to be Mark and wasn't anymore. He wasn't anything anymore. "Fuck!" I started walking around and around like a circle had been printed on the ground and following the pattern would make everything better.

I wanted to scream, but I didn't. Instead, I just started rambling. "I cannot believe this! I cannot believe this is happening. And no, before either of you say anything, it's not because I expected him, after what I said, to be all, I love you too, but... he can't be dead. It's not allowed. He can pick somebody else, he can marry somebody else for all I care, but this isn't allowed. I can't do this." I stopped pacing. I felt like I was going to be physically sick. I turned and for the briefest of seconds, looked at him. I wanted it to be like you hear about it being in the movies. Like he was just sleeping. But I knew better. I'd seen death too many times. It wasn't like that at all. His skin was colorless. Like all the blood was gone from it. There was no movement, none. He was too still. There was no life there at all. And sleeping people, they look alive. The dead look, well, dead. A part of me, a teeny tiny part of me hoped that maybe he wasn't. That maybe, if I could just gather up enough courage to go and get close enough to him to reach out and touch him and check for a pulse that maybe I'd find one. That maybe he wasn't actually dead, not yet. But that part of me was overruled by other, more powerful emotions. Like shock. And anger. And sadness. And an insanity that might not ever go away. Because how fucked up was this?

Derek sighed. "Lexie..." He looked tired, exhausted. He looked like he'd just lost his own brother. Which, really, he pretty much had. I tried to keep that in mind, I really, really did. But I just couldn't quite bring myself to care. I wasn't sure I'd ever be capable of caring about anything ever again.

"What? What? Okay, what? Please, please don't tell me he was in love with me and just hadn't said so yet. That makes it so much worse. That makes it unbearable. To know that I came this close," I held up my hand with my fingers pinched together to illustrate my point. "To know that I came this close to having everything I ever really wanted only since I couldn't get myself together soon enough, couldn't gather up my courage soon enough, it didn't work out. Not that it would have mattered anyway because we'd still have been on that damn plane and he would still be here, crushed under it!" I stomped over and kicked the plane wing, hard. And then I screamed. Not because Mark was dead, but because Mark was dead and I'm pretty sure I just broke my foot by kicking the plane wing that crushed him. Because, you know, kicking an inanimate object totally taught that inanimate object a lesson. I totally didn't just break my foot for no reason. Just like Mark died for no reason. No god damned reason at all. I spun around and started hopping around like a rabbit and grasping at my foot. And I kept screaming. Now it was for Mark. Because he was dead. He was dead. I was in love with him and he was dead. What the hell was that? What the fuck was wrong with my life?

I stopped screaming and went back to talking excessively. "My mom dies, George gets hit by a bus, there's a shooting at the hospital where I work, my brother-in-law nearly dies and a whole bunch of people I knew actually died and now, just when we finally all got over it, we get into a plane and it crashes! And then Mark, the man I thought I would spend my life with dies. And not even for something that meant anything." Then, after I had vomited out all of the words I could think to say I did this ungraceful sort of spin and flopped to the ground.

Nobody said anything for a good thirty seconds and then I heard a dead man speak to me. "Really?"

I twisted around to see Mark staring at me. "Really?" he said again. I wasn't sure which emotion was stronger, my embarrassment over how much of that he heard or my pure, unadulterated joy that he was alive.

The joy won out. And then sheer panic killed it. I just sat there, staring at him. I'm pretty sure my mouth was hanging open, like a gaping fish taken out of the water.

"Lexie." That broke me out of it.

"Uh-huh." I crawled on hands and knees over to him. I laid down on my stomach so I could look right at him.

He closed his eyes and I panicked all over again. I was about to start screaming when he opened them. "Lexie," he said again.

"What? What? Anything, just..." I gulped, trying to remember that breathing was a thing I should keep doing. "What?"

"I'm not going to marry anyone else, okay?"

What? "Whatever, okay? Just don't talk. Just..." I looked up at Derek and opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out. I just stared at him. And he stared back. We both knew that there wasn't anything we could do.

"Okay, we have to..." Arizona bit down on her lip like her intention was to make herself bleed. She was trying to keep her calm, but it wasn't really working. "We have to get this off of him." She started to look around for things we could use to do that, but Derek just shook his head.

"That's not a good idea."

"You were trying to do exactly that when I got here!"

"I know, but..." he drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. "If we take it off of him, we don't know what will happen. And we have nowhere to take him if that makes it worse." He waved his arm out like he was showing us something important. "In case you haven't noticed we're in the middle of the forest!"

"I know." Arizona sniffled, blinking back tears. She walked over to him and put a hand on his arm, the only kind of comfort she could really offer him.

I didn't say anything. Derek was right. But... at the same time, we had to do something, didn't we? And then it hit me. There was something we could do. And it was a pretty simple thing. Actually, once it occurred to me I felt like a complete idiot for not having thought of it immediately. "Has anyone thought to look for a cellphone?"

Derek and Arizona both looked at me like simultaneously they thought I was a genius for thinking of something so brilliant and they thought they were both morons for not having through of something so obvious.

I got to my feet slowly. My foot still hurt like hell but after I tested it out a bit I realized it wasn't actually broken, I'd probably only sprained something. "I'll go back to where the main part of the plane landed, it's not too far. I can look for a phone and maybe some other supplies. Arizona, you should go get Cristina and Meredith, bring them here. It's better if we're all in one place, right? And Derek, you should stay here with Mark."

"Lexie." Mark spoke so quietly I barely heard him. I bent down on one knee so I could hear him better and tried not to groan as I realized I was now unintentionally putting all my weight on my bad foot. "Stay."

I nodded and looked over at Derek. "I'll go. I walked past it before," he said. He looked over at Mark one more time and took off running towards the other half of the plane.

A/N: Please leave a review! I love reviews.

And now, here is a teaser for the next chapter!

"I'm not in love with her, okay? I'm not. I wanted to be." He shuddered visibly and I wanted to do something to help. Anything. I couldn't even imagine the kind of pain he must have been in and... and all I could do was sit there and watch. I couldn't help but feel like all my training was completely useless. All the things I'd spent so much time learning and what good was any of it?

"Just, don't talk okay? Just... conserve your strength. Don't..."

"Shut up, Lex. I have to say this. I don't want to die here but if I do I want to know I said my piece."

I rolled my eyes, but let him continue.

"I'm in love with you. I don't think there's anything else at this point. It'd be easier if I could be with someone who..." he paused and for a moment went completely still. I had to fight the urge to scream. "Someone who wants what I want. But that doesn't work because all I really want is you."

I couldn't help it. The tears escaped. They started dribbling down my face and I couldn't help it. I'd wanted him to say that for longer than I wanted to admit. But not like this. Not here. I hastily swiped my hand across my face, trying to stop the tears. It didn't help. They just kept coming.