Seattle, Christmas eve.

Life brought her back to the exact place she fleed from. Lexie, it won't be that bad, her sister said, Just for the holidays. Zo, Derek and I miss you. It didn't sound so bad then. But now, everything felt different. The air, the weather, the people. Everything reminded her of why she left. Everything reminded her of him.

Ever since that day — June fifteenth — everything seemed more dull, out of life. It's almost as if losing him flipped a switch inside her. The colors weren't as bright, her smiles weren't as big, her overall persona was different. And not the good kind of different. Her friends in New York would always ask her what big tragedy happened in her life for her to be "looking so sad all the fucking time". Usually, Lexie would just flip them off and go back to sulking. Sulking, she does all the time, sure, but never crying. She promised herself she'd never cry over him again. If he's happy, I could be happy too. Happier, even. But all that flew out of the window that one night in August.

That one night, just like every other night, she was in a bar drinking after her shift. But tonight was different. Tonight was his birthday. She was back to looking at old pictures of them — mostly him — that she took when they were together and he wasn't looking. Him laughing, his head thrown back and his eyes sparkling. Him cooking for her, wearing her pink apron with a cartoonized bikini body. Them looking at each other, smiling, while dancing at Izzie and Alex's wedding reception (which Meredith took). She laughed bitterly and locked her phone, as she signaled Mike the bartender for a drink. Better to come home shit-faced than sober, she'd told herself. She downed shot after shot of tequila (and without chaser now, impressing even herself), until someone came up to the other side of the bar, right at her eyeline.

Blue-gray eyes, salt and pepper hair, his muscular arm wrapped around a beautiful girl with bright eyes with auburn hair.

Lexie frowned at the couple in front of her, watched them as they kissed and flirted and danced, unaware of the pair of eyes watching them, merely a few meters away. Even in New York, she sees them at every turn. Shot. Shot. Shot. She downed all the tequila that came her way. (She's told Mike the bartender the very first day she walked into this bar, to make sure she's never without a tequila shot in hand.)

"Woah, Lexie. Slow down." Mike the bartender said and chuckled, watching the brunette in front him gulp down shot after shot, while he filled shot glass after shot glass.

Finally, after what seems like forever, Lexie stood up from the stool, dropped cash on the table and started heading towards the door. Her feet were shaky and her mind was clouded, and she doesn't even think she remembers where home is.

Maybe I'll surprise Mark tonight. Maybe I'll change his mind. She chuckled, and suddenly everyone was looking at her. Did I say that out loud? Oops. Did it again. Ha ha!

Two hours later, Lexie was sat on a curb, just outside her apartment. Sobbing. And laughing, at the same time. I must be going crazy, she thought. She touched her wet cheeks, realizing that this was the first time she cried since June fifteenth. For months, she never allowed herself to feel deeper than just a little pinch, a little pain. She's always pushed down the rest, afraid that if they come to the surface, she'll have to face the fact that this all wasn't just a dream, and this was her life. This IS her life. She sees that now. He's married to someone else, and she is here, drunk and alone and miserable. So she sat on the curb, her body wracking with her sobs, and finally let herself feel.

—

"Heeeeey, look who's finally here!"

Lexie ran into Derek's arms, lugging her bags behind her, her face stretching into the first genuine smile she's had in months. She loves him, her brother-in-law. He's always had her back with matters of the heart, and always supported her and he's unexpectedly became her shoulder to lean on.

"Merry Christmas!" she says happily, as she was transferred into her sister's arms. Meredith hugged her tightly, and pulled her into the kitchen of her new house, asking her to tell her everything about New York.

Lexie told Meredith and Derek everything about what she loves in New York, her interest in neuro, her upcoming boards and her new friends. Pretty much covered all her bases, all while purposely leaving out the parts where she's probably considered an alcoholic now, or the three dates she recently went out on with her neuro attending who looked just like him, but just isn't quite him.

Meredith tried to look interested in the things she had to say, even though she really just couldn't wait to pull her sister into a corner and ask her how she really is. She knows Lexie. Probably not as much as some people do, but she knows her better than most. And she is different. She was thinner, the bags under her eyes darker. Her sister shrugged it off as "always being put in the night shift", but in the four years she's worked with Lexie here, she never once looked this exhausted. She almost looked like a shell of her old self.

—

An hour before Christmas eve dinner with her old co-workers at Seattle Grace Mercy West, people were starting to arrive at Meredith's house. Jackson was here, arriving with April (whom he is dating now), Arizona hugged her upon sight, Callie gave her an awkward hug and Cristina arrived having downed a few drinks beforehand, drunkenly pulling Lexie in the middle of the living room to "shake that ass, Little Grey".

Lexie was relieved to see that everyone here was still the same, and she felt instantly at home again. She loved this place, truly. She always thought she would live in Seattle her whole life, grow old with these people — her friends.

"Hey Lex, I think someone's at the door. Could you get that?" Meredith said, trying to comfort a screaming and crying Zola in her arms. She nodded absently at her sister and ended her conversation with April as she hurried to the front door.

"Merry—"

Lexie almost gasped. Mark was standing in front of her, Sofia in one arm and a bottle of wine on the other. His big smile suddenly disappeared as he saw her face, and a flash of confusion registered in his eyes. "Hi."