AN: Thank you for all of those who reviewed and for all those who keeping adding my work to their alerts, it's very flattering. =)

Standard disclaimers apply and, despite due diligence, the inevitable mistakes are my fault.

Remembrance

Chapter One: The Darkest Hour

His pager and cellphone ran in perfect unison and he frowned at them as he held one in each hand.

"Derek," he said, letting the pager drop onto the comforter.

"Mark." It was said as a sigh.

"Do I bother you on your nights off?"

"Mark," he repeated. "It's Lexie."

He listed for a while, his spine straightening with every passing work. By the time Derek had moved on to details, he'd stopped listening. The phone discarded, he pulled clothes on as he walked toward the front door. Derek's voice filled the empty bedroom behind him.

Ten minutes later, Mark used the heel of his hand to push through the swinging door of Trauma 2.

"What the hell happened?" he barked.

An ER resident and intern looked up from the gurney. The resident took in his denim and leather and a look of irritation chased away his surprise. "Sir, you need to leave."

Mark walked closer to the gurney. The intern recognized him. "Dr. Sloan," she said, more for the benefit of her resident. Then: "Jane Doe with blunt force trauma to the head."

It was then the two doctors moved and he saw the shorter frame of Miranda Bailey near the wall of the small room. Her arms were crossed over her chest, the yellow gown awkwardly billowing around her. "She has a name," she said quietly. "Lexie Grey."

He looked down at the patient's ashen face and felt his gut drop like a severed elevator. Her skin was blanched of all color, leaving her eyebrows stark by contrast. It made the crimson on the bed look far too vivid, comic even, to be real.

Adrenaline pumped his heart faster.

"I already asked for a neuro consult," the resident said.

He brushed the kid to the side to check her breathing and pupils. "I'm not here to give you a consult."

"This is my case," the resident said, his voice belligerent.

"Do you really think I'm here to steal your patient?"

"Dr. Sloan." Miranda's hand went on his sleeve and tried to pull him back. He shrugged her off. "They don't think she's surgical."

The resident divided a suspicious look between them. "You're from surgery, too?" he asked, wary. "Look, I don't—"

"Why don't you spend less time talking and more time keeping her blood inside her body." It wasn't a question.

"We've already stopped the bleeding." It was curt. The resident pulled off his gloves, glaring at Mark the entire time. "Robbins here was about to take her to CT."

The intern, wondering if it was better to piss of her own resident or someone else's attending, put a hesitant hand on the gurney.

Mark took over, rolling it toward the door. "I'll do it." The intern looked grateful to have the choice taken away from her.

"Dr. Sloan." Miranda tried again, stepping forward with her hand out.

He just glowered. She started to stare him down and gave up halfway through, blowing out her breath. "Take Dr. Shephard with you."

Six minutes later Lexie was halfway through the scan and Mark was entirely through his patience.

"What the hell is taking so long?" he asked, pacing the small length of the attached room. He looked out the glass to her immobile body. The gown swallowed her frame. "Is this machine broken? Should we use a different one?"

Derek leaned back in his chair to look at his friend before returning to the monitor, waiting for the image to upload. "Mark, it's not the machine. Give it two more minutes."

Feet apart, he stood behind Derek as the scan finished. With one arm around his abdomen, he pressed a fist against his mouth to keep from shouting. "That's a contusion," he said abruptly, pointing at the screen. "Right? That's a contusion."

Derek looked up, saw the expression on Mark's face and swallowed his comment about hovering. "Yes," he said instead. "That's a contusion."

Mark squinted at the screen. "It's big."

Derek stood up and squared his shoulders to match Mark's so that they were looking at each other. "I've seen bigger. As long as we can control the swelling, she won't need surgery."

He nodded. "Okay." One hand lifted to rub his jaw. "Okay. So we keep her blood pressure down and—"

Derek clamped his hands around Mark's shoulders to stop him. "Mark. Mark, she's going to be fine. She's breathing on her own and—"

Mark moved away from him to the door. "What about brain activity? I didn't even ask that idiot about brain activity. Her pupils…"

When Derek didn't follow him out, Mark turned. One look at his friend's face had him back in the room, door slamming behind them. "What? What do you know?"

"She's unresponsive, but you know as well as I do that—"

"Try again."

Derek nodded. "We will."

"Now."

It took the combined efforts of Drs. Bailey and Shephard to keep him out of Lexie's room while her doctor checked her bandages for continued bleeding.

And suddenly there was time. Time to think thoughts he didn't want to entertain. His jacket discarded, he pushed up his sleeves with impatient hands. With nothing to hold onto or cut with or do, his hands felt increasingly useless.

"Do they—does anyone know what happened?" he asked, his voice cutting through the tacit agreement to remain silent. Miranda exchanged a look with Derek, who gave an almost imperceptible nod of his dark head. Irritation flashed through him and his ineffective hands clenched into fists.

"The police say it was a mugging," Miranda finally said, leaning against the opposite wall, her eyes lowered.

"A mugging?" It would have been laughable if he hadn't felt like someone had steamrolled over his body. Was still streamrolling. "She just went out for ice cream; she couldn't have had more than five dollars on her." His arms went up behind his head and he clamped down hard on his neck.

Through the blinds of the room he could see the resident removing the gauze around her head. There was blood, he realized numbly, but he couldn't tell if it was fresh or not. Something in him told him to be grateful there hadn't been a shooting or stabbing involved.

"Did he hit her? Did she fall?"

Here another look was exchanged. Derek took over talking. "They found a baseball bat next to her. The police are trying to get some prints off of it."

Any obligation to drum up some gratitude to some higher deity flew out the window.

"Jesus Christ." He choked on the words, the syllables half strangled. He doubled over at the waist, his hands resting on his knees while he focused on breathing. When he stood, the blood rushed away from his head and for a long moment he saw red. Then: "Are there any other injuries?"

Miranda shook her head. "Some bruising on her chest and legs, but nothing—" she cut herself off and cleared her throat.

"Serious?" Mark filled in with a bark of laughter.

The resident was barely out the door with a nod of his head before Mark brushed by him on his way inside. Lips bloodless, head swaddled and pathetically small, she looked like a child. A child he'd been trusted with, and miserably failed.

Gripping the light he had taken from Derek, he hovered over her body for a moment, afraid to touch her. Taking pains to be careful, he pulled back her eyelids, hoping for a reaction so hard he almost imagined one that didn't exist.

"Lexie," he said, his voice hoarse and barely audible. "Lexie," he tried again, stronger this time. "Lexie!" he shouted, using a tone he only employed when she used his razor.

Nothing.

He pinched the inside of her elbow. She was sensitive there. After two more tries he rubbed his face; the adrenalin had faded and exhaustion was eager to act as a substitute. Then he stared at her face, wishing, wishing, wishing she'd look as pink and frustrated as she had when he'd conned her out of an ice cream run.

Guilt, familiar and cold, sliced through his veins. There would time for guilt later. Plenty of time.

He rubbed his knuckles against her sternum and her chest jerked away from his touch. The breath whooshed out of him and he stumbled back a step, nearly crushed by his relief. His shoulders sagged, releasing tension so tight it was as painful to let it go as it was to hold on.

He looked up and saw Miranda purse her lips and blow out a steady breath. Derek let his head fall back against the wall. Their postures were twin expressions of weary gratitude.

"We'll start suturing in about an hour, when we're sure the bleeding's stopped."

Without looking up from her face, he shook his head once. "I'll do it."

Derek opened his mouth to protest and Mark, sensing what was imminent, curbed him. "I don't want some intern stapling her head, giving her a botched facelift. It's her head, Derek." His voice wavered as his fingers reached out to float above her cheek. Curling them in, he didn't touch her. "She's beautiful, isn't she?" Without waiting for an answer, his eyes steady, he continued. "I'll do it. I can give her that much at least."

AN: Please review! It's my sustenance.