Chapter Two

Waking Up

The Starship: Seattle Grace
Destination: The Colony World of Homestead II
Status: Autopilot
Crew: 258 asleep
Passengers: 4,999 asleep, 1 awake
Year: 3486
(39 years to go...)

I'm Lexie Grey. Passenger 1456. I'm a doctor, I'm going to Homestead II to start my residency, I'm going to be a surgeon. Most people would say that spending a hundred and twenty years in hibernation is going a bit too far when I could just go across the country. But I want to start over. My sister is Meredith Grey, a renowned general surgeon. She went to Homestead II with her husband a few years ago. She doesn't know about me, but I want to find her. My mother just died of the hiccups, I mean how crazy is that right? And it was only a few weeks ago that my dad told me I had another sister. But this is probably the only chance I'm going to get to find her.

I will miss Seattle. They have rain on Homestead II, don't they? I just wanna start over.

He loved the way she laughed. They way her eyes sparkled when she talked, the way her hair fell across her face. It obviously helped that she was gorgeous. Mark watched her for hours, he watched her whilst he was eating breakfast and dinner and whilst he was trying to entertain himself with whatever he was choosing to do to entertain himself. He was quickly becoming obsessed with everything she had to say, and with her, every little movement of the video he had memorised. He tried talking to Meredith about it but she didn't understand. Lexie was a person, Meredith was a robot. And Cristina still wasn't talking to him. It was after about a month that his eyes fell on the hibernation pod manual. He flicked through it casually like it didn't mean anything but he was avoiding the question. He felt guilty for even questioning it.

"What if you were stuck on a desert island and you could choose a person to be stranded there with you but it would mean trapping them forever, would you still do it?" He asked Meredith one night, slapping the manual down on the bar top. He was standing, not sitting, and there was a dangerous look in his eye.

"I don't know, I've never been on a desert island." Meredith replied, staring back out of cold, unfeeling eyes.

"Ok, well yeah. Okay, say you figured out something that would make you're life a million times better, but there's no taking it back. In making your life better, you are punishing somebody else. How would you make that choice?"

"Mark, these are not robot questions." Mark sighed. In that moment Meredith had laid out exactly why he had to do this. She wasn't a human, she didn't have the capacity to be a human. But Lexie was. She was real. He hated himself for wanting it, for wanting her. But it was cruel to strand someone on a ship for forty years. He listened to her everyday, she wanted to find her sister. And maybe her sister wouldn't still be there in forty years. If she ever found out that he'd woken her, she'd hate him for ruining her life. So he stalled. He avoided the pod room. He talked to Meredith as much as he could, he talked to himself until he was sure he was going crazy.

The straw that broke the camel's back was the morning he shaved. He cut off the beard he was growing and trimmed his hair back to its former glory. He ruffled his fingers through it, looking at his face in the mirror and telling himself for a final time that what he was doing was wrong. There was a lingering thought at the back of his mind; like the devil sitting on his shoulder. What if one day she knew and she forgave him?

"Please don't do it." He said a final time before walking to the pod room. He stood over her, a sleeping angel, and he told himself that there was no coming back from this. He knelt on the floor beside her and put a hand on top of her pod whilst he got out all the tools needed for the job. He opened the manual and set everything up. A sombre look on his face as the guilt came over him in waves. But he had to. He was so alone. He had always been alone, since he was a child and his parents abandoned him to go out to functions and exclusive parties. Even back on Earth he had no one. And she was perfect. Then it was like his hands took over and he was no longer in control. All the right wires were connected into the side of the pod and all he had to do was add the final spark and she'd be awake. He didn't hesitate. His hands moved forward and the metal clinked together.

The pod was bathed in light. Mark took his hand off the lid and began to tidy up all of his tools. He couldn't let her see him. He was about to turn around when he heart started beating again and she took her first few breaths. The air around him stilled as he watched the pod open and lift her body upright. He couldn't tear his eyes away from her because a part of him knew there was no going back from this. But the other half was so excited, so adrenaline pumped because this was really happening. For one split second all he felt was bliss. Then it crumbled to guilt and he turned quickly. Dragging himself from the pod room and running away. She'd find him later, she had to. But for now he had to pretend he wasn't responsible for this, had to get it in his head that she'd woken by accident, just like him.

"Hello?" She said, her voice sweeter in person. Mark walked out into the Grand Concourse and found her walking around and confused.

"Hello," he replied, watching her head almost whip around to look at him.

"Hi." She said again, the first time a question for anybody, anywhere. But this was just for him. He took a couple of steps forward, more cautious than her. She took about ten rapid steps and closed the gap between them. "Are you part of the crew?"

"No, I'm just a passenger just like you. I'm just like you." He said softly, "I'm Mark, Sloan." He outstretched his hand for her to shake but she just looked at him with bewilderment.

"Lexie Grey." Then despite her confusion, she smiled, lighting up Mark's whole world. "Do you know what's going on? I haven't seen another person yet." Mark shook his head, his hand rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.

"No, we're all alone." Ouch, he heard it as he said it. Maybe he should've started a bit slower, eased her in to the bad news.

"What do you mean we're all alone? Where's the crew? They're supposed to be here. They're supposed to wake up a month before us." She was starting to hyperventilate now, all the grief she'd stored away in hibernation was flooding back into her now.

"The crew is still asleep." Mark said more gently, the gap between them was so small he could reach out and touch her, prove to himself that she was real. "We woke up early. It's just me, well you and me." He tried not to smile, but he couldn't help the corners of his mouth creasing up.

He took her to the observatory. And the deep male voice of the stars told her that they had thirty-nine years to go until they reached the colony of Homestead II. He thought she might believe the ship itself if she didn't believe him. "Thirty-nine years to go?" Lexie said quietly, to herself. "No no no no." She put her head in her hands. She dropped to the stairs below her and looked away from Mark. The wail she let out almost broke him - she believed the ship, and he had caused this. He knew what she was thinking. That there's no way she would be able to find her sister now. Or at least find her in time that they could have any sort of relationship. They'd be old and Lexie wouldn't be able to learn from her. She'd be old. And her dream of becoming a surgeon was over now. Then it hit her, he watched the nerves in her shoulders twitch as she pulled herself up.

"Have you tried the pods Mark? Have you tried going back into hibernation? We have to try!" He watched her run out of the observatory in tears. He followed her to the command ring and the mechanic doc and back to the Grand Concourse, back to the pod room. He watched her shake her head and tell her that it wasn't possible and that there was nothing either of them could do. He watched her stare through the window in the door to the bridge, hoping to find a way into the room, but it was hopeless. Eventually he got fed up of her trying and he just blurted out without thinking. "It's been a year! I've been here a year and nothing has worked! It's not possible!" His face was beet red and pulsing. There was a vein on his forehead that was almost exploding out of him. It wasn't that he was furious he just couldn't handle feeling the guilt for her trying so hard.

Lexie turned to face him. They were standing in the pod room, her arms were folded and her tears were slowly drying into red, puffy circles. "You've been awake for a year?" Her voice was sweet like it had been earlier, and her eyes burned with sorrow for him, not anger. "I didn't even think to ask. Mark, I'm so sorry." She took a step towards him. He felt it now, that bliss, that excitement as she looked at him. Her eyes were brighter in person too. This was what he'd waited for, maybe it would all be worth it for that. She told him she was tired, and he told her to get some rest. He told her that he'd still be there in the morning and that he was there if she needed to talk. He offered to walk her back to her cabin but she refused. He let her have some time to herself.

DAY 2:
Today Mark told me that he's tried everything to rebuild a hibernation pod, to even get them working again. Most of me believed him but I still sat in the hold for four hours trying to build one myself. No luck. I'm a doctor, I'm not an engineer, I don't really understand how all that wiring works. But I have already memorised the pod manual. Mark carries that thing around with him like it's a magazine in his back pocket. I did find the medical bay though and made an inventory of all the ship's best medical supplies in case we need them. Maybe I am starting to accept that forty years isn't so long, after all. Meredith could well be alive when we get to Homestead II. There's some hope in that. Plus there are worse people I could be stuck with, but a super hot, and nice, guy?

DAY 3:
Mark showed me the on-board restaurant and 'bought' me dinner. And I found out he's been dying for a decent cup of coffee for almost a year. I don't know how the man copes. He's been stuck on the basic breakfast options for a year. His face lit up when I put the 'Mocha Cappuccino Extreme' down in front of him. He looked like a kid who'd just been given a year's supply of chocolate.

DAY 5:
I know we haven't known each other for very long, but I feel like I could talk to Mark. He'd really been there for me the last couple of days. So I decided to ask him why he's emigrating across the solar system. Maybe I'll start to tell him some of my story.

Mark said he has no one. That he's been alone for so long, even before the 'stuck alone on a ship' thing happened. He thought no one needed him on Earth, so why not make a better life for himself. He's a bio-engineer apparently, he wants to help people. He said there's nothing left on Earth to fix, we just replace everything. I see what he means and I guess it's a pretty good reason. I told him about my mom. I smiled for the second time in five days.

DAY 10:
I'm trying not to make this entire diary just about Mark, but he is the most exciting thing going on here. He told me he used the last of his savings to buy this ticket, and my heart sank a little to know that it'd kind of ruined for him now. And me too I guess. Look at us, two small people on a very large spaceship, full of sleeping people. He looks at me sometimes like he can't believe I'm really here. I can't believe I'm really here. His eyes are so blue.

DAY 14:
So it's officially been two weeks of sitting around feeling sorry for myself. So today we danced. Mark showed me the activities suite, I discovered the pool and we played Just Dance and basketball. There was a moment, my back against his front, I was bouncing the ball in front of me trying to keep it from him. He was leaning over me shoulder trying to grab at it. His breath was on my ear, he was so warm. And he smelled a bit like sweat and a bit like cologne. Then I raised the ball and scored, it dropped through the hoop and bounced but I didn't see where it went because I was looking at him. He was grinning from ear to ear and I knew if I leaned up slightly I could kiss him. For a split second I wanted to, so badly. Just to ease the steady thumping of my heart, but then he moved, retrieving the ball and resuming the game.