"You can't focus on your own stuff, you have to go diagnosing old ladies?" Alex demanded, plopping down on the common room sofa. "I did not expect to be examining Webber's wife…ever, I'm a pediatric surgeon, not a geriatric one."

Lexie shrugged, and then huffed when the motion made the unzipped hoodie she was wearing slide off her shoulder. "Not my fault it was your night to check on Lex—I mean visit."

Alex sighed as he tugged it back into place. "Having a schedule doesn't make you a chore."

"You say that to kids with working parents."

Their seat in the far side of the common area meant that anyone around would see only the gesture and their profiles. She wasn't confirming anything when people speculated about who he was to her. They made assumptions about Jackson, too, and he couldn't have been more obvious about coming by because it was "right," or what he owed to Mark. He didn't know how to act around her. Meredith insisted he was being super weird around April, so he was just like that around people he'd slept with. Never mind that he hadn't had that problem in the spring.

Whatever. If Jackson was going to be weird, he could be weird. No one seemed able to be normal.Maybe becaus normal no longer exists.

"Why not say something to Mer? Making things like that her business is her M.O., specifically with the Webbers."

"She has enough going on. I don't have to have talked to her much about that whole thing to know you'd be bringing less baggage." Lexie shifted in her chair, using the rigidity seizing her right leg to give herself more leverage. It wasn't enough to settle her desire to fold her legs up behind herself. "Plus, noticing signs of an aortic aneurysm in the one old woman I happened to know sounds crazy."

"It sounds like you're a doctor. You know, they missed contrary artery disease in Mer's mom. If you all weren't already involved in one suit…. I'd call it negligence."

"They expect familial involvement, too,."

"Look, you wanna be Yang when you grow up, right?"

Lexie raised her eyes from her hands, which she kept examining in moments like this."I…I was thinking I'd keep going with neuro—"

"Did I say anything about your specialty? For all I know, all internsl imprint on their superiors. You want to be the kind of doctor Yang is becoming. Already is. Can't fault her for the Mayo thing—mone of us have left the nest without plummeting—"

"Hey!"

"Shit, sorry," Alex started to backtrack, and then he snorted. "God, between the two of you…. I've had to avoid all the drowning analogies for years, and then this?"

She doubted Meredith cared, but that he did was Alex's brand of sweet. "Oh, yeah, you're really the one suffering."

"I'm saying. I'm a jock, Little Grey. I l don't have an infinite amount of images up here. Do you wanna hear the story about Yang, or not?"

"You didn't say there was a story."

"I was getting there. In our intern year, she and Mer were kind of tied for who was the biggest mess. Honestly, I'm not sure who won. Mer's the most open about it all, but Yang

keeps ending up with these dudes who want…. Well, we definitely didn't know this at the time everything with Burke went down, because who knew Shepherd was gonna get his shit together, or Mer was going to figure out her mom didn't actually have anything together—Point is…she'd say he fell for the trashfire, and stuck around while she put it out. Burke, and Hunt, it turns out, weren't as into Yang as they were into a Yang who'd become Mer.

"Yang's always known she's good. Burke thought that's what he wanted; realized she was gonna be better than him; that she'd never been putting on a front, and he panicked. He'd been using her, but truth be told, she was using him at the beginning. Hot for teacher was sort of her thing." Alex's eyebrows went up, and Lexie wondered what he'd put together. If he'd truly been more observant than she'd ever give him credit for, or if he'd stumbled onto that similarity as he made his way to whatever his point was.

"It didn't stay like that for her. He was a total sleaze who probably had more to do with breaking O'Malley than Mer, did, but he let her go. Hunt thinks he did, but they haven't stopped screwing. Mer won't say anything. Swhe thinks that's how soulmates work, or because he was there when Yang woke up, or whatever…." Alex picked up the soda he'd grabbed from the communal fridge, grimacing like he wanted it to be a beer. Lexie wanted to tell him to forget it, but whatever thread of curiosity that Adele Webber's condition had loosened had gotten wrapped around this. Not shoving. The alternative was claiming she was tired so she could go work for half an hour to be allowed to stare at the ceiling.

"How much of that is stuff you should be telling Yang?" she asked. Alex barely got his hand up in time to catch the drops that spluttered out of his mouth. "Real cute."

"Hey, he's one of us," one of the guys—it sounded like Paul, whose time on a vent had inspired his dealer-brother to start looking into edibles, and swearing they'd all get discounts. "One of us!"

The chant picked up for a minute, and then Jean, whose husband had just left from his daily visit with her elementary-school aged kids, added, "He's cooler with the idea than I was. What's your name? We've been calling you frat boy."

"I say the other one was definitely Greek in college." Chelle said from the floor, where she was totally showing off with resistance bands. "But he's got the eyes."

"Yeah, those eyes are dreamy." Hank sighed. A few days ago his wheelchair would've leapt forward, but he'd gotten much better with the sip and puff switch. Across the room, she caught Garrett leaving forward. If the personal care attendant didn't hint that he spent half an hour, minimum, considering his eyes, then Lexie would decide something in her head needed to be recalibrated, whatever Derek's MRI report said.

Speaking of, Alex was smirking, and she was focusing on baby-faced Garrett's crush on the UW drama student because she could see what he was thinking, and it wasn't—"He smizes," Chelle agreed.

"He's got the enigma thing going on," Jean said. "But I bet he's easier to talk to than with. I'll take the brother-in-law."

"You just want the baby," Trey, the PCA who was holding Rick's cards for him, waiting for Garrett to remember he was supposed to be fishing for sixes, not the nine watching the Seahawks.

"It's true, except I get the sense that you don't wanna get on the sister's s-h-i-t list. Knew that before I knew she could rearrange my insides."

"Now that's the one I'd take," the female PCA,Wendy, put in. "That look she gave Lloyd when he almost tripped the kid—" She made a sizzling sound. Lexie caught Alex making a face at the same time she did. "She always get her way growing up?"

Alex should've asked the question on his face, which was do you all know anything? The answer was no. Through weeks of group, she'd avoided details. With a framework of surgeon, plane crash, tragic, she couldn't blame them for to fill in the gaps. "Um…. Not exactly…?"

"All right, crew, enough," Jean said. "Let the girl have her visit with…?"

Alex blinked at her, frozen like the conversation was the down scroll in a Star Wars movie and he needed to catch up. "Oh! Alex. I'm Alex."

The room went as still as it could with the TV muted, and some requisite stretching and spasming. Then, Chelle pointed two fingers at them. "Uh-huh. Alex and Alexandra? Uh-huh."

"I…uh…I never actually thought about that." Alex ran a hand over the back of his neck. More than one of the others made faces that said, yeah, they've done it.

Whatever. They had.

"I did." She hadn't said anything. Hadn't wanted to be Little Alex, or have Cristina and Meredith joking about her wanting to screw herself. "I'd tried to go by Alexandra for, like, half a minute in college. Thought it sounded green up."

Later, one person had called her Alexandra, pronouncing the "an" "aha" to make it sound "sophisticated"—""snooty," she'd said. Paul had considered himself very grown up in comparison to her.

"If you're thinking about seeming grown-up, you're not there," Jean said. "That's what I tell my kids. Of course, they're actually kids."

"I was sixteen. I thought I knew everything."

"Huh," Alex muttered.

"What? LEven if I'd memorized an actual—"

"Not that. I only met your mom a couple times, but didn't seem like she'd let that slide."

"She didn't really have a choice. I got in early decision." Lexie had left Seattle behind, and thought she'd never return for more than a visit.

"Damn, Doc." Chelle whistled.

See, I like Doc, she heard Mark's voice say, kind of like she heard him say Little Grey. If Jackson and his swirly eyes had been next to her, she could've believed he heard it, too. With Alex, she wasn't sure.

"You're one of those," Jean observed. "Old soul. Came out Lin dependent. You the—No, you're not the oldest, are you?"

"Ye—" She didn't remember when that had felt true. "Technically, I'm the middle, but…." I didn't grow up that way? She'd been older than Molly, but everywhere else she'd been younger. Then, at HMS she'd started getting asked if she was related to Ellis Grey. Starting at Seattle Grace and becoming "Little Grey" had been easy, because she'd always known. "It's sort of…complicated."

"Sure, Jan," Garrett cracked, with incredibly perfect timing. After groaning at the reference, everyone went back to their "leisure activities." She'd have to figure out how to repay the save, soon. Owing someone was more than she wanted to deal with.

She also didn't want to deal with the walls having ears. She turned to Alex. "Take me upstairs?"

He was a blusher. Meredith would start poke him in the cheek a few shots in, but Lexie was familiar with the concept of embarrassment. It was one thing to put their business out in the hospital, where everyone knew Dr. Yang was stellar, and Meredith was a great person once you developed immunity to her venom. They had staff who'd crossed the courtyard; one of those PCAs was always eyeing Meredith. Lexie didn't ask if she'd worked with Ellis Grey. She wouldn't be able to unhear, to not know.

"Get rest," Chelle said. "I'm gonna cream your ass on the obstacle course tomorrow!"

"We'll see." In your dreams.

"Leave the door cracked, Doc," Wendy crooned.

"Unless he's helping you with your dorsal cock-up splint," Chelle cracked.

"Like living with interns?" Alex muttered.

"You should feel right at home.

"There have been hookups this week," Lexie commented on the elevator.

"She sounds like one of our nurses when we've got frequent flyers who're dating. It's probably like a second puberty. for some people. New body to explore. They don't…." He waited, letting her tap her card to unlock her room—the illusion of privacy. "They don't know about him?"

"They know a guy named Mark was on the plane. They don't know he was my ex." She said this while taking the first half of her night-time meds; the ones that wouldn't knock her out. She used to hate swallowing pills; she'd taken liquid amoxicillin for her most recent sore throat. Now, she was grateful that she could.

When she finished, Alex was staring at her, holding the pajamas he'd taken from the dresser. She grabbed the bundle, dropping it on the comforter. He hadn't stopped when she picked up the transfer board that evened out the distance between her seat and the bed.

"He was," she insisted. "We might have been going somewhere, but there's no…. Can you just tell me what happened with Cristina? And then remember you've known her as long as Mer, without the codependency, so you know what you're talking about?"

He moved, finally, to help her transfer. It was weirder without the gowns, the bracelet, the IV. They'd been like her softball uniform, or the first time she'd donned her white lab coat. She'd been a pitcher, a doctor, a patient. In jeans, she was supposed to be herself. She'd spent a year trying to figure out who that was without Mark. Her conclusions had been: a doctor, a surgeon, one who worked to make miracles. She'd decided that she didn'twant to do that alone

Derek thought she could still be someone working for miracles. He didn't say it. How could he, while he was trying to accept that he might never operate again? But she could see it in his eyes. Meredith was usually such a realist, but not letting Derek give in meant she wouldn't take it from Lexie, either, and it was true that she could make progress. Alex didn't telegraph what he thought, not even while he evaluated how much she could do for herself, and what he should do for her.

"You've asking what I need more than you did while we were screwing." A blush crept up the back of his neck before she let go and reached down, using her new orthotics to heft her legs onto the bed. Alex grabbed her sneakers, sliding them off before she could hear her mom telling her not to put her shoes on the bed.

"You were more pliable, doing that."

"Letting people help me has never been my thing."

"Little Yang."

Lexie shrugged. Meredith was better at letting people in her space. That was all wrapped up in the patriarchy, and daddy issues. Her tendency to sit on the arm of a chair, or even that she was more likely to sprawl over Derek than the empty part of a couch might have started from not thinking she could claim her own space.

"Which brings us back," she said, and then held out the cuff of her hoodie. With enough twisting, she could get it off, but it wasn't something she wanted to waste time with. "Pull." He did, and then raised the corner of his lip in a question. "I got the this part."

Jackson would have gone shy at that, swallowing awkwardly. Alex shrugged and faced the door. Mark…Mark would've grabbed the hem of her shirt and had it off, saying that there was independent, and there was unnecessarily stubborn. But he wasn't. He'd left her to navigate this on her own.

"So, there was a point where Cristina and Mer were both in being screwed by an attending Then, Cristina collapsed. She was the first one of us on the table. Ectopic pregnancy. So, suddenly everyone knows she's got something going on; hermom shows up from Beverly Hills.… Kinda funny, that's right when Mer's mom got admitted…. Yang got outed as having a normal, judgey mom, and…at that point, people still thought Ellis had made a call on Mer's behalf, you know? Turned out, she probably hadn't been able to use a phone since way before Match Day

"Anyway, Yang spent the day after surgery discovering that this patient who was having arrhythmia had Munchausen's."

"Wait? How?" Lexie's voice was momentarily muffled by her pajama shirt, and Alex looked back, smirking at her.

"Amitriptyline. She was a pharmacy tech. She had rheumatic fever as a kid, affected her heart. Burke and Bailey thought Yang was just avoiding her own shit, and were going to take the patient back for EP studies. They cathed her—"

"Blue-green urine. God."

"Yeah. They ran a secondary tox screening, figured it out. Next thing we all knew, Burke and Cristina were a thing, Mer and Shepherd weren't—Not the point. That inability to turn it off. You've the same."

"You think?"

"I do." Alex reached around, using one hand to pull her hair out from under her collar. His eyes met hers.

She could kiss him. It would be easy, and he's been working his way through interns. The blonde one—real blonde, not Brooks—had any pining look Lexie had ever given anyone beat. They'd stood in for something real for each other before. Maybe Meredith was right all those years ago, and Lexie's heart had been in her vagina, because she didn't feel it. She'd be using him as a test subject, and all that stopped her was that she didn't want to deal with him getting the wrong idea. He wasn't Mark, who'd treat it like a sexual ASIA exam, feelings optional—except that with Mark there'd be feelings.

It probably wasn't the first time in history where unbuttoning jeans had been a friend-zoning signal, but it wasn't one she'd used before. Alex held her gaze for a second, and then nodded before pulling them off for her.

"You really thinking about moving back in with your dad?"

"Yes. No. I don't know. Haven't been thinking about it, to be honest. This is all so…. It's not even day by day. It's minute by minute."

Alex nodded, slowly, and she thought he was going to let it lie. "And in the minutes you're with him?"

"He's…. He's my dad, Alex. He wants to take care of me. Just because he never did it for Meredith—"

"I'm not talking about her. I'm not here because you're my friend's sister. You're my friend, too, and you were just telling me I needed to point out my friends' dumb decisions."

"I told you, I haven't made—"

"Mer has a kid. She and Shepherd both work. She didn't ask for you. But your dad has his own stuff going on, doesn't he? And I'm going to go out on a limb and say you trust Shepherd a lot more than your dad's girlfriend."

"I'm not going to need…. If I do need assistance, I'll qualify for personal care hours."

"You'd have that right at Mer's, too."

Lexie shrugged.

"You don't have to start over. I don't know if that's what you're thinking," he added. She shrugged again. She didn't either. She hadn't been thinking about what would happen once she left the hospital at the time her dad had brought it up. She hadn't made plans for this year before the dash.

Without meaning to, Lexie had ended up closer to her sister's cohort than her own, and they'd all been planning to leave. Worst case, she would've ended up in a slightly nicer crapartment; her salary as a resident being better than as an intern. Then, Dad had started talking about setting up her room, and she'd assumed he'd talked to Meredith. Naively, maybe. They didn't speak in general; why start for this? But it also wasn't like him to make a unilateral decision like that.

She hadn't factored in Dani. That Meredith had was a confirmation of something Lexie had suspected; Meredith knew the truth of who her dad was a lot better than she did. She'd still say they had different dads, but how much of that was her mother's influence?

"He's been visiting, more," she said. Alex's lip twisted. He wanted to tell her not to defend him, but wouldn't—or maybe wasn't sure she was. She wasn't either. "I think…well, I do think being at Seattle Grace—what'd Dr. Webber say? Distresses him. Mercy West never had a better reputation, and it's not like you're zoned for hospitals, but you know where we lived. But I also think…. We're…we were a normal family. Almost…Almost too normal? I talked to Mom once I left for school, and she visited, but I stayed every summer. Internships, classes….

"Molly married her high school sweetheart. I'm sure Mom always expected she'd stick around, and she could transition into 'involved grandmother.' Meredith was what she needed to stave off empty nest syndrome, but Dad never wanted to talk about her. If Molly hadn't needed to see Dr. Montgomery, I'm really not sure he'd have told us anything.

"I told you, back then, about the checks?" Alex nodded. "I doubt Mer knows this…. Why would she? Twenty-thousand is what he gave Molly for her wedding. He didn't have much family, either. College, weddings, cars. That's what you do for adult kids. My hypotheses it shamed him that Meredith has an instinctive understanding of family. Not a family."

"That's a really good way of putting it."

"I think about it. Why—you know, her mother was awful; I can't imagine having her childhood. And it's the same for Derek—like, he has this whole flock of sisters, and if you listen to him, their family is ideal, but hang out on a Sunday and listen to him bitch after his conversations with his mom? Maybe it's just that Mer and I don't have that framework…. We didn't know each other as kids.

"When I went to see Moll last year—She reminds me so much of Mom, and she's my sister, but it's not…. We were never friends. We weren't the sisters who were sniping at each other all the time. We weren't totally different. More…she played soccer. I did softball. I was better at math and science; she took three languages. If she was here, I'm sure she'd help."

The but she almost added wasn't fair. Eric was military; they didn't get to decide when or where to move. Molly had come for Dad's transplant, she'd called; she'd be visiting at Christmas. And Lexie hadn't been why Meredith had stayed.

But she had.

"Meredith's smaller than I am. Just…it's true. So…So shouldn't I feel safer—more stable—with my dad helping me?"

"Why?"

"Because…Because he's my dad. I mean, he's never been very…he's not a hugger, but he's not—he's my dad."

"Mer's your sister. And growing up counts for a lot. I understand that. But…I hate to put it this way, because I don't know for sure, but chances are, whatever he did with you, up until you were five? Mer was a baby when they moved here. She might've learned to walk in daycare, but he probably did more with her. I think…I think you might be right to consider who's let you fall in the past few years."

"Is that fair, though? To put another weight on her, just because she can hold it?"

Alex laughed. "Sorry. You're most like her when you're not trying to be. You want to think about what will make it more stressful on Mer? Which way will she have to deal with your dad more?"

"If I stay with him, she…she wouldn't have to, but she would."

"Yeah. And whatever she says, you know what she'd think. And I can see why. You all but made her care about you, :and you won't get rid of her easily." He paused. "You won't get rid of any of us."

What if Iwant to?

It was a startling thought. She didn't—sitting here with Alex, her meds dulling the pain enough for her to know that she didn't, as much as they all make her think of Mark. But sometimes, late at night, she imagined getting herself downstairs, into the accessible van, and going. Ah that kept her from doing it was that she hadn't started driving means.

"You know you can hurt her?"

"She's been talking to the PTs about that—like anyone thinks Derek…. Wait. Do you know…?" Shit.

"She's knocked up? I do now." He grinned. "Nah, I've had a hunch. They took Zo and Sof trick-or-treating from my place, and she didn't eat all the malted crap. Don't worry, I don't say stuff, remember?"

"You're saying stuff to me."

"You need to hear it. I didn't meant it physically. It's easy to see Meredith as the one who holds the ball, because she's always on defense. But she's pickup sticks, or Jenga. Being pregnant maybe pulls an extra brick out somewhere—"

"So piling more on—"

"You're on!" Alex threw his hands up and then held them out like he was surrendering. "Jesus, Litt—"

"Don't call me that! I'm not…I don't care what you do call me, just, not that."

"Okay. Want me to pass that around?"

Lexie turned her shrug into a nod. She did. She did want that. "Is there…You think something is going on with Meredith?"

"There's always something going on with Meredith.…I'm no OB, but I don't think she's far in." He raised an eyebrow, like she could confirm. There'd been that day in September, when she'd had the crush patient, but she couldn't pinpoint anything else until October

"Not very."

"Yeah, so, the other day Ross—the intern? Okay, just checking—he saw her going into a supply closet around lunch. He made the assumptions, intern crew was snickering about it—but Shepherd had just gone in to do a follow-up with one of my epileptic kids. So, I went up and found her in there, crying. After a lot of hemming, some hawing, and pulling a couple teeth, I got her to tell me what the deal was. She'd been on-call the previous night, and in surgery all day. This was her first chance to see Zo. They've got this new thing about only allowing one checkout. I guess Shepherd had forgotten. He took her out for lunch; had just brought her down. The Welch Wench said it would be too confusing to let her go with Mer, or for Mer to go back. There'd been special circumstances, but it was time to think of Zola; her need for consistency and routine. She'd miss her nap, and the teachers would be the ones to deal with her disregulation. It's the kind of thing you'd think would have Mer taking her head off.

"That's been her routine. Having them come in whenever. Since the crash, yeah, but before that, too."

"Do you know what the actual policy says? I'm sure I signed a copy when I was out on her check-out list, but I can't…." Lexie scrunched up her face, trying to pull it up. "It was pink. Think even the fine print was in Comic Sans."

"That harder to remember? Yang says it's easier to read."

"Hmm. Doesn't make a difference. Just have to be focused. Don't tell Mer, I guess."

"She'll know them by heart in a day or so, if she didn't memorize them that night. But that's—I think it's a symptom. I don't know…Zola's been home over a year, and she's thriving. The plane crash—almost losing you—I wanted to remind you that she doesn't have all the power, that's all. You have her, yeah. You've got your family, and us. But she…" He ran his hand over his face. "I'm not trying to charge you with anything here. You've got plenty going on. If you need to pull back, we'll get it. So will she. But just make sure she knows why, okay?"

"She's my sister, Alex. I'm not going to just leave her. I'm not my dad."

Retreating to live with him wouldn't be the answer, anyway. That would be how she'd truly get stuck. She had high school friends who stayed in Seattle, sure, but they've been Facebook acquaintances for years, at this point.

Not mentioning Mark in group was the same thing. She'd been the whack job in the circle before. She wasn't going to do that again. She wasn't staying up until all hours reading about plane crashes. (Okay. Once, but it'd freaked her out that it'd only taken five clicks to get to the 9/11 truthers, no matter where she'd started.) When Alex had to leave, she did get him to hand her her laptop. This time, she wasn't going to get caught up in the past. She'd work on securing her future.

A/N: 07/26/24: My eye situation may lead to a sudden absence. if there is a week or two without an update, please know I will be back ASAP. You can find me on Twitter ( chelseyblair) or Tumblr (chicleeblair) for updates.