if living is the problem well then that's just baffling {ensemble}
Title: If Living Is The Problem Well Then That's Just Baffling (or a demise in three parts)
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Ensemble.
Word Count: 1,177
Rating: PG-13
Author's Note: Things I don't do: write in 2nd person, write from 3 seperate pov's, kill off characters. I have done all of that. It's your guess as to what really happened here.
Summary: Post Season 5.08, AU from there. It doesn't sound like you; none of this sounds like him (maybe that's the problem).
This is years later.
(Years after everyone stopped worrying; he always did surprise you when you least expected it)
The funeral is tomorrow. Someone decided there should be a wake. You don’t know who or why or what he would’ve wanted. The one thing this has taught you is that for all he knew of you he is nothing but a blank slate. You didn’t even know his middle name.
You don’t want to see the body, even if it was pills (because they’re doctors, they know dosages and when enough is enough - in more ways than one) and there aren’t any outward signs of trauma. It won’t look like him anyways. But you came because it’s the right thing to do - he was your friend, he might as well have been family - and because you worried other people might not. They did. It was the right thing to do.
You don’t cry and neither does Cristina, but you find Lexie in a corner, sunk against the wall, hidden on the floor. Her dress is a size too big and there’s a run in her stockings, probably from the heel of her shoes that sit discarded next to her. She cries. Of course.
People start to empty out. You stay with her when she doesn’t move and Cristina nods because she’s starting to grasp things like emotions a little more clearly. Lexie just hasn’t been to enough funerals, enough wakes, to know that it’s all salt and earth and nothing more.
(She also hasn’t tried to disappear into a bathtub before - she doesn’t get that aspect like you do; that sometimes it feels like it’s all you can do)
“It’s just,” you wipe her tears away with the pad of her thumb; you can be the good big sister when it’s needed, “I mean, I used to date him. Or not date him but - and he helped me, or at least he tried, and now he’s just,” her face crumbles again, “I mean how does that happen?”
You let her ask questions she already knows the answers to and she leans into you, her small shoulders shifting and pressing against you, her head inches away from you own shoulder. Any more than that would be too close, for both of you.
“He seemed fine.” She adds, and you nod, thinking that he wasn’t especially emotional anyways. You never saw him cry but you’d heard about it. Once. Never again. Not even at the last funeral. Lexie cried then too, just a little.
And things like this, they don’t care with warning labels and signs, not always. It’s slow, progressive. You’d like to say if you just knew you could’ve stopped him, you’d like to lie, but he was so damn honest it feels like you’d be offending him. So you just sigh, and look at Cristina, who’s still watching but not doing anything, as you tell her, “Sometimes these things can’t be helped.”
It doesn’t sound like you; none of this sounds like him.
(This is the end).
---
This is so long ago you barely even remember (the moment or her but you remember the look on his face and that’s what’s important here).
There had been a bed and white sheets and white walls and it all glared in such a way that, briefly, you forgot this is where you work; this is what you do, have done, will continue to do every day for years. And yet somehow the whole room feels different, smaller, more intimate. So much so that you fled to the doorway, stopped when you realized he wasn’t following, and then stayed. Because you were the last person out. Because everyone else is gone.
You don’t have anything to say to him, no soothing words or pats on the shoulder. You have stories you hate telling but would if you thought it would do any good (he won’t hear them) and a handful of remarks they taught and re-taught both of you because your bedside manner used to, and still does, suck. But you think he might lose it. Worse yet, you are scared he might lose it (people like them, people who don’t show emotion, they’re the ones that don’t just cry, they break). Because then you both won’t know what to do and your world make shake a little. There is normal and abnormal, and someone you know dying already puts things close to abnormal. That would just put it over the edge, because no matter how far outside of your life he is, he’s still in your life, in one way or another.
Part of you thinks that if he’d just throw something across the room you’d be okay. You know how to deal with that (it’s just too silent in here, in this room where machines used to beep except now that’s over too and you are acutely aware that of the three of you in the room only two are breathing).
His fingers encircle her wrist. Now, you think, he’ll lose it now. Just something. Anything.
(You fear the funeral; you think about finding a way to work that day, scheduling a shift; later, he’ll say she hated funerals, he won’t go either).
What he does do is this: uncurls her fingers so her palm lies flat against those sheets (he doesn’t want her to seem angry or in pain; this you pick up on and you wish you didn’t, it would be so much easier if it was just random). Pushes the stray strand of hair from her face. Says, “she wants to be with him anyway.”
It takes you too long to understand, then realization dawns.
“Yes,” you reply without thinking, catching his eye; he looks like he forgot you were even here. He probably did. But he’s right. It’s exactly what she would want, in that way that is out of you realm of comprehension and yet you know how she is - was - about things like death and love. Yes, that has her written all over it.
(This is the middle).
---
This is far too soon.
(You don’t expect much, you aren’t looking for forever, but you were looking for more than two weeks).
You knew something was wrong that night and you ignored it because you couldn’t do this again. Once, yes; twice almost killed you. You don’t want to know what happens on the third strike.
So it starts with her curled too far from your side of the bed, continues the day you find a hanger on the bed and her on the floor of the bathroom (the color of that dress almost looks like blood against the tile; just a few shades off). You wait for the end, subconsciously, terrified and anxious all at once because you don’t know where this is going to leave you, you just know that she will leave you, somehow (she was always going to).
You’ve just failed earlier than you expected.
(This is the beginning - and an ending all on its own).
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Ensemble.
Word Count: 1,177
Rating: PG-13
Author's Note: Things I don't do: write in 2nd person, write from 3 seperate pov's, kill off characters. I have done all of that. It's your guess as to what really happened here.
Summary: Post Season 5.08, AU from there. It doesn't sound like you; none of this sounds like him (maybe that's the problem).
This is years later.
(Years after everyone stopped worrying; he always did surprise you when you least expected it)
The funeral is tomorrow. Someone decided there should be a wake. You don’t know who or why or what he would’ve wanted. The one thing this has taught you is that for all he knew of you he is nothing but a blank slate. You didn’t even know his middle name.
You don’t want to see the body, even if it was pills (because they’re doctors, they know dosages and when enough is enough - in more ways than one) and there aren’t any outward signs of trauma. It won’t look like him anyways. But you came because it’s the right thing to do - he was your friend, he might as well have been family - and because you worried other people might not. They did. It was the right thing to do.
You don’t cry and neither does Cristina, but you find Lexie in a corner, sunk against the wall, hidden on the floor. Her dress is a size too big and there’s a run in her stockings, probably from the heel of her shoes that sit discarded next to her. She cries. Of course.
People start to empty out. You stay with her when she doesn’t move and Cristina nods because she’s starting to grasp things like emotions a little more clearly. Lexie just hasn’t been to enough funerals, enough wakes, to know that it’s all salt and earth and nothing more.
(She also hasn’t tried to disappear into a bathtub before - she doesn’t get that aspect like you do; that sometimes it feels like it’s all you can do)
“It’s just,” you wipe her tears away with the pad of her thumb; you can be the good big sister when it’s needed, “I mean, I used to date him. Or not date him but - and he helped me, or at least he tried, and now he’s just,” her face crumbles again, “I mean how does that happen?”
You let her ask questions she already knows the answers to and she leans into you, her small shoulders shifting and pressing against you, her head inches away from you own shoulder. Any more than that would be too close, for both of you.
“He seemed fine.” She adds, and you nod, thinking that he wasn’t especially emotional anyways. You never saw him cry but you’d heard about it. Once. Never again. Not even at the last funeral. Lexie cried then too, just a little.
And things like this, they don’t care with warning labels and signs, not always. It’s slow, progressive. You’d like to say if you just knew you could’ve stopped him, you’d like to lie, but he was so damn honest it feels like you’d be offending him. So you just sigh, and look at Cristina, who’s still watching but not doing anything, as you tell her, “Sometimes these things can’t be helped.”
It doesn’t sound like you; none of this sounds like him.
(This is the end).
---
This is so long ago you barely even remember (the moment or her but you remember the look on his face and that’s what’s important here).
There had been a bed and white sheets and white walls and it all glared in such a way that, briefly, you forgot this is where you work; this is what you do, have done, will continue to do every day for years. And yet somehow the whole room feels different, smaller, more intimate. So much so that you fled to the doorway, stopped when you realized he wasn’t following, and then stayed. Because you were the last person out. Because everyone else is gone.
You don’t have anything to say to him, no soothing words or pats on the shoulder. You have stories you hate telling but would if you thought it would do any good (he won’t hear them) and a handful of remarks they taught and re-taught both of you because your bedside manner used to, and still does, suck. But you think he might lose it. Worse yet, you are scared he might lose it (people like them, people who don’t show emotion, they’re the ones that don’t just cry, they break). Because then you both won’t know what to do and your world make shake a little. There is normal and abnormal, and someone you know dying already puts things close to abnormal. That would just put it over the edge, because no matter how far outside of your life he is, he’s still in your life, in one way or another.
Part of you thinks that if he’d just throw something across the room you’d be okay. You know how to deal with that (it’s just too silent in here, in this room where machines used to beep except now that’s over too and you are acutely aware that of the three of you in the room only two are breathing).
His fingers encircle her wrist. Now, you think, he’ll lose it now. Just something. Anything.
(You fear the funeral; you think about finding a way to work that day, scheduling a shift; later, he’ll say she hated funerals, he won’t go either).
What he does do is this: uncurls her fingers so her palm lies flat against those sheets (he doesn’t want her to seem angry or in pain; this you pick up on and you wish you didn’t, it would be so much easier if it was just random). Pushes the stray strand of hair from her face. Says, “she wants to be with him anyway.”
It takes you too long to understand, then realization dawns.
“Yes,” you reply without thinking, catching his eye; he looks like he forgot you were even here. He probably did. But he’s right. It’s exactly what she would want, in that way that is out of you realm of comprehension and yet you know how she is - was - about things like death and love. Yes, that has her written all over it.
(This is the middle).
---
This is far too soon.
(You don’t expect much, you aren’t looking for forever, but you were looking for more than two weeks).
You knew something was wrong that night and you ignored it because you couldn’t do this again. Once, yes; twice almost killed you. You don’t want to know what happens on the third strike.
So it starts with her curled too far from your side of the bed, continues the day you find a hanger on the bed and her on the floor of the bathroom (the color of that dress almost looks like blood against the tile; just a few shades off). You wait for the end, subconsciously, terrified and anxious all at once because you don’t know where this is going to leave you, you just know that she will leave you, somehow (she was always going to).
You’ve just failed earlier than you expected.
(This is the beginning - and an ending all on its own).