[ga] fic: Where I Came Undone (Alex)
Title: Where I Came Undone
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Character: Alex
Word Count: 1800
Rating: R (violence and imagery)
Summary: He's not sure if he ever really figures out it's only him, him and Reed, that have been torn to sideways. An attempt to get myself back in the game, even if I have cheated and gone back to the Season Six finale to do it!
He's collecting supplies on autopilot, reaching blindly for items high above his head, when the sharp sound of a gun firing pulls him from his reverie. He'd noted the murmured voices on the opposite side of the room when he'd entered, separated from him as they'd been by the rows of metal shelving and plastic tubs; had thought, perhaps, they were in the early stages of an argument. He'd managed to tune the exchange of taunts out as he worked but his head snaps up now, confused at the turn of events as he takes a cautious step or several towards the end of the row.
Turning the corner, it feels like hours have elapsed as he completely fails to consider the possibility that whomever fired the gun is still standing right where they had been.
Completely fails to consider the possibility until he catches a glimpse of Reed, half hidden by a man he doesn't recognise, spread-eagled as she is across the walkway between the shelves. He says something, words, can't remember what they are as soon as they've tumbled to out, just split seconds before a piece of metal disappears into his own ribcage. Turns his insides to rack and ruin in a heartbeat.
He doesn't remember hearing the gun discharge that second time. Feels his face drop into a perfect caricature of shocked as his shoulder blades collide heavily with the scuffed linoleum floor. Fighting, he works desperately to move his lips into a motion that might produce some kind of sound, but the back of his skull meets the floor just inches later.
Instantly whites out his entire world.
- - -
When his eyes blink back to open, it takes him longer than it really should to work out why the world has fallen to its knees. Why he thinks up might now be down and that east and west no longer make any logical kind of geographical sense.
He's not sure if he ever really figures out it's only him, him and Reed, that have been torn to sideways.
Her absent gaze refuses to blink. He stares at her as the second hand ticks resolutely around the face of his watch. White noise fills his head to full. To overflowing. He can see a pool of sticky black halo out from her head and he's suddenly glad for the static.
“Reed.”
He can feel his lips twitch into motion, sense the vibration of air crossing his vocal chords. He doesn't register the sound of her name as it rolls off his tongue, but he follows the course he thinks the vowels and consonants probably took and finally comes face to face with his own insides.
Leaked and leaking as they are across the cold linoleum floor.
- - -
He calls her name again. Breathy and panicked. Pushes a hand in her direction and longs for her to reach back. To curl her impossibly small fist into his and laugh.
To tease him about the sex they never had and all the other myriad things she seemed to know about him.
Even as he knew virtually nothing about her...
Notes the inadvertent slip into past tense.
“Reed, please...”
- - -
He doesn't remember making a conscious decision. Left or right. Back or forward. Just knows that reaching for the elevator call button high above his head is quite possibly the single most excruciating movement he has ever had to carry out.
The coppery tang of his own blood coats the back of his throat. He inhales, coughs, doesn't scream.
But only just.
He can feel his veins turning to ice as they quickly empty out. His back teeth collide at semi-regular intervals and the chattering echoes all the way to his toes. He attempts to catalogue the damage as he waits for the elevator to arrive with his eyes closed, a final “fuck you, too” to Reed who still refuses to blink back.
He knows he was shot. He knows he was shot in the chest.
Lungs turned to mush and blood-stains on his teeth.
He knows that Reed is already dead. That if he'd managed to turn her over the back of her skull would have been missing. Shards of shattered bone and brain and blood on the wall behind where she'd last stood.
He also knows he's minutes away from joining her. Swimming with the fishes in a pair of concrete boots and all that jazz.
“I'm sorry...”
- - -
The elevator arrives. Stainless steel doors that yawn to open soundlessly. He half expects them to close again before he's managed to drag himself completely inside. Clamps down on the irrational horror that his legs will stay in the supply closet with Reed while the rest of him makes some desperate form of escape. He's almost right. The doors begin their close, tighten momentarily in and around his ankles before sensing the temporary obstruction and re-opening again.
He'd laugh if he still remembered how.
Tucks his knees towards his chest instead and lets the doors try again.
Refuses to think too hard about the liquid pieces of him that spill silently between the cracks.
- - -
He contemplates the movements required to get his fingers up near the call buttons. Visualises muscle tissue expanding and contracting in order to carry out the motion. Practice does make perfect after all. He forces himself onto his back in an attempt to better survey his metallic surroundings. His intended target, the panel of brightly lit discs above his head, might as well be football fields and mountain ranges away.
He gives up on the notion before the idea even solidifies itself as a serviceable plan.
Resigns himself instead to hoping that a non-handgun wielding stranger stumbles upon him this time, maybe even a non-handgun wielding stranger with a medical degree, that could be a nice change of luck. And as the floor beneath him shudders once before continuing on its descent he lets his eyelids slide to closed, sandpaper rough as his pulse marches to a beat that seems all out of rhythm.
- - -
There's arms around him now and he strains to keep his head up as he registers the mortifying fact that he is being carried.
“Put me down.”
The words tumble out over lips that he can't quite keep still. His tongue feels thick and paralysed inside his mouth and the constant taste of blood sends his stomach roiling.
If he receives an answer to his plea, then he doesn't hear it.
His recollection of events seems patchy at best. He remembers a gun, and the echo of it firing still fills all the spaces around the static inside his head. Doesn't quite yet know how he feels about it all.
Settles suddenly on anger; figures it was his default for more months than he can count and slips back into the familiar routine easily. Spills curses and empty threats of retribution into the air as the arms that have been holding him disappear and his back collides heavily with something cold and hard.
“Alex, you've been shot.”
Well, crap.
- - -
He keeps forgetting where he is. What it is that's happening to him. Why his chest feels like someone has set it on fire from the inside out.
Fingers tap insistently against his cheek. The sound of surgical glove on stubble grates against nerves that are already frayed to loose cotton ends. He's tipped over onto his side then, and the motion swiftly empties all the air from his lungs.
He's three quarters to convinced that they'll never re-fill.
- - -
The cavernous room echoes with the haunting bray of bellowed agony. And it's not until his mouth is forcibly filled to full with sheets of frayed white gauze he thinks will surely suffocate him that the sounds fall to stifled and he stills enough to recognise that it's all him.
Minutes disappear then. And when the walls stop their fairground spin it's to the revelation that Mark Sloan has punched a scalpel between his ribs and then used his fingers to shove a tube into his plural cavity.
It's easier to breathe in the aftermath and yet so much more difficult at the same time. The acrid stench of leaked and leaking blood, his own, of that he is now more than certain, invades every molecule of air that fills his ruined insides.
- - -
Familiar fingers fiddle at his face and he wants nothing more than to bat them away defiantly with an angry leave me alone... that he knows he doesn't mean. He's not sure where she came from but, as Reed's eyes still fail to blink back every time his own slide to closed, he's suddenly glad that she's there.
After all, any alternatives he can muster are blood-stained and broken and could never end well.
- - -
He thinks that all he wants is to be remembered.
Can feel his dignity leaching into the hardwood beneath his back. Staining the carpet under their feet a rakish black-red. Mixing so completely with Lexie's tears that no amount of demolition and reconstruction will rid the room of what they're slowly losing.
Little pieces of themselves.
Gone.
He thinks that all he wants is to be remembered.
But not like this.
- - -
His pulse pounds at the back of his left eye. He wants, desperately, to raise his fingers to his right. To gain some sort of tangible confirmation that it's still where it should be.
But his movements are jerky. Too heavy and too light and too far away and too close all in the same split second.
Her hair is longer than he remembers it being, and he feels his fingers catch in the braided curls at the back of her neck. She is smiling at him.
She is beautiful.
“Izzie...” The word, breathless against his lips, catches suddenly on the tip of his tongue.
She shaved her legs for him once and he knows that it means so much more than you'd first think it would. It's an important piece of information but he can't seem to pull all of it together into something real enough to provide an answer he can understand.
Clouds roll by.
He doesn't remember seeing those before.
- - -
His knees are red. Blood red. Maybe his. Maybe hers.
She left once. That he does remember. A note in his locker full of words he could never begin decipher. An ache in his chest that he doesn't think ever really faded past half way gone. At least, not until a man with a gun replaced her words with a chunk of molten, hot metal.
And it all feels the same in the end.
The same and yet so infinitely different.
“You came back for me...”
He feels himself smile around the notion. Chapped lips stretched over teeth that feel too big for his mouth.
Forgets to care as she whispers back, soft and slow and sure.
“I won't ever leave you...”
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Character: Alex
Word Count: 1800
Rating: R (violence and imagery)
Summary: He's not sure if he ever really figures out it's only him, him and Reed, that have been torn to sideways. An attempt to get myself back in the game, even if I have cheated and gone back to the Season Six finale to do it!
He's collecting supplies on autopilot, reaching blindly for items high above his head, when the sharp sound of a gun firing pulls him from his reverie. He'd noted the murmured voices on the opposite side of the room when he'd entered, separated from him as they'd been by the rows of metal shelving and plastic tubs; had thought, perhaps, they were in the early stages of an argument. He'd managed to tune the exchange of taunts out as he worked but his head snaps up now, confused at the turn of events as he takes a cautious step or several towards the end of the row.
Turning the corner, it feels like hours have elapsed as he completely fails to consider the possibility that whomever fired the gun is still standing right where they had been.
Completely fails to consider the possibility until he catches a glimpse of Reed, half hidden by a man he doesn't recognise, spread-eagled as she is across the walkway between the shelves. He says something, words, can't remember what they are as soon as they've tumbled to out, just split seconds before a piece of metal disappears into his own ribcage. Turns his insides to rack and ruin in a heartbeat.
He doesn't remember hearing the gun discharge that second time. Feels his face drop into a perfect caricature of shocked as his shoulder blades collide heavily with the scuffed linoleum floor. Fighting, he works desperately to move his lips into a motion that might produce some kind of sound, but the back of his skull meets the floor just inches later.
Instantly whites out his entire world.
- - -
When his eyes blink back to open, it takes him longer than it really should to work out why the world has fallen to its knees. Why he thinks up might now be down and that east and west no longer make any logical kind of geographical sense.
He's not sure if he ever really figures out it's only him, him and Reed, that have been torn to sideways.
Her absent gaze refuses to blink. He stares at her as the second hand ticks resolutely around the face of his watch. White noise fills his head to full. To overflowing. He can see a pool of sticky black halo out from her head and he's suddenly glad for the static.
“Reed.”
He can feel his lips twitch into motion, sense the vibration of air crossing his vocal chords. He doesn't register the sound of her name as it rolls off his tongue, but he follows the course he thinks the vowels and consonants probably took and finally comes face to face with his own insides.
Leaked and leaking as they are across the cold linoleum floor.
- - -
He calls her name again. Breathy and panicked. Pushes a hand in her direction and longs for her to reach back. To curl her impossibly small fist into his and laugh.
To tease him about the sex they never had and all the other myriad things she seemed to know about him.
Even as he knew virtually nothing about her...
Notes the inadvertent slip into past tense.
“Reed, please...”
- - -
He doesn't remember making a conscious decision. Left or right. Back or forward. Just knows that reaching for the elevator call button high above his head is quite possibly the single most excruciating movement he has ever had to carry out.
The coppery tang of his own blood coats the back of his throat. He inhales, coughs, doesn't scream.
But only just.
He can feel his veins turning to ice as they quickly empty out. His back teeth collide at semi-regular intervals and the chattering echoes all the way to his toes. He attempts to catalogue the damage as he waits for the elevator to arrive with his eyes closed, a final “fuck you, too” to Reed who still refuses to blink back.
He knows he was shot. He knows he was shot in the chest.
Lungs turned to mush and blood-stains on his teeth.
He knows that Reed is already dead. That if he'd managed to turn her over the back of her skull would have been missing. Shards of shattered bone and brain and blood on the wall behind where she'd last stood.
He also knows he's minutes away from joining her. Swimming with the fishes in a pair of concrete boots and all that jazz.
“I'm sorry...”
- - -
The elevator arrives. Stainless steel doors that yawn to open soundlessly. He half expects them to close again before he's managed to drag himself completely inside. Clamps down on the irrational horror that his legs will stay in the supply closet with Reed while the rest of him makes some desperate form of escape. He's almost right. The doors begin their close, tighten momentarily in and around his ankles before sensing the temporary obstruction and re-opening again.
He'd laugh if he still remembered how.
Tucks his knees towards his chest instead and lets the doors try again.
Refuses to think too hard about the liquid pieces of him that spill silently between the cracks.
- - -
He contemplates the movements required to get his fingers up near the call buttons. Visualises muscle tissue expanding and contracting in order to carry out the motion. Practice does make perfect after all. He forces himself onto his back in an attempt to better survey his metallic surroundings. His intended target, the panel of brightly lit discs above his head, might as well be football fields and mountain ranges away.
He gives up on the notion before the idea even solidifies itself as a serviceable plan.
Resigns himself instead to hoping that a non-handgun wielding stranger stumbles upon him this time, maybe even a non-handgun wielding stranger with a medical degree, that could be a nice change of luck. And as the floor beneath him shudders once before continuing on its descent he lets his eyelids slide to closed, sandpaper rough as his pulse marches to a beat that seems all out of rhythm.
- - -
There's arms around him now and he strains to keep his head up as he registers the mortifying fact that he is being carried.
“Put me down.”
The words tumble out over lips that he can't quite keep still. His tongue feels thick and paralysed inside his mouth and the constant taste of blood sends his stomach roiling.
If he receives an answer to his plea, then he doesn't hear it.
His recollection of events seems patchy at best. He remembers a gun, and the echo of it firing still fills all the spaces around the static inside his head. Doesn't quite yet know how he feels about it all.
Settles suddenly on anger; figures it was his default for more months than he can count and slips back into the familiar routine easily. Spills curses and empty threats of retribution into the air as the arms that have been holding him disappear and his back collides heavily with something cold and hard.
“Alex, you've been shot.”
Well, crap.
- - -
He keeps forgetting where he is. What it is that's happening to him. Why his chest feels like someone has set it on fire from the inside out.
Fingers tap insistently against his cheek. The sound of surgical glove on stubble grates against nerves that are already frayed to loose cotton ends. He's tipped over onto his side then, and the motion swiftly empties all the air from his lungs.
He's three quarters to convinced that they'll never re-fill.
- - -
The cavernous room echoes with the haunting bray of bellowed agony. And it's not until his mouth is forcibly filled to full with sheets of frayed white gauze he thinks will surely suffocate him that the sounds fall to stifled and he stills enough to recognise that it's all him.
Minutes disappear then. And when the walls stop their fairground spin it's to the revelation that Mark Sloan has punched a scalpel between his ribs and then used his fingers to shove a tube into his plural cavity.
It's easier to breathe in the aftermath and yet so much more difficult at the same time. The acrid stench of leaked and leaking blood, his own, of that he is now more than certain, invades every molecule of air that fills his ruined insides.
- - -
Familiar fingers fiddle at his face and he wants nothing more than to bat them away defiantly with an angry leave me alone... that he knows he doesn't mean. He's not sure where she came from but, as Reed's eyes still fail to blink back every time his own slide to closed, he's suddenly glad that she's there.
After all, any alternatives he can muster are blood-stained and broken and could never end well.
- - -
He thinks that all he wants is to be remembered.
Can feel his dignity leaching into the hardwood beneath his back. Staining the carpet under their feet a rakish black-red. Mixing so completely with Lexie's tears that no amount of demolition and reconstruction will rid the room of what they're slowly losing.
Little pieces of themselves.
Gone.
He thinks that all he wants is to be remembered.
But not like this.
- - -
His pulse pounds at the back of his left eye. He wants, desperately, to raise his fingers to his right. To gain some sort of tangible confirmation that it's still where it should be.
But his movements are jerky. Too heavy and too light and too far away and too close all in the same split second.
Her hair is longer than he remembers it being, and he feels his fingers catch in the braided curls at the back of her neck. She is smiling at him.
She is beautiful.
“Izzie...” The word, breathless against his lips, catches suddenly on the tip of his tongue.
She shaved her legs for him once and he knows that it means so much more than you'd first think it would. It's an important piece of information but he can't seem to pull all of it together into something real enough to provide an answer he can understand.
Clouds roll by.
He doesn't remember seeing those before.
- - -
His knees are red. Blood red. Maybe his. Maybe hers.
She left once. That he does remember. A note in his locker full of words he could never begin decipher. An ache in his chest that he doesn't think ever really faded past half way gone. At least, not until a man with a gun replaced her words with a chunk of molten, hot metal.
And it all feels the same in the end.
The same and yet so infinitely different.
“You came back for me...”
He feels himself smile around the notion. Chapped lips stretched over teeth that feel too big for his mouth.
Forgets to care as she whispers back, soft and slow and sure.
“I won't ever leave you...”