(Untitled)

[drownondryland]

It's the story of Meredith's life, really. Every time she starts to get back on her feet, something new comes along to bowl her over, and it's all the more frustrating for the fact it forces on her, the realization that she's grown soft here. Things were so good for a while, so peaceful, at least compared to the lives she and Sean had led before;

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[lexiepedia]

The response is about as good as Lexie can hope for, really, if not better. At least they aren't snapping anymore. She can hold her own, when she needs to, when she reaches a breaking point, but that doesn't mean she likes it all that much, particularly when she doesn't actually think it will accomplish much. It's hard to say if she honestly thinks there's anything to be gained here, if Meredith will ever come around like she did back home, but Lexie certainly wants her to. To call this a step in the right direction would probably be naïve, but it's better than several alternatives.

"Oh, yeah, I have a hut now," she says, nodding in confirmation. "It's not much, but it's something. Better than staying in the Compound, I thought, anyway. I think I might actually go crazy if I tried to live in here long term." As soon as she's said it, that last sentence, she's sure Meredith doesn't need to know it, but for her part, she doesn't find herself wanting to take it back. There can't be any harm in sharing things. It's a tactic she's tried

[lexiepedia]

Lexie can't help but be grateful that there are no further questions about Alex and Izzie or herself, for that matter, exhaling slowly as she summons up a smile. She'll have to tell eventually, like she'll have to tell about George dying and Derek becoming Chief and her and Mark and Mark's daughter, but it's so goddamn nervewracking that she needs a moment where she can take it. The chances of her just completely losing it are heightened otherwise. Sometimes, she's still not convinced she hasn't already, anyway.

"It is," she agrees, a little more brightly than is necessary, to compensate for everything that's filling her head. What she really wants is another sandwich. She'd rather have some chocolate, but that isn't quite so easily come by here, apparently. "It's really great. For you guys. Not - not that Sean isn't a great guy, too, I'm sure he is, I just mean, it's great for you guys back there." And it would be great, she thinks, if she could stop rambling like this, but she's pretty sure that isn't going to happen anytime soon.

[drownondryland]

"Back there," Meredith agrees, seizing on that just a little too eagerly. Please, please, please, please, please let it stay there. If she were the praying kind, she'd pray now. Hell, she'd go to the church and get on her knees and beg if she thought it would do any good. She can't have Derek Shepherd here. She can't have Derek Shepherd in her life again and she certainly can't have him anywhere near Sean. "I'm sure it's wonderful. For him. And for weird-alternate-universe me, yes."

It is impossible for anyone to be the star of her story other than her, even some other version of her.

"And he is. Sean is - a great guy, I mean," she adds after a moment. It seems important. Lexie knows Derek, Lexie's used to her being married to Derek, and Meredith doesn't really care what Lexie thinks because she doesn't much care about her, except she needs her to like Sean better. Not that it matters what her opinion is, but she needs Sean to be the better man in this equation. He is for her. Without understanding quite why, she needs that to be

[lexiepedia]

"Yeah, they kind of were for all of us, I think," Lexie says, a hint of something apologetic in her voice. It isn't like she was in an especially good place, either, having been suddenly transported, while naked, to her sister and her sister's boyfriend's bedroom. She's sure it's true, that Sean is a great guy, strange as it is to think of Meredith with anyone other than Derek. She refrains from mentioning that she likes weird-alternate-universe Meredith better. Something like that just doesn't need to be said; chances are, based on the circumstances alone, it would be obvious enough, anyway. She had a sister, before, someone she'd grown fairly close to. The brief time she's spent around Meredith here has made clear that that's no longer the case

[drownondryland]

Everything, Meredith thinks, but does she really? It's a lot to carry around, even what little she's let herself see on the television screen, and it's not her life anymore. Even what Lexie's told her hasn't helped all that much. It's a drop of hope, yes, some confirmation it's possible to do this and not bolt (and maybe it's the years or the bias or maybe she really is just sure, but Sean is good for her, Sean is better for her. If she can make it with Derek, there can't be any doubt she and Sean will be alright if she can just bring herself to say she knows what she wants). It isn't a promise, though, and the only thing that can determine her future is what she chooses next

[lexiepedia]

Despite being well aware that it can't mean anything, Lexie smiles just a little at the sight of two plates anyway, opening a couple of drawers until she finds another with silverware and a knife with which to cut them both slices. At least if Meredith's eating, too, she'll feel a little better about it. Besides, they're talking now, and it does mean that Meredith intends to stick around long enough to eat her slice, isn't trying to get away absolutely as soon as possible. She'll take it.

"Oh, Cristina's good," she says, eyes a little wider, as she puts the cut slices of pie on the plate, leaving the rest of it out just in case. Good might as well be a relative statement for all of them, but it isn't like there've been any major crises or like she's up and left like Izzie did. "She's seeing somebody, Owen, the new trauma guy - well, he's not really new, but he would be for you, so, yeah, new - and they finally hired a new cardio attending and she's pretty badass, so, yeah. Good." Comparatively speaking, it's where things have been

[drownondryland]

"Finally?" Meredith's brow furrows a little at that as she thinks back to Seattle Grace as it was when she left home. "So Hahn left. Huh." Vanished, quit, died, was fired - nothing's out of the realm of possibility. The woman drove Cristina crazy, but she knows her best friend, even if she hasn't seen her in months; crazy is better than not working at all. She's not thrilled either by the reminder of how much she's missed.

It's hard thinking of it that way, like something she's skipping over but will still get return to eventually. She doesn't know how else to think of it, though. These are her friends, her real family, and she's missing huge parts of their lives. "So... trauma guy, badass attending," she says, spearing the end of the pie with her fork. "And Izzie left? But she's alive, she's okay, but... poor Alex. That has to have been really hard on him." He's too much like her not to have felt the loss like a punch to the gut, a stark betrayal. Even here, now, god only knows how many miles and years away from it, it feels like

[lexiepedia]

"Oh, yeah, Hahn left," Lexie replies, finding that she can't quite hold back a laugh at that, eyebrows raising for emphasis. She'd barely worked with her, of course, but Cristina had been thrilled to have her gone, and it was what had started the lack of cardio attending that had made Cristina even crazier. "She quit. Didn't even make it a year. She'd been gone for months, already, when I showed up here

[drownondryland]

Meredith stares at her, eyes narrowing a little as if she can maybe then see what it is she's missing. Lexie is visibly discomfited by this turn in the topic and that is a notable slip, and she's this close to interrogating her when she realizes there isn't anything about this which makes sense.

"That's insane," she says. "Izzie can be... special, but she would never just miss her appointments. She is too smart and, and too much of a doctor not to come in when she's supposed to. She knows better than that, so what is going on here, Lexie?" If she plays into this somehow, Meredith won't know how to forgive her, but even though Alex has made mistakes in the past, she can't see him cheating on Izzie when they're married and she has cancer. It has to have been something else. Not that anyone in their circle, it seems, is immune to adultery, a thought that just makes Meredith set her shoulders and lift her head, taking a bite of her pie. She's not a part of that. She cheated once and Finn forgave her, but she'd never do that to Sean.

[lexiepedia]

"Izzie got fired and I'm sleeping with Alex," Lexie blurts out, exhaling heavily, and feels a lot better for it, though the expression on her face is one of a person who's waiting for an absolutely horrible response. However Meredith feels about her, though, this, she thinks, she'll have to understand. "She got fired, and that's why she left - I mean, she didn't even say anything, she left the guy a freaking note, who does that? - and she'd been gone for ages, no contact, nothing, and then we... had sex. Only because she was, you know, gone. And it was only going to be the once, but then she came back and they broke up for good, so we... kept doing it. Thus the naked in a sheet." Almost pleadingly, she looks over at Meredith, eyes wide. "Apparently she'd been getting her treatments somewhere else. Like, she was that set on not coming back."

[drownondryland]

Meredith stares at her, mildly horrified and inexplicably heartbroken. Izzie left a note. Izzie left a note.

Izzie left her.

"While he was married, Lexie?" she demands, knowing just how hypocritical that is the second it's out of her mouth. Well, fuck feeling bad for that. She didn't know about Addison. Lexie knew Izzie, worked with her. The two stories are goddamn worlds apart, whole universes. "You didn't know she wasn't coming back. Does Izzie know?"

[lexiepedia]

"Yes, I did know she wasn't coming back," Lexie shoots back, pulling a face like it's the most appalling suggestion she's ever heard, that she might have slept with Alex while Izzie might still have been coming back. A moment is all it takes for her to deflate, sinking back in her chair as the corners of her mouth lower in a frown. "Okay, maybe I didn't know the first time, but we were drunk and sad and it just sort of happened and I regretted it right after. Besides, it was his idea."

At least, she's pretty sure it was his idea, but it's close enough that she sounds entirely certain when she says it, even if she is just making excuses. She's a dirty mistress and she knows it. Taking a few more bites of pie, she stares fixedly at the table, as if there will be some answers printed on it that she hasn't yet come up with herself. "But after the first time, they were broken up for good, and I did know. I don't know if she knows, we don't really talk about her. Or anything. We're trying not to feel things."

[drownondryland]

"Right, 'cause that's going to happen," Meredith snipes. She doesn't know Lexie well - and doesn't want to - but it's not like it's hard to see she's an emotions kind of girl. "You don't not-feel things, Lexie."

But she can't blame her for Izzie leaving if Izzie never knew, and she can't really yell at her for the rest when she's done it all a hundred times and worse besides. The woman she once was... well, she doesn't regret it now, but she's not like that anymore, and being here at this table with Lexie, forced to look at her and see everything she missed out on, it just makes it that much harder to ignore the woman she's become instead - still not the one she wants to be. She's not sure she ever can be, not when what she said to Lexie once is as true now as it was three years ago. Their father picked her.

Twenty-five years and she's still picking up the pieces from that.

She stabs her pie. "As far as I can tell, you're all feelings."

[lexiepedia]

"Which is exactly the point of trying not to feel," Lexie says, like that ought to have spoken for itself. The whole problem is that she feels too much, that even now, she misses Mark so much it hurts. Being here has deprived her of the one good coping mechanism she had, the one thing she was finally starting to do for herself, and it sucks all the more for it. Meredith probably doesn't want to hear it, but she's come close enough to asking anyway, so Lexie heaves out a sigh, resting an elbow on the table and her head in her hand, angled so she can keep taking bites of her pie, which she's all but polished off. "Things have just really sucked, okay? I broke up with Mark, and it's really, really awful, and the only time I don't have to feel so totally awful is in bed with Alex. And I'm pretty sure he's having as bad a time as I am with everything, so, yeah."

[drownondryland]

There was a list Lexie once made, things about her, reasons not to hate her, like knowing her better will make her more human to Meredith. She can't remember any of the reasons now, but she already feels she's learning too much. It's the first time she's heard Lexie say anything that reminded her so intensely of - well, of herself.

She's not even fully healed yet and that's probably in part because she and Sean are back at it again, burying their problems in sex and alcohol and whatever she can come up with to do at work.

"It doesn't work," she says, shaking her head at her, faintly incredulous. "You can't just try not to feel. You're going to feel anyway, it's how you work, and anyway, it just, it doesn't work. It's great for an hour or two, sure, but that doesn't fix anything, Lexie... You were dating Mark Sloan?"

[lexiepedia]

Groaning faintly, the thought having somehow not occurred to her that Meredith wouldn't know about her and Mark, Lexie nods, her frown only deepening for it. If Meredith's from that early - which, of course, she would have to be, with her not knowing about Derek and still acting like they're of no relation - then all she'll probably know is Mark the playboy who's slept with most of the nurses in the hospital, when he's so much more than that.

Even in trying to explain about how miserable she's been, she can't help still loving him.

"I was living with Mark Sloan," she corrects, head lifting just enough that she can try to meet Meredith's gaze. "I had been for months, ever since you and Derek got married and I walked in on you two having sex on the kitchen counter. And then all of a sudden he's got this eighteen year old he didn't know about, and she's - totally awful, not to mention pregnant, and he just up and tells her that she and the baby can move in with us. Doesn't talk to me first or anything. And he acts like I'm the bad guy