The Same Mistake Again (1/1)
Word Count: 1330
Pairing: Alex/Izzie
Spoilers: Season 5
Rating: PG
Warning: Character death
Author's Note: Secret Santa fic for ellie_kat89. Hope you had a very merry christmas! Just so you know, I tried so SO many times to write a happy, christmassy fic for you, but, alas... you have character death! I apologise profusely and hope you enjoy it anyway! Title is lyrics from a James Blunt tune called 'Same Mistake'. Thanks to my bestest beta ice_whisper.
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libellous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
The first time she calls her dead fiance's name while she is sleeping he manages to convince himself that he's hearing things and he rolls over and curls around her back (that she murmurs softly when he does so and snuggles deep into him is not worth losing sleep over). She's almost as tall as he is meaning his nose is pressed into her curls and he takes a deep breath to remind himself of where he is and what he now has.
She is silent and still for the rest of the night and he thinks he probably fell asleep at some point too (but his right shoulder is stiff and sore from laying on it all night and he is more exhausted now than he was six hours ago).
She moves around the kitchen quietly the next morning and with a soft smile on her lips. He doesn't question her night time ramblings but he does notice when she pours three cups of coffee even though Meredith has been on call all night and Derek won't be up for another hour. When Sadie (he'd forgotten about their new houseguest) stumbles in and reaches for the third cup he thinks he has his answer but she looks just as surprised to see her there as he is so he's not sure.
He is on call the next night and she the one after that and despite intentions to meet up at the hospital (for on call room sex, because really, is there any other kind?) by the time they next actually see each other he has completely forgotten her words, murmured in the dark.
- - -
The second time he hears her speak his name she is walking away from him, headed where, he has no idea. She's been distracted and distant and he's guessed, sadly, that being with him now is making her think about what she could have had with him then. He doesn't like to dwell too long on it though because any comparison he comes up with always leaves him wanting in one way or another.
She is giggling as she heads up the hallway, he hears that too, and he thinks that whatever else she is she also seems happy, so somebody (though probably not him, it's almost never him) must be doing something right.
- - -
George thinks there is something wrong with her but he's never listened to George in the past and he has no intention of doing it now. Besides, she's not concocting fake pregnancies (or failing to pick him up from school every second afternoon) and she's not taking a blade to her wrists in the kitchen or the bedroom or any other room in the house so she's just fine. George's words make him angry (irrationally so, even he will admit to that) and it takes the rest of the afternoon and the promise of a solo surgery for him to realise it wasn't that George pissed him off but more that George scared the shit out of him (and fear and anger have always elicited an equal response from him - they did then and they still do now).
In hindsight, he thinks that the declaration of love and the promise of feats that have previously eluded him - not leaving, not cheating, not dying (well, he's pretty sure he has that last one covered) - was dramatic and more than a little desperate.
That she just stared at him blankly throughout the entire monologue, confused and more than a little bewildered seems perfectly understandable (in hindsight).
- - -
They are in bed again the third time when it's his name she breathes and they've hardly seen each other all week and he's been building himself up - bracing himself - for what he is sure to come. This is almost more than he can take (and experience tells him he can, he has, taken a lot in the past). He wakes her up this time (unintentionally, he tells himself, but did he really need to lurch out from under the covers with such vicious haste?) and when her eyes crack open, sleep hazed and dark, he tells her what she said. When she rolls over to stare at him, confused and still more asleep than awake, she says, indignantly, of course and what else and it's your name.
He feels sick to his stomach.
He sleeps (but doesn't) in his own bed for the rest of the night and he makes sure he leaves before she is awake the next morning. He has somehow managed to convince himself that ignoring it and avoiding her will make everything alright but he still feels sick, a constant, unrelenting nausea that no amount of ignoring or avoiding seems to fix. He is preoccupied and nervous (and God, he wants to vomit) because once, once was all kinds of devastating from which he never really recovered and twice was earth shattering in the worst kind of way.
(The thought of three times has him retching into a basin of the closest men's room).
- - -
He's wrung out and edgy by the time he finally sees her, late in the day. She's laughing with Meredith about something he can't hear and doesn't understand and when he reaches them and rests a hand on her shoulder she turns to look at him but doesn't meet his eyes.
It's Meredith that asks him if he is okay and it's her that answers, giggling suggestively that she kept him awake all night and did Meredith think that eleven times was some kind of record? He laughs (tries to) at all the appropriate moments but it rings hollow in his ears and his head pounds behind his eyes (and for a moment he is able to convince himself that it's him that is crazy).
- - -
By the time he gathers the courage to approach George it is too late (but he doesn't know this at the time). He stammers out that he thinks George might have been right but that he so badly wanted him to be wrong and now he doesn't know what to do.
By the time he gathers the courage to approach George she is already calling out his name (but he doesn't know this at the time) because her lips are unmoving and her eyes are closed and he is not there anyway.
By the time he gathers the courage to approach George she is unconscious and not breathing and all alone (but she doesn't know this at the time - because she is calling his name and taking his hand and not looking back).
- - -
Afterwards he will tell himself that it is where she would want to be (where she has always wanted to be). It's what he says to Meredith after she breaks the news to him and it's what he says to George who won't stop crying. It's what he says to Bailey when she finds him on the stairs but her blank gaze and worried rebuttal make him think that she wasn't talking to him about her (which would be strange because she is all anybody talks to him about these days).
It's not until later, when someone questions gently (for everything is done gently around him now, an ill-informed notion that he is not already broken) why he thinks that she wanted to die, to be dead, that he remembers. No-one else knew that she thought he was him.
It is his fault, of that he is most definitely sure (everything else is but a blur of black suits, too much rum mixed with not nearly enough coke and a funeral he never wanted to attend and can't even remember).
Once was all kinds of devastating and twice was earth shattering in the worst kind of way (three times makes him crazy in a catatonic, pill popping, running 'til he vomits kind of way and it's all he can do not to laugh hysterically at the absurdity of that).