Into The Fire
A Grey's Anatomy Fanfiction.

We don't think about the terror of one person, aching in one place, alone. Untouched, unspoken to. Watering a plant. Slices of doom like taffeta. People are not good to each other. People are not good to each other.
People are not good to each other.
Charles Bukowski, The Crunch

THERE ARE THREE KEY STEPS TO STARTING A FIRE.

ONE: LIGHTING A MATCH. Scraping chaos out from the underbelly of creation and learning to call the empty space it leaves behind a body. The year is nineteen eighty-seven, and when the cry of a peculiar, holy thing falls upon the city of Seattle, it is known to sound something like this: a seed that is planted but does not bloom must've been meant to perish; a blaze left unsnuffed will burn, furious and fervid, until there is nothing left for it to destroy.

The year is NINETEEN EIGHTY-SEVEN . . . and – for the first time in our known history – a flame rises, flourishing, from the throes of America's wettest city; a baby is born inside of a matchbox, becomes destined to build a future for herself out of hip-bones and gunpowder and matchsticks and still-warm organs imprisoned in styrofoam containers, learns that she is nothing if not a conglomeration of others' unwanted remnants. When she is cut from the flesh of one woman's womb, then placed into the weary, age-spotted arms of another — leaving ash trails littered like snakeskins in her wake — the first advice that the doctor gives Katherine Cagle is a warning.

Be cautious, he says. A fire like this does not stop burning for anyone.

TWO: SHAPING A SPARK. Slowly beginning to comprehend the correct way to care for a little girl who has bloomed from petals that are stained chalky with soot and ash the color of a late mid-noon thundershower. The year is two-thousand three, and – from beneath a fissure in the bartop, along the curvature of a cheekbone, below the surface of an operating table – the fire rises; it grows, and then it goes.

The year is TWO-THOUSAND THREE . . . and – for the first time in our known history – it comes upon something that is entirely capable of withstanding its carnage: a sister. A red-headed, freckle-cheeked entity, determined to chase after the dreams that she'd kept preserved for years like bits of brain-matter in formaldehyde. Although she does not know it yet, the youngest daughter will resent this someday: this moment, this woman, this severed tie between them. She will remember the tightness it left in her chest, the heaviness that it held in her limbs as her own dream withered away beneath the manila enclosure of another nameless medical school rejection, and she will become accustomed to watching it die. To learning. Listening. Nearly missing the words once they finally reach her; still, they arrive on an incisor-sharp wind, slicing through her capillaries like a gladius.

Spin yourself out of ceramics, they order. Become something that a fire like this cannot even begin to touch.

THREE: FORNICATING A FLAME. Lapping up the consequences of treating a woman as if she is a figment of light pollution and learning to love the way that control tastes. The year is two-thousand eleven; as the blaze is snuffed out and the body is pulled from the pyre, its chest still twitches with an indication of something — barely there, but alive in every sense. Trapped like a sorrel-breasted finch twisting beneath the caging of teeth-colored ribs, a new spark begins to ignite.

The year is TWO-THOUSAND ELEVEN . . . and – for the first time in our known history – in the palm of a late northwestern summer's hand, a girl (all bunny-knotted laces and unruly curls and rumpled scrubs and chipped teeth and scratched lenses and pale-skinned extremities) darkens the doors of a teaching hospital and wastes her last breath on a threat to rewrite her own destiny.

And if you cannot defeat the fire, she reminds herself. You must learn to become it instead.

DAWSYN CAGLE – a girl born from embers and bred to become something inextinguishable – never thought she would reach the finish line, the pearly gates, the coveted surgical internship. But here she is. Crossing it. Stepping through them. Desperate to escape the suffocation of a cradle rocked by parents that are smitten with merely the idea of her & fleeing from the shadow that her genius older sister left behind before flunking out of medical school in New York, Dawsyn finds her perfect match in Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital: a false prophecy, a place where young physicians are sent to either bloom or perish.

The year is TWO-THOUSAND TWELVE . . . and – for the first time in our known history – a flame does not just burn in Seattle, it flourishes. A woman shaped from resistance persists. A girl, a medical miracle, learns to outgrow her powder-pink pistil and her petals stained with soot; when fresh tepals arrive alongside the first inkling of a sticky Seattle autumn, they burn hotter than anything the city has ever known before.

Dawsyn Cagle is a spitfire, something that no one – not her sister, not her fellow interns and the belittling words that they exchange behind her back like baseball cards, not the man in the apricot scrubs with the eyes like moss-curtained jungles or the Head of Plastic Surgery, who's persistence is fueled entirely by her resistance – can seem to snuff out. When a shooter enters the hospital and sends a nickel-laden bullet slicing through her pencil skirt – and thus, the countless layers of tragedy that she'd worked so hard to keep hidden from her new colleagues — Dawsyn learns that time is not the only thing that will never be on her side, old habits die harder than everything but the surgeons at Seattle Grace, and all that she will know before she goes are these words, funneling out from her throat like smoke tendrils:

Take the meaning of your anguish and hold it on your tongue, until it melts in on itself like a square of cotton-stitched gauze. If you need to burn, they write, then burn.

Burn as if it was the very thing that you were born to do.

INTRODUCING.....

(🫀🍻🚑💋) .｡*ﾟThe Spitfire!
Rachel Dipillo as Dawsyn Cagle

(✨🧠🌇🥂) .｡*ﾟ&&& Her Gasoline!
Elena Satine as Dilyn Cagle

(🩺🏙☕️💉) .｡*ﾟ&&& Her Match!
Eric Dane as Mark Sloan

(🔬🧨💵🌡) .｡*ﾟ&&& Her Spark!
Jesse Williams as Jackson Avery

&&& with . . . .
Jake Borelli / Hudson Tamer
Rushi Kota / Cory Amarillo
Randy Shelley / Jared Eaton
Emily Vancamp / Jenny Parks
Natasha Calis / Cora Summers
Noah Wyle / Bentley Wells
Meryl Streep / Katherine Cagle
Dennis Quaid / Seth Cagle
Yaya Dacosta / Georgia McCrary
Jeremy Allen White / Willis Hughes
Jennifer Aniston / Meredith Grey
Julia Garner / Sloan Riley
Grey's Anatomy Cast / Their Characters Described / Others

Acknowledgements
to heal a wound, you must stop touching it.

Author's Note — here are some important things to consider before you read:

✧ this book contains mentions of the mcnasty, mcdrinking, mcdrugs, mcviolence, mctrauma, mcautomobile accidents, mcdeath, mcage difference, and many mcspoilers, as well as one incredible mc-slow burn (no pun intended.)

✧ grey's anatomy & any characters associated with it that have probably caused you extreme emotional trauma belongs to satan aka shonda rhimes. however, dawsyn, dilyn, the interns, as well as the plot & (most of) the lines all belong to me - with the exception of jenny and cora, who belong to my partner in crime kaileec22.

✧ the psds used in the graphics featured here belong to @/breewaffle on deviantart!

✧ this is not an episode copy-paste / character insert fic, so if you're looking for that, sorry to disappoint; it will read more like an original.

✧ i have been working on this book for 3+ years now & while it will probably have zero readers by the time it's finished, it is my number one passion project and always will be. i am so grateful for each and every person who has taken the time to read or share dawsyn's story. thank you for reading and i hope that you enjoy <3

Best Ratings — #2 in grey's, #2 in teddyaltman, #8 in jacksonavery, #21 in greysanatomy, #33 in marksloan

Dedications — to my incredible roommate kaileec22 who has been here since september 2017 & day ONE of this fic, my #1 support system and first wattpad friend peoplehoods & the milfs foxgIoves halosnite nightwvngs Iexihoward awfulmoons & fxllmoons !!! none of this would be possible without ur love, encouragement, & mark sloan headcanons <3

The Works! — Started 9/11/17 | Restarted [01] 9/21/17 | Restarted [02] 1/18/23 | Ended — | Published 1/13/19 | Status ongoing / being rewritten

          © BANANAPOPSICLES / 2019
            INTO THE FIRE