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chapter forty two ━ take the lead
season eight, episode three

❝ that one hundred percent success rate
isn't going anywhere! ❞

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Most senior surgeons named a particular day like today alert the morgue day.

Which wasn't the most catchiest of titles, and it wasn't exactly like Christmas or Halloween, or twenty percent off at the cafeteria day.

Today was the day the fifth year residents rotated in as lead surgeons, therefore leading the attending's to presume an abnormally high amount of bodies entering the morgue.

As you can probably tell, the attending's were incredibly (not) faithful in the residents' abilities.

"Dr. Levine?"

Alex and Aliya stopped short half way down the corridor as the owner of the voice sauntered through the entrance of the hospital, interrupting the start of Aliya's rant about aneurysms with an extremely large gift basket in her hands, tied together with pretty purple and pink ribbon in a neat little bow,.

However, little wouldn't be a word to describe the bow, seeing as it was bigger than Aliya and Alex's heads put together.

The brunette eyed the bow cautiously in alarm, the gift basket throwing her off just a bit. "Uh— no?"

"Oh—" The young blonde girl looked stunned and she began to scramble for something buried within the pockets of her trousers. "—It says here to deliver this basket to a Miss Aliya Levine, and you're not Aliya Levine?"

Aliya Levine shook her head, nudging Alex in the ribs as he opened his mouth to protest to the fact that this woman was very much the person she was looking for. "Nope, wrong girl."

The blonde's expression dropped, and it almost made Aliya feel bad. Though, the basket was already really starting to creep her out. "Do you know where I can find her?"

"I don't think an Aliya works at this hospital?" Aliya turned to Alex, her eyebrows drawn together as she gave her friend a faux puzzled look. "Dr Karev? Isn't that right?"

Alex, baffled, cleared his throat and nodded her head. "Aliya Levine did you say? Never heard of her, she sounds crazy though, so it's probably for the best you don't find her."

At that, Aliya scoffed, rolling her eyes. "Sorry we can't help you, I hope you find her."

However, the unnamed blonde's eye caught onto something, her eyes narrowing on the brunette woman's very obvious name tag. "I think I just did, this is for you, Dr. Levine."

With a sigh, Aliya very begrudgingly took the overfilled and expensive gift basket. "Thanks." She muttered, stomping over to the front desk and dropping the basket onto it, grimacing at the very delicious looking selection of fancy truffles, even fancier crackers, spreads, chips, and whatever else had been stuffed into that giant basket.

"To Aliya, Best Wishes, Dad." Alex read out from the card that it came with.

"Best Wishes?" Aliya scoffed with a grimace, casting one look at the basket derived from the depths of regret and crossing her arms. "That's all he's got? There's not even any good crackers in here. I can guarantee they'll taste like cardboard."

"More for me—"

Alex's hand started to reach to rip the cellophane, though he was interrupted by Aliya.

"Woah— hey! We're not eating this!"

"What!" He said with so much shock that it was as if he had just witnessed Aliya kick a defenceless puppy. Or he was a kid being told that Santa Claus wasn't real.

"Don't touch the basket!" Aliya pointed and accusatory finger. "I'm gonna find a return address."

"What's with the basket?" Cristina questioned as she approached the desk, Meredith in tow.

"Lifelong regret wrapped in a pretty pink bow." Aliya spoke, lightly. Though, the lack of return address made her want to throw the stupid basket across the room. "Any news on Zola?"

The Levine woman spoke without meeting anyone's eye, offering the basket to the nurses, who happily took it off of her hands.

"Oh, so you're speaking to me now?" Meredith questioned, shocked that the brunette had uttered a word to her. "Finally dropped the grudge?"

"Oh—" Aliya threw her head back with a mock laugh, before shaking her head. "Not in a million years, but I'm not a total bitch like someone I know—"

Cristina snickered, earning a very stern stare from her best friend as the four began to defend the corridor.

"—And besides, I like Zola." Aliya said with a shrug, peeling the skin off of her banana.

"No, I haven't heard anything." Meredith grumbled, because she was pretty sure she had never heard the Levine woman say bitch before.

Now, the Grey woman could officially say that she was on Aliya's bad side, a side she didn't exactly want to be on anymore.

But, it seemed Aliya wasn't letting up anytime soon.

"Hey, is it up yet?" Cristina called out to April and Jackson rounded the corner, the red head with a clipboard in her hand, and a huge pink wedding binder tucked underneath her arm.

"It's going up now." April replied, before shoving a piece of paper into Aliya's hands. "Before I forget, Aliya, you need to come down to the boutique and get measured."

"Oh!" Aliya narrowed her eyes at the paper in her hands, looking back to April. "Is that the boutique with the free bowl of candy? 'Cause if it is sign me up, I'll be there after I clip an aneurysm." The brunette grinned, slipping the note into her pocket.

"Good luck with that, Shepherd's in a mood." Cristina warned, though it didn't sway Aliya's excitement one bit.

"Try not to kill the guy." Alex said, slurping on his coffee.

"Thank you for all the support, it's truly overwhelming." Aliya spoke, sarcastically, pushing her brunette waves over her shoulder.

"You'll do great, you've got a hundred percent success rate on clipping aneurysms." Jackson assured, looking over his shoulder at her, before turning to the Grey woman. "Have you heard anything?"

"Haven't heard anything." Meredith answered, robotically, as if she had said the same thing fifty times already that day, almost making Aliya feel guilty for inadvertently calling her a bitch.

April frowned, sympathetically. "How are you even here?"

"Well, there's nothing I can do, and I have to do something so I might as well do this." Meredith justified, gesturing to the OR board as it came into view, displaying which OR's they would be operating in.

It unexpectedly held great importance that most surgeons grew superstitious.

Nobody wanted OR 6. OR 6 had the highest death rate out of all of the operating rooms.

And, it smelt like cheese.

"It's up!" The residents spoke in unison, quickly pacing over to the board as one of the scrub nurses began writing with the whiteboard marker.

"OR 3! Yes!" Cristina fist pumped, overtly excited about scoring that particular operating room. "I love OR 3!"

April raised a brow at the board. "Bowel resection? I thought you had a peds case? Meredith has general."

"I switched last minute." Alex responded back, and Aliya slowly side eyed him, her elbows resting on the desk behind her.

"Why the hell did you do that?" Aliya questioned, knowing too well that he was destined to be a peds surgeon, even if he kept screwing with his chances.

"You can't just switch!" April said quickly, not even letting Alex reply to Aliya's previous question.

"Plastics?" Cristina looked at the board as Jackson's name was written for a cheilioplasty. "I thought you were the gunther."

"I wasn't the only gunther." Jackson responded, matter-of-factly, smirking across to his girlfriend.

"Nepotism." Cristina scoffed at the pair, both adorning those famous last names the hospital liked to babble about. "Wasting all your capital on boob jobs?"

"It's a cleft lip." Aliya defended, waiting in anticipation for her surgery to be written on the board.

"I'm changing a kids life today." Jackson mused, grinning at the OR board like some crazy lunatic. "Look at Kepner, she's fixing a bum knee. Way to shoot for the stars, kid."

April shot him a look, before regaining her posture (and her grip on her clipboard). "Okay, guys. You also start teaching skills labs today—"

At that, Cristina yawned, Meredith curled her lip, Jackson's expression turned stern, Alex grimaced, and Aliya clapped her hands as she scored OR 1, not even hearing what the Kepner woman had to say.

"—I made up a schedule for the month, it's up on the board in my office."

"Your office?" Aliya's attention averted quickly, and so did the other four residents'.

Meredith gawked. "In your what?"

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"You little— ugh!" Aliya gawked in amazement as she entered April's office, the other residents behind, mirroring the same exact expression the brunette had on her face. "I'm going to be your sister in law and you didn't think to tell me you have an office— with a freaking sofa!"

"Sorry!" April smiled widely as she held open the door for everyone.

"When did we get this?" Cristina questioned, looking around the warmly lit room, decked out in so much cosy decor, from throw pillows to lamps, to paintings on the wall.

"We didn't." April corrected, but nobody really cared seeing as they took it as a 'what's mine is yours' sort of scenario. "It's for the chief resident, actually."

"This is good." Alex said, dropping down onto the sofa. "I can sleep on this."

April visible cringed as the Karev man placed his dirty shoes onto her shiny new and clean pillows. "Yeah, I got that on Craigslist. It's mine."

"We got a fridge?" Meredith peered inside, eyes scanning the shelves full of bottled water and soda.

"Oh, look! Jackson! She's got the flaming hot Doritos you like!" Aliya pointed into the drawer, that held a variety of snacks, including Jackson's favourite chips, coincidentally.

Out of excitement, Jackson quickly turned around, knocking over a potted plant in the process, spilling the soil all across the floor. "Score!" He said, despite having to scramble quickly to pick up the plant.

April glared around the room that had descended into chaos. "Okay guys—"

"Why is my name on this?" Cristina interrogated, approaching the meticulously planned board April had up in her office.

The redhead moved towards the board, where Aliya had noticed her name was also on it too, which couldn't be a very good sign. "These are this month's skills labs!"

With April now distracted, Aliya quickly dug into her snack draw, stuffing a few of her snacks into her pockets.

When she looked back up, Jackson's eyes were pinned on her, a brow raised in a sort of disapproval he didn't actually mean.

"For sustenance." Aliya justified with a shrug of her shoulders.

"Thief." Jackson murmured back as the pair made their way to the couch, dropping down beside Alex (only after Meredith had slapped him to sit up).

Now, all four of them were squished onto the small green sofa, watching Cristina and April as if they were giving a presentation.

"Each of you has been given one skills lab to teach." April explained, cheery.

Cristina shook her head, readying herself with an excuse not to teach. "No, I can't teach today, I'm on a mitral valve."

"Okay, well, then just switch with one of these guys." She looked back at the four on the couch, hopefully.

"I got an aneurysm to clip." Aliya quickly spoke — she was in no right mind to teach baby surgeons.

It would only end up with a scalpel to the eye.

"I got a baby's face." Jackson said, gesturing to his own face as he kicked up his feet on the coffee table, his hand resting on Aliya's thigh, seeing as there was no room to actually put his hand, seeing as they were all squished shoulder to shoulder.

"Guys! Come on!" April said with a sigh, placing a hand on her hip out of frustration. "I divided these up fairly, and I got a tonne of other stuff to do and stuff for my wedding, and prep for a new fifth year—"

"You come on!" Jackson interrupted her. "Every surgery we do this year could end up in the oral boards."

"And they love picking the crappy outcomes." Alex added, matter-of-factly.

"How can we even find time to pee with a schedule like this?" Aliya helpfully added to the conversation, a topic of great importance. "Every minute is accounted for."

"This could affect which fellowship I get." Cristina took her post it note down from the board, making her way over to the free arm chair. "I mean, it's not just life or death, April. Now it's our careers."

"Okay," Meredith cleared her throat, lurching forward slightly. "How's this? Whoever has the worst outcome today, teaches all the skills labs for the whole month."

"That's good." Cristina nodded her head.

Alex thought about it for about half a second. "I'm in."

"That's terrible!" April screeched, her voice gaining a very high pitch that could only really be heard by people under the age of fifty.

"If I get the worst outcome, which I won't," Aliya spoke up in reply, still deliberating over whether to agree as she met the Grey woman's eyes. "You're taking my skills labs, and then you can consider yourself quarter forgiven."

Meredith screwed up her face, before letting out a sigh, outstretching her hand for Aliya to shake. "Fine."

"I'm so in!" Aliya clapped enthusiastically, unwrapping a stolen granola bar from her pocket and waving it about in victory, only for April's eyes to dart to her snack draw.

"You guys get this email?" Jackson squinted at his phone screen, and Aliya peered over his shoulder to take a look.

"You know! That's disgusting!" April continued on, seemingly not agreeing with their master plan in solving this particular conflict. "No, no, no! There will be no wagering on patient outcomes, That's an order."

"It's technically not wagering." Aliya replied, thoughtfully. "Money isn't technically involved."

The Karev man seemed to sink even lower into the sofa. "So, you're out then?"

"You know, okay, just, everyone out of my office!"

Then, all of a sudden, April started making shooing motions, as if she was trying to herd a group of sheep into a pen.

"Woah—" Jackson quickly piped up. "Webber resigned. He's no longer Chief of Surgery."

Aliya gasped, incredibly loudly, accepting the phone off of Jackson and bringing it so close to her face, it was a miracle she could still even read the words. "Oh, you got to be freaking kidding me!"

"Dr. Owen Hunt is now Chief of Surgery."

"What?" Cristina's jaw dropped in shock.

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"Hey, have you heard the news—" Aliya quickly rushed into Derek's office, ready to ramble on until she stopped short, eyes narrowing onto a box in his hands. "What's that?"

"The Alzheimer's Trial. Carl Baumann is taking over." Derek said, his voice low and quiet as he shoved various amounts of paperwork into the box.

"No! No!" Aliya spoke rapidly as she charged forward in an attempt to get him to stop stuffing hours upon hours of work into cardboard boxes. It felt as if he was packing up their home. "Our trial is not going to Carl Buttman!"

"It's Baumann." Derek corrected.

"I know that!" The Levine woman burst out, frowning at the neurosurgeon. "Surely there's something we can do, literally anything. I can pull strings—"

"I'm blacklisted." Derek continued to pack the papers into the boxes, unable to meet her eyes, mourning the loss of the trial. "I may never do another clinal trial again. I've had this conversation with Richard already. He's blacklisted too. It's over."

"We're blacklisted, Derek." Aliya corrected him, leaning onto the desk, staring longingly at the clinical trial box, papers being tucked safely inside and shipped off to god knows where.

It was cruel.

"No." Derek shook his head at Aliya's correction, even though she didn't even know she was wrong. "I. I'm blacklisted, not you. Me."

Aliya took an intake of breath, puzzled and confused, her eyes darting towards him at what she thought he was potentially implying, because, he couldn't possibly— "Are you saying—"

"You're safe." The Shepherd man replied back, simply, as if he hadn't just given the woman across from him this totally brand new piece of very important information. "I made sure they didn't blacklist you. Well, alongside the help of your father."

Aliya's jaw dropped to the ground for the second time that day, but for a totally different reason than April's office.

"Because someday, you're going to cure Alzheimer's." Derek carried on, a small smile on his face as he closed the lid of the box. "Or Parkinson's, or whatever you decided to cure. With or without me."

"Derek—"

"I wasn't going to drag you down with me." He said, simply, with a shrug of his shoulders.

"You didn't have to do that." Aliya softly spoke, a small smile on her face. "But, thank you." She added, before Derek could say anything about it.

"Let's go see Mr. Colvin about clipping his aneurysm, and then I'll be the judge of whether or not I should've just left you blacklisted." Derek joked, and Aliya pushed his shoulder, following him out the door.

"Evil!"

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"So, if Rob's out of surgery, then I'll pick him up from school but if not, then I'll text you, and you can drop him at Kathy's." Mrs. Colvin spoke into the phone. "Yeah, thanks so much. Okay, bye."

The woman sighed in relief as she hung up, quickly slipping the phone into her pocket.

"Sorry, I just have to make sure we got the kids squared away." Mrs. Colvin smiled, perching onto the side of her husband's beds.

"Don't apologise, it's completely fine." Aliya assured, a pen and whiteboard with a less than artistic drawing on the front of it.

"You have kids?" Mrs. Colvin questioned.

"I don't know. A nephew, though." Aliya replied, taking the cap off of her pen. "So, I will locate the aneurysm, which is the bulge in the wall of your artery."

Aliya used the pen to point to the picture, at the bulge she drew in the artery to show the aneurysm.

"And then, I will take a tiny steel clip, and I'm gonna place it across the neck of the aneurysm which will stop the blood supply." Aliya explained, meeting the worried gaze of Mrs. Colvin, who was desperately trying to stay strong for her husband, but was very visibly shaking from the stress. "That way, we don't have to worry about a rupture."

"How do you know it's fixed?" Mrs. Colvin asked the Levine woman, her hand moving to Mr. Colvin's knee, holding it as if to steady herself.

"We do what surgeon's call a matador move. It sounds like something you'd hear on a gymnastics class but, basically I'll take a needle and poke the dome of the aneurysm." Aliya pointed towards the aneurysm she drew. "And if we see a tiny amount of blood , we're talking minuscule, then we know it was successful." She ended her explanation with a wide smile, trying to settle their anxiety.

"And if it was unsuccessful, it bursts." Mr. Colvin added.

"Possibly," Aliya answered. "But, those chances are slim, I can assure you."

Mr. Colvin breath shook in an attempt to calm his nerves. "But, I can die?"

"Not if I get it clipped." The Levine woman tucked the whiteboard under her arm, putting the cap back onto her marker. "So, you take it easy okay? And if you need me, I'm just a page away."

"Thank you, Dr. Levine." Mrs. Colvin smiled, and Aliya slipped out of the room, leaving them to it.

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For the next two hours after briefing Mr. Colvin on his procedure (where he was assured by Derek that Aliya had a 100% success rate on clipping aneurysms), Aliya had sat down to practice with Derek over and over on how to clip aneurysms.

She had repeated the exact same motions so many times her hands started to throb, and she was pretty sure she would be doing those very same gestures until the day she died, unable to break the cycle, forever stuck in an endless loop of clipping aneurysms.

Though she wouldn't really mind at all.

Derek then swiftly left to retrieve some coffee, though Aliya knew he was only going to go check on how Meredith was doing and return empty handed, seeing as they still hadn't heard a single word about Zola.

However, Aliya's silence without Derek was quickly interrupted by a presence that can only be described as unwanted.

Maybe not totally unwanted, because the Levine woman was totally unsure about what to think about this whole deal with her father, trying desperately to make amends.

"Hi, Aliya." Her father stood in the doorway, watching her from afar.

"Oh, hi." Aliya said in surprise, looking away from her work for one moment, up at her dad who stood tall against the door frame.

"What are you doing?" Travis asked with intrigue, edging closer into the room with cautious steps, as if she were a rabid and unpredictable zoo animal.

"I'm clipping an aneurysm today, I want to be prepared." She replied back, her forearm resting on a pile of neurosurgical books that were so heavy she could probably use them to knock her father unconscious, so she didn't have to deal with him.

"I'm sure you'll do great." Her father offered, his lips curving into a gentle smile as he slipped down on the chair opposite her.

Aliya's back straightened, and she angled her face cautiously at her dad. "The basket? Really?"

Travis let out a breath, before recovering into a somewhat nervous spurt of laughter. "I thought you'd like it."

"It was a little much." Aliya admitted, drumming her fingertips on the desk. "And besides, I'm not much of an apology gift kinda girl."

That was a lie.

She could easily be bought with anything from a baked good, to a bar of Hershey's cookies and cream chocolate, to a new record.

Or coffee.

She would forgive anything with fresh coffee placed into her hand.

"I gathered that when I saw the interns huddled around the basket like elephants at a watering hole." Travis responded, and it seemed to make Aliya feel the tiniest pang of guilt, that was until the residual anger settled back down in the depths of her stomach.

It was anger towards the fact that it seemed only now, when the papers in LA were publishing articles about his wife's treatment of her youngest daughter, that Travis Levine wanted to build a bridge not even an architect could build.

"I don't expect anything from you, you know." Travis said, his voice still soft, like it had been all these years.

Because, he never did anything to actually help her. When she was in that house, and even when she left, he never had a shred of decency to stick up for her, to support her when her mom told her she wasn't good enough until her throat grew sore, widening the ever gaping hole in Aliya's heart.

Sure, he made her chocolate chip pancakes when Molly was out of town, and surprised her with a bouncy castle at her fifth birthday party — even though Molly was far from impressed by it — but, after that, he stopped completely.

Maybe he realised that even everything he did was never good enough for his wife, and that maybe there was no point in even trying anymore, there was no point trying to stop something he had no control over.

So he left Molly to her own devices, ditching Aliya in a deep and shark infested ocean.

Metaphorically speaking of course, though, thinking about it, Aliya would rather fight off a shark than be in her mother's presence.

At least a shark could put her out of her misery.

Travis studied his daughter, who had remained silent, which was unlike her. "I don't expect you to forgive me, for letting your mother treat you the way she did for all these years."

Aliya racked her brain around for something anything to say.

See, she had so much to say. And, she never usually had any trouble with saying it, but instead, all she could focus on was how sick of it she was.

How sick she was of apologies, from people who find new, experimental ways to screw with her over and over. She was getting tired of it all, and quite frankly, she didn't want to say anything.

For once in her life, she was fine with not saying anything.

Because, one thing her father was right about was that she didn't owe him anything.

Not even a goodbye when he eventually left the room, unable to bear her vacant stares.

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"Alex, I really need your pig!" Aliya rushed into the room where her best friend was currently operating on said pig, though it seemed three other people had beaten her to it, all in desperate need of his pig. "Oh, come on!"

Out of context, Aliya yelling I really need you pig! would guarantee a whole bunch of questioning looks thrown her way.

But, desperate times called for desperate measures, and Aliya really needed to look at a pig's brain before she looked at an actual human's one.

"I just need the head, that's all I need!" Jackson continued to pledge his case Aliya missed the first half of.

"No, I need the head!" Aliya countered, advancing further into the room. "I'm clipping a damn aneurysm and my dad is freaking me out!"

"Well, I need to do a simple appendectomy!" The Yang woman cried, scrambling for a scalpel.

"You don't know how to do an appy?" Aliya questioned, not totally judgemental, but seeing as she could probably do an appendectomy in her sleep, it was quite a shock to hear that Cristina Yang was stressing out over a simple procedure.

"There you are." April sighed in relief, though quickly narrowing her eyes at the group surrounding a pig on an operating table. "Alex—"

"Does a pig have an appendix?" Meredith and Cristina both asked desperately in unison, because they were surgeons, not vets, and April had been around pigs more than the rest of them.

"I don't know." The red head replied, not providing any form of help.

Cristina groaned, pressing her hand to her head, before her face contorted, and she snapped her gaze onto April. "I thought you were teaching my skills lab?"

"I am." April said. "I just left them to practice whipstitches. Alex—"

"Stop." Alex interrupted, placing down his scalpel, and reaching for something behind him. "Turn out the lights, close the door."

Begrudgingly, April did what he had ordered, the room doing a total black out, that was until their eyes caught onto the pig's colon, lit up like a glow stick under UV light.

"Check this out." Alex grinned, holding the light over the colon. "Injected fluorescein dye, it makes any viable part of the bowel glow."

"Nice." Jackson mused, staring at awe.

"Woah." Aliya peered over his shoulder, staring down at the inside of the pig. "Aneurysms suck compared to this."

(Though, just from looking at the pig she did receive unwanted flashbacks of the time Owen Hunt stabbed a dozen pigs and told them to fix them — it was a wonder he was made Chief of Surgery.)

"Yeah, in high school, I had a Metallica poster just like this." Alex kept the light on the colon, and everyone fell silent at the sight.

"You might just win the bet." Meredith marvelled, however somewhat resentful.

"Yeah, with a colour-coded colon." Cristina snickered, crossing her arms, though even she could (silently) admit that it was pretty cool.

"No kidding."

"I gotta go." Meredith quickly breezed out of the room abruptly, slipping out of the door.

"This is crazy." Cristina sighed, moving out from behind Alex, and shuffling to the door. "I gotta find a book or a skills— Oh, skills lab!"

"I gotta get some instruments, I'm just gonna use the head alright?" Jackson informed Alex, who didn't even reply, he would have probably agreed to anything whilst looking at a lit up colon.

"What about me? I need the head!" Aliya trailed after him and out of the room to catch him up.

"No, you really don't." Jackson answered, walking side by side with her down the hallway. "You've been practicing on fruit for weeks, so much in fact your fingers have blisters, you're gonna be fine, okay? You could clip an aneurysm in your sleep."

Her brows knotted together in thought, creating lines across her forehead that Jackson leant down to kiss.

And, even just the contact of his lips against her skin made her entire face relax almost instantly. "Fine. You get this pigs head. But, I get the next one."

"Deal." He held out his hand for her to shake, which she did, because she didn't even really need a pigs head to practice on, she already had enough practice and even more could decend her into madness.

So instead, she decided to change the subject to something other than pigs. "Guess what."

"There's about a million things that you could potentially say after a guess what, so hit me with it." Jackson responded, slouching his arm around her shoulder.

"I'm not blacklisted." She said with a smile, though she couldn't help but think back to her dad, who was a part of the reason she wasn't blacklisted, and how she practically ignored him for five minutes straight until he left the room.

"That's great!" Jackson enthused, squeezing her shoulder. "See? I knew it would all work out."

Aliya nodded, slowly, but she wasn't entirely convinced. "Derek did something that he's being quite elusive about but he and Webber are the only one's blacklisted, not me."

The Avery man looked down at her, her features slowly morphing back to the expression she usually wore when she was thinking a little too hard, or something inside her mind was torturing her. "You don't look happy."

"I am, it's just— I don't know." She resigned with a sigh, pushing her cheek into the material of his scrubs.

"Hey, you have your whole career ahead of you, plenty of opportunities to potentially get blacklisted." Jackson joked, trying to catch one single glimpse of her smile.

"Funny." Aliya poked him in the ribs, screwing her nose up. "But, my dad helped him or whatever. Pulled some strings I guess. I don't know, but he came to see me today and I was a total bitch to him. We sat in silence for the longest five minutes of my life until he left."

"You don't owe him anything." Jackson quickly told her, seeing as he currently was number one on the list of Travis Levine haters.

"That's exactly what he said." Aliya murmured, chewing down on her lip. "That I don't owe him anything."

"The one time he's ever been right about anything in his entire life." Jackson said in surprise. "Do you want to hear something that'll make you feel better ten times better?"

"Yes," Aliya perked up, turning her head to gaze up at him. "What is it?"

Jackson cleared his throat, readying himself. "Robbins won't let me operate on the kid because she said Sloan is an artist. I can be an artist. I draw really good stick figures."

Aliya snorted, shaking her head. "Of course you do, and besides, it's solo surgery day, she has to let you fly solo otherwise it's just an ordinary day."

"Hm," Jackson murmured. "She seems to worship the surgical ground Sloan walks on, so my chances are pretty much slim to none."

"I have faith in those odds," Aliya stopped and placed her hands on his shoulders. "So go, practice on the pig and don't botch that cleft lip!"

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"You've been silent for the past two minutes, I haven't even heard you breathe." Derek commented from the side of Aliya, as the brunette  poured her entire concentration into clipping the aneurysm.

"We'll have plenty of time to talk about how great I'm doing until after the surgery." Aliya replied back, hoping to the surgical gods she did not just jinx the entire things.

Derek chuckled, so much his shoulders shook slightly. "Cocky, much?"

"Where do you think I got it from?" Aliya asked, smirking from beneath her mask at the Shepherd man, known for carrying quite a big ego.

"Neurosurgeons are cocky, Levine. It's because we're good at what we do." Derek informed her, looking around the OR at all the scrub staff, watching Aliya and waiting. "And, you have just successfully clipped an aneurysm."

Aliya couldn't help but grin, the kind that spread quickly across her lips like wildfire, sending creases around her eyes as the whole OR erupted into applause.

Despite what the medical world had taken from her, she couldn't help but feel the joy, everytime she got the procedure right, every time a life was saved, and that maybe, maybe it was worth all the heartbreak.

Her brown eyes made their way around the operating room, at all the people there, clapping just for her. Their congratulations reserved just for her.

Yeah, Aliya thought to her self, joyous laughter rippling through her. It was worth it.

—✩—
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"I don't want to go home." Cristina mumbled from the green sofa in April's office.

"I don't either." Meredith responded, tiredly, her hand propping up her cheek from the opposite side of the sofa.

Cristina scratched her forehead, pushing her curls out of her eyes. "Do we really have to talk about it?"

"Yes, you do." Meredith responded, reaching to pat the Yang woman's knee. "Maybe I'll come over later."

"That would be great." Cristina sighed in relief.

"No, actually, that would be bad because that would mean my marriage is over." Meredith leant her head back into the sofa cushions.

"Your marriage isn't gonna be over." Aliya relied, her back resting against Jackson's arm, her feet stretched out onto the sofa next to Cristina. "He worships the ground you walk on."

"That's the nicest thing you've said to me in the past two weeks." Meredith gave a small smile, reaching to accept the plastic couple of tequila April had given the pair of them.

"Don't push your luck." Aliya stifled a grin by bringing her tequila to her lips to hide behind.

"Did you finish your shift?" April asked Alex who just entered the room, sinking straight into the sofa.

Alex just held out his hand, ready for a cup of April's special tequila.

"All right, so who lost the bet?" Jackson asked taking a sip of his tequila.

"Well, it for sure wasn't me." Aliya smiled, swirling her cup in the air. "I clipped my aneurysm perfectly. That one hundred percent success rate isn't going anywhere."

"My appy was flawless." Cristina leant forward, reaching for her tequila.

"Except it was finished by a nurse." Jackson smirked, eyeing the Yang woman who just shot him a look.

"Who told you that?" She questioned, quickly and defensively.

"Karev's guy didn't even wake up." Jackson brought the cup closer to his lips, readying for another sip. "Septic shock."

"Where the hell are you getting all of the hospital gossip all of a sudden?" Aliya questioned, her brows knotted together in suspicion, before looking over at the Karev man, his face grey from the other side of the room.

Cristina lurched forward. "You blew a bowel resection? That's like misspelling your own name."

"Alex, it's not your fault." Aliya spoke softly, trying to catch his eyes, but he stared into space instead, his jaw set in a tense line.

"Hey, guys—" April cut in, also catching onto his deafening silence.

"No, it's Karev." Jackson replied to Cristina's earlier comment. "Sorry, dude. Enjoy that skills lab."

April's teeth gritted. "Can I just point out that Jackson never even touched his patient?"

Jackson stilled in his chair, his victorious grin dropping from his face.

"Sloan did the whole procedure." April told the group, raising her glass in the air and downing it in approximately two seconds.

"What does between you and me mean?" Jackson said, his voice lowered.

"So," April refilled her cup, happily grinning from the alcohol. "It would seem to me he loses by forfeit."

"Loser!"

"Forfeit!"

Jackson laughed, nervously, eyes darting between the residents. "I don't think that's—"

"I think it's perfectly fair." Aliya shrugged, her cheeks flushing purely from the tequila. "At least Karev actually held a scalpel."

"You're not helping." Jackson whispered into her ear, his fingertips scraping the edge of her scrubs.

"You want a rematch?" April darted up onto her feet eagerly. "We could go again tomorrow."

Cristina looked up from her tequila. "And the next day."

"And the next day." Meredith repeated like an echo, as April plucked all of the post it notes from the board, and handing them straight to the Avery man.

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( notes! )

aliya levine is the chairman of the tortured surgeons department, you heard it here first.

i poached mer's surgery for aliya to have in this episode cause it made more sense for aliya to be on the neuro surgery & meredith to have a general one!!

also sorry this chapter is a little shorter than usual!! i'm slowly but surely getting my motivation back so i promise they'll be longer!! i came up with a bunch of plots for season eight that i lowkey can't wait to write!!

and i also wanted to ask if there's anything you'd like to see in the next chapters?? like interactions between characters etc. it can be anything!! :)

( word count! — 6,300 )