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chapter seventeen ━ with you i'm born again
season seven, episode one

❝ i don't know why my mother
doesn't like me, okay? ❞

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Aliya jogged to catch April up in the hall, her shiny new sneakers squeaking across the freshly cleaned floor.

"April!" She called after her, her voice appearing as a hiss as the red head began to fast walk away from Aliya with a large, beige envelope in her hand. "April, don't you dare!" She called out again, dodging all the other doctors and all the carts of medicine that insisted on being pushed right out in front of her when she really really needed to stop that woman.

"Chief! You're back!" The Levine woman heard April say in a high pitched and perky voice, handing Derek his white coat as she took his suit jacket away from him.

"Good morning." Derek responded whilst Aliya's jog increased to a frantic run.

April began to open the envelope containing the scans Aliya just received a moment ago. Though, April had informed her that she would show it to the chief, seeing as she was the one out of the two who was actually cleared for surgery, which she found completely ridiculous.

Both April's justification, and the fact she hadn't been cleared for surgery yet.

She was fine.

She just needed that shiny white slip, saying she could actually do her job. That's what she needed.

"I found a giant skull—"

"Skull base chordoma!" Aliya finally caught up, tugging the large envelope out of April's poaching hands to show Derek the scan herself with a grin plastered onto her face. "We found. We. Well, I found it, but I'm feeling nice." She clarified as April's lips twitched into a frown.

"Biggest one I've ever seen." April added as Aliya pulled out the scan, her hands tightened around the edges as she held it for Derek to see. "Kid came in to the ER with trouble breathing."

"Ok, good." Derek replied, casually, shrugging on the coat as they descended the hall, taking the scan from Aliya to look more closely.

"You got cleared for surgery?" Meredith snapped, gawking in a frustration that Aliya wholeheartedly understood.

"I did." April smiled in triumph.

Meredith pulled a half disgusted look at the girl, turning back to Cristina who was flicking through a bridal magazine. "Bitch."

Aliya shot her head back, nodding in agreement as she related to Meredith's unfiltered anger, her outgrown and unkept brunette hair falling over her shoulder and halfway down her back.

"I know it looks inoperable. I mean, I would have said it was inoperable. But, you're back and you're you." April explained as the five entered the double doors that were opened to the reception, where many of the doctors and nurses were crowded around.

All eyes turned towards Derek as he entered, his own attention however was on the brain scan in his palms. The staff clapped in his presence, the gap in the crowd leading him to the stairs to give an anticipated speech.

"Hey. Good morning. Thank you very much." He smiled, reluctantly, moving up the stairs to look upon his members of staff. "Thank you, thank you very much."

He dropped the scan down, so he was no longer looking at it and cleared his throat as the clapping began to die down.

"It's great to be back. First of all, I'd like to thank Dr. Webber for stepping up in my absence." He gestured a hand to Richard who was stood to the left of him at the foot of the staircase. "Thank you."

The crowd's clapping returned, along with Aliya's own bored clap where her hand just lightly slapped her arm.

"You cleared yet?" Alex appeared behind her, stuffing his hands into his pocket.

To catch everyone up, she was ignoring him, which proved incredibly difficult. However, since he insisted on having that bullet kept in his chest, she resorted to either blanking him or telling him how much of an idiot he was for having a foreign object lodged in his flesh. She showed no emotion, no flicker of a yes or no.

The Levine woman hadn't spent all of her time by his bedside just for him to waltz around with the bullet that could've killed him lodged into his body.

"I'm grateful for all of you, for all of your support during my recovery. Thank you. It's just so great to be back as chief." He lifted the scan, his self control breaking as he brought his eyes back onto it, allowing himself another look. "I'm so grateful for the, uh." He paused, taking a sharp intake of breath that even someone at the back of the room could note.

"Have you been cleared yet?" A new voice, Jackson's, whispered, and she knew immediately that it was all orchestrated by Alex.

Aliya shifted her hip, crossing her arms over her body tightly. "You can tell Alex that no, I haven't been cleared but, I'm seeing Perkins in ten minutes." She answered, her narrowed eyes still remaining on Derek as his speech began to falter.

"I'm sorry, that's a lie." Derek admitted from where he was stood, and Meredith's head snapped up from Cristina's bridal magazine. "It's what people say and the truth is, I hate being chief. I hate it."

April whispered something inaudible to Aliya as her face flickered in disappointment, however Aliya was far from disappointed.

"Chief Webber." The neurosurgeon gestured to the man beside him, who looked too stunned to even speak. "Chief Webber is our chief. And, I'm sorry, but this giant— sorry, I've got to go look at this chordoma. I'm sorry, but— I quit."

Everyone's eyes widened in a mixture of shock to wonder, to hopelessness in Meredith's case as she realised her chances of getting cleared for surgery were now very very low, and to amusement on Dr. Bailey's case.

Derek's confession, unexpected yet brave, brought out a new found determination in Aliya — she would be damned if she missed out on operating on that chordoma.

"Let's go, Kepner, Levine, Come on." Derek ushered them to follow him back towards the double doors.

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Silence was a taunting monster and she could steal the sanity of anybody at any particular time.

With the ticking of the clock above and the tapping of Aliya's fingernails on the table and the creaking of Dr. Perkins' chair opposite her, Aliya wondered if she should just start babbling about anything in the world just to break the most uncomfortable silence of her life.

But, only bad things happened when she babbled. And, she was really trying to act sane so she could be cleared from surgery.

The silence wasn't comfortable. Aliya was the furthest from comfort with the thought of knowing April, Derek and Meredith were running scans on her chordoma and consulting with the kid who came into the ER.

Ever since the shooting and the mental breakdown and the tears, and the dog too, everyone seemed to tiptoe around her, careful of what they said. But, they were like it with each other too. They had all changed since the shooting, and that was inevitable.

Everybody liked the dog more than her anyway, she thought very self-deprecatingly to herself.

It appeared, without surgery, she had become her own worst enemy.

Her own mind seemed to be constantly attacking her with that same constant thought spiral during the past few weeks spent not performing surgery, the thing she had been training for since she could walk, since her first breath.

Her mother had convinced her that her first word was ten blade when she was eight years old.

Which was impossible. What kind of baby said the word ten blade?

"Alex bought a waffle maker, he was trying to bribe me into forgiveness with one."

She broke it, the silence disappearing with her words. She just couldn't take it anymore.

"I didn't have the waffle. He's being ridiculous. Walking around with a bullet in his chest." She scoffed with a shake of her head, her arms slipping across her stomach. "He broke up with Lexie too. Or Lexie broke up with him, both of them are telling me different things. Why can't they just stick to what actually happened? Why is it so damn hard to tell the truth?"

"How does that make you feel?" Perkins asked Aliya a question he had asked almost every single therapy session.

"It makes me feel angry, and mostly annoyed, but also absolutely fine at the exact same time." Aliya smirked at the range of emotions, her fingers continuing to tap in time with the ticking of the clock. "It's his life. If he wants to be stopped at the airport gates, then who am I to judge. It's out of my control."

She pushed her hands into the armrests with a breath, her palms digging deeper into the material, taking a long sigh. Because, it all really and truly was out of her control.

Perkins nodded slowly, opening Aliya's file with one hand, shuffling through the papers that were starting to stack up. "I'm going to sign you off for surgery—"

The clock struck ten in the morning, ticking in time with Aliya's heartbeat and now out of time with her fingernails as they lifted when she paused, her eyes slowly tracing Perkins very sincere expression, looking for signs of it all being a hoax.

When she found nothing, the corners of her dried out lips twitched up, spreading into a smile that slightly ached from the absence of one appearing properly on her face ever since that day.

Aliya may not be able to get what she truly wanted back, but at least she could reclaim surgery as her own. "Thank you."

Perkins pursed his lips with a short nod, his signature scribbling across the yellow paper in sloping lines of biro. "—But, I'm also going to refer you to a therapist." He continued a sentence Aliya thought didn't need continuing.

Her face dropped, her previous smile disappearing completely.

"What?" Aliya blurted out, blinking at the man sat across from her. Now, her heart was out of time with the clock as her it positively began to thrash inside her chest.

Perkins handed the piece of paper to Aliya with an apologetic expression. "I genuinely believe you are ready to get back into surgery. You're strong. You're a fighter. But, I feel as though you have some—" He paused to think of the right combination words that wouldn't launch Aliya into a verbal sparring match.

Like even he knew that she was known to do.

"—Unresolved issues you need to work out."

Aliya's jaw hit the floor at the audacity. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

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—✩—
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A WEEK AFTER THE SHOOTING
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She slipped the latex gloves over her fingers, her expression as dark as the her under eyes. She breathed a sigh, and even that seemed to make her chest ache.

It had reached a point where breathing hurt. The basic fundamentals of life were hurting her, and she didn't know what to do about it. Her nights were restless and spent fighting the duvet for comfort she could never receive. Nowadays, it felt like comfort was a myth.

Though, when she did finally drift off, she woke up abruptly in a hot sweat, with tear stain cheeks and all she could do was scream wilding in her head in an effort not to wake anyone up. She yelled and cried and wailed in her mind so much that the blinding migraines were constant.

It had been a week since the shooting, and ten minutes since her first ever therapy session.

"What do we have?" Aliya Levine, now a grey faced ghost, peered over an intern's shoulder, who had just finished disinfecting a deep stomach laceration.

"I just finished removing the glass. He got into a fight and someone threw a beer bottle at him." The intern explained carefully, sliding clumsily out of the stool so Aliya could take a look. "It didn't lacerate any important arteries, luckily."

"Yeah, lucky." She whispered, sarcastically, gnawing on the inside of her cheek. "3-0 silk."

She held her hand out as the intern ran off to collect the suture kit, returning back a second later with it in his hand, passing it to Aliya.

"Why the hell are you shaking?" She snapped at the red headed intern across from her, noticing his hand tremor.

His hand flew to meet his other, gripping it tightly as he babbled in an attempt to deny her accusation. Battering on about too much caffeine or something.

Aliya wasn't listening.

The once happy, kind, optimistic woman simply scoffed, shaking her head bitterly as she opened the suture kit. Which was when the blood started to pour out of the wound, and her eyes began to widen like a deer in headlights, her hand flying to apply pressure. To stop the bleeder.

There was too much blood already.

Too much damn blood.

It was everywhere.

All she could see was red—

—Andy.

Her blood stained lips flashed before her eyes, taunting her field of vision.

Aliya blinked it away, but when her eyes opened again, all she could see was her lifeless eyes.

Nobody ever told Aliya that when a person died, they turned cold instantly.

Sure, she knew it. Everyone knew it.

However, she didn't realise how quick somebody could go from warm, bursting with life and a future awaiting them, to stone cold.

"Do you need any help, Levine?" Mark appeared in the corner of her peripheral vision, noticeable despite the busy noises and bustling of the ER.

"No." She replied, not bothering to even thank him for his offer as her concentration increased despite the blur of her eyes and the pounding of her head.

All she could see was the blood coating the tips of her gloves hands, and the patient's eyes looking down at her in a drunken haze.

The blood began to drip out more between her fingers in gushing rivers, meandering down her arms.

Again, she tried to blink it away, she tried to make it stop.

One.

Two.

But, it didn't go. She lived effortlessly as if it was that day.

"Levine, are you—"

She didn't realise she was trembling.

Her hands never trembled.

But, here she was.

The brunette steadied herself. "Yes, Dr. Sloan, I'm very sure I don't need any help." Her voice sounded much sharper and louder than she intended to, but too much of her focus was on the red.

"Aliya," His voice came out softly, which almost made her hate him even more. "Why don't you grab a cup of coffee, hm?" The Sloan man moved beside her, ready and willing to take over.

She continued, despite his lurking, reaching for gauze as she packed the wound. "I just had coffee."

"That never stopped you before." He tried to lighten the mood just a little, wanting to observe even a trace of a smile flicker across her features, but he got nothing, just the thunder of her narrowed hazel eyes concentrating so hard on stopping the blood gushing out that lines began to wrinkle across her forehead. "If you would let me just—"

"I'm fine." She hissed, the drunken man widened his eyes, looking between Mark and the girl whose hands were currently pressing hard onto his abdomen.

The truth was, Aliya believed that if she told everyone she was fine, she would start to actually believe it herself.

She wanted to be fine, she wanted to smile in the hallways, and make jokes with Alex, and eat cookies with Lexie, and drink at Joe's with Meredith and Cristina. She wanted to almost-kiss Jackson.

She wanted to be the person she used to be.

But, in that moment, she couldn't get who she was back. She couldn't smile like she normally did. And, she certainly could not fake being kind.

Mark cleared his throat. "Aliya. Let me—"

"I don't need any of your damn help!" Aliya snapped, careless of the attention she had just drawn to herself, because now she was pissed.

Her head snapped to the intern.

"Didn't hit any important arteries, huh? Explain why he's bleeding this much. Nobody should bleed this much from a simple laceration that didn't come into contact with any blood vessels. Trust me, I know how much blood—"

The red haired intern flinched and began to stutter, a mixture of 'it was a mistake', 'I didn't realise' and 'I'm sorry'.

"You know, mistakes when you're a doctor can't be fixed with a simple I'm sorry. Apologies are useless. They are meaningless." Aliya snapped, because all she could see behind her eyes, was Andy, lying motionless and blue on the ground by her feet, her blood smearing the floor.

She wondered how long it took to get the blood out of the tiles, because it sure had dried up by the time they got to her body.

"They don't matter because people die anyway, right?" Aliya spoke with a simple shrug. "We just try and put off the dying process."

"I'm going to die!?" The patient exclaimed with wild doe-like eyes.

Aliya snapped her head to look at the man that for once in her life, she didn't even bother to know the name of. "Maybe. It'll happen someday. Maybe today's the day, we'll never know!"

"Aliya— please, let me—" Mark's hand rested on her shoulder and at that contact, Aliya recoiled, flinching away from him.

"You know what, screw you, Mark. Screw you."

And with that, she pushed herself off from the stool, sending it tumbling backwards, throwing the bloodied gloves down onto the bedside, the maroon staining the sheets in violent, horror movie-like splatters as she stormed out of the emergency room.

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PRESENT DAY
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"Oh my God." Callie exclaimed as she entered the room with Mark, her eyes fixated on the ginormous chordoma displayed on the screen.

"Woah." Mark spoke in awe.

"I know right." Aliya agreed, tracing the chordoma with her own eyes — down around the brain and the spine where the tumour had spread, it really was the definition of a perfect chordoma, if Aliya could even say that.

"You weren't kidding." He breathed, appearing beside her shoulder to take an even closer look.

The Levine woman side-eyed him. "I sent you a photo of the scans."

Mark shrugged his shoulders. "Yes, but I thought you edited it or something with one of those apps."

"You think I have time for that?" She said with a raised brow, a small smirk on her lips.

"The last surgeon broke the dura, which enabled the tumour to mushroom into the brain and down into the spine." April described whilst zooming in on different parts of where the tumour resided.

Derek rubbed the side of his jaw, frowning at the scan. "It's wrapped around the brain stem. Whatever we do, we need to do it quickly."

"The size of this thing— normally I open up the sinuses or the hard palate." Mark explained with a frown, leaning in to take a closer look.

"You'd have to open up both, right?" Aliya pointed out, still stunned by the complexity of her chordoma.

Because, no she was cleared for surgery.

So screw April Kepner from trying to steal it out of her cold, dead hands.

Ha, she wasn't dead yet!

Mark narrowed his eyes. "You want me to split his whole face open?" Derek nodded his head slightly whilst the four others shared looks of suspicion. "Sinuses, hard palate, tongue, jaw—"

"A broken jaw is excruciating, let alone the rest of it." Callie informed them, cringing at the thought.

"Does this kid know what he's in for?" Meredith questioned in concern.

"He wants to live. I don't think he's concerned about the pain." Derek replied quickly, just wanting to get back to his surgeries.

Aliya shook her head in bewilderment. "He's just a kid. It's an unbearable amount of pain. No amount of morphine could make that amount of pain manageable. You have to weigh the costs and the benefits here."

Meredith nodded, agreeing with the brunette's point. "And, you don't know how enmeshed the tumor is. You don't even know if you can get it all."

"Thank you, Dr. Grey." Derek raised his voice over Meredith's last words, a look of determination on his face as he dismissed what his wife was saying.

"If you want to try this thing, Torres and I are gonna need to coordinate." Mark said with a sigh. "What are we thinking, a week?"

"No later." Derek gave them a curt nod of his head.

"I'll clear my schedule." Callie responded, agreeing to the procedure. "Welcome back, Dr. Shepherd."

Derek grinned. "Thank you, Dr. Torres."

"Levine," Callie turned to the brunette woman before she left the room, her hand reaching for her shoulder. "How are you doing?"

"Great." Aliya nodded, attempting to widen her smile. "I'm fine, thank you."

She gave a nod of her head, before following Mark out of the room, because even Callie Torres knew how much Andy meant to her.

Aliya's throat bobbed, but she coughed to clear it, straightening in her chair as she turned her attention back to the computer screen.

"You're not even cleared for surgery yet." Meredith pointed out as Derek switched his screen off.

"I'll get cleared." He said with confidence, pushing up from the chair, exiting the room.

Meredith watched her husband leave, frowning whilst she turned back to April and Aliya. "Why are you smiling for? You're not even cleared yet." She hissed at the Levine woman, slumping into the free chair with her arms crossed tightly over her stomach.

"What's this then?" Aliya replied through a toothy grin, retrieving the piece of paper from her pocket and displaying it to Meredith, whose face dropped almost immediately. "I'm thinking of having it framed."

"Nice!" April congratulated.

Meredith lurched over at the speed of light to slap Aliya's upper arm. "I hate you!"

"You love me!" Aliya grinned, poking Meredith in the shoulder as she stared longingly at the paper in Aliya's hands, whilst the brunette was trying to forget the other piece of paper in her pocket (the card of a therapist Perkins was referring her to). "You'll get cleared, eventually, Mer. He can't keep you from surgery forever."

Meredith made an uncommitted noise, not entirely convinced of that fact. "He can see all of the dark and twisty."

"He doesn't have the sight, he's just a pain in the ass." Aliya began to spin around on her chair as the dirty blonde fell silent, taking a breath.

"I didn't tell you—" Meredith paused, stopping herself seeing as her breathing grew shaky, which that alone caused the Levine woman to pause, her shoes hitting the floor to stop the chair from spinning about. "I had a miscarriage, the day of the shooting. You lost Andy, so I didn't want to tell you. And—"

Aliya's face contorted in shock of the news, and she reached out to place a hand on Meredith's knee. "Oh, Mer—"

The Grey woman sniffed, swatting at a cheek to stop and tear wishing to fall from her eye.

"I'm so sorry." The brunette breathed.

"I just thought you should know." Meredith placed her hand on top of Aliya's, and the pair sat there in silence, mourning both of their losses.

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—✩—
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A WEEK AFTER THE SHOOTING
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Eventually, Mark found Aliya sat upright against the wall a few hallways down from the ER. She was trembling a hundred times a minute, picking at the skin around her fingernails so hard she was close to drawing blood.

Correction, she was drawing blood.

Mark approached her slowly, sinking to sit next to her, resting his arms on his upright knees. In one palm he was holding a blueberry muffin.

That looked slightly overcooked to say the least.

"Here." He reached out to balance the muffin on top of her knee.

"I'm not hungry." Aliya grumbled, her expression remained unchanged, and that's when Mark could see her cheeks were sunken in.

He didn't want to say it, but she looked so different. All joy had died from her eyes, her cheeks were pale, the pink blush she always had on them was gone.

She was slipping away.

And, he wasn't sure how he could make it stop.

"Just because we aren't together anymore doesn't mean I don't get to share my amazing baking skills with you. Now eat your muffin." He pointed at the baked good, then at Aliya's mouth, coaxing her to taste it.

Aliya scoffed. "I was the one who gave you that recipe, dingus." She remarked, narrowing her eyes at the man, because it was clear he went wrong somehow. It definitely didn't look very appetising.

"It's a great recipe, I use it to seduce all my women." He took a piece from the top of the muffin, sliding it in his mouth.

"You're a pig." Aliya announced, glancing in distaste at him as he continued to steal pieces of the muffin. "I thought it was my muffin."

"It is." Mark shrugged, nudging his shoulder against hers and hanging his neck in a way that angled his face closer. "But, you're nice. Sharing is caring."

"I'm not a 'sharing is caring' when it comes to my food." Aliya scowled, still leaving the muffin untouched.

"I don't have to admit you to psych against your will, do I?" He joked, but she didn't find it very funny.

Seeing as one of these days, she probably would need to be admitted.

Aliya's eyes turned to slits, slowly turning her head to a grinning Mark. "If that was your take on a joke, you're really not that funny."

"Oh, Aliya." He laughed, dipping his head as he made a performance of throwing his head back up again with a sigh. "I'm hilarious, you should know this by now."

Spoiler alert: she still was not finding him entertaining. "I don't need you to sit with me."

"Who says I'm doing this for you?" He questioned on his mouthful, still chewing his bite of muffin, making odd faces in the meantime. "We both know I'm selfish. Maybe I just want to sit here making inappropriate jokes for my own personal gain."

He curled his nose up at something, taking the muffin away from Aliya's knee.

"Don't eat that, that muffin sucks ass." He scrunched it up in his hand and shoved it into one of the drawers opposite them. She finally snorted at that, biting down on her tongue to stop her laughter from progressing.

"I don't like you very much, you know that right?"

Mark simply smiled even more at her remark, ignoring the small element of truth behind it.

Maybe it was guilt from how their relationship inevitable ended that made him feel an undying need to look out for Aliya.

He always would, out of the corner of his eye.

Even if she didn't want him to.

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—✩—
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PRESENT DAY
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"I dig weddings." Jackson announced as he chewed on his lunch. "I do a mean chicken dance."

Aliya nodded her head slowly in respect of his claim. "Macarena is my speciality." She added, slurping on her soda to annoy Cristina, the bride to be, even more. 

Cristina glance away from the bridal magazine led out across her lap, her head turning past Aliya towards Jackson, sitting beside her.

"Oh, there will be no chicken dance." She ordered, before glaring at the brunette woman, still slurping. "Or the macarena. And, if you two even think about starting a conga line, I will physically throw you both out." She looked between the two of them both, issuing a formal warning, but the pair were now laughing obnoxiously shoving chunks of pineapple into their mouths.

Aliya scoffed in the midst of her laughter. "You can't throw me out of my own house."

"Oh yeah? Watch me." She threatened further, flicking the magazine page rather aggressively.

"The only thing I'll be watching is you fail." Aliya remarked, swallowing her pineapple chunk. "Do you know how many times Alex has forgotten his keys, and I've had to climb through the window?"

Cristina raised a brow at the brunette to her right, not wanting to know any more of the weird stuff Alex and Aliya got up too in their free time, although Aliya could probably say the exact same thing for Cristina and Mer.

"I just went to the cafeteria, and some nurse called me Reed and then said, "I thought you died."" April frowned as she approached the group in the tunnels, a hand clutching her lunch as she stood in front of the gurney Meredith, Cristina, Aliya and Jackson were all sat on, with Lexie sitting on a chair to their left. 

"Yeah, don't go to the cafeteria for lunch. They just point and stare." Lexie advised, a freshly packed sandwich in her hand.

"Is that why you dyed your hair?" Jackson questioned her, earning a pointed look from Lexie, now back to brunette.

"They stare because we should've died." Cristina clarified. Because, if math wasn't on their side, half of them shouldn't even be here right now.

Lexie looked back towards April. "Pack a lunch. Keep it in your locker."

The Kepner girl nodded at the advice, moving to sit on the chair next to Jackson, just as Alex entered the tunnels the residents had claimed for themselves ever since the intern year.

He had his head dipped to the floor in some sort of mock upset, but as he came closer he revealed the yellow paper, the same paper Aliya received that morning, giving her a free ticket to the chordoma surgery.

Alex laughed evilly, holding the paper out for all to see in victory.

"You have got to be kidding me. You got cleared?" Meredith snapped, grimacing at Alex as he sat down, a grin displayed on his very smug face.

"It's down to you, Yang and Levine!" He cheered, holding the paper in his hand as if it were something he was going to pass down to his grandkids.

Aliya stared at her lunch where she had began to tear pieces of bread from her sandwich to avoid Alex's eye contact. "You can tell Karev that Levine has in fact been cleared for surgery. An hour before him, so he can go suck it."

"That is not funny." Meredith sneered, crossing her arms.

"Well, Perkins is no dummy." Cristina exclaimed, aiming her fork at Meredith's face. "He can see the crazy right under the Meredith Grey surface."

Meredith scoffed at the comment. "Again, Cristina, it's not funny because you're not gonna get cleared either, and the two of us are gonna be serving slushies at the multiplex."

"Really?" Cristina tilted her head as she pondered that thought. "I'd choose dermatology over multiplex."

"No." Jackson shook his head, spearing his salad with his fork. "I'd go gynecology over dermatology."

Cristina rolled her eyes at him. "Oh, of course you would. Perv."

Aliya pondered the thought, popping a piece of torn off bread into her mouth. "I think I'd be a lab tech. That would really piss my mother off." She smiled gleefully through her mouthful at that particular thought.

"I think I'd go with psych." Lexie announces ned to the group, staring down at her sandwich as everyone else's eyes darted to her in alarm. In light of seeing everyone watching her, she simply sighed, before muttering: "That was a joke."

The youngest Grey sister frowned at their delayed laughter.

"That was good." Jackson spoke, still trying to force out a laugh, until he looked down at what the brunette to his left had been doing for the past ten minutes. He frowned, displeased at the state of Aliya's sandwich, torn to pieces in her lunch box.

So, he reached into his own lunch bag, pulling out a packet of potato chips, handing them to her.

She eyed him up, before looking down towards the Tangy Cheese Dorito's he had placed in her lap for her.

"Thanks." Aliya opened the packet gratefully, pushing away her sandwich box and popping a chip into her mouth.

"Anyway—" Meredith sighed, leaning back on the gurney. "I don't know what Perkins' problem is with me."

Aliya shot her a look, quirking a brow at her friend. "Maybe he's heard of you before."

"Maybe he saw your file." Cristina chimed in.

"Maybe he knew your mother." Alex added as Meredith pursed her lips at the so called game her fellow residents seemed to be playing.

"Maybe he heard how you told the shooter to shoot you." Jackson finished, adding the cherry on top.

"Not funny." Meredith pouted.

"Not a joke." Jackson instantly replied back, bringing another mouthful of lettuce to his lips.

"Dr. Bailey!" Meredith greeted loudly, announcing Bailey's presence in the room which caused Aliya to look up from where she was now staring down at Cristina's bridal magazine, her brain turning foggy from the images of tulips and tulle.

"Welcome back." April smiled at the attending.

Bailey continued to stare at the six, giving each one of them a long look.  "You okay?" Alex finally asked, watching her cautiously.

"I'm happy to see you all." She smiled slightly, unnoticeable from a distance.

There was another short pause before Bailey passed a chart towards Alex.

"Karev, there's a patient in 23-04 that needs an endoscopy."

Alex shuffled out of his seat, taking the chart from Bailey, and breezing out the tunnels.

"Grey and Yang," Bailey turned her attention to the twisted sisters. "Surely your paycheck covers more than stuffing your face in the basement. Get to the clinic now."

Meredith and Cristina gathered up their things (begrudgingly), and slipped off the gurney, before following Alex out of the room.

"And, you two—" She turned to face April and Jackson, her breath catching in her throat seeing as she was there when Charles died, when he took his last breath. "I'm awfully sorry about the loss of your friends."

"Thank you." April ducked her head.

"So are we." The Avery man replied.

After a long moment of silence, where Aliya had paused with her hand halfway inside the chip packet so it didn't make a sound, Bailey straightened up, reverting back to the matter at hand.

"22-13 has a bowel impaction, and I'm sure as hell not about to stick my hands in there." She waved the chart in front of the two residents, and Jackson took the chart as April hopped from her chair. The Avery man followed her, only after giving Aliya a quick smile before he left.

"22-20 needs an ultrasound." Bailey finally passed the last chart to Lexie, who she let leave before turning to Aliya, the last one left out of the residents, slowly.

And, it seemed she didn't have a chart for Levine woman.

The pair locked eyes for a moment, because Bailey always had a soft spot for this particular intern.

Of course, all of her interns were pains in her asses, and she openly admitted once that George was her favourite, so now Aliya had seemed to taken first place, if you were keeping scoreboard.

"I heard about Andy." Bailey said, her voice soft and sympathetic. Aliya inhaled sharply, her chest growing tighter even at the mere mention of her name. "I'm terribly sorry, Levine, I knew how close you were. If you ever need anything."

Aliya pressed her lips into a line, nodding her head as she willed herself not to cry. "Thank you, and for what it's worth, I'm sorry too."

⠀
—✩—
⠀

A WEEK AND A HALF
AFTER THE SHOOTING
⠀

A few nights after her late night ER outburst, Aliya slept comfortably for the first time in over a week. She didn't even dream, she didn't wake up in a cold sweat. Her head was just nestled in a crown of pillows, and for the first time she did not need to fight to get to sleep, she just let herself fall into the abyss.

For the sake of transparency, it was mainly due to the sleeping pills the psych ward had prescribed to her after said outburst.

"Aliya Levine!" A recurring voice only present in her nightmares chimed, making Aliya believe she was in fact back to her dreaming tendencies again, or the sleeping pills had well and truly worn off. "Aliya." The voice was sharper and accompanied by the clicking of fingers in front of her face, making her question what kind of dream was this?

She sniffled in her half-asleep state, and the expensive scent of Chanel perfume almost made Aliya choke so instead, she twisted her head in the pillow that her face was buried into, burrowing deeper into the sheets even more.

"Aliya Levine, why the hell are you living in a hostel?"

The brunette's eyes flew open, and the realisation she was not in fact hallucinating hit her like a tonne of bricks.

She groaned into the pillow, slamming the other one next to her over her head to block out the ear splitting noise, though she could still make out the very faint: "Oh, Aliya, stop it! Now you're just being childish!'"

Moving the duvet away from her feet with frantic and desperate kicks, she slipped onto the hardwood floor, making very brief eye contact with her mother — whose blonde hair was bouncing in loose curls past her shoulders, clad in a powder blue blouse and black pants — before padding across the cold floor, out of her door and into the safety of hallway, out of her enclosed room where the only method of escape was out the window and shimmying down the drain pipe.

"Aliya! Don't walk away from me, I'm talking to you, and I came all this way from Los Angeles to see you!" Molly followed her daughter's footsteps down the stairs, her voice stretching out every syllable she spoke in exaggeration, the pitch causing Aliya to press a hand to her forehead to try and blur out the pain of her mothers voice, making her way to the coffee supply with muscle memory. "Aliya! I had to fly economy! Do you know how hard it is to get tickets short notice?"

Being ignored by her daughter was not something Molly Levine particularly enjoyed.

She curled her nose up at Aliya's home, and the amount of boxes piled in the foyer curtesy of April and Jackson, who were now moving in with them after the shooting. Seeing as the pair both shared apartments with their best friends, who died during in the shooting.

"There were crying babies and everything." Molly groaned, crossing her arms in a huff as she stopped short in the doorway of the kitchen.

The clock on the hutch read 7:42am, therefore Jackson and April were now padding about in the kitchen, waking up properly before going off to work.

April was fully dressed, like the freak she was, reading as she sipped on herbal tea whilst Jackson was dressed in his pyjamas, lazily leaning against the counter and sipping slowly on his own coffee (not Aliya's, because when he stole her coffee he earned himself a free twenty minute lecture).

"Hi! You must be Aliya's mother! I'm April Kepner, her roommate!" April beamed at Molly, hopping out of her seat and holding out her hand. "I'm a huge fan of your work! Your stem cell study is groundbreaking!"

She didn't hear the rest of her mother's conversation with April, she blocked it out as she reached for one of her many mugs, stumbling to the coffee in Jackson's hand. He poured it into her mug, watching her stare in a trance at the brown liquid spilling into her cup.

"So, your mother is here." Jackson commented, stating the obvious as he looked over at her mother who was chatting with an overly perky April, smiling as she praised Molly relentlessly. "She seems pleasant."

Aliya snorted, dipping her head into the mug as she slurped on the burning hot liquid. "She hates you and your whole family. Of course she's pleasant."

Jackson's eyes widened in curiosity, and at the thought people actually hated him. "What do you mean?"

"Need I remind you? She was nominated for a Harper Avery. She didn't get a Harper Avery. She now hates all those associated with Harper Avery." Aliya explained, glaring at her mother with watchful eyes over the blue rim of the mug, she was still talking to April, but as April suddenly disappeared, she stared back at her daughter, who was now attempting to hide behind said mug.

"You must be another one of her roommates. She seems to have hundreds of them." Molly looked at the Avery man in distaste, the same expression she bad when she first met Alex, and April just a moment ago — though luckily for Jackson, she didn't seem to recognise him. The last time she had seen the Avery man, he was five. "Hello. I'm Molly Levine. How lovely to meet whoever you are." She said blandly, not even bothering to shake his hand.

Then, her expression changed.

Yeah, Aliya was wrong.

Did she recognise him?

No. No, no, no, no, NO!

"Are you—" Molly raised a brow, and Aliya's throat grew dry in panic. "Jackson Avery?"

So, Aliya did what she always did. She played dumb. "Who's that?"

Molly snapped her eyes off of the man (who was in fact Jackson Avery), and towards her own daughter. "I could've sworn—"

"No." Aliya shook her head in denial, and Jackson just looked intrigued as to how this whole ordeal was going to pan out. "This isn't Jackson what's his name, this is— uh—"

She turned her head to meet his eyes, racking her brain around for a damn name!

She landed on: "Tom,"

Just as Jackson spoke up: "Norbert."

The pair shared a glance as they both suggest a name at the exact same time.

"Tom Norbert, that's my name." Jackson disguised as Tom stood up taller, determined to change the preconceived notion that Molly already hated him, even if she didn't know it actually was him. "It's nice to meet you, your research into chronic heart failure last moment was amazing, groundbreaking even." He smiled, mischievously as Molly let out an actual legitimate smile.

Aliya slowly turned her head to Jackson, who met her eyes on the way there. Her face scrunched in disgust, wondering what the hell he was doing.

"Oh my god." Aliya's voice was strained as she refilled her coffee and disappeared out of the kitchen with a shiver, leaving her mother behind.

"Aliya! You have to lighten up." Molly called, also ditching Jackson in the kitchen to follow her daughter. "I did yoga last week it was very refreshing. You should try it sometime."

"Good for you." Aliya mumbled, tugging her old jeans out of the washing basket to change in to.

"Aliya, you have to move house." Molly said, digging her heels into the floorboards. "I won't allow my daughter to live in this environment. It's more like a psych experiment than a house!"

Aliya ignored her criticism, searching for her jacket underneath the pile of April's many boxes stacked in front of the place Aliya usually dumped her coat when she got home.

"Aliya! Stop moving!"

The brunette huffed, slinging her navy coat over her shoulder, crossing her arms as she finally met her mother's eyes. "What?"

Molly pursed her lips at her daughter. "You were in a shooting and you nearly died. You didn't call and tell me to tell me you were okay. Let alone alive."

Aliya shook her head, unable to believe that her mother would somehow find a way to make the situation Aliya's fault instead of her own. "You could've called. Trent called, dad called, even freaking Eliana called. Need I remind you, you didn't call." She pointed an accusatory finger at her mother.

"I didn't call because I knew you wouldn't of picked up." Molly defended, though it was a weak argument. The woman knew how to pick up a darn phone.

Aliya laughed, false and short. "Bull." She snapped, her fingers tightening around the clothes in her arms.

"Aliya." Molly said her name sternly in a warning tone.

"That's just nonsense, mother." Aliya reiterated, not sure if she was aiming to hit a nerve, craving a reaction from her mother other than her usual disappointment.

"Aliya! You were shot at! I didn't know how you were, and I didn't want to make things worse, okay?" Molly sighed, placing her bag down on the bench, her heels clicking as she paced. "You and I both know we make each other worse."

"You have no idea what I went through that day." Aliya spat, her eyes stinging as tears lined her lids.

"No one does, Aliya! You are always like this. You always think about yourself and nobody else. You are the most selfish, immature, erratic person I've ever met and I'm ashamed you're—" Molly stopped herself, but Aliya knew what she was going to say. She had heard it a million times before, what else was new? She didn't have to hear how ashamed her mother was that she was her daughter for the hundredth time. "You never told us what happened to you! Your nurse friend died? Yeah, that's terrible, but you can't shut down! You have to keep—

"She died in my freaking arms!" Aliya lurched forwards slightly, that tear from before finally slipping out her eye and down her cheek.

Molly looked taken back, no words appearing before her.

"And, she wasn't just a nurse friend." She added, her voice cracking. "She was more like a mother than you ever were."

⠀
—✩—
⠀

"I don't want to sound like a bitch, but my life was actually starting to get interesting again." Aliya stated to the trauma therapist, chewing on the edges of her fingernails.

"Care to elaborate?" Perkins clicked the pen in his hand, twirling it around in his palm.

She sighed loudly, before explaining. "Well, if you must know, I was getting a love life back. I was dating. I nearly kissed a guy who works here, a guy that I think I actually like, and I'm doing really well in surgery, no, exceptionally well in that matter."

The brunette lurched forward in her chair, balancing her elbows on her knees.

"I saved a woman's life, and I got the chance to operate on this huge subdural hematoma! It was all great, and then we were shot up!" Aliya threw her hands down in frustration, pushing out of the chair to begin pacing around the room, rolling her eyes at the plain, sad beige wall.

"That's right." Perkins nodded, wisely, starting to get whiplash from trying to follow the woman with his eyes. "Aliya you were shot up. Something terrible happened. It may not feel like it yet, but you will get all of that back. Life goes on like it always does and you will have a chance to get back on track, you just have to push through it. You lost your friend. And, worst of all, you were there to watch her go. Your grief doesn't have a time stamp. It's yours to own."

Aliya scoffed at Perkins' speech, though she didn't really mean to, he did make perfect sense. But, when you only just lost a person who meant the world to you, it was hard to even acknowledge sense.

She made her way back to the chair, letting her head fall back onto the grey fabric, screwing her eyes tightly shut, a cold hand resting on her forehead. Her own personal grief felt all-consuming, and it seemed like it was far from leaving. The grief had settled in for the long haul.

"But, my mother is here." Aliya mumbled grimly, pushing her palms into her eyes sockets in an attempt to ease the pain behind her sleep deprived eyes.

Perkins' eyes flickered to the clock. "We still have a few minutes if you want to explore that train of thought."

"We are going to need more than a few minutes for that one, doctor." She muttered.

⠀
—✩—
⠀

It had been ten hours since Aliya's mother appeared in the kitchen. And, she had been lurking in the hospital ever since.

She was currently standing in front of her like the bad omen she was, after following her daughter in a rented range rover all the way to the hospital, as Aliya complained about her mother to Jackson who couldn't help but back seat drive her and her erratic driving. Molly Levine had even appeared when Aliya was sitting at Alex's bedside, where he was still recovering from his gunshot wound. And, she was also there in the gallery when she was watching Teddy Altman perform a heart transplant.

That reminded Aliya of the one time when she got to hold a heart herself. Her mother was in the gallery at the time, and Molly's face lit with pride from the gallery window, but not because of her daughter, but at what she had created.

Half of Aliya wanted to scrub out immediately at the time, but the other half felt a sense of joy at her mother finally being visibly proud of her youngest daughter — but even Aliya knew her mother was never proud of her, despite everything.

She was there at lunch in the tunnels, stealing Aliya's food and groaning about how bland it was, and even talking to her friends (which Aliya hated with everyone bone in her body).

"I told you, your father couldn't make the trip, he's doing a couple pro-bono surgeries, but he sent this over for you." She tapped the grey box that was now on the desk in front of her. "He thought it might bring you some peace."

Aliya regarded the box with her widened brown eyes, and her mother studied her every move from the flicker of recognition, to the tension in her jaw.

"Goodbye, Aliya."

"Bye, Mom." Aliya replied, looking up briefly as her mother disappeared in a dusty blue cloud of Chanel.

Her eyes returned to the box and she stared at it for a few minutes. After battling with her mind deciding whether or not to open the box, she reluctantly pulled the lid off carefully and her face from twenty years ago stared back at her.

Eight year old Aliya was beaming at the camera, her hair tied up in a red bow. Trent and Eliana were beside her, smiling too. She removed that photo from the box, revealing the picture from a day Aliya could replay every moment in her mind.

Christmas Day, when she was six years old. Aliya was sat by their grand fireplace at their home in Malibu, a green patterned stocking bundled in her lap. Her small hands were holding the sack, dressed in pink, cupcake patterned pyjamas. She was neither frowning nor smiling. She was just staring directly at the camera, showing hardly any  flicker of emotion.

She was six years old and her mother had told her, on Christmas Day, that she could either be a doctor, or nothing.

How would a six year old even begin to understand that?

The lid snapped back onto the box.

⠀
—✩—
⠀

PRESENT DAY
⠀

With a burst of anger, Aliya stormed into the conference room in a state of fury, her hair clinging to the sweat on her cheek. "What gives you the right to think you can refer me to a therapist?"

He was a trauma therapist, after all. Therefore he held at least some right.

Perkins was half way through collecting all the files on the table. "It's clear you have a lot of unresolved problems deeply rooted inside of you."

There it was again.

It was as if Freud himself had been reincarnated.

And, Aliya didn't really care for it, not at all.

Perkins peered up at Aliya who was pacing back and forth across the small width of the room, yet again.

Deja vu was knocking at her freaking front door.

"Deep— deeply rooted? Are you kidding me?" She remarked, rolling her eyes as she continued to pace, wondering who this therapist thought he was. How can he just make assumptions about situations he didn't even know the full story of?

"I'm being serious, Dr. Levine. Your family. Your perception of yourself—"

"My perception of myself is none of your concern." Aliya interrupted before he had the chance to say anything else. "And, my relationship with my own family is none of your business either."

Perkins gestured to the chair opposite him as he sat back down, inviting Aliya to discuss this train of thought with him. She didn't sit. "Why is that?"

"Because you don't know me. You don't know my family."

"I know that your mother never shows any real affection towards you. You told me that yourself. And, here are your exact words." He pursed his lips as he moved a file away to reveal Aliya's, which was a pretty thick file. He flicked it open, rummaging through the therapy notes. "No matter how hard I try, I can never please the 'Wicked Witch of the Cardio Floor'." He read out the words on the page, and when he finished he looked back up to Aliya, who was biting down on her cheek in an effort to keep her cool.

With a sigh, she begrudgingly dropped down into the seat after all. "Word for word, huh?"

He nodded his head, closing the file. "Why do you think you can't please her?" He asked sincerely, his hands resting on his knee.

"Because." She muttered, her eyes wandering past Perkins, and out of the window at the rainy Seattle sky.

"Because?" He printed Aliya to 'explore her thoughts', that she didn't exactly want to dig into.

She shuffled uncomfortably in her seat. "It's simple."

"It's not." Perkins countered.

"It's very simple." Aliya assured, now bored from all his open questions and ambiguity. "She doesn't like me."

"Why's that?"

Aliya made a face, her nose scrunching up as she turned away from the window to look at Perkins. His blue eyes were studying her, what she caught him doing in almost every therapy session. "Are you paid to ask questions?"

He tilted his head in contemplation. "Probably."

"I don't know why my mother doesn't like me, okay?" She replied with a sigh, reaching to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "But, I do know what she does to the people she doesn't like, and that's exactly what she did to me."

"What does she do?" He asked, sincerely enough.

"She eats away at your self esteem until there's none left." She said matter-of-factly, dropping her head to the side to avoid eye contact.

She didn't want to openly admit anything to do with her mother, and the relationship she had with her.

"That's quite extreme." Perkins commented.

"Molly Levine is quite extreme." She replied, sharply. "But, for once in my life it's not about my mother. It's not about her. My mother doesn't consume all my thoughts."

"But, she's still there." Perkins observed.

"What? Can you see into my mind now?" Aliya frowned.

"No, " Perkins denied, stifling a laugh. "But, your mother will always be that voice in the back of your mind telling you that you're not enough."

"I just operated on a massive cordoma— the biggest one I've ever seen. I saw the palate divide, I looked down a microscope for hours helping to resect the tumour. All through that surgery I was not even thinking about my mother." Aliya described, still on that surgical high.

That was a lie, she was thinking how her mother wouldn't ever bat an eye at what she did today.

She wouldn't even care.

"She gave me a box." Aliya announced, out of her own accord. "Well, my dad gave me a box with old photos. Me, when I was young. They thought it could give me peace but, it really doesn't, it just reminds me of the girl who was too frightened of making mistakes or failing a test. A girl who was terrified of disappointing her parents. I was terrified, all the time."

The Levine woman paused, digging her teeth into the side of her lip to stop herself from crying, withholding that emotion. She didn't want to cry because she was almost sure that if she started, she wouldn't be able to stop. And, she was really sick of crying these days.

"That's what I see when I look at those photos. That's all that I see."

Perkins' face expressed some sort of sympathy Aliya didn't want nor care for, so she silently pushed herself up from her seat and trailed out of the room.

⠀
—✩—
⠀

TWO WEEKS
AFTER THE SHOOTING
⠀

Jackson looked towards the backseat where the box of photos was chucked on — a half opened mess with pictures and polaroids spilling out. He reached back, delicately holding one of the photos in his hand.

"You were a cute kid." He commented, smiling at the photo took one Christmas when Aliya was five. She was dressed in a red tartan skirt and an even darker red jumper, her hands wrapped around a brown teddy bear in front of the same old fireplace, a grand Christmas tree to the left of her. "Where did all of these come from?"

She watched him out of the corner of her eyes, his lips twitching as he shuffled through more of the photos. "Did you hear anything my mother said earlier?"

"No—" Jackson quickly responded, still sifting through the baby photos.

Releasing a sigh of relief, Aliya nodded her head slowly, watching the road ahead of her as she turned the steering wheel. "Good—"

"Yes. Sorry, I lied." Jackson admitted, glancing towards Aliya to notice how her expression remained unchanged, her eyes just stayed pinned on the road. Though, her knuckles did grow white around the wheel. "You didn't tell me about Andy."

"I just— I couldn't get the words out." Aliya admitted, swallowing the lump in her throat.

"Before all of this, I knew you didn't tell me things that often before but, you can now. You can tell me things now. I mean, we share a hall." He chuckled slightly, watching the corners of her pink, chapped lips turn upwards. "And, a kitchen. That's pretty much the same as sharing food. You can tell me things. What goes on in fight club, stays in fight club."

Aliya shoulders shook with the tiniest ounce of laughter, looking over towards him. "Thanks."

"Hey, eyes on the road!" He pointed at the road before them, smirking at Aliya's crap driving skills. "We may have survived a shooting, but I don't think we'll survive if you wrap this car around a pole."

⠀
—✩—
⠀

PRESENT DAY
⠀

The Levine woman held onto the steering wheel so hard her knuckles turned pale, Jackson sat in the passenger seat beside her.

She had left Alex at the hospital, still in need of a ride home, and still very much refusing to take the bullet out of his chest.

"I'm not talking to Alex as you know," Aliya began. "And, I know that's crap because life is short and whatever, but I'm going to need you to be Alex for a second."

Jackson looked up from where he was staring absentmindedly at the glove compartment, slightly alarmed.

"Meredith and Cristina have their own shit to handle — I mean Cristina's getting married — and I don't want to upset Lexie even more than she already is. I know you have your own shit, but you are the only one accessible to me right now in this metal box." Her legs began to grow restless on the pedals, itching to get another thing of her chest, seeing as the person she would usually tell was indisposed.

"Go on." Jackson watched her carefully, changing his tone and posture, now noting her knuckles whitening and the rapid shaking of her jaw, like what happened when they were in this car before.

"I got referred to a therapist. Perkins referred me to a therapist." She started to nervously tap on the wheel.

"Okay." Jackson nodded slowly at her confession, his initial response sent Aliya into a frenzy, wondering if she should've withheld that information from someone she was meant to hate, but that was all in the past now. And, they had grown pretty close for people who were meant to be enemies. "There's nothing wrong with that, you know that right?"

"I know. I know." She frowned, her eyes pinned on the road. "I— It's just, the nerve! Who does he think he is? He clears me for surgery. I was happy, for about one second, as per usual. Then, bang, 'Oh, by the way, you need therapy'."

She slammed on the brake at the red light, the tapping on the steering wheel only increasing as she peered up at the traffic lights, willing them to change.

"And, it's not like I can refuse!" She burst out, frustrated, taking her hands off the wheel in a flourish. "A medical professional is telling me I need therapy. I can't just say no. We know more than anyone else to trust doctor's advice."

"Did he say why?" Jackson questioned further.

There was a long pause as the lights changed to green, and Aliya turned right onto their street.

Jackson cleared his throat. "You know, I could give you some real friend advice if you tell me why."

"My—" She paused again as she pulled up in a parking spot in front of the house. "I— We— I need to decorate the house for Cristina and Owen's wedding. They should be arriving soon to get ready." She quickly blurted out, pulling out the keys and slipping out of the door to hurry up the steps, leaving Jackson behind in her very own car.

A part of her didn't want to tell him about her mother all that much, because then it just became even more real to her, and these past twenty eight years just felt like a bad dream half of the time.

Scrap that, most of the time.

And, somehow admitting that to him of all people just felt a little too much.

⠀
—✩—
⠀

"Here comes the bride! Here comes the bride!" Aliya sang, smiling brightly for the first time in a while as she entered Meredith's bedroom, a bouquet of flowers bundled in her arms.

"Oh, don't sing!" Cristina groaned from where she was stood in front of the mirror, making the last minute touches, from adding more blush to her cheeks to straightening out the wrinkles in her dress. "Singing is worse than your dancing."

"Rude." Aliya said with a mock-frown, handing Cristina the bouquet, noting how it perfectly matched the red of her dress. "My singing and dancing skills are great."

Cristina raised a brow, not buying it. "Is everything okay down there?" She questioned, stroking the petals of her flowers.

"Everything's perfect." Aliya confirmed, giving a quick nod to Meredith to signify that everything was ready to go down there. "Just the best man—"

"Derek is indisposed." Meredith explained quickly, rocking on her heels.

Aliya narrowed her eyes. "Indisposed? What do you mean—"

"McDreamy was on a McJoy ride and he was McArrested." Cristina elaborated, waving her bouquet around as she explained, and Aliya's jaw dropping at the thought of Derek Shepherd, world class neurosurgeon, in jail.

She gasped. "He's in jail?"

"Yeah, yeah." Meredith rolled her eyes, pinning a black curl away from Cristina's face. "Tell everyone downstairs she's ready."

"I'll see you down there." Aliya nodded as she began to walk towards the door. "Don't trip!" She called, her final word of advice to the bride, before trailing back down the hall.

Though, she really wasn't in any position to give wedding advice seeing as she didn't even make it down the aisle.

(They engagement was called off.)

Smoothing down her own dark green dress, she descended the stairs, where Owen met her at the foot of them, where he was nervously adjusting his tie.

"She's ready." Aliya informed, curtly.

Owen nodded, his hands dropping away from where he was fussing with his tie. "Okay. Cool." He stammered through his words, turning from Aliya to gather everyone together.

"Please tell your friend to stop being a pig." Lexie groaned as she stomped out of the kitchen and over to Aliya, stopping next to her with her arms crossed tightly across her stomach. "He's being a pain in my ass."

"I'm not talking to him. He's just going to have to learn." Aliya replied, a smirk on her face.

Lexie pouted, walking past her to where the makeshift aisle was in the living room.

Aliya watched her go with a smile, turning to the staircase to adjust the fairy lights draped along the banister, even though they didn't even need adjusting.

"I like what you've done with the place." Jackson approached her, slowly and cautiously, like she was some sort of skittish pigeon.

His hands were digging deep into the jacket pockets of his navy blue suit, and Aliya glanced up, her hands stilling from where they were wrapped along the fairy lights.

She had to do a double take, because the first look just wasn't enough.

The second look showed the bright green of his eyes, reflective in the fairy lights. It showed the suit in all its glory, because the man before her was made to wear a suit, if that wasn't an odd thing to say.

Because, even just seeing him in one only made her want to unbutton—

"Thanks." She replied, shoving that particular thought right down inside her mental vault. "I just wanted to—"

"You don't have to say anything." He held out his arm to accompany her to where everyone was gathered. "You look beautiful by the way." He gave her a wide grin as her hand wrapped around his forearm.

"Shut up." She scoffed as her glossed lips curved up, nudging him with her elbow as the two descended the hall together. "You don't look too bad yourself."

He turned to her, still smirking mischievously, and for the first time in the past few weeks, the sinking feeling Aliya thought was cemented inside her chest permanently lifted for a very brief moment.

For the first time, she could finally take a breath without feeling the weight of the hole in her heart where a person should be.

She savoured that moment, because she knew in a few minutes everything would revert back to her new normal.

And with the next breath, it did.
⠀
⠀
⠀

( notes! )

the title is false advertisement. it's a scam. aliya is in fact not doing good, but she's a fourth year! so she's on some new shit!

i don't know why this chapter took ages to write but i don't care because it's one of my faves i hope you guys enjoyed it!! 🫶

and yes i am obsessed with jaliya. they're my pookies. or should i say tom? tom norbert peoples jackson's super spy alter ego but at least molly doesn't know she's rooming with harper avery's grandson!

( word count! — 11,200 )