~Faith's scary place~

fic: away is a relative term [phobia]

2008-06-22T22:21:25Z

away is a relative term
there’s an invisible hand around her throat and her lungs fill with the tears she hasn’t allowed herself to shed.
spoilers for the S4 finale.
psych_30: #8 phobia – Juliet

---

And when the day finally comes when she can be taken away from the island that killed over and over again with disappointment, she can’t breath. There’s an invisible hand around her throat and her lungs fill with the tears she hasn’t allowed herself to shed and she thinks, “I can’t”.

And when she has to step back into reality and feels her chest constrict with panic and her hands start to shake she realizes she’s not normal anymore, she’s not the woman who drank orange juice out of fear and stayed on an island out of loyalty for a sister she never dreamed of seeing again. She’s not the carpet everybody loved to step on and she thinks, “I can’t”.

And then she speaks of promises that were never hers and the boat leaves and she thinks, “I can’t, but maybe next one”

And when she sees the smoke in the distance and the fire in the middle of the sea, she turns around and thinks, “Ok, then”.

-

psych_30 table is h e r e.

fic: black holes in the mirror

2008-05-26T01:14:47Z

black holes in the mirror
begging forgiveness and promising he’ll never do it again, all of which he’s said before and will certainly say again. she doesn’t believe one word.
spoilers for Not in Portland
psych_30 : #3 addiction – Juliet

---

The metallic taste of blood on her mouth makes her sick and dizzy and the sight of her bruised face in the mirror makes her stomach tie in a knot she’s not sure she’s ever going to learn how to untie. Locked in the bathroom mirror she waits for what she knows will come next and closes her eyes to try and not to see, covers her ears with hands she can barely lift to try and not to hear.

Edmund uses his keys to get inside and kneels in front of her, begging forgiveness and promising he’ll never do it again, all of which he’s said before and will certainly say again. Juliet doesn’t believe a word.

She swears to herself, every time, every day and after every shout that this will be the last time but then. Then. Then he says he loves her and that, that’s the one thing she will never know how to quit.

-

psych_30 table is h e r e.

I bring MUSICS!

2008-05-21T21:14:00Z

For my character's mini-soundtrack meme, go leave a comment if you want to ask for a character. (No one's asked for Meredith yet, by the way *whistles*)

Izzie Stevens - for xyliette

Bruised - Ben Folds Five
Happy Working Song - Amy Adams
Beautiful - Christina Aguilera

Addison Montgomery - for milk_and_glass

Why - Annie Lennox [Live]
California - Wave
Razor - Foo Fighters

Juliet Burke - for bowlerhat_girl

This must be the place - Talking Heads
Downtown - Petula Clark
Sweetest Decline - Beth Orton

Temperance Brennan - for tidbit2008

Ooh Child - Beth Orton
Breakable - Ingrid Michaelson
Daughters - John Mayer

Greg House - for holycitygirl

Breath In Breath out - Mat Kearney
Four Horsemen - The Clash
Baba O'Reiley - The Who

Meredith Grey - for darkandtwisty02 & chicleeblair

She's not innocent - Antigone Rising
Clean & Sober - Anya Marina
Sunday Best - Augustana
Daughters - John Mayer

Allison Cameron - for phelipa [A million thanks to my best girl JJ for these songs!]

Portions for Foxes - Rilo Kiley
Breathe - Michelle Branch
You Wouldn't Like Me - Tegan and Sara
And a bonus, for the long wait: Love Song - Sara Bareilles

:)

faith_chaos @ 2008-05-04T10:09:00

2008-05-04T14:58:47Z

I wrote this forever ago and I haven’t posted because I’ve never felt like reading through it again but I’ve promised this fic to at least three people and I thought I should deliver. It deals, somewhat tangentially, with the subject of abortion, and it’s, according to me, in character for someone like Temperance Brennan to do this so bare with me.

I would really appreciate it if someone gave me a title for this, please? Pretty please? With a cherry on top?

Untitled.
Author: Faith
Summary: She climbs off and vomits, supporting herself with one hand firmly planted on the hood of your car. You wonder then if you know before she does.
AN: No specific spoilers, this could be anywhere from S1 to S3. This is my take on Brennan getting pregnant and beware, there are no happily ever afters to be had here. If you’re not Pro-Choice, I strongly recommend against reading this.

Like a little kid whose favourite toy got taken away. That’s how you feel when she’s gone. Doesn’t matter if it’s a matter of days or months, when she’s gone, when she stops being a phone call away, this is how you feel. It’s a simple explanation for a very complicated matter.

She’s not yours to miss, no matter what you try to tell yourself those night you come home to an empty apartment, those nights you know you were just this close of not making it home at all. When you risk your life time after time after time, just so she’s safe, just to make sure than nothing ever happens to her because too much has already happened and you sometimes think, one more blow will do her but good. She’s not your to have or to miss or to love.

Emotional trauma as of late has been a predominant theme on her life. It’s always one more thing piling on top of another thing of another thing of another thing and it’s good she went away – maybe she’ll shake some things off her shoulders and it won’t all be so heavy. You wouldn’t mind sharing the cargo but you know she doesn’t know how to ask for that and you won’t offer because, of everything that ever happens to you two, you offering to help with something she likes to rationalize and classify and not acknowledge is the thing more likely to kill this strange unit that is Brennan & Booth. You put her first in your mind like you put her first everywhere else.

Vacations are supposed to take her mind off things and the thought alone makes you grin because that’s not possible. Thinking is what she does best, thinking through and about and turning things in her head until she’s given them so much attention that they start to somehow fit in the picture that is the world to her. It just happens to be that what makes sense for her doesn’t always make sense to you so you let her be. Sure, you laugh and you joke but you will never let her feel like she’s missing the joke, because that’s just too cruel and you can’t put a bullet through a man’s heart but you can’t look at her and not want to make it all better.

A trip to Bahamas is not going to change things, not going to magically make it all better but maybe her smile will appear on her face more often and her eyes won’t stare off into the distance when she doesn’t know you’re looking. You hope, anyway.

She takes risks, she says the wrong things all the time, still, when you think she’s got better at that, she opens that amazing mouth of hers and makes you want to cry, makes you want to laugh until you cry until you laugh again and gather her in your arms and never let go; makes you want to shelter her from the world that won’t ever get that this is her, no brain to mouth filter. She’s awkward and brilliant and you miss her so much it hurts when you look to you right and she’s not there, sitting with her head on her hand and eyes on the road. You miss her more than you’ll ever admit, to her, to the world, to yourself.

A skeleton is found inside the walls of an old manor north of Richmond and you’re deeply annoyed at yourself when you drive down there and realize calling her is not necessary. You’ve started wishing up violent crimes and age old gore because it would be easier to bring her in from her island getaway than fetching that doctor from Canada. You’re in way over your head and it’s disturbing on several different layers because you’re aware of these feelings that you’re not supposed to have, of this almost compulsive need of knowing where she is, if she’s safe, if she’s taking stupid risks again.

You’re falling in love with her and as much as you try, there’s no denying it. It’s not something you like to dwell on, it’s something you’d be far happier pretending it doesn’t exist but she makes it so hard, with her elusive smiles and confused eyes.

Loving Bones equals losing her, and you fear the day your feelings will become unmanageable because that’s not something you’re willing to risk.

When she comes back, she has a tan and a carefree smile and it’s like a million years have passed instead of just one month. You got used to missing her, got used to her not being around and her presence now, it’s larger than the space in your head assigned to her. It’s becoming harder and harder but you’re tough and you can take it ad even if it’s killing you, you’ll stay until it’s physically impossible for you to.

You see her almost right off the plane and she’s far more relaxed than – ever, actually. She had fun, you can tell and that’s good, that’s great that’s – you can’t take it anymore and have to leave when Angela starts grilling her for answers on the man she met on the island. You catch have an answer, it was fun and that was it, she says and you pray it’s true because while you can deal with loving her in silence, you don’t know if you could deal with seeing her with someone else.

You don’t ask about her vacation – and pretend not to notice when her smile fades away too fast.

New cases rob her of that relaxed air but that’s normal, you tell yourself, yours are very stressful jobs and on top of everything else in her life, you’re not surprised when she loses her healthy tan and the circle under her eyes become more pronounced. But things go back to the way they were before she went away and it’s easy [to pretend] not to notice that she’s paler than what you’d consider healthy and that she hasn’t been feeling so great lately.

Five weeks after Bones came back you’re driving back from a dig up and she makes you pull the car to the side of the road. She climbs off and vomits, supporting herself with one hand firmly planted on the hood of your car. You wonder then if you know before she does.

You don’t say anything when she informs you that she’s taking a couple of days off, you fix Zack with a look that shuts him up before he even finishes the first word of a sentence you’re sure was going to point out that she just took time off less than two weeks previously and you look at her, look into her and there’s no judgement. Everything you believe in, heaven and hell and what’s right or wrong or important, all that’s nothing because you know, she doesn’t want kids and there’s too much behind that choice for her to change her mind.

It’s late and she’s the last one to go, usual stuff and you wait for her even if you don’t have the words to say what you want, even if she doesn’t want you to know – she would have told you if that were the case, Bones doesn’t play those games.

You wait for her and you don’t stop loving her when you tell her you know and that it’s okay and that she can call you whenever she needs for whatever she needs and that you will go to her if she asks. “Just ask Bones,” you tell her and she nods and you breath a little more easily because she doesn’t play games and she’ll call if she needs you and this won’t break you two. You won’t let it.

When the cal comes it’s two o’clock in the afternoon. The sun is shining and she needs a ride home. You will go and you will stay with her even if she doesn’t ask, especially if she doesn’t ask because she may not be yours to love or miss or take care, but the thought of her being no one’s is not something you’ll ever be okay with and in the end, you’ll be there and that’s all that matters.

[the end]

·

fic: you think that would hurt

2008-04-26T20:21:53Z

you think that would hurt
Tom is a nice guy but even that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t kill him right this second if it meant she could take his place in that sub.
spoilers for S4
psych_30: #23 vicarious – Juliet

---

Juliet watches from afar as Tom says his goodbyes and she grips the rails of the pier with one hand, the other at her side, fist clenched. He waves at her before climbing down the sub and she forces herself to smile back at him. Tom is a nice guy but even that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t kill him right this second if it meant she could take his place in that sub.

By the time the water is undisturbed again, Ben is standing next to her. He smiles at her, like this is just another day and not another missed chance and she looks down at her hand. Her knuckles are white and they look oddly in synch with the electric blue of the rail.

“You’re bleeding, Juliet.” He takes her other hand and forcibly unclenches it. There’s blood pouring from the half-moons her nails dug into her skin.

-

psych_30 table is h e r e.

fic: burn a weak heart

2008-04-14T20:32:20Z

burn a weak heart
this is your punishment.
spoilers for season 4. thanks to lenina20 for the title help and the encouragement, as always.
psych_30: #26 obsession – Juliet

---

This is your punishment. You left him and now you're here and Jack is bleeding on your knees and you have to send him away.

The chopper carries six, Ben told you, and you get to pick them. And Jack is bleeding on your knees and Hugo won't make it through the night if he stays on the beach.

Home. There's a helicopter and it could take you home and Ben knows, you care about these people. Jack bleeds, Hugo may be dying, Sun can't stay or she will die for sure.

You're so tired and the way out is just beyond your fingertips. You could leave; he's giving you a choice and that's the cruellest thing he's done yet. Jack bleeds, Hugo dies, Sun has no future on this island and Aaron cries 30 feet away in his mother's arms.

There was war and Ben won, like you knew he would and everyone around you is… it's up to you now. Jack, Hurley, Sun, Aaron still cries, breaking your eardrums, breaking your heart. Sayid's file – he can fly.

"Okay," you say. Deep breaths have no room here. "Sayid, Jack, Hugo," you add in a whispered stream. There are dozens of them and only enough room for six. You were always good at math. "Sun."

Held at gunpoint, they stare at you and the hate you feel from them is nothing. Sayid and Sun and Jack and Hurley is a big guy. Only five then; you could go too.

You look into his eyes and you know, he'll never let you go. You may go home but you'll never be free of him and why, oh why did you drink the orange juice? Alice at 9 feet tall had nothing on you.

"Kate," you tell him. You'll stay and he smiles, his eyes sparkle; you crumble inside.

Ben shouts, leader of his people once more, it cost him nothing and it will cost you everything. Somebody lifts Jack's body from your knees and you wet your fingers with his blood.

Sayid will fly, Jack will have one more scar, Hurley will live and Sun will give birth. Jack loves Kate, you said her name.

Ben takes your hand, holds it like a boy. "Say goodbye to your friends, Juliet."

Aaron cries and Claire has a gun pointed at her back. You pull away from Ben and he lets you go, you're his and you won't go far.

The baby is tiny and slightly undernourished, you think. You look at the mother in the eyes and beg her to trust you. Her arms tighten around her blue blanket.

"I saved your life," you lie. "I'll save his."

You nod at the man with the gun and he grabs her, you take the baby away and she begs, begs, begs. You walk away until her screams blend with the propellers and you hold the child, whispering sorry and forgive me. The dust hurts your eyes and the tears burn and you climb inside wishing you could stay. You push the baby into another woman's arms and her tears mix with his, but this is the right thing to do.

Ben waits for you and when the helicopter fades in the distance and all you can hear are a mother's sobs you know home is not for you anymore.

-

psych_30 table is h e r e.

Fic: third degree burns

2008-04-11T21:44:18Z

third degree burns
...tries to imagine what Jack felt when he touched the raw mark on her lower back
psych_30: #16 fetish – Juliet

---

Kate’s back is smooth and soft. There’s a small round mark that could be a bullet or could be a cigarette burn, Juliet does not ask – she’s sure Kate doesn’t want to tell – but she brushes her fingers over it and tries to imagine what Jack felt when he touched the raw mark on her lower back, the one Ben gave her just like someone gave this to Kate. She can’t, because she likes to think Jack loved her [likes to think she can still be loved] and whatever she may feel for Kate, love has nothing to do with.

-

psych_30 table is h e r e.

fic: ignorance is fault

2008-04-10T02:46:02Z

ignorance is fault
to look at her mistakes in the eye, to sit in front of the woman whose husband she got killed
spoilers for 4x06 The Other Woman
psych_30: #1 transference – Juliet

---

Their sessions consist of staring at each other in complete silence now, even though Juliet knows that her hate for Harper is almost tangible. She hates sitting here, she hates it so much and she’s resorted to counting down from one thousand in her head, just like she did as a child, when she did something bad and her dad sent her to her room to think about what she’d done.

This is not so different, only it’s Ben who sent her here to look at her mistakes in the eye, to sit in front of the woman whose husband she got killed, the woman who has every right to hate her now.

When she hits 400 she looks at Harper and her hate for the woman threatens to burn her inside. Juliet knew, from the beginning, that Ben’s feelings ran deeper than a simple crush and if she’s being honest with herself, a part of her knew that, like a spoiled child whose favourite toy gets taken away, his reaction was not going to be good. She never thought Goodwin would end up dead. Harper though, she knew, and that’s why she hates her, because knowing means there’s something that can be done, knowing means having the power to fight back and if she’d known, if she’d known she would have…

Juliet hates Harper for knowing, but she hates herself more for not listening when she tried to tell her.

-

psych_30 table is h e r e.

faith_chaos @ 2008-04-09T21:05:00

2008-04-10T02:13:56Z

psych_30 : Juliet Burke - Lost

1.	Transference	2.	Daddy Issues	3.	Addiction	4.	Ego/Id	5.	Multiple Personality
6.	Inferiority Complex	7.	Nature vs. Nurture	8.	Phobia	9.	Sociopath	10.	Approach-Avoidance
11.	Castration Anxiety	12.	Collective Unconscious	13.	Delusion	14.	Fixation	15.	Halo Effect
16.	Fetish	17.	Group Think	18.	Instinct	19.	Separation Anxiety	20.	Learned Helplessness
21.	Rationalizaton	22.	Libido	23.	Vicarious	24.	Skinner Box	25.	Placebo Effect
26.	Obsession	27.	Catharsis	28.	Free Association	29.	Repression	30.	Denial

"Yes, I know, but WHY?"

2008-04-08T00:29:26Z

For tidbit2008, who wanted something little that asks too many questions and this is where my mind goes when I think of that. It's Izzie with a child and coda to It's the Mommy Thing.

“Why do pencils write?” Amy asks and Izzie really thinks it’s a good thing she’s the only one willing to baby-sit on her only night off. No one else would have the patience to deal with this. She helps the little girl into her footsie pajamas while thinking about her question.

“Pencils don’t write honey, you write with them,” she replies and knows that another question will follow. Amy doesn’t disappoint, she’s reliable like that.

“But how do they write?”

Izzie knows what her girly girl is trying to ask but she also knows that it’s good for her to learn how to pose the right question. It will get an answer, eventually, because Amy deserves all the answers in the world and Izzie’s here to make sure that what Meredith can’t do gets done in the end.

“It’s the charcoal inside.”

“How?”

“When you scratch it against the paper it rubs off on it and tiny little pieces gets stuck on the paper and that’s what we see.”

“Yes but why?”

Izzie chuckles and zips up Amy’s pj’s. “Because charcoal is like that. It breaks easily.”

“Oh…” Amy deems this to be a decent answer and smiles at Izzie, her favourite person in the world after her mommy. Izzie smiles back, and looks into eyes that are all her mother’s minus the sadness and she’s glad she’s stayed when she said she’d go.

Amy throws herself into Izzie’s arms and giggles when Iz pokes her sides. They sit in the floor next to the bed and Amy starts babbling about nothing and everything until her watch beeps and it’s time to pull the cookies out of the oven.

“Come on munchkin,” Izzie says but Amy stays rooted in place and raises her hands, wanting to be carried. Iz rolls her eyes and pulls her up, tickling her. On the way down Amy gets quiet in that way of hers, making so much noise at the same time.

“And why is the charcoal inside?”

-

Doesn't Change a Thing: Five Decissions Izzie Stevens Never Made

2008-04-07T04:38:52Z

I sat down meaning to write down my new Kate fic and my first Juliet's psych_30 fic because I am all about Lost these days and those two are highly ficcable. Instead my brain wandered and I got this, which is all over the place. But I have a thing for Five Things fics, even if this wasn't thought through.

Title: Doesn't Change a Thing
Author: Faith V. [faith_chaos]
Summary: Five Decissions Izzie Stevens Never Made

---

1.

The bed is cold and she doesn't understand why they'd leave her alone in here anyway. It feels like when she was little and ner grandma would make her sit at the bottom of the stairs [when they lived with grandma they had stairs] and ask God to turn her into a good little girl. Izzie hopes God isn't here and she really hopes that everything she's ever been taught about life and souls and sins is just a bunch of lies because what she's about to do, it doesn't bare forgiveness.

The nurse who helped her into bed comes back, offers her a pained smile and Izzie wishes she hadn't lied about her name and age, because at least then this wouldn't have to be a secret and someone would know there was a baby inside of her once.

"The doctor will be with you in a second honey. Are you sure?"

Izzie knows they're probably supposed to ask this but it makes it so much harder. She also knows that she can't take care of a baby and that it may be selfish but it's her life dammit and she has to right to call the shots here.

"I'm sure," she says. She lays back and closes her eyes.

2.

The councelor is nice and she smiles a lot and acts like Izzie isn't about to sign a piece of paper and give up her daughter. It's a million times harder, knowing it's a girl; it makes it real and maybe she shouldn't have said yes when the doctor asked if she wanted to know.

She takes the blue pen, holds it between her fingers and stares at the white space where her name is supposed to go. She doesn't have a signature and how stupid is that?

"I can't do this." Her mother's sitting at the other side of the room, looking her way and Izzie hates that she just proved her right but she can't do it, she can't let go. "I'm sorry."

3.

There's only ever been two possibilities, lawyer or doctor, and Izzie wold make a kick ass doctor. She's smart, people forget it because she looks so good and makes a living out of posing half naked but she is and she cares about people and she knits and has very goo manual skillls and surgeons have to be good with their hands - surgery is the hardest and if she's going to do this, she will do the hardest and be great at it. Except people die, and she thinks that even if she's hardcore and brilliant she's maybe going to pick English Lit over Bio and become a really good judge some day.

4.

There's a reason Izzie went to state school when her scholarship and her body could have gotten her someplace else and there's a reason - beyond this program's rep - that she chose to apply to Seattle Grace. She's clinging, she's hoping and she's kinda delusional.

They moved on and Hannah will always be the six year old on the picture she carries everywhere and she won't see her again and it's time for Izzie to move on as well. She stayed home because that's where they could find her but she can't have a life of her own until she lets go. She just doesn't know if she can do that in Seattle. Plus, she always sort of liked New York and it'd be nice to see something other than hotel rooms and studios. There's something to be said for studying under some of the best surgeons in the world.

5.

When she was 15, Izzie fell in love. It broke her heart and it made her grow up way before she should have and she's far more of a realist than anyone would ever give her credit for because of it and knows that love hurts but she's also a little bit of a masochist and keeps cvoming back for more.

Izzie loves easily and that's hard and minutes before she has to leave for church and be a bridesmais and walk down the aisle before Cristina and smile and be really happy for her friend, what she wants the most in the world is to walk to George and tell him that she's the one he should pick, she's the one he wants to love and she's the one that loves him more. All of this is true but she looks at him, fumbling with his tie and she thinks, love hurts, and she doesn't want to hurt him. So she walks away, which is not what she does best, and she knows that things will be alright because this may be the hardest way but it's the right one.

-

Fic: "It's the Mommy Thing"

2008-03-28T05:00:52Z

I wasn't going to post but xyliette made me do it. She has ways.

Title: It’s the Mommy Thing
Author: Faith faith_chaos
Summary: By the time Meredith is 24 weeks along, Alex has moved out and you start knitting tiny baby booties for Baby Grey.
AN: I’m on an Izzie kick, and I like it very much. Bare with me, alright? Baby angst ahead.

---

You waited until you were four months pregnant before you told anyone. You were young and stupid and part of you kinda thought it would go away on its own if you ignored it. That didn’t work out so well.

---

You follow Meredith into an on-call room and lock the door behind you. Resting against it, you watch as she sits in the bed with her head between her knees, taking deep breaths.

“How far along are you?” You ask.

Meredith raises her head, cocks it to the side. “Iz,” she starts, but then she sort of loses her momentum or whatever and stays silent. There’s no denying cold hard facts.

“If you don’t want anyone to know,” you tell her, “you shouldn’t be grabbing your stomach all the time.”

“Nine weeks,” Meredith sighs.

“Derek?”

“Yeah.”

You sit next to her, quietly. You don’t think anyone else knows and you should probably tell her this. You hug her instead because you don’t think this can be easy for her. “Have you told him yet?”

Meredith chuckles, and yeah, you should have guessed. “You have to tell him.”

“Why?” Mer asks. “He’ll probably start to think about buying a second trailer or something. I can’t tell him.”

“Believe me, everyone is going to know soon and he won’t get over you not telling him first.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You think he won’t be pissed?”

“You don’t know everyone is going to find out.”

“You’re a doer, Meredith. If you were going to terminate, you would have done it already.”

Meredith chuckles again, but this time it sounds more like a sob. “I know. I just, you know, don’t know.”

“You don’t have to know everything Mer. It’s okay.”

You hug her and she’s a bit stiff at first because she was probably not hugged enough as a child or something, but then she sort of crumbles against you and you know she’s glad someone knows.

---

Some days, you would wake up before daybreak because the baby was kicking so hard. You hated every single kick and every little movement for the simple fact that you couldn’t help but loving it already.

---

Meredith tells Derek and that freaks her out. You spend an entire weekend baking her sugar-based things to try and make her happy because when you’re twenty-something and a doctor and the father of your child actually wants you, you should be allowed to enjoy being pregnant.

You make her drink milk and wake her up an hour before she really has to because the morning sickness is a bitch, but you know that if you lay still in bed for a while, get used to the nausea, it’s easier to get up.

“How come you know so much about pregnancy anyway?” Mer asks you. You just smile in response and tell her that you considered OB/GYN before surgery. Her life is too chaotic at the moment and maybe that’s why she doesn’t realize your answer doesn’t make sense.

“Derek wants to build a house,” she tells you over breakfast.

---

You learned how to knit when you were twelve. Your grandmother taught you and you always thought building something out of nothing but yarn was a very cool thing. You knitted a soft pink baby blanket when you were 16; Hannah left the hospital wrapped up in it.

---

By the time Meredith is 24 weeks along, Alex has moved out and you start knitting tiny baby booties for Baby Grey. You know that Meredith or Derek will buy the baby everything it could possibly need but you do it anyway. You know it’s only going to make it harder when you inevitably leave.

Meredith walks into your room one Sunday morning and smiles at you when she sees you slit your eyes chasing a stray stitch. “You don’t have to do that Iz,” she tells you.

“I know. But every baby should have something made especially for them.”

She sits next to you on the bed but starts to nod off. “Just sleep,” you chuckle and she curls up beside you, falling asleep in less than five minutes.

---

You tried not to love it, the baby, but the battle was lost way before it begun, and every day hurt a little more because you knew that it would all be over soon.

---

“Meredith, don’t be such a drama queen,” you tell her when she asks you not to move. “Derek is moving in as soon as the baby’s born, you won’t be alone.”

She looks at you in that way that sort of turns her into a scared five year old, complete with the scared eyes and when she speaks, it’s that baby voice that just screams vulnerability.

“But he’s a boy. I’ve never lived with a boy before.”

“Seriously? Seriously? You don’t want me to leave because you’re afraid of living with a boy?”

You sigh and throw yourself on the couch. You’ve been having this discussion for a week now. You have to leave. You can’t stay here and watch Meredith be a mom because you know you’ll want to hold the baby and bathe it and sing to it and it’s the mommy thing, all these instincts you’ve had for over a decade now that you could never use and it kills you.

“And Cristina is not my person anymore,” Meredith says in a tiny voice. She sits next to you and looks at you, as if you hold all the answers. “She hates me because I’m all knocked up,” she adds.

“She doesn’t hate you Mer,” you say. And it’s true too. “She’s just jealous.”

She looks at you like you’ve grown a second head and yeah, it sounds rather stupid because she’s Cristina and she hates small people who cry all the time but it does make sense, to you at least. You know now that Cristina was going to have an abortion, that she didn’t want a baby, but you also know that you can’t know, not really, until you’re there.

“You got a choice and she didn’t. It doesn’t matter that she wouldn’t have carried it to term, she didn’t even have a choice to back down.”

“Don’t move, Iz.”

You can’t tell Meredith why you have to leave because you know she will hurt for you and you can’t bring yourself to make her feel guilty over something that’s not her fault anyway so you promise you’ll stay a couple more months.

---

Your doctor was an old man with white hair. He looked at you as if you were on the path to hell already and didn’t even offer an epidural. You went into the delivery room alone because it was your mess and you didn’t want anyone to see you crying after the hard part was over and they took the baby away.

[the end]

Fic: White Gorilla's Dream [2/2]

2008-03-17T19:02:34Z

Title: White gorilla's dream [2/2]
Author: Faith [faith_chaos]
Summary: Sort of like how you’d be so much happier if Lexie was not here, if she wasn’t the kind of person – your kind of person – who hangs out in a bar instead of going home.
AN: For anna_in_the_sky, who wanted "Lexie and Meredith get drunk together at a bar" and I owed her the second part. Part one here.

---

You were never afraid of the dark. Even as a little kid, there was something comforting about not knowing what was going on around you, about pretending that if you couldn’t see it, it did not exist. So it wasn’t that your mother was never home and your father had left you, when you were curled up in bed surrounded by shadows, it was just that it was dark and whether they were out there or not, you couldn’t have seen them either way. You’ve always been happier not knowing. Sort of like how you’d be so much happier if Lexie was not here, if she wasn’t the kind of person – your kind of person – who hangs out in a bar instead of going home. Her kind of people, the ones who are truly bright and shiny, they go home at the end of the day.

But you’re here already, sitting next to her and there’s no unknowing now. She’s just like you, in a way and that’s not a nice thought. Even alcohol can’t make you numb enough to ignore it.

“I don’t like your patient,” you tell her, choosing the path of avoidance once more. Plus, the young girl with blue eyes and white-blonde hair was all sort of philosophical and tragic. “She freaks me out.”

Lexie chuckles and brings the glass to her lips. “Yeah,” she says. “Are you drunk?” She cocks her head to the side and looks oh so cute. You try to picture Derek sitting here and looking at her, giving her the McDreamy smile. It’s a very clear mental picture but you can’t bring yourself to hate her and that has been the problem all along.

“Not drunk enough,” you answer, pouring more tequila into both your glasses.

When you finale get drunk enough, Joe calls you a cab, but the fog in your brain is so thick you can’t remember Tatcher’s address and so you take her home with you. She’s drunker than you, or maybe she just can’t hold her booze like you do, and you end up with your arm around her waist guiding her into your home. It’s weird because you figure this is the big-sister thing to do, but you’ve only ever taken care of yourself and some call it self-centered but you call it Meredith takes care of herself because no one else will.

You let her take Cristina’s half of the bed because what gives, there’s no going back and you might as well just roll with it. Or maybe it’s that when you were in the cab and asked Lexie for her address she said she didn’t want to go home and see him even drunker than she was. Which shouldn’t even be a blip in the radar because they’re not your family, and you don’t care, and this is hot how it was supposed to be. Tatcher was supposed to be a good father to them, because he wasn’t to you and that sorts of even things out; it wasn’t Tatcher at all that made Lexie and Molly the lucky ones, it was Susan who loved them the way people are supposed to be loved and you had a small chance at that too, for a while there. It wasn’t that they had a father, it was that they had a mother and maybe that means you never had a chance at all.

[the end]

-

here be fic [Grey's Anatomy]

2008-03-16T01:30:59Z

So, I lost my last prompt firday requests and I haven't done them again yet, but I wrote other stuff instead.

For xyliette [#2] and milk_and_glass [#5]: [Izzie] It's been a year and it still hurts ALL THE TIME.

It could go like this…

1.

She finds Sydney in an on call room. Not that she’s been actively trying to find her, she just kept an eye open. Under normal circumstances, Sydney is the last person Izzie wants to see, but today is different, today is painful and the perky resident may very well be the only one in the hospital she can talk to. For this, Sydney is the safe choice. Izzie needs someone she can talk to, who won’t look at her like she should be over it by now and who realizes that a year is not nearly long enough for it to stop hurting so much. And even if she doesn’t get that it hurts ALL THE TIME, then at least she’ll listen and let her be miserable for a while.

Sydney looks up from the bed and smiles.

“Well, hello Izzie! Anything I can help you with?”

She hesitates, because admitting she needs anything is admitting she’s still not okay but she’s just about to crumble with the weight of everything she’s been keeping inside.

“I’d like to dialogue now.”

2.

She still has to stop and take a deep breath before stepping into the hospital. It’s more than just a thing she does, it’s more than just a reminder of everything that went wrong inside; it’s that she’s painfully aware of how easy it would be to not take that next step.

A week ago, she received a phone call from her financial advisor, she’s hit the one million mark. It’s a good thing, really, but she can’t bring herself to feel grateful towards Bailey for not letting her donate all of her money because it makes it that much harder to step foot in the hospital today. She doesn’t need to be here.

She just doesn’t have anywhere else to go.

The air catches in her throat as she starts walking.

3.

“Beautiful,” Hahn says. Izzie just tries not to cry.

They just closed a man who’s been on the transplant list for 7 years and the surgery went smoothly. A perfect beating heart.

She keeps it together just long enough to order one of her interns to stay with the man through the night. And watch for blood cloths.

4.

“Are you and Ava on or off?”

“Rebecca,” he corrects.

“Whatever, are you on or off?”

She ambushed him in the door of his bedroom, wearing an oversized sweater – brown, hand-knitted but not the one – and jeans, her hair lose and her face pale. She doesn’t look like she has been crying because she hasn’t let herself do so. She’s desperate in a way that comes out mostly angry, and maybe that’s why Alex actually replies.

“Off,” he tells her, looking down.

“Good,” she says. Then she kisses him and it feels a lot like that one time with the bomb except it hurts and she’s scared in a way that no one can make better.

“Iz,” he whispers when they break for air. He looks at her and maybe it clicks that it didn’t work when they tried to be more than friends and maybe he’s figuring out that it’s been over a year since they did this and – there it is. She sees it in his eyes that he knows what this is about and that it has nothing to do with him and her and everything to do with trying to forget. He freezes and she feels the tears threatening to spill out of her eyes.

“Alex?” Izzie asks, only it sounds like please. He kisses her back and pulls her into his bedroom.

5.

There was a multiple car crash and tons of emergency surgeries and Meredith was already way past done with the 30 hours shift from hell but somehow she ended up being pulled into an emergency reconstructive rhinoplasty on a 17 year old girl.

When Sloane’s done, he takes a minute to look at the result. “We did a fine job,” he tells her. “She still won’t be making prom queen tomorrow.”

“Prom’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Meredith says and that’s around the time she realizes the date. Dammit, she thinks, and then Izzie. “Are we done Dr. Sloane?”

He gives her the go ahead, and as she scrubs out all she can think about is getting home. She hasn’t been to the house in two days and she doesn’t want to know what she’ll find when she gets there but she can’t not go because they’ve all forgot about what today is and Iz is probably baking herself numb right now. Except Meredith finally gets there and Izzie is not in the kitchen, and not laying in the bathroom. She’s in her bedroom under a mountain of covers, curled up and holding the brown sweater.

Meredith leans against the doorframe, not sure of what to do and not knowing what to say. She may still be dark and twisted inside but this is not something she wants to ever understand.

“Do you remember when there was a bomb at the hospital?” Izzie asks. “That’s dumb, of course you remember. You didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning.”

“I know,” Meredith replies. “Iz…”

“I don’t want to get up Mer, please don’t make me.”

Meredith says nothing, she just walks towards the bed, kicks of her shoes and gets inside, wrapping her arms around Izzie.

“You’re not alone, remember?”

-

And because I've always loved these:

My Addison…

Was, in fact, an adulterous bitch - that doesn’t mean she’s heartless or evil or that she wanted to hurt her husband.

Failed to see her marriage crumbling in front of her eyes, and that’s not something she’ll ever forgive herself for.

Knows Derek left her way before he moved to Seattle, he just didn’t have the guts to tell her and she would have saved herself so much heartbreak if she’d known.

Is a natural red-head.

Is far more insecure than people give her credit for, she just hides it well.

Is the best in her field, and she’s proud of that.

Hated the trailer with a passion.

Has never let go of her guilt over cheating, and she still feels like she owes Derek

Has never had any family but the Shepherds, and now she doesn’t have them anymore and that hurts just as much, or maybe more, than not having Derek.

Doesn’t talk about why she has no family and never will. Some things are better left unsaid, no matter how strong her masochistic instincts are sometimes.

Misses Mark more than she thought possible. Doesn’t miss Derek as much as she thought she would.

Loves her job, most of the time. Hates it sometimes too, and not the part with the sick and dying babies, but the part with the healthy ones that get to go home. Losing something she never had.

Is a very good friend.

Dislikes animals to an extreme.

Didn’t mind Doc so much though.

Is very kind.

Starts by picking her shoes when she gets dressed, she builds it all around them.

Loves Mark, just not the way he thinks he loves her.

Thinks there’s something basically unlovable about her.

Has been proved right one too many times.

Will never stop being a geek, she’s just a very good looking one now.

Is a wonderful cook. She’s lost practice because it’s kind of depressing to cook for one and it’s been years since she had someone to make the effort for.

Likes her co-workers alright, they just don’t seem to like her all that much.

Is a realist at heart.

Can’t stand to let people see her cry.

Accepts she makes mistakes and while she doesn’t remotely like failure, she can pick herself up when she falls.

Is afraid of letting go.

-

I'm gonna go watch some Lost now. That show is like crack. *shakes head at self* I'm gonna watch What Kate Did, and the title tells me I'll probably enjoy the hell out of it.

And I still need to look for a Kate icon, dammit.

Anybody want to pimp this? I'm gonna go, Lost DVDs await me.

Fic: Not So Simple [House/Izzie]

2008-03-06T23:10:46Z

Title: Not So Simple
Author: Faith [faith_chaos]
Summary: He’s not so sure he wants to know.
AN: For holycitygirl, who needed cheering-up. I should have realized, though, that I'm really not good at the cheering-up business.

---

“You have to stop doing that,” Izzie tells him when he steps into his office. She’s sitting on the floor, absently bouncing a ball against the carpeted floor while eating a sandwich.

“I thought you people had your own space,” he says, referring to the surgical lounge. He knows Izzie doesn’t like it there very much because they’re all “old and mean”. It explains why she likes to hang with him – not.

“Whatever. You have to stop.”

“Stop… breathing? Stop being an ass? Stop what exactly?”

“Stop torturing Allison. Please.”

So that’s what’s going on. He just had a very uncomfortable conversation with Cameron – uncomfortable for her – about their terminal patient and his sympathetic young wife. It’s not that he enjoys torturing her – though he does, just a little – but that he still doesn’t understand it, he still doesn’t understand her and that annoys the hell out of him.

He doesn’t even try to deny he just sort of beat her up emotionally, but now he’s interested in why Izzie would care about it, she doesn’t usually get involved when it comes to House and his department. It could be because she and Cameron are BFF’s as of late, but Izzie knows how to keep personal stuff separated from work, she’s much better at it than he is, in any case.

“Why do you care?”

“Because she’s my friend and she lost her husband and you’re making light of the situation when it isn’t something that should be made fun of.”

She stops bouncing the ball and looks at him, and there’s something there, kinda like regret, that he hasn’t seen before. He finds it profoundly upsetting because this is Izzie and she’s supposed to be simple. He doesn’t dig complications.

“Just, stop, alright?” She stands up and crosses her arms, leaning against the wall. “Please.”

She doesn’t leave his office though the hallway door, instead, she steps into the conference room and stops next to Cameron. House doesn’t hear what they say, but when Izzie walks past his office, her eyes are red and she’s biting her lip and he knows she’s just this side of crying. He could go and demand an answer out of Cameron, but there’s always a risk of her actually giving him one and he’s not so sure he wants to know.

[the end]

-

Fic: White Gorilla's Dream [1/2]

2008-02-29T13:57:03Z

Title: White gorilla's dream [1/2]
Author: Faith [faith_chaos]
Summary: And your mother is dead and your father is an alcoholic and your little sister does the same thing she’s always done and deals by not dealing and suddenly you’re alone and you’ve turned into someone who goes to a bar after work and gets smashed.
AN: For anna_in_the_sky, who wanted "Lexie and Meredith get drunk together at a bar". Next part will come on monday.

---

There’s something really fucked up about being depressed and knowing it. Like there’s this thing that’s wrong with you and you know it’s wrong, and you know it’s bad and you know this isn’t the way things are supposed to be but you just don’t have it in you to feel better. But then you know that your attitude, your issues and your problems affect other people and you start faking it, and then, when you’ve been doing it for a long time, it keeps getting easier to fool everyone until one day you realize that people around you have no idea how truly depressed you are and it’s just the way you want it.

And your mother is dead and your father is an alcoholic and your little sister does the same thing she’s always done and deals by not dealing and suddenly you’re alone and you’ve turned into someone who goes to a bar after work and gets smashed. Even if the smell of liquor turns your insides cause it’s the smell of your happy childhood.

You’re here, at Joe’s, doing the Tequila thing because when you 14 and on holiday in Spain with your dad, he took you to a zoo and you saw Snowflake and you thought an albino gorilla was the coolest thing ever and now he’s dead and your father is so not himself, or more himself than you’d seen in a while and really, you didn’t need to know that. You didn’t need to know your father was a mean drunk either but not even your mom could keep a lid on it.

The albino girl who’s not allowed to leave her home tells you she’s going to die alone and sad and locked up like Snowflake and that makes you want to drink. That can’t be good but you’re here already and so, you’ll drink.

“You had a bad day,” Meredith tells you, sitting next to you on the bar. She’s obviously drunk and that’s funny, for some reason.

“Hey! You do not get to laugh at me!”

“Sorry,” you say but really, you’re not.

“Whatever.”

So, apparently, Meredith is going to drink with you now and that’s kind of comforting, it’s kind of nice and you never got to do this with Molly but you won’t tell Meredith this cause it’s probably too sisterly and that will freak her out.

“Snowflake is dead,” you tell her, like that’s supposed to explain everything and maybe you’re a little drunk yourself.

[tbc…]

Part Two

-

the one that has no title

2008-02-29T13:55:13Z

Title: the one that has no title
Author: Faith [faith_chaos]
Summary: You’re surprised for all of a second but why should you, really – you were friends first anyway.
AN: For xyliette, who wanted "Derek, Addison & Mark."

---

There’s this thing, about Addison, this thing that annoys the hell out of you. It always has and it always will because really, she’s never going to change. She’s never going to grow out of that self-doubt she’s always carried inside, that self-doubt that’s never going to be replaced with confidence. It doesn’t just annoy you, it scares the hell out of you too because it leads to so much disappointment, so much heartbreak for that perfect redhead that most of the time you want to beat the hell out of whoever made her this way.

She’s amazing and hot and scary smart and painfully beautiful and she just doesn’t see it. She’s never seen it, not now, not then, as a first year med student, insecure and shy and sweet and sarcastic and so much more. No one would believe you, that Addison was shy and shaky on her feet and clumsy and way too skinny because she just couldn’t be bothered to cook just for herself, no one would believe you because people here, in Seattle, they don’t know better and those who do, those who knew her way back when, they kind of forgot. Everybody just sees her as she is now. Tough. Hard. Strong, desirable, intelligent. And that’s fine, it’s true, every last bit of it. But they don’t see the scary inside, insecure-Addison, the part of herself she keeps behind close doors these days. You forget sometimes too. You forget that somewhere after med school, after Derek & Addison went one way for their internship and you went another – because you loved them both to death but you couldn’t stand to see them love each other –, somewhere after you stopped seeing her everyday and loving her little quirks and her occasional babbling and the way she was so prone to roll her eyes at herself, somewhere after all that, you started to buy her bullshit mask and you too forgot that she was so afraid, so fragile, all the time. She just got better and better at hiding it.

You fell in love with her when she was 20 years old, unsure on her feet and uncomfortable in her own skin. Before she figured out how gorgeous she was, when she walked around holding a book to her chest and was prone to tripping on stuff. You loved her an you let her go, because you loved him too and you knew he’d make her happy. Derek could do nothing wrong and you could do nothing right and it was only fair for her to have the best. You tried to move on but that didn’t work out so well and you ended up right at the beginning, until you convinced yourself you had never really love her, like that, and that you were perfectly happy with being a part of their lives.

You come with your own set of issues, and yeah, you have contributed way too much to her feeling like she’s unlovable, but the look on her face right now, this half-hopeful, half-defeated oh-I-am-so-getting-my-heart-broken-again look, that’s one you never caused.

You know it’s not Derek because she won’t let him, not anymore and you know it’s not you because, well, you’d rather shoot yourself than put that look on her face so you’re left wondering, staring at her from the stairwell, until Derek walks up to you.

“There are laws against this, you know?”

“I’m not stalking her,” you say. You look at him and he sighs. He crosses his arms and looks at her down on the hall.

“She talked to her father,” he tells you and suddenly it all snaps into place. You want to kill the son of a bitch, even if he isn’t here now. You should have guessed, there was a time in your lives when her father was the default answer to her lost, sad looks.

“Is he supposed to meet her here?”

“I think so, yeah.”

“Do you think he’ll show up?”

Derek doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to, you just know. It’s been the same since you first met her and you haven’t stopped wanting to kill the guy since then either. The difference, though, is that before she had the both of you to be there when her father failed her and now, now she has no one and it’s all of your collective fault. Even the last couple of years in New York, at least you were there when she needed you, even if Derek was the one who was breaking her heart.

“I don’t think he’ll show up,” you say.

“Me neither.” Derek looks at you, he cocks his head to the side and sighs, very dramatically. “I think… Joe’s.”

You’re surprised for all of a second but why should you, really – you were friends first anyway.

“I’ll meet you downstairs in 10 minutes,” he says. He turns around to leave but you can’t help yourself and grab his arm, keeping him in place. You lower your voice and speak almost right into his ear.

“The look on her face? Right now? I know it makes you want to kill him as much as me.” Derek nods and tries to pull his arm away. “That look? That’s what you did to her every time you weren’t there Derek. Just thought you should know.”

He leaves and you think maybe he won’t be back but five minutes later he joins you in the lobby and you walk together towards Addison.

“We’re going for drinks at Joe’s,” you say. “Wanna come?”

She raises an eyebrow and smiles. “Together? The three of us together?” She signalsthe space between you with a pointed finger, almost mocking you.

“Come on, Addie,” Derek tells her.

She looks at the door, as if he’s going to walk in just this second and you can see, clearly, the moment she gives up.

“Okay,” she says, getting up. She walks between you and when you reach the door you hold it open for her, Derek holds it for you and the three of you walk away, together.

[the end]

-

Fic: Lessons Learned the Hard Way

2008-02-29T13:46:23Z

Title: Lessons Learned the Hard Way
Author: Faith [faith_chaos]
Summary: Izzie’s voice almost breaks and it makes both of them feel weird about it. Izzie doesn’t break in front of other people and Addison can’t help but want to do something when she sees people in pain, but this one, she may be beyond help.
AN: For milk_and_glass, who asked for Addison/Izzie, hurt/comfort, after a traumatic event.

---

This is not about Izzie, it is so not about Izzie, but even if this is not about her, even if this is all about George and Callie and their TTTS children, Izzie feels like curling up into a tight ball and cry her eyes out. Which, okay, yeah, selfish, but she’s s just so damn scared right now. And she knows what George is feeling, she’s been there already, and there’s nothing anyone can do to make him feel better, just like there was nothing anyone could have done to make Izzie feel better when it was her child, when it was Hannah who could maybe, possibly not make it.

In a way, George is lucky. He has friends and his family, and his wife happens to be friends with one of the best neonatal surgeons in the world, so they’re going to operate and things will be alright [they have to be alright]. Izzie didn’t really have all that, and it’s unfair but then, no one said having a kid at 16 would make things easier. And okay, here she is, rambling again about herself and how life sucks when she should be thinking about George and how his life sucks. It’s a horrible, horrible thing that these kids, these tiny little babies could die and yet all she’s worrying about is George. But then, she is a horrible person.

So, here she is, sitting in an on-call room, trying not to cry. It’s stupid, really, but Izzie’s known for doing the stupid thing every now and then, and now, well, she’s alone.

George was happy when he told her that he was going to be a dad, he was really, truly happy maybe for the first time since his dad died and Izzie let him go. It hurt like hell, but she let him go. She didn’t even give her the option of thinking about choosing someone, she made the choice for him because she knew, deep down, that even thinking about not being with Callie when she was pregnant would be something that he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself for. And now she’s all alone.

She lays down because, seriously, this inner drama thing works better when you can curl up and hug your knees and that’s what Addison sees when she steps into the on call room.

“Dr. Stevens,” she says, while holding a cell phone on her hands. She looks nervously to the sides. She didn’t expect anyone to be here when she made this phone call, but the resident in front of her looks all sorts of miserable and she maybe should say something. The thing is, Addison’s not so great when it comes to saying stuff at t eh right time.

“Hi Dr. Montgomery,” Izzie says. She doesn’t even switch positions in bed and her voice is kind of empty. “You can go ahead and make your phone call, I don’t care.”

Addison thinks about it, but realizes that this is so not the time. “I didn’t think I’d see you here,” she tells her, “I figured you’d be with-”

“Don’t. Just don’t say it.” Izzie’s voice almost breaks and it makes both of them feel weird about it. Izzie doesn’t break in front of other people and Addison can’t help but want to do something when she sees people in pain, but this one, she may be beyond help.

“So you two never…” she drifts off, not sure how to end the question. It doesn’t matter though, Izzie got what she meant.

“We’re not such great friends anymore. Not after, you know.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

Addison leans against the door, crosses her arms in front of her. “I could use a resident for the procedure,” she says.

“I can’t. I- Callie wouldn’t want me there.” She looks up at Addison and answers the unspoken question: “She doesn’t know. She just doesn’t like me a lot.”

Addison doesn’t do pity, she knows how much it hurts to be pitied but just then, she feels very sorry for Izzie. “Callie requested a closed gallery, but I’m sure I could manage-”

“Thank you,” Izzie interrupts. “Thanks, I’ll be there.”

She has to be there, these are George’s children and if she can’t sit next to him and hold his hand like he did for her, she can do this, at least.

---

When she operated on Sav, Addison hated every moment of it. She did her damn best because that’s how she’s wired, but she hated it. She shouldn’t have to be put in a position where her friends’ lives depend on her because she knows, if something goes wrong, it will be her fault. Somehow, it will be her fault. It’s always her fault.

Addison is the best though, and as the best, she can’t not do this when Callie is begging her to and she can’t think about the woman on the table as anything other than a patient, 27 weeks along, twin boys. Fetoscopic laser ablation. She can do this, she has done this before. She looks up at the gallery, already knowing what she’ll see there.

Izzie is half-hidden, standing in front of the glass, holding her breath. She’s just waiting for surgery to start, somehow, that will make it better. She just knows. Once Addison starts, once she gets her ridiculously talented hands working, it will be okay, it has to be okay. George is a good person and good things should happen to him.

The procedure starts and Izzie can’t stand to watch anymore, she turns around and slips down to the floor, holding her hands together but not daring to pray for anything. She just hopes for everything to be alright, for George to make it through this one as well. And then Izzie starts to remember, and it makes it hard to breathe. But she’s alone here [all alone, Izzie] and no one will come looking for her so she can let herself break down a little. IT all blurs together, George and letting him go, his babies and how scared she is for him, Denny and being in the exact same position just a year before, Hannah, Hannah, Hannah and it’s just too much and Izzie really needs to get herself together but she can’t, and she stays there, on the floor, her back hurts and her eyes hurt from all the crying and she doesn’t even know how long she’s been there but she runs out of tears and then she just stares into space. She can’t even get up, it’s too hard just to be there and keep herself semi-seated on the floor.

Iz is so focused on keep on breathing that she doesn’t notice when Addison unlocks the door and steps inside. She’s still wearing scrubs but her hair is down and she’s exhausted. “Surgery went well,” she says. “They should-”

“I should have learned,” Izzie interrupts. “You tried to teach me and I hated you for it but I should have learned.”

Addison takes a deep breath; she knows this is not about Callie or George, or the twins anymore, this is about Izzie being one of the loneliest people she’s ever met, behind the smile and behind the cheerful eyes. It’s like seeing herself in a mirror and not an image she enjoys.

“Izzie,” she says, walking nearer. She sits on the floor next to the resident; sometimes you just ned someone to be there.

“I should have- I should have learned, I should have understood I should-” Izzie starts crying, and the tears burn her cheeks. “Why didn’t I? Why did I have to- Why?”

She breaks. It’s kind of that simple but there’s no other way around it. Izzie Stevens is breaking down next to her and she doesn’t know what to do because she is so close herself, so the only thing Addison can do is hold her as she cries. She doesn’t even bother to tell her that it will be alright because truth is it won’t, not for a long time, if ever. Izzie clings to her and Addison clings back, and even if this is twisted and not right at all, for a moment there, they don’t feel like they’re alone.

[the end]

-

here be fic

2008-02-19T12:30:54Z

For xyliette, who wanted Izzie and her alternate family. It’s a thing.

imperfect

After the George Very Bad Thing that happened, leading to the near destruction of their friendship, the actual destruction of his marriage and quite probably had a lot to do with him failing his intern exam, Izzie decided she was done with the drinking. No more booze for Izzie.

Of course that was before tonight. Because tonight? Is a night for drinking and aiming for one of those major blackouts she hears so much about. Maybe if she’s lucky and determined enough, she’ll manage to erase the last 12 hours.

So, when Izzie gets to Joe’s – where else? – she spots her friends on a table on the far back. Cristina and Meredith are doing the tequila thing, and Alex is having a beer. Izzie goes for tequila, cause that will probably do the trick faster and asks for two shot glasses at the bar. She knocks them down before heading towards the guys, carrying both glasses [she might break one sometime tonight].

“Izzie!” Meredith and Cristina salute at the same time, with far more enthusiasm than normal. So, they’re already way on their way to getting smashed.

“Hey!” Mere says, “what are you doing here? You weren’t on today.”

She sits between Alex and Meredith, ignoring the question she grabs the bottle of Patron, pouring the good stuff into one of her glasses.

“Alex, are you staying for a while?”

“I’m going to be driving you all home, so yeah.”

“Good.” She drinks up and pours herself another.

“Alex?”

“Yeah?”

“When I’m so drunk my hands start to get shaky, pour my drinks for me, okay?” She sounds pathetic, even to her own ears. Maybe that’s why Alex just nods and doesn’t say a thing. He’s far more observant than people give him credit for.

“What’s up with you?” asks Cristina. “Meredith here, she just figured McDreamy likes to kiss random women on hospital grounds and I am mourning the death of a very promising career in cardio. Did the fact that you’re a deer doctor caught up with you or something?”

“Sometimes, I find you funny, Cristina, really. Sometimes I find you kind of annoying but today? Shut the hell up because you have no idea- no freaking idea of-” Izzie shuts up and pours herself another shot.

Drunk Cristina must have a little bit more people skills than sober Cristina cause she stays clear of Izzie and her supposed problems and she and Meredith focus mostly on her drunk dad and her weird sister and the McBastard who says he wants marriage and a house and stuff and then goes and kisses a nurse.

“So,” says Izzie, “your father is a drunk, therefore you drink?”

Meredith nods and sort of melts on the table, resting her head on her arm.

They keep with the drinking, and Cristina is doing most of the talking. Usually that would be alright, and Izzie wouldn’t mind so much to hear about Cristina’s issues or Meredith’s drama but now it’s just getting sort of annoying, so when they start playing Whose Life Sucks the Most? Izzie sort of snaps.

“Seriously? Neither of you gets to win tonight.” And then she does some more drinking.

Alex has his own drama going on but keeps it inside, and while that is not exactly healthy, Iz doesn’t have it in her to try and figure out what’s going on. Not tonight.

“He’s a doctor!” Izzie suddenly says. “He’s a freaking doctor with a freaking perfect life and perfect kids. He’s just perfect in his perfect house with the perfect blue door and the house tree in the back and the perfect freaking lawn!”

“Iz? Are you alright?”

“No, Meredith, I’m not alright. I am so far from being alright I can’t even imagine what being alright would be like right now.”

“Are you… seeing someone?” Meredith is clueless and drunk, and it’s really not her fault that the question makes her want to laugh and also cry a little bit.

“I saw him. I definitely saw him.” And she pours herself another shot. “He’s a doctor Mere,” she says. “He’s a doctor and he never wanted me.”

Everyone in the table just sort of stare at her.

“I am beautiful and smart and nice and I bake good. And he never wanted me.”

So, the tequila is making her ramble, whatever, she’s entitled to it today. She’s entitled to lots and lots of things today.

“I met my father today,” she tells them. “And he’s a paediatrician. He has tons of money and his kids go to Harvard. He doesn’t care about me, he doesn’t care one way or the other. He already has a family, he doesn’t need his illegitimate child too. I met him today, after 27 years. So that’s what’s up with me.”

And she pours herself another shot.

For hpchick, who delurked to ask for Faith&Xander, and actual interaction during season 7.

a little dirty with my clean

Faith likes sunrise. When she was a kid, just 11 or 12, she’d wake up extra early just to see the sun rise. Of course as she grew older and became fully conscious of the things that go bump in the night, she appreciated way more but still, she likes sunrises just because. She wonders if this is the last one she’s ever going to see.

She senses someone opening the door behind her but she’s not worried.

“Sun comes up even on Apocalypse day. Kinda comforting if you ask me.”

It’s Xander, and he’s talking to her for some reason.

“How you doing?” she asks, waving a hand in front of her left eye.

“I’m fine. You?”

“Just peachy. Waiting. We’re leaving for school soon.”

They stay silent for a while, and it’s alright. Faith has a lot she’d like to say, sorry, for one thing, but she knows that if she does now, if she says she’s sorry for everything that went down way back when, he’s gonna think it’s just cause of the end of the world thing, and she owes him better than that. So, she does the next best thing and offers him the truth.

“I’m not peachy. I don’t know if we’re doing the right thing, turning these girl into slayers. We have to, we need to, but I don’t think we should. It’s not fair to them. Just… don’t tell, alright?”

“I won’t,” he says, and maybe he gets it, that this is her twisted way of saying sorry.

-

faith_chaos @ 2008-02-17T12:02:00

2008-02-17T16:54:03Z

I was going to wait until I got all of these written, but that may take a while.

For troatie, who asked for Addison/Derek, getting a proper goodbye.

I’m glad it’s over

It wasn’t like Addison to overindulge with the drinking, but this was her last night in town, all her things had already been shipped away, and she found herself confronting the sad true that she had no one to say goodbye to.

Okay, she was being a bit melodramatic. She’d had a nice talk with Callie, and her friend had made her promise that she was not going to hate her when she went down to California to visit, all knocked-up and huge. Still, that was kind of it. Mark, she was still trying to avoid. Alex, she was afraid to actually fall into bed with, if he came on to her again; loneliness made her do stupid things. Things with Richard were not great at the moment and Derek and her were being civil and all, but she didn’t want to risk seeing him and discovering that he didn’t care she was leaving for good. So, she went to the bar, and when Joe told her she’d be missed, she laughed a little bitterly, but a part of her believed him and that was in itself a very sad thing. She was going to be missed by her favourite bar keeper.

She rolled her eyes at herself. Typical. She was going to spend her last night in town wallowing in self-pity and tomorrow she was going to pretend everything was alright. It’s what she does best anyway, pretend things are alright when they’re not, pretend she’s happy when she’s blue, pretend she’s perfectly alright with being this invisible, not-important person.

“Keep them coming Joe, I need to do some drinking.”

Joe eyed her warily, but he probably knew her well enough by now to realize that she really did need to do some drinking.

So she sat there, and contemplated life and all of the ways things can get seriously, irreparably wrong, and she drank, the alcohol burning on the way down, almost as much as the thoughts in her head her burning a path through the map in her head. Connecticut to New York to Seattle to California to… maybe she could stop at LA? Yeah, maybe there she would finally be able to stop running.

She lifted her glass and pressed it against her lips. Scotch, single malt, their drink. Just a little extra to the masochism of tonight. She felt that she had to let it all out tonight, that she had to think and rethink everything that went wrong in order to get a fresh start. Perhaps it would be easier if she could actually speak out loud but she wasn’t about to subject anyone one to drunk-Addison’s ramblings, she was not drunk enough for that.

Someone sat next to her, but she barely paid attention until said someone spoke to her.

“You’re leaving?” Derek asked, with a wounded puppy quality to his voice, one she used to adore.

“I am.”

“Why?”

“Really, Derek? Really? You need to ask?”

He stayed silent. He was Derek, of course he needed to ask. It blew the mind the amount of things this man didn’t realize, simply because he wasn’t interested in them.

“I’m starting over, somewhere people don’t hate me on principle and I don’t have to talk myself into getting up in the mornings.”

She didn’t know why she was telling him this, she didn’t know why he was listening at all, but she did know that a little part of her was too happy with the fact that he had heard she was leaving and cared.

“Who told you?”

“Richard. He’s not happy.”

“I know.”

They stayed silent for a while, but it wasn’t like all those other times when the silence had been almost unbearable because of all the unspoken things between them. Now, there was hardly anything left to say.

“You don’t have to leave Addison,” he said, but she knew he didn’t mean it, she knew he was saying it because she was Addison and because once upon a time they had been Derek & Addison and happy and silences between them had been comfortable and not empty.

“I really do,” she replied. She stood up, put a few bills on the bar in front of her and smiled at Joe, who smiled back at her from the other side of the bar.

“Goodbye, Derek,” she told him. She hesitated for a second before putting her hand on his shoulder. She new they weren’t likely to talk again for a long time. She took a deep breath and let go, and just like that, she was leaving. It was scary, the good kind of scary, filled with possibilities and chances. LA was going to be different, LA was going to be good.

-

Title form Anya Marina's song, Clean & Sober.

Fic: And change is not such a bad thing [Grey's Anatomy]

2008-01-30T17:03:40Z

Written for zvi_likes_tv, last year on doc_santa.

Title: And Change Is Not Such a Bad Thing
Autor: Faith [faith_chaos]
Summary: "We should have sex," Meredith says. She's not sure Cristina is even awake, but the idea pops into her head and she thinks it might be worth mentioning.

---

It's when Meredith finds herself missing Cristina so much that she sneaks into Alex's bed one night that she realises something is very different.

It's when Cristina feels Meredith's fingers brushing against the light freckles on her face and doesn't care about it that she realises this is different in a not bad way.

---

"We should have sex," Meredith says. She's not sure Cristina is even awake, but the idea pops into her head and she thinks it might be worth mentioning, mainly cause this laying down next to each other almost every night, cuddling [Cristina may raise her new eyebrows all she wants but it is cuddling] was all comforting and warm in the beginning but now it's kinda uncomfortable, what with Meredith's skin turning hypersensitive the minute she turns off the lights and Cristina smelling so yummy.

And also, she wants to hold on to her and never let go. She's discovered she misses Cristina more than she's ever missed anyone else, and that's a sort of dependency that would usually freak her out, big time, but because it's Cristina, it kinda makes sense. Somehow.

So, Meredith just had to say it out loud, and hopefully that'd help making the thought not so crazy. Because it was crazy. This is Cristina. Cristina who doesn't like to touch [except when lights are out], Cristina who doesn't like relationships or complicated or [it's been noted] people. Cristina who is, apparently, asleep.

---

Cristina is not asleep. She heard Meredith, clearly, and she's pondering.

Before [before the wedding that wasn't and attendings making them both feel things they're not wired properly to feel], Cristina would have turned around and given Mer one of her "You're so stupid" glares and she wouldn't have had to say anything because Meredith would have known that Cristina thought it was a stupid suggestion but that she understood that being Meredith and all, she's prone to stupid suggestion. Now, though, she's pondering.

It doesn't seem like such a bad idea, actually, because lately, well, lately she's been having thoughts of how it makes her feel well to sleep with Meredith. And how the other night she got home late and when she got into bed, Meredith sleepily smiled and said "You're here" and then she closed her eyes and snuggled next to Cristina and that made her feel sort of warm inside. And when she discovered Meredith was wearing nothing but panties and a tank top, Cristina felt like running her hands down her friend's leg and that was sort of—well, weird, but not uncomfortable.

So, instead of giving Mer the patented Cristina look of "You're so stupid" and instead of pretending to be asleep, Cristina turns around and says: "Okay, let's have sex."

---

It's not awkward, which is weird because of the whole best friends thing and Mer's never done this before [tequila-prompted one night stands have been boys only so far], but it's hot and it feels like a secret. Like this is just another thing best friends do and not hot, lesbian sex. Which it is, Meredith fingertips tracing patterns on Cristina's back and Cristina making it hard for Mer to breath when her nails [nails!] softly scrape the skin on her inner thighs.

It's good, in that way Meredith should have known it would be because Cristina is good at everything and it figures she'd be excellent at this too. Except, well, now she's stopping and looking at Meredith with her head cocked to the side, like she's analyzing her naked body and that's making her a little self-conscious.

"I don't get how you ever get guys to sleep with you."

"Excuse me?"

"You're so skinny you look like you're breakable."

"Seriously?"

"What? Like it's not true?"

"Shut up!"

And just like that they're kissing again and Cristina's fingers are back doing wonderful things to Meredith's clit.

This is good. This is good because Meredith knows Cristina won't ever, ever leave her and Cristina knows Meredith won't ever pressure her into being someone she's not.

It doesn't mean Cristina has stopped thinking about Burke, or that Meredith has let go of McDreamy yet. It doesn't even mean they are going to stop talking [or not talking, in Cristina's case] about it.

It doesn't mean they are going to start calling each other stupid nicknames or that they are going to turn into George and Izzie and the awkwardness will never go away.

It doesn't mean they are going to do things any differently than they have until now [except for the sex, but that's a bonus].

What it means, is that they are safe and things are easy. Not in a "you're a dirty slut" way but in the "there is no angst here" one, and that's the best thing that's happened to either of them in a while.

[the end]

-