waltzmatildah

Title: It's the last day on earth (in my dreams... in my dreams...)
Word Count: 3050
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: implied Alex/Izzie, implied Alex/Addison, implied Callie/George, implied Callie/Arizona, Addison/Derek friendship.
Summary: It's the end of the world as we know it. Set post season five finale. Apocolyptic fic... of sorts.
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and all the characters, settings, and events thereof, are properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for profit, it constitutes fair use. Referral to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libellous, defamatory, or in any way factual.

The flashlight fades to a thin stream of pitiful yellow before blinking out completely and a vigorous shake does absolutely nothing to restore lumination. Streetlights have been out for weeks now, porch lights, headlights, garden lights. Every so often a green exit light halos the space above a long since bolted door, ironic really as there can be no exiting this.

The non-rebreather strapped tightly over his nose and mouth is clogged and damp and almost as suffocating as the acrid atomsphere outside the confines of the hospital. He says he hates having to venture out but always ends up volunteering for suicide-like missions to command posts and strategic response stations anyway. Truth be told, it's kind of exhilirating, in an apocolyptic, end of the world as we know it kind of way. There are dogs barking, emaciated and limping and lining the streets, a constant background noise. They seem to outnumber the humans ten fold and he wonders what the hell they must be thinking about this unholy mess, if dogs even think at all.

He trips over rubble, the remains of a store or a house or a school, it can be difficult to tell these days, lands heavily on his knees and one hand, the other safely cradles his precious cargo, presses it to his chest protectively. He remains on his knees, straightens at the waist and winces at the sharp pain in his wrist. The skyline is a grey haze, interrupted sharply by the space needle, only these days, with a little more space and a lot less needle. He thinks, briefly, that he's really glad his made-up child never had to see this, then he shakes his head to forget her again.

A self important jab to his ribs has him spinning and gasping and wide-eyed blinking. A weapon, distinctly automatic looking, is being waved in his face, the silhouette of a soldier blots out the weak sun that half heartedly burns through the chemical sky. From behind his spacesuit-like armour the soldier motions Alex to his feet and prods at him to keep on going, attempts an it's not safe to be out here through his thick plastic mask. All Alex hears is muffled, garbled monotone. He bites back a harsh laugh and only just stops himself from shrugging a really? back at the guy because... freakin' really?

He has no idea if it's meant to be night or day or some time in between, the stars all exploded, that much he knows for sure. Iowa is long gone, he knows that too. Washington will be one of the last, they're nothing if not resilient in Washington.

The gas guage on the red convertible points stubbornly ever closer towards empty but the engine still purrs with a rolling hum. Addison isn't sure whether that says more about the quality of the vehicle she is driving or of the air that it is currently taking in and about one hundred miles back down the endlessly grey freeway she stopped caring. The hood is down to keep her awake and her hair whips, angry and sharp around her face and into her mouth, her eyes, her nose. She tries not to think about how disgustingly filthy it is as it sticks to her teeth and disappears momentarily down her throat.

Things have fallen apart in Seattle. The messages have been frequent but disjointed and more white noise and static than anything resembling detailed information. Addison glances side long at her cell phone, discarded impatiently on the seat beside her, and squints to make out the time digitally displayed on its face. It feels like she's been driving all night and all day, all day and all night. It feels like she never stopped.

There is a roadsign looming ahead, she hopes with ferver that it's graffitti free and displays information that may give her an inkling as to how much further she has to travel. Wonders if she'll go insane before she gets there.

The longer she drives the further away the horizon seems to get.

The drone of a Predator 1-B spyplane hums overhead, just out of sight. He can't see it but Alex knows it is there. It's like he's stuck in an episode of Dark Angel and he's well and truly beyond caring that he should be embarrassed for thinking that. In fact, he briefly allows his long buried Jessica Alba fantasy to resurface and it's just enough to bring a fleeting grin to his lips.

The two-way attached to his hip crackles to life and a mechanical echo breaks him from his moment of reverie. He struggles to detach the device from its clip, juggles his precious cargo and the dull ache in his wrist that is slowly working it's way up his arm.

“Yeah?” he manages to croak out, not bothering to remove his mask, he no longer has the energy for menial tasks. The word fades on his lips, his throat tight and rough, sandpaper dry, he's not entirely sure the sound registers at all on the other end.

“Karev? Can you hear me? Alex?”

He nods, dumbly. Knows on some level that head movements aren't going to cut it but can't quite figure out what he needs to do instead, continues nodding, forgets to stop.

Another voice cuts in, deeper, louder. Agitated and tense.

“Karev, stay with us. Alex, don't you dare...”

The words seem illogical and nonsensical and he squints and stops the nodding, tilts his head to the left as though the angle will increase his understanding. It doesn't. The bundle shifts in his arms, murmurs slowly, a pitiful mew. He drops the radio and doesn't bother to retrieve it, he has nothing more to say anyhow.

His right knee is pressed to something flat and metallic. It's a street sign, Broad Street. He forgets where Broad Street used to be. What was significant about it? Did it lead to somewhere? Or maybe it led away from somewhere else. He no longer knows and, as he looks up, squinting through the settling dust and debris, he thinks it probably doesn't really matter anymore. Broad Street goes nowhere now.

He struggles upright, shifts the weight of his load onto the jut of his left hip, smooths back a blonde curl with a shaking finger and puts one foot in front of the other. He uses the shoulder of his shirt to wipe sweat and other substances from his forehead and eyelids, it stings and blurs his vision, renders the hazy landscape even hazier for a split second and he stops moving, waits for the world to right itself again. He's often waiting for that these days. It never quite happens.

Addison arrives at Seattle Grace amid flurried activity. She is sticky hot and freezing cold at the same time and the heel of her left shoe has lost its cap and it slaps, metallic sharp, at the concrete under her feet. She pulls her coat higher up her neck, tucks her chin down to meet it and offers a quick snarl to the world. The air is heavy with havoc and bearly contained chaos. It weighs at her shoulders, heavily, solidly. Seattle tastes like home despite the fact that it never really was.

She pushes through a small gathering at the entrance, not bothering with pleasantries or politeness. Once inside a cloud decends, cloying and raw and she is apprehensive, unsure of what awaits. She really needs to find Callie, but the garbled screams of disbelief and horror on her voicemail would seem to indicate that she should probably seek out the Chief first, or even Mark. Mark will know what the hell is going on.

“Addison?”

She spins on the heel that is still intact, almost drops her purse and curses, loudly.

“Addison? When did you...”

“Derek, thank God. What the hell is...”

“What are you doing here?”

“There were messages, voicemail messages, lots of them. Mostly from Callie, a couple from Grey, one from Karev... but I couldn't understand a word they...”

“What did they say?”

“I just told you, I couldn't understand them... any of them... they were hysterical and insane and, Derek... what the hell is going on?”

There is a pack strapped to his back, weighing him down. There is water in there, and supplies, should he be gone long enough to need them. Bandages, some food, what little could be spared, more masks. He thinks he needs a lifeline but he's also pretty sure that the hospital was fresh out of those... last time he checked. He sits heavily on an upturned flower pot. There is a jagged crack in its side and a chunk out of the rim but it looks sturdy enough for now, despite the slight wobble and shudder it gives as his weight settles.

He slings the pack to his feet and winces slightly as it bounces off his toes. It's heavier than he remembers it being when he first picked it up. But burdens always do seem to have that tendency.

He fumbles with unresponsive fingers to get the zipper moving, claws his way inside and pulls out a plastic bottle of clear liquid. He is dismayed to find it has leaked somewhat, that the contents of his pack are damp and that the bottle is no longer full. Reduce, reuse, recycle. He guesses that is the risk you take.

Denim clad legs pass him at pace; he assumes a body is attached to them but you can never be sure of that these days and he doesn't bother looking up to check. There is a buzzing in his ears and he is unbearably hot despite the lack of decent sunlight, or moonlight, or starlight. He twists the cap off the bottle and raises it to his lips but his co-ordination is off and he pours before he is ready to swallow. Chokes instead, sputters water and saliva onto the dusty asphalt at the base of the flower pot and mentally chastises himself for being wasteful.

He has settled his cargo in the dust as his feet, wrapped in cloth as sooty and stained as the street on which it now sits. He tilts her head back and brings the bottle to her lips, encouraging her to take a sip, he can't remember the last time she managed to take a sip.

He's beginning to think she's not even trying anymore.

“So, O'Malley?”

Derek nods slowly, as though allowing time for the information to sink in.

“And Stevens?”

Derek continues his slow, sad acknowledgement.

“On the same day?”

“At the same time,” he corrects,“...to the minute... most of us, we were with George, we didn't know until after... about Stevens. And the others, they were with her... I think it was worse for them. It was always gonna be her, it was never meant to be him. Bailey...well... and then Karev...”

Addison feels the ground shift beneath her feet, earthquake like. She exhales slowly and it whistles through her teeth. And just like that, the messages make sense afterall. Callie's hysteria, Meredith's detached calm, Alex's distant echo, one after the other. A series of confirmations she couldn't bring herself to believe. Had to see it, touch it, taste it for herself to make it real. She blinks and feels hot tears race tracks to her chin, swipes at them angrily just before they make it.

She looks around. There is destruction written into the walls of the hospital, she can read it now. Now that she knows what to look for. The ground below them all is crumbling.

“There was something, in his voice...”

“His voice?”

“Karev, Alex... he called... his was one of the messages I got... his voice. It was flat, like he was empty, hollow... I though, at first, that it was just some elaborate hoax, like you were all bored and thought you'd just... well... obviously it wasn't. I think I started to figure it out when Callie just kept on calling, constantly, like she'd dial, leave a voicemail message, hang up and then dial again. You should hear them Derek, she's... God. And Karev... it's haunting, like he's already a ghost.”

“You and him, before... you were...”

“We were nothing... that was before and we were nothing...”

“You're here, I'd say it was something...”

“And so he just...” she trails off, leaves the question hanging in the air. Can't bring herself to speak the devastation out loud. To voice that it could have been worse, that this earth shattering day could have been so much worse.

Derek shrugs in reply, unable to enunciate the words, afterall, he gave them his wedding day. There are no words for that.

Sirens blast Alex back to a semblance of functioning and awareness. They are piercing, reverberating, painful. He staggers to his feet, acutely aware that he needs to be careful, that he is the sole protector of something pricelessly precious. He is staggered that he, of all people, was ever entrusted with such responsbility, with such purpose and as he gropes in the thick darkness and comes up empty handed he thinks, bitterly, that they should have known better.

He drops heavily to his knees and scrabbles madly at the ground, mask hurled off, fingernails tearing at the rough roadway beneath him. Lost and losing. He feels the pads of his fingers tear apart and become sticky slick with blood. His heart is hammering in his chest, a familiar combination of fear and failure.

He can see her now, the dust has finally settled enough that he can make out her shape, her pink prom dress is stained and torn ragged and she has her hands outstretched in his direction. He inches forward, the wind seems gale force and hurricane loud, though the trees to his left are motionless and the debris that surrounds them is silent and still.

There is a soldier, off in the distance but coming towards them. Alex is relieved, thinks that maybe he will be able to help them get back. To get back home before it's too late. The soldier, a familiar silhouette that is contextually confusing him, blurs in and out of focus until he appears again, mirage-like and wavering, just metres away. It is O'Malley, in fatigues and with his hair all gone and the incongruities are enough that they stop Alex from reacting before it's too late.

Izzie stands then, rises confidently from the dust like she never needed his help at all before and she probably never did but he had tried to carry her anyway. His brow creases into a frown as he watches O'Malley smile in her direction, invitingly, reassuringly. Ash falls like snow around them, feather light and filthy. He wants to drop to his knees and beg Izzie not to go because, somewhere deep inside him, he knows she is going to, but his lips don't move and she is out of reach. The hurricane is still holding him back and as the ground caves in between where they are standing all he can do is watch as she turns and walks away.

There is an oddly comforting voice murmuring in his ear, a conglomeration of words that he can't quite decipher. There is pressure on his hand, secure and grounding and as he watches them walk away together it tightens solidly to stop him from following their lead.

Addison sits and holds his hand. It's feels both completely inappropriate and entirely inadequate at the same time but she does it anyway. Her cell phone vibrates a faint distraction in her purse, it'll be her LA friends, wondering where the hell she is. She turns her head towards labored breath that fogs in the mask over Alex's nose and mouth and barely even hears it anymore. She's already been to see Callie, sedated and sleeping. She ran a hand through her black curls and traced smudged mascara down her cheeks and left the paeds chick with the wheelie sneakers to put Callie's pieces back together. Addison thinks she is more than capable.

Richard tells her that, to be perfectly honest, they're not really sure yet what happened to Alex. All they know is that it was self inflicted and happened so fast and so completely and at a time when focus was splintered and lives were dissolving, shredding at the seams and there was no one left to notice. He is yet to regain consciousness and his tox screen is a rabbit warren of chemicals and interactions and she wonders if she could ever love someone enough to do what they all know he did. Doubts it as strongly as she prays for it in the same breath.

“You were there...”

Addison looks up sharply at the words, muffled and whisper soft.

“It was the last day on Earth, you were there when they took her, the soldiers, O'Malley... they took her and you were there. You held my hand I think and told her to go with him, with O'Malley... O'Malley will get himself killed out there...”

Alex trails off, there are still substances in his blood stream that are making coherant thought and casual conversation impossible and his ramblings are altering things inside Addison that she's not entirely sure she will ever recover from.

“Yang said he'd be cannon fodder...”

He drifts back to sleep then and despite silent, desperate, countless hours waiting for him to wake up, Addison is grateful for the repreve. She's done a quick headcount of those left standing, paired them off on her fingers to make sure that everyone, everyone else, is present and accounted for. Meredith and Derek, Callie and Arizona, Lexie and Mark. Cristina and Hunt. The only one left, by her calculations, is Alex and so it comes to her, she deduces. He is her responsibility now.