Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Maggie sighs as she finishes looking through another cold case file. She’d asked to be temporarily reassigned until she decided what she wanted to do. Working in her previous position that handled alien specific cases meant that she’d run into Alex. Alex, her now ex-fiancée, worked for the DEO which was an agency that specifically handled alien cases. Hence her dilemma. Working in her prior position means running into her just a few weeks after their break up. 

She wasn’t ready for that, not yet at least. She wasn’t sure if she could ever work with her again, their break up had been painful. They still loved each other but couldn’t set aside their differences on having children. Maggie knew that if they kept seeing each other they would get back together only to break each other's hearts again. She could transfer to another police station but it felt too dramatic.

But god were these cold cases painfully cold. 

Maggie suspects that her boss gave her these cases in particular because there was practically nothing to go on. It would force her to make a decision faster because she is getting bored out of her mind with them. The file in front of her is a single sheet and one sided, doomed to be forever unsolved because of a lack of anything to it. It’s a shame really.

Not finding a starting point with it, she moves onto the next file.

It’s a missing person’s case, presumed dead. She reads the name off. Alexandra Grey. It seems even going through these cases won’t be able to distract her from Alex when one victim shares a name with her. She tries to move past that, no need disregard the case because she’s heartbroken. Maggie continues to read. 

A doctor, another similarity, on a flight coming from Settle to help perform surgery when the plane suffered a mechanical failure and crashed. National city was lucky they had Supergirl to save their planes. In total there were six doctors onboard plus the pilot. Surprisingly the others survived but not without serious injuries. Alexandra is the only member of the flight unaccounted for, hence the presumed dead. Odds are her body was scavenged by animals and they’d never find it over the wide area that the plane had been scattered. It’d been several years, they would’ve found her by now if she was alive.

Maggie flips through the pages of the files, reading about search efforts before making it to the back of the file. There’s a photo clipped to the back and for a moment she thinks she’s losing it because this Alexandra looks a lot like Alex. No. She’s just too distracted that’s all. Maggie rubs her eyes but the picture still looks the same.

Has she ever seen a picture with Alex having long hair? She must have. She’s just imposing Alex’s image on to her, that’s it. Maybe if she looks up another picture she’ll look like an entirely different person, sometimes pictures just have weird lighting. Maggie then pulls up google and types the name in, clicking on images.
Okay, not any better. They all look like Alex. This is worse. She stops to pull over one of her colleges that doesn’t know Alex while simultaneously pulling up a picture of Alex on her phone.

“Hey, would you look at these two photos and tell me if you think they look like the same person? I think I’m a little too tired.” Maggie explains avoid getting a weird look.

Her co-worker eyes them both for a good moment, then nods. “Yeah, they definitely look like the same person.”

“Thanks, that’s what I thought.” She dismisses her co-worker and now she’s not sure what to do. 

This Alexandra shares the same name with Alex, shares the same face, but from what she knows they can’t be the same person. Her entire background is different, excluding the fact that they were both educated as doctors and looked the same. In fact Alexandra has a couple of sisters, but none named Kara. And Kara is definitely her only sister. Alexandra’s parents are dead, Alex’s are alive. At least they think Jeremiah is alive but his history is sketchy.

She stares at the file. She must be going crazy, maybe she needs a vacation. She should just put the file away, but she stares at the picture again.

Ultimately, Maggie finds herself in front of a Hospital called Grey Memorial Hospital. She couldn’t put the file away. There were too many questions to be answered.

The best place to find those answers would be here. The place had had a name change since the plane crash apparently, in obvious tribute to the doctor that she was here to ask questions about. From what she knew, most of the doctors on the plane still worked here, one of them was actually Alexandra’s half sister.

Maggie walks into the foyer and up to the information desk, waiting patiently for the nurse at the desk to no longer be busy. The nurse greets her and she flashes her badge.

“Hello, I’m Detective Maggie Sawyer with NCPD, I need to speak with a Dr. Meredith Grey.” The nurse eyes her badge suspiciously and then questions her.

“What is this in regards to might I ask?” She figures that she’s not going to get anywhere unless she gives the nurse an exact reason, doctors are busy after all.

“I need to speak with her about her sister, Alexandra Grey.” A doctor standing off to the side filling out paper snaps her head up at the words and immediately begins to walk over.

“Why don’t you go get Dr. Grey. I’ll speak with the detective.” She speaks to the nurse before turning her attention to Maggie. “I’m the hospital chief, Dr. Miranda Bailey. Did you find Lexie?”

It’s obvious that the doctor she’s talking to believes that this is the final answer of confirmation of Alexandra’s, or apparently Lexie’s, death. Except she can’t actually tell her that because she has no clue.

“Nothing has been confirmed yet, I’m just here to ask some questions to clarify some questions I have. I was recently assigned her case file and I’m following up on some things that I noticed.” Like the fact that her ex looks a lot like this doctor. 

Dr. Bailey doesn’t seem to believe her but withholds that judgement. Meredith comes quickly rounding a corner, emotions on her face steeled in preparation for whatever news may come her way.

“Do you have news about Lexie?” Meredith is blunt and straightforward, she’d probably spent a lot of time preparing for the news that her sister was dead. Maggie really didn’t want this to open up old wounds for her but she needed to be sure.

“You must be Meredith. Would you mind if we go talk about this somewhere more private perhaps? I know whatever you might be expecting is probably not this.” She can tell that Meredith is confused by her words but resigns herself to leading her to a private conference room.

Meredith closes the door to keep prying eyes away and takes a moment.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name?” She asks this time instead.

“Detective Maggie Sawyer.”

The irony isn’t lost on Meredith, a detective with the same name as the half sister that she learned about after she’d lost the half sister that the detective was here to talk about. She wonders if maybe Lexie sent this detective to her on purpose, from beyond the grave or whatever. A sign that she was at peace finally.

“I know that you’re just trying to do this as respectfully as possible but I know that my sister is dead, even without a body. I’ve lost a lot of people, I’m no stranger to trauma. So whatever you’re going to tell me, just tell me.” She asks, bracing herself.

It’s terrible that Maggie can’t actually give her some closure, instead it’s more complicated than that.

“I might have a lead on her case, that’s all I can really say until I investigate further. But the reason I came here today is to learn more about Lexie. I think that it would help greatly in answering some questions I have about the case.” Maggie explains.

Meredith is even more thrown now but she’s got nothing to lose by telling her about Lexie on the other hand. She just doesn’t understand why she would need to know.

“I’m assuming you and your sister were close, considering that you two worked together.” Maggie inquires.

“Not at first, I was rude and a bit of a bitch. Our father left my mother when I was young, and when I found out about her, I resented her. She represented a lot of the bad parts of my life. But Lexie didn’t let that stop her from getting to know me, even though I didn’t fit the fantasy of the big older sister she had in mind. She forgave me and basically forced me to acknowledge her. As it turned out, I did love having a sister even if I didn’t want to at first.” Meredith describes their relationship. “I took it for granted.”

Maggie nods understandingly, family could be complicated and often wasn’t perfect.

“How would you describe her?”

“She was extremely intelligent, I know that she was valedictorian of her class and she went to Harvard. Lexie had a photographic memory and she could recite practically anything off the top of her head. She did that a lot when she was nervous about things, she’d just spew out a bunch of facts and become an overall wreck, stress eat. She did that a lot at first when we met, but she got more confident overtime. And she cared a lot about others, about the patients. She’d always cry when she lost a patient, because it was very important to her that she knew them personally even if it hurt more in the end.”

It’d been a long time since Meredith had talked about Lexie, and as she talked about her, she was beginning to recall all the small things about her that seemed like she’d forgotten until now. It was cruel that Lexie had never reached her full potential, never completed her residency, never took her boards or decided whether she would complete her training in neuro and accept a fellowship at their hospital or another.

Meredith finds herself speaking about Lexie with the detective for longer than she expects to. It’s oddly therapeutic to talk about her sister, especially when she’s never cared about talking out things in therapy before.

“Lastly, two more things” Maggie begins to ask “Does Lexie have any birthmarks, or any similar identifying features that would help? And would you mind giving a DNA sample for any comparison purposes, for some reason we didn’t have one on file for Lexie.” 

Meredith pauses in thought for a moment. “I can’t remember off hand but I can provide her medical files, they may have something and yes of course I’ll provide a sample. Do you need a swab or anything?” She offers.

“That’d be great and I already have what I need, just need to do a quick swab. I’m sure you know how it goes.” Maggie assures her.

And after that, their meeting is over. Meredith shows her the way out of the hospital before returning to her colleagues who’ve been lurking around waiting for news.

“What did she say?” Derek is the first one to ask her, the group had clearly decided that her husband would be the best one to ask her. Meredith gives the group a mildly irritated look anyway.

“She came to ask me a few things about Lexie, told me that she’d just been assigned to her case and that they haven’t found anything yet. I don’t know why, but all I can think is maybe she’s trying to soften the blow. Maybe they found a body and they’re not sure. All I know is she asked me for a DNA sample, just in case.” She all but snaps at them.

“I’m sorry but I can’t deal with this now, you all have patients, so until there is a confirmation please get back to work.” She knows that they’ve all grieved for Lexie, especially Mark, but all Meredith wants to do is get out of there as fast as possible.

Maggie ends up lurking around NCPD till the very late hours, so that she can use the lab while it’s practically dead and no one else will see the results of the test she is running. She’s thankful that she had a toothbrush of Alex’s still at her apartment so that she didn’t have to figure out a way to get a DNA sample without arousing suspicion. It’d be extremely awkward to have to explain this if it didn’t pan out.

It’s nearing two in the morning when her computer beeps with the results, startling Maggie from increasing urge to sleep. She clicks on the notification and starts to read the results, comparing the DNA markers on the screen. In the corner the match percentage reads 25.8%.

Fuck. This means that Alex shares enough DNA to be Meredith’s half sister and the odds that she is not Alexandra Grey are very slim. All Maggie knows now is that she needs to talk to Alex and figure this whole thing out.

Chapter Text

Alex wakes up, startled out of her sleep by a nightmare, sweat dripping down her back as she takes gasping breaths. She rubs a hand across her face as she glances over at her clock on the bedside table. It reads 5:12 AM and it’s still dark out. 

She decides to get out of bed and walks over to the bathroom to wash the sweat off her face. As Alex steps back to look at herself in the mirror she thinks about the dream she’d just had. It’s a recurring one that she can’t seem to pin down why she’s having it. It starts off on a plane, it’s actually the flight to Geneva that she’d been on when Kara had her first appearance as supergirl.

At least that’s how it starts out.

In the dream the plane switches between two different types of planes. The large plane with dozens of passengers to Geneva switches to a smaller, private plane. The smaller plane only has a few other people on it, she can’t make out any of the faces. It switches between the two planes right up until the plane loses one of its engines. 

At that point the plane tears itself apart mid air, the pressure drops and feels like she’s being sucked away. The next moments of the dream are blurry and erratic but the next part she’s in a forest and instead of the business suit she’d been wearing, she’s in scrubs. In the dream she’s also dirty and bloody, stumbling around calling out. There’s an intense sense of fear and panic as she keeps going through the forest.

It’s always the same and it never gets any farther than that. It doesn’t make any sense to her. 

Alex had been having the dreams since Myriad had happened over a year ago. Maybe if the dreams had started after the initial incident with the plane it would make more sense.

But since everyone in National city had their minds taken over, something had felt...off.

She finishes washing her face and walks out of the bathroom to sit on the side of her bed. Alex picks her phone up off the side table to check her messages and is surprised to see a message from Maggie.

“ Can we meet up and talk? ” It reads.

It’s shocking because after they ended things, Alex hadn’t heard a word from Maggie. The text was also sent past one in the morning which is odd for Maggie. 

She sits there, wondering why Maggie wants to talk. Is there really anything for them to talk about? They were on the opposite sides of a life altering decision, it’s why they broke it off.

Alex knows she probably shouldn’t respond, this might be a late night drunk text for all she knows. But there’s a gut feeling that says she has to.

“ Where and when?” She simply texts back. Afterwards she quickly sets her phone aside, she figures that she won’t get a response right away. 

Instead she chooses to start getting ready for work because there’s no way she’ll be going back to sleep at this point. By the time Alex comes back showered and dressed with a coffee at hand there’s a reply.

“ National city Park. Noon. ” Is Maggie’s response.

Okay, so it doesn’t look like a drunk text.

“ I’ll see you then.” She confirms.

If there had been any major incidents that morning, Alex would’ve been screwed because she could not focus since she saw the text from Maggie. J’onn seems to notice that something is up with her but respects when she asks him to leave it alone. He knows her well enough though that she’s pretty sure he suspects it’s about Maggie. Not that he’ll say it.

Then again, he’s a mind reading Martian, he might be reading her mind. Not that he’d do that without her permission.

She really wishes that she’d gotten a better night’s sleep before she read that text.

Alex ends up showing up to the park early, at their usual meeting spot. She’s fidgeting a lot as she waits for Maggie’s appearance. Eventually she appears from behind.

‘Hey.” Alex turns at her voice, and her throat catches as she sees Maggie.

“Hey.” She returns in response. Maggie sticks out one of two cups of coffee in her hands.

“I thought you might need this, it’s your regular.” Alex takes the cup, thanking her as she does.

The two of them walk for a bit, sipping their coffees, not really saying much of anything. It really is awful seeing your ex for the first time after breaking up.

“So, what is it that you wanted to talk about?” Alex finally breaks the silence. The whole mystery of the late text and sudden meet has been killing her.

Maggie stops dead, biting her lip, and turns to Alex with a look of serious contemplation on her face.

“You trust me, right?” Maggie asks her suddenly.

“Of course.” Alex responds with little hesitation.

Maggie looks into Alex’s eyes, their look of deep concern, and steels herself.

“I think I found something that I wasn’t supposed to find and I know that I need to tell you about it. But, I’m not really sure who we can trust or where it’s safe.”

It’s at that moment that Alex’s concern for Maggie jumps a thousand fold.

“Okay, let’s find somewhere safe then. Then we can talk about it okay?” Alex reassures her.

Alex makes sure that no one will try to check in on her with a few well placed texts and the two of them end up on the outskirts of the city in a relatively abandoned area. The two of them leave their cell phones in the car at Maggie’s request, both of them turned off.

“What is it that you found out Maggie?” Alex asks as they’re hidden in an old warehouse.

It’s then that Maggie pulls out a NCPD case file.

“I’ve been working on some old case files, cold, missing persons. Most of them were dead ends, until I found this one. I started reading it, and at first I thought my mind was just messing with me and it was just a coincidence but the more I looked at the case the less it seemed like it.” She flips open the file looking at the photo that she’d moved to the front.

“I tripled checked everything to make sure that I wasn’t going crazy, or maybe I was just missing something and that this wasn’t what it looked like. But unless I’m missing something about some sort of undercover op or something, I think you need to read this.”

Alex takes the file and the first thing she sees is the photo of herself. But that can’t be right? This is a missing person’s case and she is definitely not missing. Her eyes move to look over at the name listed and it reads Alexandra Grey .

That’s even more freaky. She knows that Maggie wouldn’t be showing this to her if she thought this missing person just looked like her but she can’t figure out what Maggie seems to know yet as she starts looking at the file.

“I thought I was seeing things at first, that I hadn’t had enough sleep. But other people saw the resemblance too. So I started looking into her, she has the same degree of education you do, she’s also a doctor. And then I went to the hospital that she worked at in Seattle.” Maggie starts to explain to her.

Alex can’t help but be stuck on the photo, trying to read the file and failing. Something about it has her frozen.

“She has a half-sister that I was able to speak to and I got a DNA sample from her and I still had your overnight toothbrush. I thought that I could compare them and they wouldn’t match and then I could move on, but-”

Maggie stops there and Alex looks up at her waiting for her to continue.

“But?”

“It put you two as a twenty five percent match, which means that you’re half sister to Alexandra Grey’s half sister. After that I looked for any sort of adoption records but I couldn’t find anything, and you never mentioned anything either. I looked for several explanations but I couldn’t find anything. So unless you can give me something that can explain all this, the only thing I can conclude with my evidence is that you are Alexandra Grey who has supposedly been missing and presumed dead.”

She drops all the information on her at once. Maggie needs some sort of explanation other than the idea that this is some sort of weird conspiracy that she keeps coming up with.

Alex is desperately trying to understand what’s in front of her, her belief in Maggie and the memories in her head. None of it makes sense.

“I don’t understand it either. As far as I know, I’ve never been her, I’m not adopted, but my brain is telling me that this is a photo of me. I know you wouldn’t lie to me Maggie, but I’m having a hard time believing that this is true.” She looks back down at the file, her eyes are still drawn to the photo.

“She’s a missing person right? How did she go missing?” Alex begins to question. The first page is just full of very basic personal information and she hadn’t been able to make herself flip past it yet. She flips the next page over to begin reading, finally forcing herself away from the picture.

At the same time she’s reading the police report, Maggie tells her.

“She was in a plane crash, they never found any remains.”

Plane. Crash.

The description of the crash in the report brings her recurring dream to the forefront of her mind. Small plane. Total of six doctors aboard. There was a malfunction mid-air and the plane broke apart. The five of the doctors and the pilot were stranded in the woods for four days before being rescued. Alexandra was not found.

It sends a chill through her spine. 

There’s no way anyone else could’ve known about that dream. She hadn’t told anyone about them.

“Maggie, I remember this.” Alex finally speaks.

“What?” She stops, realizing that Alex had said something to her.

“I remember the plane crash. I thought it was a weird dream that I was having because I was on the plane that Kara saved when she became supergirl but the details were always wrong.” She admits.

“In the dream, it always flashes between the plane I was on when Kara saved it and a smaller plane with only a few people on it. And instead of it being saved, the plane breaks apart and I get sucked out. The dream always ends with me dressed in scrubs, in the middle of the woods calling for help. I never understood why I was having the dream.”

“Until now.” Maggie adds on to Alex’s retelling of her dream.

“It makes sense because the flight that Alexandra Grey was on was headed to another hospital to perform a surgery with a team of other doctors, before it had a mechanical malfunction and crashed in a wooded area.” 

It explains her dreams, but not the fact that she has no memory of ever being Alexandra Grey.

“But how can I not remember anything else? I have memories of growing up as Alex Danvers, with my mom, dad, and Kara. How can I have been someone else without knowing it?” Alex feels so frustrated.

“It makes sense if someone altered your memories, and if I recall correctly your alien boss can do exactly that.” Maggie suggests to her.

“What? No, J’onn would never. I mean the DEO didn’t even-” Alex stops herself mid sentence “-the DEO didn’t even know J’onn was a Martian until last year.”

“What do you mean that they didn’t know he was an alien? He works for the DEO.” Maggie asks.

“No, before we met, J’onn had taken the identity of the former DEO director that had tried to kill him when my- my dad intervened and we thought both of them had died. Everyone thought he was Hank Henshaw for years until he was forced to reveal himself when Kara was affected by Red Kryptonite. I found out a little before that because he was being hunted by the white Martians.” Alex explains everything that had happened before they’d met.

“That doesn’t mean that he wasn’t lying to you, Alex.” Maggie argues with her.

“It’s not just that Maggie, when they found out and arrested him. They arrested me too because I knew he was a Martian and didn’t say anything. They were convinced that he was manipulating me and we were being taken away to some other facility. We escaped and were on the run until Myriad happened and came back to help. It was only after that they cleared us.”

It takes Maggie a moment to connect the dots that she’d connected.

“They arrested you not because you committed a crime by hiding J’onn but because they were worried he’d unlock your memories because he was a Martian.”

“Exactly.” Alex answers. “The DEO was worried that I had figured out that my memories aren’t real.”

“Then the problem is what’s their whole plan?” Maggie asks her.

The weight of the answer falls on her all at once.

“Because the DEO wants Kara, an alien as their weapon. Clark wouldn’t work with them but when Kara landed here, he left her alone with people he thought he could trust. But if we’re right, he may have just placed Kara in their hands and they just used me and everyone else to help control her. The chance that J’onn could unlock all of our memories is a threat to them.”

Meredith sits on the couch after she’d put the kids to bed once everyone had gotten home and they’d had dinner. She finds herself looking at the few pictures that she had of Lexi. It really wasn’t much, they’d been busy doctors and had only had a few short years of knowing each other before the plane crash.

Everyone at the hospital has been talking about how Detective Sawyer had come to talk with her about Lexi and god she wished that they would just shut up about it. Over half of the doctors she now worked with had never met her sister, just heard rumors. None of the residents from her year stuck around, new interns came, had done their residency, passed their boards and some had become attendings. Lexi had become just the name on the building.

It’d been so long since the plane crash, but yet it was still coming to haunt her.

Derek comes up from behind her, rubbing her shoulders and kissing the top of her head.

“We’ll get through this.” He tells her.

Meredith really hopes that this will be the end.

Alex knows that she has to get ahead of this, she doesn’t know how much time they have before whoever at the DEO realizes what Maggie has uncovered and told her. There’s no way she can dig into this there, they’d figure it out before she got close.

She needs J’onn’s help. If Alex can uncover her memories from before, they’ll know exactly who is behind it in the DEO and they can take them down before they find out that she knows. It actually benefits her that she met up with Maggie because Alex can use it as an excuse to talk to J’onn in private after work.

He seems to sense that something is up based on the way she asks him to meet up after work but trusts her enough to wait to find out. They meet in a relatively remote area, the same way as before.

“Alex, what’s this about?” J’onn finally asks her now that they’re alone.

“I need your help.” Alex decides to be straightforward on this.

“I’m guessing it’s something serious considering how you’re acting about.” J’onn states, letting her take her time to tell him.

Alex pulls out the file that Maggie had given her early and hands it to him.

“Maggie brought this to me today, and I’m pretty sure that the DEO has been covering up a lot of things.”

He opens the file and sees her photo as the first thing and then starts reading the details of the report. It becomes glaringly obvious pretty fast what this is about.

“This is you, or at least who you were.” J’onn summarizes succinctly.

“I think someone at the DEO changed my memories so that they could use me to manipulate Kara. They’ve probably changed her memories as well. The only thing I can remember is the plane crash, I’ve been having dreams about it. I think between the flight to Geneva that nearly crashed and when Non took control of me with Myriad that it affected whatever they did.” Alex explains, even though she’s still wary.

“I need your help to uncover the memories, before they can do anymore damage.”

She can tell that all of the information has finally made an impact on J’onn, in the same horrifying way it had to her earlier.

“I’ll do my best.” He tells her. Alex carefully steps forward and lets his hands touch her head, closing her eyes.

Memories of her early life as Alex Danvers seem to melt away and they’re replaced with other ones. Ones where the name Lexi Grey plant themselves. Her father is Thatcher Grey and her Mother is Susan Grey. It’s not Eliza and Jeramiah Danvers. She has a younger sister named Molly. She was valedictorian in high school, went to Harvard and studied to become a doctor. 

Her mother died. Of hiccups of all things. She starts her internship at Seattle Grace. Meredith. Her older half sister. Derek. Zola. Mark. Mark Sloan. There’s a mix of heartache and confusion. The plane.

The memory is no longer jumbled. The plane breaks apart and she is sucked out. She barely manages to hang on debris in a desperate attempt. It saves her life. She’s on the ground, in the forest. Stumbling around, calling for help and the others that were on the plane. A road comes into view and there’s a car. She remembers feeling frustrated because she can’t figure out how to explain that there’s others, that there’s been a plane crash.

Then there’s a hospital, not the one she worked at, the one she was at after the crash. She can’t tell them who she is, she’s labeled as a Jane Doe patient. Suddenly she’s being transferred but it’s not another hospital. It looks like a DEO facility. She recognizes the face that talks about wiping her memory.

General Lane.

J’onn finishes restoring her memories and Alex is feeling a little distorted between the clashing memories. 

“It’ll take a while for you to adjust and there might be confusion for a bit, but it’ll fade.” He tells her.

“We need to go find Kara, now.” Alex says as she manages to finally clear her thoughts. “Once we fix her memories, we can end this.”

Chapter Text

Kara was finishing up with covering an event for a story and checked her phone for a message from Clark. They were supposed to meet up after their respective work schedules today, and spend some time together. They really never did that sort of thing together until recently, seeing as he had spent most of her time on earth absent in her life.

Things had been getting better though, once she started using her powers, it felt like they had more in common than just being family. At least that’s what she thought until she saw his message.

“Sorry, I can’t make it. ”

No explanation but she’s sure he wouldn’t do it without a reason. Guess she might as well go home.

“Kara!” She turns her head at the sound of a familiar voice calling her name.

“Lena!” Kara pauses to let her catch up. “I didn’t know you were here, I would’ve looked for you.”

“No, that's okay, I was hiding from unwanted attention earlier. Although if I knew you were here it would’ve been better.” Lena waves off her apology.

“It’s been a while though, do you want to catch up, go get dinner? They really didn’t have much food, if you’re not busy.”

Lena then notices the look she makes in response to her remark.

“Kara, are you okay? You look upset.”

At that moment Kara realizes that she’d briefly been distracted by the thought of her cancelled plans.

“No, it’s nothing. I had plans but they got canceled, so I’m free.” Kara tells her.

“I’m sorry, were you looking forward to them?” Lena reaches out in a comforting gesture.

“Yeah, I was. I was supposed to meet up with Clark but he had to cancel, I understand though.” She tries again to wave off the concern.

“Alright, well what should we get to eat?” Seeing that Kara wants to move on she lets her, at least for now.

They pick somewhere casual and sit in a quiet corner booth, making quiet gossip about the event they’d just been at. Lena fills in some information for Kara’s story. Even after a while of sitting and talking, with Lena slipping in some jokes she can tell that Kara is still down.

“You’re still upset that Clark canceled, aren’t you? Did you two have a fight?” She can’t help but ask.

“It’s not that, we didn’t have a fight, it’s just-“ Kara lets the words trail off.

“Well you’re clearly upset over it and as your friend I want to make you feel better.” Lena continues to insist.

“You’re always there for me, let me be here for you now.”

Kara sighs at Lena’s argument and leans back in her seat.

“It’s just, Clark is my only biological family member that I have and that should be important to him.” Kara starts telling her.

“But it doesn’t seem like it is. He’s always been absent, sure we’ll text or call but he would never visit when I was younger. Only recently did we start actually hanging out but this is the third time he’s canceled on me.” 

She bites her lip in thought. “It just feels like he doesn’t care about me at all.”

Lena reaches over and grabs Kara’s hand.

“Family can’t always be perfect Kara but don’t let it keep you from enjoying yourself right now. Afterwards you can call him and tell how you feel, yell at him, but for right now we can order dessert and have fun while he misses out.”

Kara squeezes Lena’s hand back and smiles. 

“Thank you, I really needed to let that out. Now you promised dessert?”

Midway through the promised dessert though, Kara’s phone starts to ring. A glance tells her that it’s Alex.

“Hold on, I need to take this.” Kara steps away from the table just in case it’s DEO business.

“Alex, what’s up.” 

“Kara, where are you?” Alex’s voice comes through and she’s clearly worried.

“I’m having dinner with Lena, what’s wrong?” She responds simultaneously going through a list of excuses she gives to Lena about why she has to leave.

“You’re with Lena, okay just stay with her I’m coming to you, just tell me where you are.” Alex tells her instead.

“Why, what’s going on?” Kara tries asking again.

“I can’t tell you yet, just stay where you are. Okay?” She makes her promise. 

Kara takes a deep breath as she replies. “Okay.”

She hangs up after giving her the restaurant name and heads back to the table.

“Is something wrong?” Lena asks her once she comes back.

“I don’t know. Alex is coming to get me, she said to stay with you until she gets here.” Kara explains.

Lena nods and then summons a nearby waiter.

“We’ll need the check.”

Kara waits anxiously at the door with Lena until she sees Alex appear with J’onn at her side.

“Alex, what’s going on? Did something happen?” Kara says to Alex in a hushed voice as she rushes over to her.

“Not here, we need to go somewhere safe. Now.” Alex then turns to address Lena.

“Do you have any sort of safe house, I think we’re going to need your help.” 

Lena is caught a bit off guard but she nods.

“I have a place, do you want me to ride with you or follow?” She asks, still entirely unsure of what’s going on.

“Actually it’d be safer if we go in your car.” Alex tells her.

Lena nods and has her driver pull up her car and the four of them get in and head to Lena’s safe house in silence. It takes a fair amount of time considering that the safe house is hidden on the outskirts of National city. In fact they can’t even physically see it until Lena temporary disables the cloaking mechanism hiding it,

Once they’re all inside she activates her security measures again.

“Okay, we’re secure. What’s going on, if the DEO isn’t safe enough then I can’t imagine what is going on.” Lena questions.

“Until we know the full extent of who’s involved it’s not.” Alex says then turns to Kara.

“Alex, please tell me what is going on!” She all but snaps because at this point it’s getting frustrating.

“Kara, we accidentally uncovered a brainwashing program that General Lane was in charge of. Everything we thought that we knew is a lie.” She finally tells her.

Alex is still having trouble with it herself. She has two separate sets of memories but she knows which ones are the real ones now. But the impact of this revelation is overwhelming, thinking about the life she left behind. God, Meredith thinks she’s dead. It’s been what, seven, eight years? She hasn’t had time to process how much was taken from her, what is really real to her.

Kara is in a state of shock that won’t even be comparable once J’onn uncovers her real memories.

“Alex, what do you mean?” She finally gets the words out.

“Maggie found a cold case file this morning and she brought it to me because it was a missing persons case for me. And the second I read it, I realized that some of those memories had slipped through. I thought they were just dreams but they weren’t. It’s why they were so worried when they found out J’onn was an alien, it wasn’t because he was an alien-“

Kara wants to deny it for a second because how? How could it possibly be true? But the things Alex describes are hauntingly familiar to her. The weird dreams that feel real, the constant tugging of her gut that things were wrong that had become more frequent. More importantly, she knows Alex, she trusts Alex with every fiber of her being. J’onn as well. There’s no way they’re lying to her right now.

“It was because he can read minds.” Kara fills in the blanks. 

Suddenly things make a little more sense. Part of her had always questioned why they chose to arrest Alex. Alex was her sister, yes she covered up J’onn’s identity but Supergirl might not have been on their side afterwards. It was a risky move. But not if they were worried she would ruin the truth.

“Wait, so you're saying the DEO used both of you for a brainwashing project? Were you two their test subjects? What was their whole plan?” Lena had been silent until now but she was quickly catching on, J’onn being an alien didn’t even throw her off.

“It’s because I’m Supergirl, and they wanted an alien they could control.” This is no time for secrets and Kara really hopes Lena doesn’t hate her for it.

“Oh.” Is her first response. “That actually makes a lot of sense now.”

“What can I do to help?” Lena moves on quickly from the revelation, mostly because there’s a more important matter at hand.

Alex is the one with the answer for that.

“From the memories I recovered, it seemed like Cadmus was a part of it. I think Lilian helped fund the program. I was hoping you might be able to find some records she kept that’ll help us root out everyone involved.” She tells them.

“I’m surprised you trust me knowing my mother was involved.” Lena remarks upon hearing that.

“Well, J’onn can read minds and we might have already checked previously to see if you were involved with her plans before you helped us put her in jail. We would’ve found out sooner if you were. Also sorry about that.” Alex then reveals to her.

“To be fair, I would’ve done the same if I could. It certainly would make trusting people a lot easier for me.” Lena points out, accepting the apology.

“But the first step is to fix Kara’s memories, it’ll go a long way in helping us unravel it all.” J’onn says.

“Kara.” 

Kara steps forward and lets J’onn have direct contact so that he can do what he needs to do.

For her there’s a lot more memories to recover. After Clark leaves her with the Danvers, there’s a confusing set of events that didn’t make sense to her young brain at the time. She ends up at a facility, she tries fighting the guards but they know exactly how to subdue her. She immediately recognizes General Lane and a few others.

They try an array of methods to try and control her but she remains difficult and refuses to do what they want. She spends so much time praying to Rao that Clark would figure out what happened to her, save her. He doesn’t come.

There’s multiple escape attempts but they always stop her. Then they start brainwashing methods. Not all of them work out. They create these whole fake lives for her, getting more complicated with each failure.

She tries to escape again. A plane is caught in the crossfire. She does her best to minimize casualties but it gets her caught again. They bring in Alex. They’re worried about what she saw when Kara saved her, Alex has no idea what’s going on. Then they realize a new way to keep her under control is to have her attached to someone who is just as unaware of the truth as she is.

They create the lives of Kara and Alex Danvers with bits of truth interwoven in the fake memories to make it seem more real. It’s the last time they ever have to redo the brainwashing.

J’onn releases her and she steadies herself as she adjusts to the memories.

“Are you okay?” Alex asks, putting a hand on her shoulder with Lena hovering nearby.

“Yeah, we need to get to work fast.” 

Lena manages to dig up Lillian’s records from the Cadmus project with their direction. J’onn decides that the only way they can end all of this is to go to the only higher up authority that they can trust. President Marsdin is their one ally, being an alien and head of the government she has the power to act against the corrupt government and military figures that put this together. There’s also no way she would have let the project happen under her authority.

As much as Kara doesn’t want Alex and J’onn to go to the DEO knowing what they know now, they have to. It keeps any suspicious activity undercover but J’onn also has to check out the memories of the other agents.

He carefully interacts with each agent under the guise of doing security protocol checks that were ‘mandated’ by the President earlier that morning.

A similar thing is going down at the military bases that General Lane and the other personnel involved are stationed. Once they get the confirmation, President Marsdin gives the go ahead to the teams she’s authorized while the non-affiliated members of each organization are separated and filled in on the situation.

It’s abrupt chaos as the arrests are being made, many of them try to resist and fight back but thanks to Lena they have all the information on their fallback plans on how they would react if any of this ever came to light.

Just as suddenly as the chaos erupted, it ended. They watched as agents and soldiers were arrested and carted away. Alex can hardly believe it's over just like that. The others still have to be debriefed and they have to handle the official press release on what’s happened and probably a million other procedures. But it’s over.

Once things have settled, Alex finds herself sitting in a room off to the side taking it all in. Kara appears at the door a moment later and decides to come sit down next to her.

“So what now?” She asks her.

“I’m not really sure.” Alex tells her.

“What about your family?” Kara then asks.

It’s at that moment that it occurs to Alex that Kara doesn’t really have anyone besides Clark, who should have kept this from happening in the first place. She doesn’t know what’s going on with Eliza or Jeremiah, whether they were a part of this or not. But for herself, she has a family, one who thinks she’s been dead all this time, one that surely wants to know what happened to her.

“You know that you’re always going to be my sister, right?” Alex asks her instead of responding.

“I know, but I know having been your family, I would want to know that you’re okay. Not be wondering forever.” Kara knows too well what she’s thinking. 

“Tell me about your family.” She asks.

“I have a younger sister named Molly, she’s married and has a little girl named Laura. Her husband is in the military, so I didn’t get to see her as often as I should have.” Alex starts off telling her.

“You’re an aunt? I bet you're the cool, fun aunt.” Kara comments, urging her on.

“Yeah, maybe. I had another sister, an older half-sister.” She continues on. “I didn’t know she existed until Molly had her baby at the hospital she worked at and then I ended up doing my internship and residency at the same hospital. We didn’t get along at first but I think working together helped us. She’s married too, she and her husband adopted a little girl named Zola, so I have at least two nieces.”

Alex pauses thinking about them.

“They were both on the plane when it crashed, along with a couple of my friends and-” Mark. God, how is she supposed to feel about Mark now? According to Maggie everyone survived but everything has changed. Is she even sure anything she feels is right? “-we were heading to perform a surgery.”

Kara grabs her hand and squeezes it tight.

“They said everyone survived the crash, so they’re alright? Right?” Kara asks for confirmation because it’d be really terrible to learn that they hadn’t.

“Yeah, Maggie said she talked to her. I should actually call her, I was supposed to update her on everything. What about you, what are you going to do?” Alex asks her.

“I think I need some time with Clark, and we need to talk about some things. So you’re going to see them tonight?” 

“Yeah.” Alex finally replies.

“Good.” Kara smiles at her.

Meredith feels like things just kept going wrong today. Complications on complications, and constantly running patients back to the OR. She hopes there’s no more as she finishes scrubbing out. A glance at the clock tells her it’s two o’clock in the morning. The halls are quiet now, the earlier chaos finally broken. Derek appears at the door.

“Ready to head home?” He asks.

“Almost.” She still has to deal with post-op procedures.

As she dries off her hands, a nurse comes to the door.

“Dr. Grey, someone is here to see you.” Meredith wants to groan as she hears the words, they aren’t getting out of here are they?

“Who is it?” She asks.

“A Detective Maggie Sawyer.” Meredith stills. Today's chaos must have been a sign of the bad news to come.

“We’ll be down in a minute.” Derek tells the nurse who nods and walks away. He looks at his wife in concern.

“Do you need me to do anything?”

Meredith shakes her head at him. She was sick of everyone trying to coddle her over this, she just wanted to get it over with. They walk down the halls to the foyer and Meredith focuses on Detective Sawyer the second she sees her, this is it, the news that she’s normally the one giving.

“Did you find her?” Meredith asks bluntly.

She smiles at Meredith as she responds. “It’s probably not the answer you’re expecting but-” Maggie steps to the side a little, looking behind her.

“Meredith.” Her head snaps to the familiar voice, looking where Maggie is and she feels like she can’t breathe.

It’s Lexie, her hair is shorter and she’s older than in her memory of her but it’s her. It shouldn’t be possible.

“How?” It’s not her voice that says it but Derek’s from behind her.

“It’s a very long story, it’s actually kind of crazy.” Lexie tells Meredith as she steps closer to her, unsure of how to proceed. There’s tears in her eyes and she smiles at her.

Meredith’s brain finally catches up with her and she pulls her sister towards her, into her arms. Through the appearance of  her own tears, she responds.

“Of course it is, Greys’ only do things that are crazy.” A bit of laughter and more tears follow that statement as Derek is quick to join them in their reunion.

Alexandra Grey is with her family again, she glances at Maggie through it all and mouths a thank you.

Chapter Text

Meredith practically hasn’t let go of her since the hospital. Derek drives them to their house, which when they pull up, Lexie realizes is the dream home that they’d been building. It hadn’t been finished before and she’d been expecting their old house until now.

They end up sitting on the couch, lights dim because it’s still the middle of the night, almost morning really. They have questions and she knows it.

“Where have you been? We looked everywhere, searched the whole damn forest, sent your picture to every hospital, every record for a Jane doe. We couldn’t find you. I-“ Meredith stops as Lexie squeezes her hand to get her attention.

“It’s not anyone’s fault Meredith, not because you didn’t look hard enough. Okay?” Lexie tells her.

Meredith nods, not taking her eyes off her.

“When the plane crashed, I had no idea where any of you were. So I went and started looking, and I ended up at the edge of a road. Some people found me and called an ambulance. I was so out of it by then that I couldn’t tell them about the plane or who I was. They took me to the hospital and-“

She’s not sure how to tell her.

“I was taken. I was taken from the hospital.” 

They’re obviously confused, trying to come to a conclusion that makes sense. Waiting to see if she continues on with the sentence.

“So you were transferred to another hospital?” Derek tries filling in but Meredith seems to realize that’s not it. She’s just watching her carefully.

“No, I was abducted. I was a convenient Jane doe no one would look for and they just took me.” 

Meredith’s grip on her tightens. Derek’s face drops. Lexie knows that even only part of the truth she can tell them will hurt so much.

“Where did they take you? What did they-“ 

Meredith cuts herself off. She wants to know but there’s the fear of knowing that the answer could be anything. Anything could have happened to her little sister, horrible things. She doesn’t want to imagine them. Not about her sister.

“You’ll probably hear about it on the news in a few hours. There was this secret operation that was uncovered that experimented on people by basically brainwashing them. I ended up there, becoming part of that experiment. I was living as a different person and I didn’t even know until two days ago.” 

Lexie is sure that if she included the whole alien aspect of the story that they might have her committed. They’re already having a hard time processing what she’s told them. Until now they probably assumed that she had amnesia or was comatose and completely unrecognizable. Or living some weirder version of Lost minus the island. This probably isn’t any better though.

“How did they-I mean you said that they altered your memories? What did-“ Derek can seem to get his head around the questions that he’s trying to ask her. 

He’s a neurosurgeon, he’s studied the brain and what affects it. The thought of brainwashing puts him in a tailspin of concern and scientific intrigue. Meredith knows him well enough that she redirects the conversation, right now is not the time to treat her sister like a patient.

“But despite all of what you’ve been through, you’re okay? You don’t seem to have any severe injuries from the crash. They didn’t do anything else to you? You said you were completely unaware of it all until now, so were you just living a regular life?” 

It’s all Meredith is really concerned about at the moment. 

“Yeah, essentially.” If one considered dealing with alien related cases on a daily basis normal.

“So what was this other life like? You were gone for so long, it’s a lot of life to live as someone else. A lot can happen, hell a lot has happened here.” Derek inquires.

Lexie pauses for a moment, the other two don’t say anything while they wait for her response.

“Some things they didn’t change, I think because it made it easier to believe. I was Alexandra Danvers, I was still a doctor.” Lexie starts to tell them.

They perk up at this information.

“Really? Does that mean you finished your residency?” Meredith asks her. She had often wondered what future had been stolen from her sister, what she would’ve accomplished. Maybe the plane crash hadn’t stolen everything from her.

“What’s your specialty?” Derek follows up with his own question. He had been leading her to become a neurosurgeon after all.

Lexie smiles a bit at their excitement.

“I did, I finished my residency and did my fellowship at National City General. I’m double board certified for Neuro and Trauma.” She informs them and Derek perks up at that.

“Who’d you do your fellowship under for Neuro?” He asks.

“Dr. Edward Kingsman.”

Derek takes a moment to recall what he’s heard about the fellow neurosurgeon off hand.

“He’s not bad I guess.” He ends up shrugging. Meredith laughs at him.

“He’s just not you right?” She pokes fun at her husband.

“I’m not answering that.” Derek responds to her question.

Lexie is glad to see that the two of them are still happy together after all this time.

“So do you still work at the same hospital or did you go somewhere else after your fellowship?” Meredith decides to ask her next, she can’t help but want to know what her life has been this past few years. They’ve missed out on so much.

Lexie hesitates for a moment. Meredith can tell but she wants to give her time, Lexie is dealing with the impact of everything that’s happened for the first time.

“I’ve had a few career changes, actually. Some surprising ones in fact. I worked in a research lab for a bit after my fellowship. It was actually right outside of Seattle.” She mentions and she feels the shift between them.

“I wonder how many times we were so close to finding you without realizing.” Meredith is probably this close to breaking down in tears but she wants to hold it together. Not yet.

There’s probably more than one reason Lexie felt discontent with her research job back then if she thinks about it for a moment. She swallows the feeling immediately after.

“I only worked there for a short time though. I ended up accepting another job which is actually kind of the reason I was able to figure out everything. Oddly enough, I uh- I took a job as a federal agent.” The words kind of just blurt themselves out.

Lexie gets the confused faces that she’s expecting and the shock leaves the room quiet for a while. Derek opens his mouth a few times to ask a question but then immediately scraps it each time.

“I know it’s kind of strange, going from a doctor to a federal agent. I still operate though, just part time.” This conversation is starting to become god awful to Lexie because honestly she really hadn’t thought any of it through.

Hell it hadn’t even been forty eight hours since she’d gotten her memories back. At first her only thoughts had been about stopping the people responsible and getting back to the life she left behind. Now, everything is different. There’s no way to explain all of it, at least not right now.

Meredith can tell her anxiety is building.

“I think this is the kind of conversation we need drinks for. Tequila?” 

Midway across the country, Kara lands in Metropolis outside of the Daily Planet where she knows Clark is still working. She walks into the building to the receptionist desk, there’s a security guard there because it’s late and the normal staff is gone at this hour. They look annoyed with her, clearly ready to send her away.

“Hi, I’m Kara Danvers-” She pauses for a moment, because that’s not really true is it? She’s not sure anymore but continues on anyway.

“I need to see my cousin, he works here, it’s an emergency.” Kara explains the rest quickly before the security guard loses patience.

“And the name of your cousin?” He looks at her tiredly.

“Clark Kent.” She supplies. He gives her an odd look but picks up the phone to call upstairs anyway.

“Mr. Kent, you have a visitor at the front desk-yes, I know. She says she’s your cousin- yes. Okay, I’ll send her up.” 

The guard hangs up the phone and grabs a visitor badge and hands it to her, motioning for her to follow him to the elevator.

“His office is on the thirty-first floor, he’ll be waiting for you when you get off the elevator.” He informs her before making sure she gets on.

Kara spends the elevator ride trying to prepare herself for the conversation she has to have with Clark. There’s so many thoughts going through her head about how to say what has to be said. She’d rather not deal with it to be honest. For once she wants to run and hide, let everyone else deal with all her problems. Ignoring it would be so easy. 

The elevator doors open and Clark is there, he looks frantic.

“Kara, I’m glad you’re here. We need your help, Lois said that the DEO just arrested her father. She doesn’t understand why we need your help to talk to J’onn. This has to be a misunderstanding, it doesn’t make any sense.” He immediately begins to tell her and Kara can feel her stomach sink.

“I already know, that’s why I’m here-” 

“Then tell me what is going on, because I’m about thirty seconds away from not willing to listen to what the DEO has to say anymore. See, it’s things like this, Kara, this is why I can’t trust them.” Clark continues on.

“Clark!’ Kara finally snaps at him so that he’ll stop. 

She grabs him by the arm and pulls him over to his office and closes the door.

“This is a lot more complicated than you realize-” She begins to explain to him, but Clark seems to be too caught up in his own beliefs to be willing to let her explain.

“No it’s really not. I understand that Alex works for the DEO but they’re corrupt and I don’t trust them. They’ve arrested General Lane and they refuse to explain why. I understand that he can be a bit unreasonable, but he’s still a good man, he’s Lois’s fath-” 

Kara can’t take it, she can’t listen to Clark defend him just because of Lois.

“No he’s not! He is not! And if you’d ever been around at all you would know!” She yells at him.

Clark looks at her in shock, not expecting her to yell at him like that. Kara doesn’t want to let him interrupt again and it’s time for him to know the truth.

“If you’d been around, you would know. I was never in Midvale after you dropped me off with the Danvers. General Lane came and took me to Cadmus and he had them alter my memories. He was the one that couldn’t be trusted, that’s why they arrested him.” 

Confusion takes over as Clark tries to make sense of what she’s saying.

“What? But I know Jeremiah and Eliza, they helped me understand my powers. They wouldn’t and we sent letters. I remember, I still have them. What about Alex?”

“I don’t know about Eliza and Jeremiah. Eliza took off and we haven’t known where Jeremiah is for a while. Alex isn’t even their daughter. Lane kidnapped her too. We found her missing person's case by accident. That’s how we found out that everything we knew was a lie,” Kara can’t help but shout at him at this point.

“But the letters?” He asks her again.

“They weren’t from me, Clark. They came from Cadmus. I’m your only family Clark, and you didn’t care enough to do more than send a letter every once in a while. I waited for you to come and rescue me and you never came.”

As she finishes, Kara feels tears streaming down her face. This is too much for her.

“I have to go.” Kara says abruptly, moving for the quickest exit possible. She doesn’t listen to Clark calling her or let him follow.

Lexie hears footsteps and is startled from her sleep, not sure where she is at first. After a moment, she realizes that she’d fallen asleep against Meredith on her couch. There’s a blanket covering them, probably put there by Derek.

The footsteps come down the stairs and it’s not the Dr. Shepherd she’s expecting.

Amelia appears at the bottom of the stairs and notices movement from the couch, then does a startled double take.

“Oh my god!” Meredith jumps awake when she hears Amelia shout.

“It’s too early for you to be this loud, Amelia.” Meredith then mumbles, her eyes still shut tight.

“But, it’s Lexie! You’re here! You’re alive! Oh my god!” She continues to freak out. 

Meredith begrudgingly opens her eyes and reaches for a pillow and throws it at Amelia, smacking her in the head with it.

“Hey! What was that for?” Amelia asks in bewilderment, not understanding why Meredith is reacting this way.

Lexie decides that it’s better that she intervenes before Meredith weaponizes another household object.

“Meredith’s kind of drunk at the moment, and also really tired from surgery. You kind of missed the earlier reunion freak out.” She explained to her.

“Well, still! You’re alive!” Amelia surprises Lexie by throwing her arms around her in excitement, causing her to fall into Meredith who wasn’t exactly pleased about it.

“I mean, how did you survive? Where have you been? And where’s Derek, shouldn’t he be home by now? Does he know yet? Does anyone else know? Shouldn’t we be waking up people and telling them the good news?” 

Meredith decides that she needs to put a halt on ‘Hurricane Amelia’ before she gets too far and knows that it’s probably stressing Lexie out somewhat.

“Amelia, calm down. Lexie has only been back for a few hours and she has a lot to process. The whole thing is a complicated shitstorm, hence the drinking.” She says, physically holding her in place so that Amelia can focus.

“Oh.” Meredith can practically see a light bulb go off in her head.

“Derek knows, he was at the hospital with me when Lexie showed up.” She stops to look around the house. “And he was here a little while ago, where did he go?”

Meredith finally sits up, curious about the disappearance of her husband. A glance around and she sees that his coat and shoes are missing from the entrance. Then she hears his car in the driveway, meaning that he’d left the house at some point. Maybe he’d gotten called in?

She starts to move off the couch, flinging aside the blanket as she hears footsteps come up the porch and start opening the door. Meredith makes it halfway across to the door to open it for him, figuring Derek is fumbling with the keys in his tired state, when it flings open.

“Cristina! What are you doing here?” Meredith exclaims as she registers her entering the house instead of Derek, who is actually a few feet behind.

“Your husband called me and said you would need me because he said that they might have found Lexie. So I dropped everything and got the first flight out of Zurich, then he picks me up and tells me that she’s alive. Tell me that he’s not screwing with me.” Cristina immediately asks.

“Well, I’m not dead.” Lexie speaks up from behind Meredith.

“Oh my god! You are! You’re here! I’m not hallucinating just because I’m jet lagged and sleep deprived, right?” Cristina turned to Meredith for confirmation.

Meredith smiles at her friend and nods.

“Yes, she’s really here and she’s really alive.” She says even if she can’t believe it herself at the moment.

“Come here, I need to hug you. And we need to call everyone, did you guys tell everyone yet? We should have a celebration!” 

Lexie doesn’t expect Cristina to hug her as tight as she does, nor be this excited. 

“Listen, I know everyone is excited and everything. But I’m not really ready to see anyone else yet.” She tells them and Cristina pulls back from the hug in surprise.

“What?”

Cristina and Amelia look at her a bit startled by that. They’d assumed that Lexie would be anxious to see her friends and family.

“It’s just there’s a lot that’s happened in several years and I’m still trying to adjust. I’m not ready.” She tells them.

Meredith and Derek share a look between themselves because while they don’t know the full story they know enough. It’s clear that the reality of everything is starting to set in and Lexie is trying not to panic. Meredith moves over to check on her sister.

“Lexie, do you want me to explain what happened?” She whispers. 

Lexie knows she needs to remove herself from the room because this is already becoming too much and she decides that it might be helpful in the transition if other people know, to help her. 

“Yeah, can you. I think I need to take a shower, it’s been over two days and I’m starting to smell  gross.” Lexie responds.

Meredith gives her a comforting squeeze and looks towards Derek.

“Why don’t you show her where the bathroom is? And help her get some clothes.” He nods and starts guiding her away. 

Meredith then turns to the other two.

“Normally I would offer tequila for this, but Amelia can’t drink and I just finished the last bottle we had, so coffee first.” 

Today would be a long day and it’d just barely started.

In the early hours, just as the next shift is about to begin for many of the staff at Grey Memorial Hospital there is a particularly odd rumor circulating around as the doctors get ready to see their patients.

“I’m telling you I saw her ghost! In the foyer late last night!” An intern gossips with another.

“You don’t even know what her sister looked like!” Levi snaps at the other interns gossiping off to the side. 

He really doesn’t like that they’re gossiping about Dr. Grey like this, especially when she’s waiting to hear news on her sister since the detective showed up this week. Spreading rumors about her sister’s ghost haunting the hospital would not help her if she has to deal with properly laying her sister to rest soon. At least he has enough respect not to bring it up, unlike everyone else at the hospital. Most of the people here now never worked here when she was alive to begin with. Hence, why he was annoyed with these interns.

“I’ve seen her photos. I mean, you’ve seen the articles about the plane crash and how they renamed the hospital after her.” The other intern argues back.

“That doesn’t mean you start baseless rumors! You never saw her in person, it could've been anyone. You were probably too sleep deprived!” Finally Levi decides to just walk about from the other two because he has things he needs to do.

A little further down the hall he bumps into Jackson which spooks him because he realizes that he was probably close enough to hear him arguing with the other interns. Off hand he also knew that Jackson was one of the remaining doctors that personally knew Meredith’s sister.

“Dr. Avery! Uh, how are you this morning?” Levi asks, trying to act casual.

“Don’t do that.” Jackson responds with a tinge of annoyance.

“Do what?” Levi knows that he’s failing here but he’s still trying.

“I’ve heard the ghost rumor already, you don’t need to walk on eggshells around me or anyone else. It’s annoying more than anything else.” He informs him.

“Got it.”

Jackson sends Levi off to do rounds while he ponders on the recent developments in Lexie’s case. Mark didn’t want to talk about it unless ‘there was actually something to talk about’ in his words. It’s not the healthiest way of dealing with things and Jackson was pretty sure Mark had never really moved on from Lexie. He tried dating again at one point but as far as Jackson knew there hadn’t been anyone in a while. 

Instead he spent most of his time harassing everyone else about their love lives, earning him the nickname “Dr. Love Guru” with his advice. Hell, he’d helped him and April get through their rough spot after Samuel and now they had a beautiful baby girl. He’d even stop Callie and Arizona from the brink of divorcing. He didn’t want anyone else to miss out on their chances with love but ironically he was sure Mark was missing his.

As Jackson continues reading through his charts before rounds a nurse comes up to him with an urgent look on her face.

“Dr. Avery, I think you need to take a look at the news this morning. And you might need to cancel your surgeries this morning.” He looks at her confused and then glances towards the tv screen that’s on with the morning broadcast.

It’s a great shock to see Lexie’s picture plastered across the screen because it’s not for the reason he’s expecting. He reads the headlines as he listens to the reporter.

Missing Doctor found alive; Kidnapped by Terrorist Org. CADMUS

He needs to find Mark.

Lena knew more than likely that somehow even from prison her mother would leak the info about the Cadmus operation, probably in an attempt to warn anyone they hadn’t caught already. They were able to keep a fair amount of information out of the news but not everything. She also knew that Catco was going to deal with a fair brunt of the shitstorm that was coming because Kara worked there.

Before she could even text her, Kara appeared outside her window. She’s going to have to get used to that.

“Kara, I take it you’ve seen the news?” She asks.

“Not yet. I went to talk to Clark earlier.” Kara starts off telling Lena.

She can tell by the look on her face that it did not go well. Kara can feel the tears burn at her eyes again.

“He never came to get me. I waited and he never came. He was never there, he didn’t care.” She lets it out.

“Oh, Kara.” Lena moves to hug her friend. She needed her right now, she could deal with everything else later.

Chapter Text

Nothing about Grey Memorial Hospital has ever been calm which is why Richard Webber knows something is up when he spots Stephanie Edwards hurriedly walking around the hallways. 

“Edwards, what are you doing back? I thought you hadn’t been cleared yet?” He calls out to her.

Stephanie barely looks back at him as she continues on her way.

“I’m not, I need to find Jo. She’s not answering her damn phone!” She explains irritated, changing directions as she’s trying to decide where she should look for her friend.

“I’m pretty sure she was in surgery, check the OR board.” Richard supplies helpfully and watches her run off in that direction without a word.

He shakes his head at the lack of thanks and starts to move on when he hears Bailey call out to him.

“Richard, do you know why Avery is calling an emergency board meeting?” She asks him immediately and he frowns at the news.

“I hadn’t heard anything? When are we supposed to meet?”

“Now, he sent the email two minutes ago and then had someone page me.” Bailey informs him. She did not need the extra stress today, especially when she had a hospital to run.

A quick glance at his own inbox shows Richard his own email for the meeting.

“Do you have any idea what it might be about?” She asks him as they start to head to the meeting location.

“No clue.” He responds, and then pauses in thought. “Although, I saw Edwards in a hurry looking for Wilson earlier.”

“I swear if the residents did something again I’m going to lose it.” 

Meanwhile, after checking the board Stephanie made her way up to the outside of the OR rooms as Jo was scrubbing out of a Peds surgery.

“Jo!” Stephanie immediately shouts, scaring her as she walked out.

“Steph, what are you doing here? I thought you weren’t coming back until next week?” Jo looks at her friend in confusion.

“I’m not, I’m here because you weren’t answering your phone when I needed you to. Is it true?”

She looks at Jo expecting her to know what she’s talking about.

“I was in surgery, I’m sorry and what?”

Stephanie looks away from her in frustration, clenching her hands.

“You don’t know? It’s all over the news this morning.” The statement really explains nothing to her and Jo just watches as Stephanie swipes to something on her phone.

“Dr. Grey’s sister, she’s alive, it’s all over the news.” She finally explains shoving her phone into Jo’s face.

At the moment Stephanie blurts that out, Alex Karev is walking out of the OR after scrubbing out.

“What did you say?” 

He doesn’t really wait for a response and walks over grabbing Stephanie’s phone out of her hand to look at the article himself.

“What the hell?” Alex mutters. He barely remembers to give Stephanie her own phone back before he’s walking away pulling up Meredith’s contact on his phone.

Jo is still standing with Stephanie as she processes the information, who proceeds to make an unexpected comment.

“Hey, didn’t you say those two dated or something? What if he’s still in love with her? I mean I know you two are engaged but-” She starts speculating.

Jo turns, giving her friend an exasperated look.

“Did you really not listen to the whole story I told when we found out about her other half-sister?”

“Listen, I was invested in my patient’s love story at the time. I did not think that Grey’s dead sister was going to come back to life.” Stephanie says in defense of herself.

“Well, if you had listened, you would know she had a whole thing with Dr. Sloan.” Jo helpfully reminds her.

“What? Dr. Sloan? But he’s the lonely love guru.” 

“But that was after the plane crash.” Jo reminds Stephanie.

Alex can’t get ahold of Meredith and that doesn’t help answer any of this. He does however spot the emergency board meeting email and assumes that he’ll have a better time getting answers there. Once he gets there though, half of them are missing. Bailey, Webber, Callie and Arizona are the only other ones that are there yet. 

“Hey, do you know what’s going on?” Arizona asks as he enters the room, the group had clearly been trying to figure out what was happening and Alex was pretty sure he knew the answer at this point.

“I think I might. Where’s Sloan?” He immediately asks because someone needs to find him before he finds out on his own.

“Mark just finished a seventy-two hour shift, he went home to sleep. Why? What’s going on?” Callie responds.

There’s really no good way to say it.

“Check this morning’s headline for the Seattle News.”

The others are quick to whip out their phones and search wondering what the hell is going on at the same time. Alex can see the moment they realize exactly what is this morning’s headline. Immediately the room erupts into abrupt chaos. Everyone is shouting over one another, which is the scene that Jackson walks into moments afterward.

The group immediately jumps on him for answers.

“Calm down!” Jackson finally bellows loud enough that they all shut up.

“I found out from the news this morning, just like the rest of you. I’ve spent the last twenty minutes getting a hold of Derek and Meredith, and a whole bunch of other people.” He starts explaining to them.

“I talked to Derek, he confirmed it. They’re with her right now, Lexie is alive.”

Everyone is staring at him in shock. They’d spent the last few days preparing themselves to get news of a body and probably finally laying Lexie to rest. Not this.

“They’re saying she was kidnapped and brainwashed.” Arizona brings up the part of the headline that was really shocking them all.

Jackson presses his lips closed tightly before he speaks again.

“That is also true. She’s been through a lot and I know you obviously want to see her immediately but she’s not in the place for that right now. It’s going to take a while before she’s there.”

There’s a brief moment of silence before Alex speaks up to mention his earlier thoughts.

“Someone needs to call Sloan and tell him.”

Mark groans as he hears his phone waking him up out of his sleep. He hoped that the interns would’ve learned to not call him when he’s not on call like he keeps telling them but the lesson hasn’t stuck yet it seems. He ignores the first one, hoping he can just go back to sleep. Then there’s a second and a third.

After the third he sighs and lifts his phone to see exactly who is calling. There’s actually quite a few more missed calls than he’s expecting, which he’d probably slept through. They’re all from Callie and Jackson, which makes him sit up. Odds are there’s an emergency with either Arizona or the kids.

There’s a few texts that tell him to call her back as soon as he sees her message and he’s just about to as he gets another notification. He reads it expecting it to be another text but it’s a random news alert. 

Or at least he thinks it is. He reads it quickly before he starts pulling up Callie’s contact to call her back and stops midway through as he registers what the news alert had said.

“Seattle Doctor Presumed Dead in Plane crash found Alive”

There’s one doctor that he knows that fits that description. Mark swipes back to the notification and opens it without hesitation. He only has to scroll down to the first paragraph to see her name. 

It’s Lexie.

For a moment, he just sits there in silence reading the article expecting something else. He feels like he’s reading it wrong, like if he blinks the words will change and bring the worst with it.

Callie’s number appears on the screen again and this time he answers her. He puts the phone to his ear but doesn’t say anything right away.

“Mark?” Callie’s voice asks, not sure if he had really picked up.

“Callie...the news-” He hears her suck in her breath, it’s all the answer he really needs.

Meredith eventually wanders upstairs to check on Lexie once she’s answered all of Cristina and Amelia’s questions. She’s sitting on the edge of the bed in the guest room in one of Meredith’s old college shirts and shorts, messaging away on her phone with her hair damp still.

“Everything alright?” She asks, seeing the stern look on her sister’s face.

Lexie looks up in surprise, having not heard her.

“Yeah, I’m just getting some updates from the investigation from my boss.” She tells Meredith. J’onn had informed her that the agents sent to retrieve Eliza hadn’t found her in Midvale, she’d honestly been hoping for better news.

The casual mention of her job reminds Meredith of how much her sister has changed since she disappeared. Never in a million years would she have expected her to become a federal agent. Her little sister who had experienced a traumatic hospital shooting with her now was trained to shoot a gun.

Meredith tries to not think of what else her sister has been through as a result. She back tracks her thoughts.

“I don’t know if you’ve already heard but your story hit the news. We’ve started getting calls from everyone wanting to know how you are.” She brings up instead. 

“We’ve told everyone to give you some time to adjust before they try to come and see you.”

Lexie lets go of the breath she’d been holding and nods.

“Yeah, it’s just a lot to process.”

Meredith walks over and sits down on the bed next to her to pull her into her arms.

“Don’t worry, we’re going to help you through this.”

The news has spread so fast that even Catco can’t manage to get ahead of the story and try to manage what is going on, mostly because the story involves one of its own workers. Once that little bit of information about one of them they’d quickly scooped out about Kara. That was entirely problematic due to the fact that they had no backstory to give with her without giving up the fact that she was Supergirl.

This meant that Lena spent the early morning constructing the whole story and giving it credibility and calling the right people to handle the chaos that had been handed to them. All anyone else needed to know was that Kara had lost her family in a ‘fire’ and that she’d been left with a family friend by her cousin prior to her brainwashing and abduction. 

Lena didn’t really care that the narrative was going to be lighting a fire under the Daily Planet's ass because of Clark’s negligence considering how he’d sent Kara off in tears.

She sighs as she finishes her dozenth phone call and walks back into her living room where Kara has decided to huddle under some blankets and watch the news broadcast unfold. 

Clark is trying to move carefully through hoards of reporters who are trying to ask him how he didn’t know what happened with Kara and questioning his relationship with Lois due to the fact that her father had been responsible. His responses basically avoid answering, irritating her.

“I want to shoot him with kryptonite but then I’d look like my brother.” Lena vents.

“You’re not like your brother.” Kara only responds to that last little bit because she’s still not ready to address her own feelings about Clark.

“I know.” She insures. “Besides I’m pretty sure the supervillain genetics come from Lillian and not my father. He may have been an adulterer but if there’s anything he’s done right it was that Lillian isn’t my biological mother, aside from not abandoning me.” 

That last part might have been an indirect jab towards Clark, which Lena decides to blame her blatant remarks on the wine.

As the news continues playing they show old news footage from the Seattle Grace plane crash and subsequent lawsuit against the airline. They play a clip of Meredith testifying about being unable to find her sister in the woods and how she’d been in the back of the plane when it exploded mid air. 

“Alex’s sister has that same look that she gives.” Kara comments offhandedly in regards to the glower Meredith gives the attorney who cross examined her at the trial.

Lena can see her clench the blankets tighter around herself and she’s not sure what she should say.

The news spreads at the hospital faster than Jackson was planning on and he wishes they’d had some time to break the news to those who actually knew Lexie. Not that he actually had any idea how to give that news even then. But it would’ve been nice for Meredith to give a heads up.

On the other hand, his mother is spamming him with texts trying to put together a statement for the hospital’s publicist and he’s dodging everyone else in the hospital coming up to him with questions. He’s relieved when the next person to walk up to him is Callie and not someone being nosy.

“So, I finally got a hold of Mark. He saw the news before we got ahold of him, he’s in a bit of shock right now. I told him that she’s safe and right now Meredith is trying to not let her get overwhelmed by everything, to give her space.” 

Jackson feels relieved to know that Mark knows now.

“Who else doesn’t know yet?” He follows up with.

“I don’t think April, Hunt, or Pierce know. I’m pretty sure they’ve been in surgery since the news broke. Is there anyone else we’re missing?” Callie lists those that she can think of.

“Alright, I’ll handle it.” He tells her.

Jackson braces himself as he walks into the scrub room and grabs a mask. The three doctors are thankfully together working on a trauma patient that came in early that morning so he doesn’t have to have this conversation more than once. When he steps into the room Hunt immediately looks up with a bit of confusion and concern.

“Something wrong Avery?” Hunt asks, clearly reading his nervous body language.

“No, I just need to have a talk. How close are you guys to finishing?” Jackson inquires.

There’s a moment of assessment between the three before April responds with an answer.

“If this last bit finishes up smoothly we should be good to close, why?” She gives her husband a look trying to discern if she can figure out what he wants to talk about.

“I’ll just wait outside then, take your time.” He tries to reassure them, but they’re still concerned.

They finished up as planned and one by one they started to scrub out as they each finished their parts. 

“What’s wrong?” Hunt asks again, not convinced that something hasn’t gone wrong.

“They found Lexie.”

The room stills. There’s a look of apprehension that comes across. Jackson knows that they each have their own personal feelings about the matter. Hunt had unresolved guilt over changing their airline while he’d been Chief, under the assumption that the crash wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t switched airlines. He knew that April still kept Lexie in her nightly prayers all these years after the crash. Pierce wasn’t exactly in the same boat as the other two, having never met Lexie but they shared a sister and she’d been doing her best to support Meredith with the hope of news had come.

“Oh my god, how is Meredith? Does she know yet?” Pierce is the first one to start asking questions.

“Meredith’s with her, she’s alive.”

“What!” 

There’s a collective shout among them, and then it breaks into a chaos of questions and Jackson has to get ahold of them. He’s doing his best to break the news gently but he has a feeling that there’s no way to do that. At least not with the answers he has.

“Was she in a coma somewhere? How did they find her?” April asks calmly after their abrupt excitement, still barely containing her happiness.

“That’s the thing.” He starts off.

“After the plane crash, she was able to find help and was taken to the hospital nearby. At the time she wasn’t able to properly explain what happened or identify herself so she was originally labeled as a Jane doe. But then someone took her from the hospital because she couldn’t be identified.”

He can see the gears quickly turn for Hunt as he registers what Jackson is telling them.

“You’re saying she was kidnapped from the hospital.” 

“Yes.”

Immediately after he gives them the answer Hunt has to turn around and put his hands on the edge of the sink; April and Pierce cover their mouths in shock. It’s not even the worst part of the news.

“Is she being brought here for treatment? I mean, what’s going to happen now that they’ve found her?” Pierce asks.

Jackson takes a big breath as he begins his explanation.

“Physically, she’s fine according to Meredith. She’s not at a hospital currently and they don’t plan on admitting her. Apparently, when she was taken, the people who took her used her as part of a brainwashing experiment. She’s been living these last few years with a completely different life until now. Right now she’s just trying to readjust, so we have to give her some space.”

It takes a while for them to process the information and Jackson does his best to help them through it even though he’s still having trouble trying to process the information himself. Never in a million years would any of them have expected to have to deal with this happening.

Chapter Text

Everything about being suddenly dropped back into her life as Lexie Grey has left her with the unsettling reality that she now has about a thousand things to deal with in order to put her life together. And if she’s honest, she feels like she’s drowning in it all.

At first Lexie was happy to see everyone but it’s not at all like seeing someone for the first time in a long time. It’s more like she had been watching a movie and blinked and suddenly it was at the climax of the storyline and she’s not sure how it all got to this point. These past few weeks, she keeps waking up expecting her apartment and then Meredith’s old house until she remembers that this is the dream house. She hears the pitter patter of tiny feet and expects Zola to be the one to round the corner but it’s the blonde head of little Ellis or Bailey.

Zola’s already eight, steadily taking after her parents and wants to grow up to be a neurosurgeon like Derek. She has her own journals that she uses to document important things going on, the same as her mother and grandmother. Meredith mentioned that instead of just writing in it like a normal journal Zola for some particular reason had chosen long ago to address the passages to Lexie. It had gripped her heart tight, hearing that her existence was kept that prominent in Zola’s life despite that she shouldn’t have any real recollection of her.

There’s also Molly, her only fully biological sister. She still lives across the world wherever her husband is stationed but she had video chatted with her the other day while being a blubbering mess. Promising to figure out how to come and visit soon, showing her how big Laura had gotten and introducing her to her nephew that had been born overseas.

If she’s honest with herself, Lexie barely recognizes her. It seems like she’s talking to a stranger.

Then there’s the fact that Cristina had apparently moved to Switzerland to run a medical institute, only currently in Seattle to visit. Amelia in turn had moved to Seattle and at some point taken over being head of neuro from Derek. She and Meredith seemed to get along rather well which was weird because she was pretty sure that Meredith didn’t like Derek’s family in general.

Then Derek had been joking about how the two of them getting along was a mistake because now they ganged up on him all the time. This led to him mentioning something about the “Lady Chief Trifecta” and suddenly she found out that Meredith had found out she had another half-sister that her mother had given up for adoption.

He seemed apologetic for spilling the beans on that particular news, as if they thought that Meredith having another half-sister might offend her somehow.

Lexie put a hold on catching up sometime after that because she needed time to process it all.

Mostly she needed something to take her mind off all of this at the moment. Her first thought is to go to the DEO and see what she can help with but J’onn would immediately stop her and tell her that she needed to take a break and be with her family. Also she’s kind of stuck at Meredith’s house because she didn’t have any form of transportation considering she’d left her motorcycle at Maggie’s place.

She could probably call her and have her bring it to her but she had chickened out at least five times trying to call her.

Most of the household had left for the day, so eventually Meredith comes out to find Lexie sitting on the back deck. She sits down next to her but doesn’t say anything for a moment.

“Why don’t we go out and get ice cream.”

“Huh?”

Lexie looks at her sister in confusion as to why she’d suddenly decided to say that instead of anything else.

“You process your emotions through eating sweets. So instead of being cooped up in the house, we’re going to go get ice cream.” Meredith proceeds to explain and this time it’s not an option.

So they get ready and into Meredith’s car driving into the city to an ice cream shop that’s along the beach area. Lexie picks her normal go to of a peanut butter cup fudge sundae and the two of them start taking a walk without saying much of anything, just eating.

For a moment they take in the sound of the waves crashing on the nearby beach, some seagulls squawking indignantly as they fight over discarded food, the conversations of people walking by and even the hum of machinery from construction off in the distance. It brings an old familiar feeling with it.

“I remember when we brought Zola to the beach the first time.” Lexie comments first.

“Yeah?” Meredith responds, waiting for her to continue. 

“Do you remember how Derek let her have a taste of his ice cream and then she kept trying to take the cone from him?” 

Meredith lets out a bit of laughter as she does recall the memory of Derek trying to negotiate with their one year old to release the cone from her grip; it had eventually ended up on his shirt with Zola giggling at his misfortune. Lexie doesn’t say anything else for a moment, she just swirls the sundae in her hand around with the spoon mixing the toppings in but not really taking a bite.

“I can’t figure out how I’m supposed to come back to my real life because not everything that I lived through these last few years was fake. They were real moments that I lived, they were just based on these memories that weren’t real. Or at least I felt that they were because finding out you were brainwashed makes you question if your feelings and decisions were your own. And the obvious answer seems like I should just go back to my real life but that’s not really here either because people moved on without me and it’s not the same. And then I think about my friends and my job in National city that are just as affected by this as me and how much I care about all of it but I care about Seattle too.”

Lexie realizes that she’d just let out a long winded rant and takes a deep breath.

“I feel like I’m split in two.”

Meredith lets Lexie gather herself before she attempts to say anything to her. When she finally looks at her, desperate for an answer, Meredith responds.

“There was a point after the plane crash that I accepted that you were most likely dead and if you weren’t dead by some miracle, that you would not be the same little sister I knew. I knew that because the rest of us weren’t after the crash, no matter how much we tried to pretend.”

Meredith pauses for a moment but she is not done.

“Recently, Owen actually went through a somewhat similar experience. He found out his sister, who had been presumed dead, had been really captive in Iraq for ten years. I was kind of pissed at him because of it, mostly because he got his sister back and I didn’t. I got a small glimpse of what was probably a miracle scenario if you had survived. And I was angry because he got so frustrated with what she wanted and how she had changed because of her trauma. I ended up yelling at him, that he didn’t understand how lucky he was. About how much I wanted what he had. It shut him up for a good while.”

“Little did you know the odds of that happening twice in a row.” Lexie can’t help but comment.

Meredith couldn’t help but chuckle with her sister but then she pauses and continues on with what she’s really trying to tell her.

“But that's not the point, the point is, it doesn’t matter what you decide. You could decide that coming back to your life is too much, that you just want to go back to National City and pretend that this never happened. That’s okay. You could come back and pretend that the plane crash and none of this happened and that would be okay. You could join a nunnery, change your entire identity and start a new life, commit yourself to a mental institution and it still wouldn’t matter. How you handle your trauma is nobody else’s business and I will fight them for you because you are my sister. Because that is better than never knowing what happened to you and you being unhappy.”

And when Meredith says that to her, Lexie actually feels a little bit of the weight that’s been on her shoulders. She pulls her sister into a hug that she’s not expecting, so it takes a second for her to respond back.

“I don’t think I’d survive a nunnery though, I would probably get thrown out.” 

The two of them are laughing hysterically after that statement and Lexie is so grateful for her sister. After a moment of just letting go, they try to calm themselves still letting some laughter through. As they finally start to calm down though, they start to notice some screeching of metal that’s getting worse the longer it goes on.

“What is that sound?” Meredith questions, as they stop to listen.

“I think it’s coming from the construction down the street.” Lexie points out but she gets this uneasy feeling that something’s not right about the sounds she hears.

Then the screeching becomes incredibly louder and more consistent, and that’s when they realize that the steel beams the construction workers are working on are collapsing before their eyes. It starts off slowly, then as they catch on to what’s happening it crashes before they can think about it, leaving a cloud of smoke and screams of unsuspecting bystanders.

Lexie and Meredith instinctively grab for each other during the initial moments of the disaster. Then in the silence of the crash they look at each other and nod, then they run towards it.

The dust is still settling around them, and people are still running away from the center of it but they continue to assess the situation around them, knowing that they will be finding casualties that will need their help. The people they come across have mostly cuts and scrapes or a sprained joint from attempting to flee. A few minutes more and the dust has almost completely settled and they can see the heap of steel that was the construction site. 

It’s clear that some of the workers had become trapped under the collapse, being right in the center of it and likely realizing too late what was about to happen. As they move closer they start to hear the cries and pleas for help previously lost to the chaos around them.

“Hey, we can hear you! Just hang on!” Lexie calls out as she begins to carefully move around the debris, trying to look for the person she hears.

“Over here! Please! I don’t want to die!” They can hear him cry again.

Meredith spots him first and signals Lexie over to the area.The man they find is pinned inside of a crushed excavator and from the way the beams had come down they only had partial access and visuals of him. While taking his pulse, Meredith starts asking him questions trying to assess what injuries he may have.

“Hey, we’re going to help you okay? We’re doctors, my name is Meredith and this is Lexie. Can you tell us your name?” She asks hoping that it’ll help calm him down.

“My name’s Max, please I don’t want to die-”

“I know, help is on the way to get you out of here, but I need you to tell me what you’re feeling so we can figure out what injuries you have, okay?” Meredith tells him and he nods as best as he can.

“Okay, try not to move too much in the meantime. Can you tell me what you feel? Where is your pain?”

Max takes a moment to concentrate on the specifics of what he feels before he answers her.

“My chest hurts, I’m pretty sure I’ve broken some ribs there. And I can’t really feel my legs right now-oh god- what if they’re gone? I can’t-”

Meredith quickly interrupts his thoughts from getting out of hand.

“You don’t know that, okay, until you get out of here, I need you to focus on me okay.”

“Okay.”

As Meredith reassures Max, Lexie is still looking around and listening because there’s not much room for the two of them to be with him. In that time she hears an odd noise and it takes a moment to pinpoint it. She starts moving along the pile of beams, looking carefully through the spaces. It takes a good moment for her to actually see what it is that she’s hearing.

Lexie meets with the wide terrified eyes of another construction worker who can only make gasping breaths with a piece of rebar stuck in his neck. He’s clearly still alive at the moment and pinned as well, she can’t begin to imagine how they’re getting him out of there without accidently moving him wrong and risking damage to his spine from the rebar, never mind any other injuries.

“There’s another one over here!” Lexie calls over to Meredith to let her know.

Meredith then reassures Max that she’ll be right back and comes over to see what they can do and it’s not much. She grimaces as she sees the rebar and that they can’t even get close to the man. 

There’s nothing more they can do until the fire department and rescue crews show up, or at least that was what they hoped. It quickly becomes apparent that any approach that they’re going to try will result in potentially crushing the man underneath the steel beams and if they wait too long to remove the steel beams the man in the excavator he’ll likely succumb to his crush injuries.

It also doesn’t help that the person heading rescue operations is, in Lexie and Meredith’s opinion, a cold hearted bastard.

“We have to get to the man that we can actually save, we have to move those steel beams now.” 

Captain Floyd, who’d taken charge of the emergency operations when his crew had arrived on scene, had from the get go held little hope for the man with a pipe sticking out of his neck. Attempting to save the man held a high potential for immediately paralyzing him at best, killing him at worst. The worst part in Lexie’s opinion was that he had no regard for the fact that the man he was giving up on was hearing him talk so callously about him less than ten feet away.

“We’re doing it.” He reiterates as he grabs his radio, Lexie immediately snatches it without a second thought.

“The hell we are-”

“I will have you arrested for interfering with this operation!” He threatens.

“Go ahead and try, I’m a federal agent and you’ll be the first one in cuffs. My authority outranks yours.” Lexie feels immense satisfaction that he physically steps back when she stands up to him.

Captain Floyd huffs angrily and bitterly comments as he walks away.

“Fine, have it your way, let them both die.”

All that does is earn him two glares from the sisters as he walks away.

They still desperately need a solution to carefully move the beams that the equipment they have at hand doesn’t provide. Lexie looks at the beam that sits across the excavator and she still can’t see a way it can move without knocking into all the others though. Then her phone buzzes in her pocket.

She pulls it from her pocket looking at the name flashing across the screen.

Winn 

Then it clicks and it kind of makes Lexie feel like an idiot for a moment because she’d been thinking about this all wrong.

“I think I have a solution, give me a minute.” She says to Meredith, stepping away to answer her phone where she can actually hear.

“ Hey, Alex, I don’t mean to interrupt but uh, I thought you might want to be updated- if you're up for it that is-” Winn immediately greets her, stumbling over his words.

“That’s fine, but can you hold off for just a little bit. I kind of have a situation that I need some help with, there was a construction site that collapsed over by the beach front in Seattle and there’s no way we can get the people trapped without potentially killing someone.” Lexie quickly explains to him.

“ Oh, geez, so much for a break for you-” She can hear Winn type quickly in the background as he responds. “ -assistance is on its way, steel beams are nothing for the Girl of Steel!”

“ Thanks Winn, I'll let you know when everything is handled.”

Lexie quickly makes her way back over to the rescue team and Meredith.

“We have a solution on the way.”

Floyd scowls at her in response.

“Oh, just like that? Is your rescue plan going to get here before or after they both bleed out?” He says spitefully, disbelieving that she could have a better solution that fast.

Lexie hears a familiar whistle in the wind and she smirks at him before turning her head upwards to see the barest glimpse of red and blue in the skyline.

“Actually she’s already here.”

“Look, it's Supergirl!” 

Someone in the crowd helpfully calls out and Lexie catches Floyd becoming absolutely gobsmacked when he realizes that Supergirl is the solution. Kara swoops down, hovering just above the collapse to assess the situation. A moment later she dives underneath one of the beams and begins lifting it out effortlessly. There’s some minor debris that briefly threatens to crash onto the men that are trapped below but she uses a quick blow of her breath to knock it away from harming anyone.

Kara makes quick work of the mess, steel beam by steel beam, utilizing her laser vision and super strength to clear through to the beam that is crushing in on the excavator. She examines around it first, clearing smaller debris below it that would dislodge before she picked it up. Once she removes the beam, Kara looks towards Lexie nodding to her.

Lexie turns to the first responders that had been watching in awe until that moment.

“Hey, time to get to work! Once she pulls the top of the excavator off we have to work to stabilize him fast!” Those around them snap to command, rushing around to grab their supplies and move towards the excavator, almost giddy to be able to work with Supergirl. Once they’re all in position, Kara uses her laser vision to carefully cut the top of the excavator off before lifting it away. Immediately after everyone moves forward to get Max secured on a board and apply pressure to major wounds.

By the time they get him moved into the ambulance, Kara has nearly cleared the area around the other man with the rebar stuck in his neck. Meredith and Lexie stay behind to work on him because he needs every advantage they can give him.

Lexie gets over to where Kara is standing over the man looking at the rebar jutting out of his neck. 

“What’s it looking like internally?” Lexie asked her as she arrived over to them.

“The rebar is pressed right against the spinal cord but thankfully it hasn’t been severed. However his windpipe is being cut into by it and it’s currently plugging the hole it’s made.” Kara informs her.

“So we have to keep his neck as still as possible otherwise it paralyzes him at best or worse he bleeds out. Can’t put him in a neck brace with the rebar sticking out either.” Meredith assessed as she came up alongside them.

“We can if Supergirl uses her laser vision to cut it down far enough.” Lexie suggests and she looks up to Kara who nods assuredly.

Lexie then slips off her jacket and places it around the man’s upper body to cover him from the heat of the supervision while both her and Meredith hold him to prevent any movement. With a nod from Lexie, Kara carefully cuts down the rebar. The second it’s cut down they waste no time getting a neck brace and back board strapped on with Kara helping them move the man as needed without disturbing what part of the rebar is left.

They carefully transfer him onto a gurney and get him to the ambulance.

“We should probably go with him to the hospital to make sure there’s no complications on the way to the hospital.” Lexie suggests to Meredith and she nods in agreement and the two of them climb in the back.

One of the paramedics jumps in right with them and the other gets in the driver seat and immediately starts driving. Lexie isn’t really paying attention to anything but checking the patient’s vitals and making sure that the wound is stable. 

“Oh, Dr. Grey I didn’t realize it was you. I thought you were taking time off.” The paramedic comments in surprise now that he’s also not distracted by the patient.

“Well this wasn’t exactly in the plans, Warren.” Meredith replies to him.

That’s when Lexie looks up at the two and who is in the ambulance with them starts to register.

“Didn’t you used to be an anesthesiologist?” She asks, there’s something else she’s missing right now but her memory is still jumbled but she knows that she knows him.

“Yeah, wait, Little Grey?” Warren turns to reply to her at the same time that he also realizes who he’s talking to.

“Yeah, nice to see you again.” Lexie greets him awkwardly. “Weren’t you the one that was dating Dr. Bailey?”

“Yes, actually we’re married now.” Warren informs her. 

At that moment the paramedic that’s driving updates them.

“We’re two minutes out from Grey Memorial.” 

Lexie freezes because she really hadn’t been thinking about more than making sure their patient stayed alive and not about any impromptu reunions possibly happening by going to the hospital.

“I did not think this through.” She looks at Meredith as she says it and her sister tries to give her a reassuring look.

In the moments before the ambulance arrives at the hospital Bailey is rounding up residents to assist with the incoming trauma. Hunt and Callie had already taken the first patient with the crushed legs to surgery. She spots Jo and Stephanie lingering around the nurses station talking.

“Wilson, Edwards, time to get to work we’ve got another incoming trauma.” The two jump to attention and quickly follow after Bailey, gowning themselves up as they walk to wait in the ambulance bay where April is already waiting.

“Please let it be something good, I swear I’m losing my mind not being on neuro. Deluca’s a lucky bastard getting in on that surgery with both the Shepherds.” Stephanie complains to Jo while they wait.

Jo just rolls her eyes at her friend.

“You do remember that you’re still a resident and that everyone has to rotate through the specialties right? Now stop complaining and do your job.” Bailey says, intervening in their conversation and giving them both a glare because she’s already heard enough complaints about the residents being shuffled around in the chaos of the last few weeks.

The ambulance finally pulls into the bay sirens and lights going, as it slows to a stop they’re already on the move to help pull open the back doors. The group of doctors proceed to pause as they realize that Meredith is helping Ben start to move the gurney out of the back of the ambulance.

“Meredith? How did you-” April starts questioning and then her eyes glance towards the back as Lexie’s movement catches her. It takes a moment for it to click as to who she’s looking at and then looks are exchanged between the group and before anyone can say anything Meredith is quick to order them around.

“Not a word, let’s just get the patient to a trauma room, now!” 

Lexie just keeps her head down focused on keeping the patient’s neck secure and preventing the wound from being aggravated. The closest trauma room is thankfully clear for use and the second they wheel the gurney in and shut the door she starts rattling off their assessment of injuries because it’s probably better that she starts talking first otherwise no one will.

“Patient was trapped under the construction collapse and impaled in the throat causing partial obstruction of the airway and the rebar is currently pressing right against his spine at risk of paralyzing him. There's also potential blunt force trauma, internal bleeding and a concussion. We’ll need imaging and to get him into the OR as soon as possible otherwise we risk his airway collapsing, among other complications. Also probably need someone from ENT-”

“We already paged for a consultation before you arrived.” Bailey informs her as the residents around them rush to assess the patient based on the information she gives.

That makes Lexie pause as she considers exactly who’s the head of that department.

‘Wait, who did you page-”

The door behind her swings open and someone speaks behind her.

“You called for an ENT consult.” 

Lexie turns and realizes that the person who walked in isn’t Mark Sloan but Jackson Avery. It takes a moment for her to recall that he’d chosen to become dual certified just like Mark was. She’s not entirely sure though if she’s relieved that he was the one that showed up instead.

“Lexie…”

“Door!” Meredith is quick to snap at Jackson because he’s left it half open. He quickly gets the implied message of need for privacy and shuts it.

Jackson tries to direct his immediate attention on assessing the patient but much like everyone else in the room he keeps glancing over at Lexie. Meanwhile she’s ignoring the elephant in the room and continuing to make sure they have an action plan to get the rebar out of the patient’s neck without drowning the man in his own blood or paralyzing him. It’s almost like old times if it weren’t for the tension in the air and the fact that they were only speaking at her cues. Meredith was also watching them all like a hawk.

They finally get an ultrasound done on the neck to see how close veins are around the rebar and Jackson gets a tracheostomy done so that they can relieve the pressure and prevent him from losing his airway in the meantime. Finally they get x-rays up so that they can see exactly how it’s pressed up against the spine.  They can’t help but grimace at the imaging because this guy is going to need all the luck and skill he can get for them to get the rebar out of his neck.

“Can we page one of the Shepherds?” Jackson inquires but Bailey immediately shoots that suggestion down.

“No, they’re both in on the giant skull tumor, can’t pull either of them now that’s it’s halfway through.” She reminds him.

“What about Flemming or Graham?” He suggests then.

“They got pulled for the surgeries for the pile up on the highway this morning, I’m also pretty sure they’ve been on call for way too long to be able to stay awake for how long this surgery would take.” April recalls having been running the ER most of the morning.

“Well who’s left?” Meredith asks, looking towards Jo who is pulling up information on her tablet.

“Uh, Robinson and Lewis.” She replies.

“Yeah, no, neither of them. They should’ve retired when we were interns.” Lexie immediately vetoes the neurosurgeons available as she remembers how neither of them were cut out for trauma injuries. They are usually stuck with low risk patients and Lexie swears she could fall asleep listening to Dr. Lewis speak.

“Well, those are the only options left, unless we’re going to wait and I don’t think he has that kind of time.” Jo says, grimacing because she doesn’t like either option either.

Lexie looks down at the patient and bites her lip.

“I’ll do it.” She volunteers suddenly, causing pretty much everyone’s head to snap to her as she suggests it.

“I finished my residency and did my neuro fellowship and dual certified with trauma up in National city. My license is active and I still have privileges at National General, it’s just under a different name.” 

Meredith is the one to show her immediate concern.

“Are you sure?” She asks because she doesn’t want her sister jumping head first into a situation that may overwhelm her.

“I’m sure. Besides I already threatened to arrest a guy to make sure this guy got a fair shot at making it out alive, might as well see it all the way through.” Lexie confirms which gets odd looks thrown her way.

“You threatened to arrest somebody?” Jackson can’t help but start to chuckle when hears this coming from Lexie of all people but at the same time he’s also not surprised with how she is when it comes to fighting for her patients.

“Hey, he threatened to arrest me first and he deserved it. Anyway, can we get this guy up into an OR or not?” Lexie asks before they end up derailing this whole conversation.

It’s Bailey who ends up making the final decision for them.

“Alright let’s stop wasting any more time, I’ll go and make sure you have privileges and take care of all that. I assume that you’ll be taking over as the general surgeon on the case if your sister is going in on it?” 

“Of course.” Meredith nods and the air in the room shifts after that. There’s a small sense of normalcy there again.

Lexie is mentally going over her plans for the surgery, the potentials that can go wrong and her mental checklist that she used to prepare herself for big surgeries like this.

“Hey Meredith, what resident would you recommend that has the experience for neuro?” She asks her sister off handedly. She doesn’t know any of them and there’s no time to wait on bringing in anyone she trusts off hand.

“Edwards, probably, she’s been working heavily with Ameila. Although she just got back from medical leave-” Meredith turns towards Stephanie who is silently listening in on the conversation trying to not strike any of her superiors’ ire “-Edwards are you up for the surgery?”

She jumps to attention immediately as the attention is directed to her.

“Of course, I wouldn’t have come back if I wasn’t one hundred percent.” Stephanie assures them.

“Alright, then Wilson you’ll be with me. You two finish getting the patient prepped and into the OR we need to get changed into scrubs.” Meredith orders them and they’re quick to get to work.

Meredith then ends up carefully leading Lexie away from any prying eyes and they change in the attending lounge. Lexie uses the bathroom to regain her composure and then steps out prepared in dark blue scrubs and scrub cap. Meredith smiles to herself, seeing her sister as an attending for the first time. Something that was previously a lost opportunity to her before.

“Ready?” She asks and Lexie nods.

When they make it to the operating room, the patient is already under anesthesia and the others are in the middle of scrubbing in for the surgery. Lexie happens to notice that Stephanie seems to be posed with her hands on her hips. Stephanie is a little embarrassed as she notices Lexie staring at her and immediately begins to explain herself.

“Oh, sorry. It’s a superstition thing I learned from Dr. Shepherd. It’s called the superhero pose, apparently there was this study done on this pose and it’s been proven to increase not only your confidence but you perform better on tasks. At least that’s what she told me and I think it helps.”

Lexie gives her an understanding look and she’s suddenly aware that not only has she seen both Kara and Clark do that exact pose but she herself also has that same habit when she’s in what Winn has referred to as her “Badass Mode” and finds herself cracking a smile.

“I think that’s some very helpful information and I could use a little confidence boost.” Lexie comments in reply and finds herself matching Stephanie’s pose until there’s space at the sinks for them to scrub in.

“The superhero pose is kind of ironic if you think about it, considering we got Supergirl to come help save our patient.” Meredith can’t help but make a polite jab at her sister as they stand next to each other scrubbing in moments later.

“Wait, Supergirl helped save our patient?” Jo and Stephanie echo each other as they turn to them in surprise. The others turn their heads as well.

“Yep, now let's not waste all her help. Shall we?” Lexie ends up redirecting instead.

It’s such an odd feeling, stepping into the operating room but Lexie doesn’t hesitate. She takes place next to Jackson and moments later she’s holding a scalpel in her hands.

“Ready?” She asks Jackson and he nods, with that Lexie makes the first incision.

They move methodically and quickly to start removing the rebar because as soon as they start their work the wound in the trachea starts to open more. Lexie handles and gets control of the bleeding directing Stephanie where to assist as she also removes the rebar by pieces while Jackson works to close up the trachea. It’s a messy and tight space with three of them working together to get it done. Lexie finds that Meredith's voice of to the side discussing the damage to the abdominal cavity with April is oddly comforting and helps her focus.

Jackson finishes up closing the wound and checks to make sure that it’s holding before he steps back so that she can finish removing what is left of the rebar. It’s at that point it becomes a little more difficult as the rough twisted material is hooking ever so slightly onto the bone and they’re trying not to yank on it and cause additional damage. So it takes grinding away at the rebar with careful precision until all comes away.

Lexie feels the tension release as she pulls out the last bit and clears any lingering smaller chunks of debris and feels relieved that everything has gone well. She starts rolling her shoulders and neck to stretch her muscles now that it’s not necessary to keep her head down and focus on the surgery. As she does that, her head turns up and catches a glimpse of the viewing gallery above the OR and realizes that she has an audience of familiar faces watching her.

She’d been too focused and zoned out to everything else that she hadn’t looked up once to see that it had happened. So she freezes a little bit, taking in the faces of people, some of whom she hadn’t yet gathered the courage to reunite with yet. They’re all smiling brightly at her and she sees Bailey lean over to the intercom pressing the button.

“Good job, Dr. Grey.” 

This causes the others to start clapping and cheering for her and Lexie can feel her cheeks heat up behind her surgical mask. Then her eyes linger up a bit and she catches Mark beaming directly at her, and she holds his gaze for a moment before looking away because they still have to close up the patient.

Afterwards, Lexie finds herself taking a moment to herself in the scrub room trying to not get overwhelmed by everything that has happened today. Meredith comes in to check in on her after directing the residents on post op care.

“Do you want to sneak out? I can steal Derek’s car keys and make him get a ride home.” She offered to her sister.

And the offer sounds tempting as Lexie stands there thinking about it but she decides against it.

“No, actually I think I’ll be okay with seeing everyone like this. I just need a minute.”

Meredith silently waits for her to finish scrubbing out like she’d been avoiding previously and watches as her sister meticulously works dry every crevice of her hands after, before finally turning towards the door to leave.

Nobody really looks towards them, but that doesn’t stop Lexie from ducking her head behind Meredith’s lead throughout the halls towards one of the attending lounges. Meredith opens the door and Lexie lifts her head finally to look into the room. No one seems to notice that the door has opened because they seem to be all talking excitedly amongst each other, talking over one another too loud to have heard the door.

Meredith gestures for Lexie to walk inside and shuts the door after her. The group continues to stand there distractedly talking. Leading the two sisters to stand there giving each other amused looks because everyone is so excited to see Lexie that they miss that she is standing in front of them right then. A moment more of this goes on and she’s stifling some laughter behind her hand wanting to see how long it will go on. And that’s what finally starts to catch their attention.

Everyone freezes like deer in headlights as they turn to her laughter and see Lexie standing there.

“I’ve been standing here for five minutes and none of you have even noticed.” She is still trying to suppress her laughter but it’s quickly a losing battle.

Derek is the one to break the stupor that has fallen over the room because he’d kicked into proud older brother mode over her neurosurgeon skills and is quickly giving her a hug and begins praising her work.

“You did so great, I’m so proud of you!” He said, squeezing her a little too tightly.

“Thank you.” 

Lexie takes a moment as Derek is still giving her a hug to register who else is in the room. Bailey, Jackson, and April are of course there waiting to actually have a real reunion but are a little more subdued than some of the others in the room because they’d had a little bit of time to interact with her. Amelia and Cristina have already had a few weeks of seeing her while staying at Meredith and Derek’s house so they stand off to the side for the others. Callie and Arizona are practically vibrating in joy and have tears in their eyes. Alex is standing there with a wide grin on his face and she notices that one of the residents, Wilson, is standing closely with him. Richard is standing with the young woman who she’s fairly certain is Meredith’s other half sister Maggie. She seems to be radiating with nervous energy and Richard is trying to get her to ease up. Then there’s Owen who stands awkwardly in the back and she assumes that it’s half because he currently has two exes who are currently standing together all buddy buddy on the other side.

Lastly, of course is Mark, who her eyes keep trailing back to in-between looking at everyone else. He hasn’t taken his eyes off her the entire time and he is just fixed on her like he can’t believe she’s really there in front of him.

Then Derek finally lets go of her in his excitement and she decides to break the spell over the room.

“You guys know you can come hug me right? I’m not going to break.” Lexie tells them.

Saying that causes most of the group to move forward to immediately hug her, which in hindsight is not the best move as she’s swarmed. Lexie does her best to properly hug everyone as equally as possible and as she gets to the end of those who had rushed up to hug her Lexie realizes that Mark seems to be stuck in his spot, just still watching her. Callie, however, also realizes that around the same time as her because she watches as she turns and frowns at him then directly marches over and starts pulling him over.

Mark is startled and almost panicked as Callie drags him to stand right in front of Lexie. So the two of them stand there for a moment as Lexie tries to give him a reassuring smile and not let her own nervous energy show. 

“Hey, little Grey. Welcome back.” Mark finally says, in an almost whisper as he wraps his arms around her in a hug.

His grip around her is tight, and Lexie is flooded with feelings of nostalgia as she feels his body basically engulf hers. She’d forgotten how much taller Mark was compared to her and how it had always made her feel tiny compared to him. It reminds her of quite a few memories of them together and she has to calm herself and remind herself that she’s taking things one moment at a time. That it’s just a hug. It doesn’t mean more than two very close people reuniting for the first time and it doesn’t have to be more than that for now.

Mark decides to let go after having hugged her for quite a long time, longer than the others definitely had. But no one comments on the fact. He stays sort of hovering nearby and chooses not to say much more to her because there’s a shared sense that neither of them don’t know what else to say to each other. Their friends are happy to fill the void.

“I absolutely love the short hair, it’s such a good look for you.”

“Derek mentioned that you’re also an FBI agent? Such a fucking badass move to take down your own kidnappers.”

“Oh, you need to see how big Sofia has gotten, look!”

“Anyone tell you Evil Spawn has finally been tamed? Engaged and everything.”

“I’m Maggie Pierce, it’s so amazing that I actually get to meet you.”

“Look at you in attending scrubs, all grown from your intern days. Unlike some of you here.”

“I am so sorry I can’t stop crying, I promise these are happy tears.”

There’s a lot going on at once and she’s honestly blocking out some of the things going on around her in order to not get overwhelmed because it feels that it’s better to get the hardest part over with. Meredith at some point had moved closer again and placed a comforting hand on her back, not saying anything. She’s not sure how long they all stand there, telling Lexie about things that she’d missed like she’d been on vacation while she made small commentary within her comfort zone. Eventually the moment breaks away from them slowly, as one by one the doctors start getting paged.

There’s a knock on the door and an intern pops their head in just at that time.

“Uh, Dr. Bailey, so sorry to interrupt. There’s a few matters that need your attention and I was asked to come find you.” Levi Schmidt pokes his head with a deer in the headlights look as he realizes he’s interrupted something.

Bailey makes a face in annoyance and sighs.

“Just give me a moment.” She replies and turns back to the group of doctors who are now glancing at pagers.

“Okay, funs over. If I have to go back to work, you all do too.” The order comes and everyone makes faces at the announcement, but Lexie feels a little relieved.

A few people drag their feet at their goodbyes while others are needed more urgently and leave a bit hastily but not without goodbyes. Bailey stands off to the side with Levi as he nervously starts to explain himself.

“-Uh, so, it seems that the parking lot is swarming with reporters again. I think they may have caught wind of- uh,” He glances over at where Lexie is standing, and Bailey gets the hint.

“Of course, they’ve been acting like bloodhounds for weeks. Don’t worry, I'll take care of it.” Bailey directs that statement to Meredith and Lexie more than him before turning back to Levi.

”Anything else, Schmidt?”

Levi pauses for a moment, going over in his head the list of things he’d already informed her on and then remembers, and reaches into his coat pulling out a radio.

“One last thing, this was in the trauma room you were in earlier. I thought it might be from your husband’s fire station. I think one of the firefighters left it behind when bringing in your patient earlier.” He explains.

“Oh shit.” Lexie exclaims as she suddenly recalls snatching that radio from Captain Floyd earlier and realizes that she hadn’t exactly given it back.

Meredith has of course recognized it too and the two of them are trying to save themselves from a fit of hysterical laughter again while those left around them are bewildered. Lexie manages to calm down just enough to explain it.

“I may have stolen that from one of the fire captains earlier, the one that threatened to arrest me and I threatened to arrest him back.” 

“You stole a fire captain’s radio and threatened to arrest him?” Mark’s deep voice comes from beside them, surprising Lexie because she’d forgotten he was standing there having been silent for so long and not having left like the others.

“Yeah, he was ready to let our patient die to save the other. So I snatched it right out of his hand before he could give the order.” Lexie tells him, and then Mark responds with his own abrupt laughter as he patted her on the back.

“That’s my girl.”

There’s a lot less tension in that moment and that small interaction between them feels so much more normal.

“Anyway, Schmidt, that radio belongs to Captain Floyd, I believe from station 11. Make sure it gets back to him and pass the message that he was wrong.” Meredith instructs the intern and he nods deciding to take his leave.

Bailey then leaves the room to deal with the hospital security and much to Mark’s dismay, he’s finally paged to something that’s urgent. That doesn’t stop him from giving one more lengthy hug to Lexie.

“I’m glad you’re okay.”

They give each other a lingering glance as he walks out the door and the room is just Lexie and Meredith again.

“Well, I think we might be stuck here a lot longer than we expected with the reporters here. I’m going to check on our patient in the meantime, will you be okay by yourself?” Meredith asks her.

“Yeah, I’m actually going to call my friend back. He wanted to share some of the updates on my case. I’ll be fine.”

It takes a few moments longer for Meredith to actually be reassured before she leaves and Lexie plops down on the couch next to where she’d left her belongings. She pulls out her phone and dials Winn’s number and it doesn’t take him long to pick up.

“ Hey, Alex, is everything all good now? ” Winn asks immediately.

“Yeah, the patient is stable. You said earlier that there was something with the case you wanted to tell me?” She inquires.

“ Uh, yeah. I’m not sure how to explain it, it’d be easier to show you really. But you’ve kind of had a day already, I don’t know if you’d want to come in with everything-”

“Winn, I have no problem with coming to the DEO. Well actually, I don’t have any transportation right now and there’s reporters outside the hospital right now so I’m not exactly sure that’s possible right now either.” Lexie frowns as she responds.

“ Do you want J’onn to just come pick you up? Like we’ve got vehicles with blacked out windows, no one would be able to see you inside if he came and got you.” He suggests to her.

“Yeah, that would work. I’ll text him where  exactly to pick me up.” 

“ Okay, great. See you soon .”

Lexie makes sure to let Meredith know in person where she's going just so her sister doesn’t freak out if she just texts her that she is leaving the hospital. J’onn picks her up at an exit by the tunnels at the back of the hospital far away from any prying reporters. The car ride is fairly silent between them and she’s pretty sure J’onn knows that she has a lot on her mind but he won’t ask because he would rather she come to him first. Aside from that, J’onn isn’t really the person that she wants to talk with about some of the things she’s currently trying to process.

Her coworkers at the DEO are a little surprised to see her after not having been there for a few weeks but also not surprised at the same time. Most of them nod in acknowledgement and continue on with their work. Lexie’s pretty sure their overall silence is to avoid calling her Agent ‘Danvers’ and that the transition to Agent ‘Grey’ would be too weird right now. They would also be too mortified to just use ‘Ma’am’ or just ‘Alex’ like those who are closest to her.

Winn turns around from his computer station to see them walking up and lights up as he sees her come in.

“Alex, I have missed you so much! It’s been so weird since, well everything went down. Especially because it all happened so fast and pretty much all of us were out of the loop, well because we had to be. But you’re back, and now we can have a little bit of order restored.” He immediately began to ramble off.

“He really missed you.” J’onn comments to Lexie as she grins at Winn’s ramblings.

“Hey, she’s my emotional support coworker. I’m allowed to miss her.” Winn responds to his comment defensively.

“Relax, I missed you too. Now, what is it that you wanted to show me?” She asks, directing him back on track.

“Right!”

Winn spins around and grabs his tablet off the desk and spends a good moment swiping around on the screen to bring up something while he begins to explain.

“So, after J’onn identified all the agents that were working with Cadmus he started to sort through their memories to find any information that would be helpful for us, just to make sure we weren’t missing anything.” He starts off, then J’onn continues on for him.

“But while I was doing mind readings of the agents, I kept coming across these gaps in their memories. Blocks that I couldn’t get past no matter what I tried. It shouldn’t be possible for any of them to hide anything from me. So we had brain scans done.”

Winn finally pulls up the images on the screen and passes the tablet to Lexie so that she can see them.

“Somebody put implants in their brains to block certain information from being accessed, we’re not exactly sure what, considering that it’s obviously not designed to keep all of Cadmus’s secrets but it’s definitely concerning.” He explains to her.

“I figured since you’re the neurosurgeon you might have a better idea of what to do, like how we would remove these without frying someone’s brain.”

Lexie grimaces at the images because the implants were placed with the intention that it wouldn’t be practical to remove them without a huge risk.

“Have you considered trying to hack into them instead?” She suggests.

“Yeah, unfortunately, I can’t wirelessly interface with the implant which means that in order to look at the tech and make sure we’re not going screw anything up.or make sure it’s even necessary to remove versus deactivating would still require surgery. Which I do not have the stomach for.”

Lexie sighs and hands the tablet back to Winn.

“Where’s Kara right now?’ She asks him instead of lingering on this new problem.

“Uh, finishing up with an apartment fire I believe. Supergirl has had a busy day today.” Winn recalls.

“Okay, well, I desperately need a night filled with takeout and junk food and people I can talk to about all the weird drama in my life. Can we do that tonight? And preferably soon because I haven’t eaten since this morning, which was really just half a sundae I abandoned on the beach and toast. Because I am even hungrier now that I’ve mentioned food.” 

“And I also have to go get my bike from Maggie’s so I have transportation.”

Winn proceeds to give her the most concerned look at her distress.

“Yeah, I can do that. You go deal with getting your bike, I’ll call reinforcements. We’ll probably meet at Lena’s place though because other reporters keep hounding Kara’s apartment.” 

Sending the text to Maggie’s phone takes about fifteen minutes because Lexie keeps rewriting the message before she deems it safe enough to send. Maggie of course replies in a timely manner that she’s leaving work soon anyway and can in fact meet her in about twenty minutes at her apartment. That of course gives her about fifteen minutes of looking like a nervous idiot while waiting at Maggie’s apartment door.

Which is exactly how Lexie is caught off guard when she does show up.

“Hey.”

Her head snaps up in the direction of her voice and can’t help but smile.

“Hey.”

Maggie pulls out her keys to unlock her door.

“Give me a second to grab your keys and I’ll take you to the parking garage.” She tells Lexie, and she just nods and watches as Maggie steps into the apartment leaving the door partially open as she grabs the keys from where she’d been keeping them and comes right back out. She locks the door again and gestures to the direction of the parking garage to which they start walking.

“So, how are things going with your family and friends? I’m sure they’re so happy to see you again.” Maggie casually asks as they walk.

“Uh, okay, I guess. I’ve been taking it all one step at a time. A lot’s changed and it’s taking some time to process.” Lexie hesitates in her answer.

“I mean it’s been years, so it’s understandable.” Maggie replies.

“Yeah, I mean we’ve both had time to live different lives and move on, disregarding the brainwashing part because I was still pretty much the same person otherwise.” She inputs.

There’s a pause in the conversation as they continue walking and Lexie feels that she has to be the one to dredge it out of the awkwardness.

“Hey, you know what’s hilarious though? My sister found out she had another half-sister a few years ago and her name is Maggie.”

The two stop as Maggie turns to look at Lexie in surprise.

“Wow, the universe has a really weird sense of humor. I mean what are the odds of that even happening? It’s like the plot of a soap opera or tele nova.” She laughs at the thought of the circumstances.

“Honestly, it’s not even the weirdest of coincidences that has happened at that hospital. I could tell you so many outrageous stories about the drama there from my internship year alone. It’s better than any show you could imagine.” Lexie tells her.

“I’m sure they would be great to hear, maybe another time though?” As Maggie says that, she finally hands Lexie’s keys to her bike to her and she realizes that her motorcycle is right in front of where they’re standing.

“Yeah, another time.” She says as she takes the keys and pulls out her helmet putting it on before swinging her leg over the bike and turning it on.

Maggie stands off to the side for her to pull away and waves goodbye to her as she leaves. The ride following to meet up with everyone at Lena’s apartment gives Lexie plenty of time to overthink their interaction in the aftermath though. So by the time she’s made it there and made it to the door she’s managed to get her emotions festering again. And she’s eternally grateful that Kara opens the door within seconds of her reaching it.

So of course the first thing Lexie does is ambush Kara in a hug because she desperately needs it.

“Hello-oh! Winn was right to say it was urgent. What’s wrong?” Kara immediately asks.

“A lot. I forgot how much drama there was in my life before and apparently dying didn’t make it go away and adding my current life into it is not helping.” Lexie tells her trying to not be as panicked as she sounds.

“Okay, first off, sit down and maybe try and breathe.” Is the immediate response to the impending panic.

Kara guides Lexie to the couch where their friends are and Lena appears with a glass of wine handing it directly to her. Lexie not so graciously chugs about half of the glass before Kara gently lowers it away from her as a silent reminder to drink with moderation. She sets the glass down but it doesn’t stop her from trading it for some of the takeout Lexie spots on the table. After a few bites, she starts to spill.

“So I’ve been avoiding most of my old friends until I decided to do impromptu surgery at the hospital I used to work at because I just didn’t know how to start that conversation. But I ended up meeting everyone all at once today and it was very overwhelming and I opted to just strongly disassociate while talking with everyone. They’ve all moved on and had these lives that I know nothing about. There’s entire relationships I couldn’t have even predicted. And there’s babies, my friends have started entire relationships, gotten married or are getting married and there’s kids that didn’t exist before, like half my nieces and nephews.” 

She pauses in her rant to take another bite of food and continues on before anyone can really stop her.

“And I feel like I don’t know my sister Molly, like she’s a stranger almost and my other sister, my half-sister Meredith, found out she has another half sister that her mom gave up for adoption which just adds to our family drama. But also her name is Maggie, and it’s kind of weird but funny that she found out she had another half sister while thinking I’m dead and meanwhile I’m alive and ending up in a relationship with someone else named Maggie. And then that relationship fails and it uncovered this whole thing.”

“Which, now that I’ve undone the brainwashing, I’m learning that they may have accidentally erased my entire attraction to men because I had some unresolved romantic issues with someone who I saw for the first time today. And they are definitely still there and I still have feelings for Maggie as well, and I really wasn’t expecting to go through a second crisis with my sexuality .”

It’s at this point that she finally runs out of steam on her whole rant.

“Wow, that’s a lot of things to be dealing with.” James is the first to comment in the following silence.

“Well, wait, what’s the backstory on this guy? Were you guys dating before being kidnapped, is he your ex, what level of history is there between you guys?” Winn then asks, becoming quickly invested in this development.

“Okay, first don’t judge me, the history is kind of messy.” Lexie establishes an immediate disclaimer to the group. This does not prevent Kara from side eyeing her because she knows her too well at this point.

“How messy?” Kara asks.

Lexie pauses to take a sip of her wine glass as she briefly considers how to word her response.

“Okay, so this guy, he’s the best friend of my half sister’s husband. We met when I graduated medical school and started my internship at the hospital. He was already an attending, so he's significantly older than me, and at the time he had a reputation of sleeping around.” She reveals.

“Girl-”

“Winn, I said no judging.” 

Winn closes his mouth quickly and Lexie continues on.

“So anyway, we started working together on patients and we started to become good friends. And then my sister was concerned that he would end up breaking my heart and her and her husband tried to steer us away from each other and that backfired because it wasn’t even a thought until then. And then we started seeing each other and it was good for a while until it became very clear that we were in different stages of our lives and how we wanted our relationship to progress was different.”

Lexie pauses again to calm herself with Kara putting a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

“We kept being on and off, then he found out that he had a teenage daughter who was pregnant and he wanted to help her and help her raise the baby while we were together and I didn’t want to be a part of that. Which is even crazier to me now because I didn’t want to even think about marriage and kids then that’s why we broke up and I broke up with Maggie for the exact opposite reasons!” The whole thing just made her feel like she was in a tailspin.

Kara's heart sinks a little as she hears Lexie say it. She knows how much she struggled with the decision to end her relationship with Maggie over the issue, how much she cried in Kara’s arms after. And she knows how much she struggled to come to terms with her sexuality and then come out to everyone with the dread that they may or may not accept her. But because Cadmus had messed with their minds they’d tarnished the importance of that moment. The rest of the room stays silent as Lexie continues to explain.

“And then after we broke up, his daughter gave the baby and she went back home to live with her mother. Then we were both trying to get over each other by just sleeping with other people which wasn’t the greatest idea because everybody at that hospital just sleeps with each other and everyone was going through messy breakups at the time. It just created jealousy and cycles of wanting each other at the wrong time. And then it-”

Then Lexie cuts off abruptly in her explanation, she’s just quiet for a long moment. Because she knows the next part is probably the worst moment in her life. Gary Clark.

“Alex?”

Lexie realizes that everyone is looking at her, concerned for why she’d stopped.

“Sorry, it’s just this next part, it's hard to talk about.”

Kara offers her hand for Lexie to squeeze in comfort and she takes it. If it’d been anyone else’s hand Lexie would surely be hurting her by the way she squeezed.

“There was this patient I was assigned to, she had cancer and we had operated to remove a tumor. But there were complications and we discovered that she’d had a stroke after surgery and because of that she was brain dead. Her husband was distraught and he didn’t believe that there was nothing we could do and he didn’t want to take her off life support. She’d had an advanced directive though, expressing that she did not want to be kept on life support and we chose to follow it because her husband couldn’t come to terms with the fact that she was brain dead. Afterwards he attempted to sue the hospital but he didn’t have a case. I thought that was the end of it.”

Lexie swallowed heavily as she recalled the next moment.

“I was trying to get orders for a patient and of course the person I had to have sign them was the guy that I was trying to get over and he wanted to know if I was serious about the friend I was seeing to try and get over him. And then there were gunshots and he was pushing me down to the ground covering me.”.

There’s an immediate shift in the room as the others feel like the wind is knocked out of them. They know where this story goes all so suddenly.

“Oh god, I remember that news coming to the Daily Planet. That was Gary Clark at Seattle Grace wasn’t it.” James realizes.

It’s been nearly a decade since the hospital shooting had been on the national news but at the time he had been disturbed by the stark difference in Gary Clark’s demeanor in pictures before his wife had died and in the still security footage as he’d entered the hospital. He remembers finding pictures for each of the victims that were mentioned in the articles. It dawns on him that he’d known Lexie Grey’s face long before he’d met her as Alex Danvers.

The name of the shooter brings recognition on the faces of Winn and Lena but not Kara. She couldn’t know, because she’d been held hostage without any awareness of the outside world’s events going on while they’d been trying to perfect her brainwashing. She has a foreboding look in response to everyone’s recognition and Kara knows she can piece together some of what the others know, but it’s what she doesn’t know that scares her.

She’s frozen and doesn’t know what to say and Lexie won’t look at her.

“I didn’t realize it at the time, I’d had my back to him when he was shooting. We ran for the elevators and when they opened, my friend that I’d been seeing to get over him was bleeding out inside. We ended up bringing him into a conference room trying to keep him alive but I knew that we needed supplies and that someone needed to get them while the other kept him alive, so I went. Then on the way back, I saw Gary Clark and he told me that I was one of the people he was there to kill, because I had unplugged the machines keeping his wife on life support.”

Kara pulls Lexie towards because she’s afraid if she tries to continue giving squeezes of comfort she’ll end up hurting her with her super strength. Lexie puts her own hand over hers because she knows that Kara wants to protect her from something that happened long before her.

“I thought he had shot me, but when I opened my eyes I realized that he’d been shot by the SWAT team. I got out of there and got the supplies to them. Our friend lived but we broke up after everything. And my ex, he was still very much in love with me and trying to be there for me after the shooting. After a while we tried to be together again because we weren’t in the same place as before.”

“Or at least we weren’t for a little bit because he found out that he’d gotten his friend pregnant while we were both sleeping with other people trying to get over each other.”

Winn groans in frustration at this development in the story.

“Ugh, I’m sorry, I’m just getting upset for you about this guy. Like I kind of just want to bully him a little for you.” He explains his feelings.

“And this is why I haven’t told you his name, because you would have done a full background check by now and have his social security Winn.” Lexie responds.

“I feel like you’re underestimating my technical skills, as if not knowing his name can stop me.” Winn pauses as he sees the look that Lexie gives him. “But I will respect your wishes.”

Lexie nods in approval at his quick recovery and gets them back on track.

“Yeah, so, us getting back together ended very shortly after that. He wanted to be a part of his child’s life and wanted to co-parent with his friend and her partner and I couldn’t do it. I was there for them when his daughter was born because her mother was in a car accident half way through her pregnancy and his daughter was born early because of it. But after that we both started dating other people which didn’t work out for me because we both knew I was still in love with someone else.”

“But he was still dating someone who wanted everything he wanted and was at the same place he was. And then one night I confessed how much I was still in love and how much it was affecting me and then his girlfriend walked out and he said nothing. And the next morning we got on the plane and that was the last time I saw him until today.”

There’s so much more to their story than Lexie can really explain to them at the moment but it’s what she can bear to explain to get the others caught up in understanding how much this relationship had impacted her.

“How did it go? Seeing him for the first time?” Kara asks.

“Like nothing had changed but at the same time it felt like if we spoke more than a few words or if we talked about anything beyond ‘I’m glad you’re alive’ it would come crashing down. I mean people move on when they think you’ve been dead for eight years, I don’t want to know how he’s moved on.I barely wanted to know how everyone else moved on.”

They talk a bit more about the things that are overwhelming her. After that Lexie finds that she doesn’t want to process this anymore and so she just leans into Kara and lets her pull a blanket over them. Winn is encouraging her stress eating as Lena puts on a comfort movie, while James refills drinks but Lexie doesn’t drink too much because she’s worried she’ll go overboard. She doesn’t want to drink her problems away like her father did and Meredith still expects her home tonight like she promised.

Eventually the food is gone and the movie is over, everyone is helping clean up while Lexie lingers in the moment a bit. When she’s ready Kara walks her to the door and gives her another hug.

“You’ll get through this, I know that not everyone can understand all the things you’ve been through but I can and we’re always better together. We’ll figure this out, figure out who you are now instead of just who you were.” She whispers in her ear.

“I know, we always manage to seem to get through it. Although, I feel like a multiversal war against Nazis was easier than dealing with this.” Lexie jokes back.

“Please don’t remind me about that, it’s still really weird to think about.” Kara can’t help but laugh back as she responds.

Soon after Lexie finishes leaving, James and Winn take their leave too as they both still work in the morning. Then it’s just Kara and Lena left in Lena’s apartment. It’s silent after they’re gone and Kara just automatically moves around trying to help clean up what’s left. 

There’s a sharp crack and Lena looks up at the noise and she sees a plate cracked in half in Kara’s hands and the two halves are cracking and crumbling under her grip. Lena quickly moves across the room and carefully starts to take the pieces from Kara even though she knows they won’t hurt her.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I-” 

“It’s okay, it's just a plate, it’s replaceable.” Lena starts to reassure her and then she sees her face from the bowed position it’s in.

Tears are streaming down her face and Kara seems to be trying to hold in it. Lena gets her to release the last bits of plate and just pulls her towards her, immediately wrapping her in a hug. Kara just clings to her instantly and it shatters the wall she was putting up as her sobs become audible and her weight is heavy in Lena’s arms.

“What’s wrong? Talk to me.” Lena tries to ask.

“It’s just-” But Kara can’t get the words out.

But Lena can tell, Kara is breaking apart just like Lexie did earlier. She put on a brave face for her but listening to the hurt that Lexie was going through was just uncovering the same realizations for Kara. She’d had so much stolen from her and she didn’t know who she was now.

In Seattle, it’s already dark and heading into the late night as Lexie’s motorcycle pulls up and she parks outside Meredith and Derek’s house. As she pulls off her Helmet she notices that Derek has come to peer outside due to the noise of her bike. He opens the door once he realizes that it’s her coming back.

“Since when do you ride motorcycles?” He asks, a little dumbfounded.

“A few years now, actually.” Lexie replies and comes inside, finding that no one else seems to be downstairs.

“Did Meredith go to bed already?” She asks because she assumed that her sister would be waiting for her to be back.

“Not last I checked, but there’s a sister cult meeting going on in the bedroom if you want to join them. Although five people don’t fit because Amelia kicked me out to make room for herself.” Derek tells her.

“Your sister kicked you out of your own bed?” Lexie can’t help but laugh a little.

“Yeah, it’s weird but I’ve gotten used to it.”

Then there’s a moment of silence and Derek takes a sip from a drink he has sitting out. He looks at her with a contemplating face for a moment before talking again.

“I don’t know if you know or not already, or what you may choose to do with this information, that’s up to you because it’s been over eight years and I don’t know what other changes you’ve had in your life. I mean you drive motorcycles now and you’re a federal agent, you’ve had time to grow on your own-” Derek pauses, clearing his throat to cut off his descent into rambling.

“-Anyway, I think you might want to know that after the plane crash Mark hasn’t really been with anyone. He broke up with that, uh- Julie- I think, pretty much right after. I think he was waiting for some kind of closure before he moved on, if he even planned on it. But I think that you both will want closer, whatever it ends up being doesn’t matter and I figured that it may be easier for you to figure that out without everyone else butting their heads in.”

He stops and takes another sip of his drink before adding on.

“But now you know, so you can decide to do whatever you want with that and whatever happens, happens.”

Lexie just sits with the new information that Derek had just told her and she doesn’t know how to feel about it. After sitting there, quietly for whoever knows how long, Derek brings her over a drink and she accepts it.