Here we go again.

Amelia stared at her phone. She was being paged to the ER. She groaned, this new thing where Derek took all the surgeries, all the aneurysms and bleeds and routine things she had on her plate, left her with traumas and consults. At first, it seemed like the perfect plan, but maybe Derek was right – not that she would ever tell him that. At times, their arrangement was worth her time, she got to do surgery on interesting and bloody and exciting traumas, but most of the time it was ghost tumours and bumps on the head. Wondering which one of the two it was going to be she just walked through the pit looking for Kepner, the page was a generic 911 and she didn't see any emergencies that required help, any help, let alone neuro. It was rather slow, but in a hospital ER slow was good. In the last few days she had been hesitant to walk down to there, after all it was Owen's territory and while in the rest of the building he was easier to avoid, it was really rare and difficult to go down there and not bump into him. Taking a good look around she didn't see him and relaxed, they were not broken up, she had no idea if they had ever been together in the first place, however he kept giving her this look that varied between kicked puppy and wanting to understand the deepest, most difficult machinations of her brain. One she could deal with, the other she'd rather avoid in any case. She had wanted it, wanted it so bad to work and to be something real, it was one of the reasons she had moved here, to start fresh and maybe find someone who didn't like her just because she was a lost cause. Owen made her feel accepted and loved without the need to prove herself, just like with Addison, only different. Then she saw Meredith wave her over to a bed.

"What do we have?"

Meredith must have noticed the spaced out look in her eyes, but said nothing. Amelia reminded her of herself so much sometimes it was annoying. Also, she did not know her well and Derek's behaviour towards his sister was confusing at best, as he went from ignoring her because she was and addict to offering her his job, a room in his house and trusting her with their kids after she came out of rehab, again. "Car crash, we just need you to call it, though. Pupils are fixed."

Amelia sighed. This was just getting better and better. Quickly examining the patient she gripped her little flashlight until her knuckles were white. This kid couldn't have been more than eighteen. "Time of death ten-forty three."

A nurse was writing on the chart and she turned distractedly to sign it. "There was a massive pile up, but luckily many were not even injured. He's the first casualty, hopefully the last. Poor kid."

She looked up at Bailey, blinking. Amelia felt that heaviness in her chest, she knew it so well it was almost like hunger to her. It wasn't cravings, but pain, the sort of pain that sometimes kept her up at night. The pain that crept up whenever she felt Owen's eyes on her back and the pain she felt when she heard from her room his brother and his family laughing. She was happy, happy for him and in comparison to the person she had been a couple of years ago, she was just plain happy. It wasn't sadness, just pain. She realised it was probably amplified tenfold right now because she could hear a woman screaming in one of the trauma rooms, giving birth. That was a kind of pain, emotional pain, she wasn't ready to deal with today. Her day started so well with charts of her twelve hour surgery from yesterday and now it was unravelling so fast she could barely keep track of everything happening.

"Amelia." Meredith said a bit too forcefully. Amelia turned to look at her, there really was no need to be so harsh. Her eyes though, were soft and worried. "I've been calling you for a while."

Shaking her head, she dismissed her worry. "Sorry, I was just thinking."

"Are you okay?"

"Sure." She said all too quickly. "I'm fine, a little tired." Trying to be as convincing as possible she offered a smile and slowly walked away, letting them take care of everything. She needed to sit alone for a while, where nobody would try to talk to her and ask her if she –

"Are you okay?"

Amelia wanted to scream. Then her brain connected all the information and she realised it was Owen, standing to her left. Her efforts to avoid him had been pushed aside to accommodate her escape plan from everyone else, so she had missed him standing right in her path. "Yup. Fine, I'm great."

He tilted his head to the side and frowned, he couldn't say he knew her well, but she would be the first to admit here in Seattle he was right up there with her brother as the ones who knew her best, which was sad considering how little they really knew. Her voice sounded anything but fine and in his experience a woman saying she was fine was definitely not, ever.

"Owen, I'm okay. It's never easy to lose someone." She hoped she could cover up the true nature of her feelings, if anything this kid had triggered a lot of the feelings she had going around right now. "It happens, it's the job."

The look he gave her told her that he wasn't buying any of that, but wouldn't press, things between them were left unsaid and unfinished and he had no idea how far he was allowed to go with her. He knew the look in her eyes, the one that told him she was covering up, trying to convince him and probably herself that everything was okay, whishing that if she said it enough, she might actually start to believe it. "I know we're not… I just want you to know that I'm here, for whatever you need. It doesn't have to be anything, but I care and I understand, I try to."

She smiled, she tried at least. It had taken her a lifetime to become who she was today and that had been hard enough, she really could not put up with anymore pain and disappointment. As if on cue she saw Arizona calling for her from one of the trauma rooms. "Sorry, I gotta go."

Walking into the room she realised it was the patient from before. Still in labour, she grimaced. She was in a bad mood today, not an easily irritated and short fuse kind of bad, but the kind of bad that made her consider the comfort of relapsing, of letting go. She couldn't help but think that everything had been going relatively well here in Seattle, people didn't know her or her past, they had only heard about the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, but they didn't understand it, not really. This had allowed her to push it aside, sweep it under the rug, out of sight out of mind. She had cut back on meetings and, while she wasn't drinking or doing drugs or anything remotely similar, she was being careless. The last time she had let go of her recovery had been when she moved to LA, back then she had truly believed she had everything under control and then before she knew it she was going down that same, dauntingly familiar downward spiral and many bad things happened. Things that left scars so deep it was getting hard to keep them all covered up. Ultimately, she had let herself forget and find comfort in Owen's presence and his unwavering support, though it all came back to her soon enough how painful it was to have loved and lost and, at this point, it was maybe better to not have loved at all. She told herself to pain was not worth it, the pain that would come from hurting Owen then was unspeakable.

Amelia looked around, quickly assessing the situation. The baby was not born yet and the mother looked fine, scrapes and bruises, but nothing that required a neurosurgeon. "What do you need?"

Arizona was prepping for what she imagined would be an emergency C-section, right there, right now. "I saw something on the ultrasound, but I can't quite make it out with the baby stuck this way."

"Something's wrong with the baby?" asked the patient panicking.

Arizona assured her that they would do anything they could and that it could be nothing, just a problem with imaging. However the woman insisted, she had apparently no insurance and had been going to a free clinic every two weeks, sometimes three. Amelia just stood there, not sure what he was supposed to do before she could look at the baby. Trying to make herself useful she draped the patient and took a look at the ultrasound images, which she had to agree showed an abnormality, but were in no way conclusive, given the position of the fetus. She observed silently as Arizona slowly and carefully took the baby out, Karev had come down too and was assisting instead of her. The moment she saw the newborn in Arizona's arms time stopped. Her vision blurred at the edges and she felt like she was underwater, the sounds were distant and distorted and her heart beat spiked. Everything felt like it was in slow motion around her and she wasn't quite able to focus on one thing or the other, while the two doctors worked. Recognising her name she turned to Arizona, who while looking at her nodded in Alex's direction. The look in her eyes was sad and, Amelia couldn't be sure, but the glint she saw in the reflection looked like tears. Numbly, Amelia made her way over to Alex, who was shaking his head going on and on about how rare it was to see something like this, the infant was very still and he wasn't crying, which worried her because Alex didn't seem to be working on freeing up airways or resuscitate. When she walked up to the little plastic crib she felt bile coming up her throat.

"Wrap his head right away, I don't want to see it."

The baby, this baby girl didn't have a brain. She looked up at Alex who shrugged his shoulders and gave her a pointed look, almost asking what he should be doing. Momentarily she forgot she was here as a neuro consult and not as someone who knew way too much about anencephalic babies. "Why am I here?"

Alex looked pointedly at her and arched his eyebrows, surprised at her answer.

"Just take him away, before I can see him, I don't want to hear him cry – just before he cries."

"I'm a neuro surgeon and there is no brain here for me to look at, I shouldn't be here." She needed to go away. The baby looked nothing like her baby, her baby's head was smaller and to her trained eye it was clear as day there was something missing, but it overall looked as normal as possible. This baby didn't have skin on top of her head, there was a thin membrane, it was red and soft and not at all baby like. She needed to go away before this woman would find out her baby, the baby she thought was perfect, was going to die and there was nothing all the doctors in the world could do to save her. Amelia knew that feeling all too well and she really didn't want to be here for that. "I don't need to be here. I can't-"

"Just take him away."

She stumbled backwards, trying to walk as fast as she could before the tears welling up in her eyes would start falling, making it blatantly obvious for everybody just how not fine she was. On her way out she got rid of the yellow paper coat and gloves, bumping into the drugs cabinet and knocking over a tray full of instruments that made all sorts of tinkling noises as they mixed up with each other. Alex and Arizona stared confused and at loss. No one knew Amelia Shepherd enough to know whether they should be worried about her or mad that she was running out on a difficult case. Regardless her exit had been noisy enough that everyone in the ER was looking at her by the time she had freed herself of all disposable gear, ready to run as far away as she could.

Meredith looked in and saw the baby in Alex's arms, then looking at Arizona asking wordlessly what was going on, she just saw her shrug her shoulders just as confused as she was. She stood from her seat behind the desk and followed Amelia's retreating form down the hallway and into the bathroom. Right when she was about to go in she felt someone behind her and turned around, finding Owen. They shared a look. She knew he and Amelia had been a thing and she knew she had later broken it off, for the better. He was probably the last person Amelia wanted to see right now anyway. "I got this."

She went inside, but there was nobody there. Seconds later she heard a toilet flush and Amelia came out looking pale as a ghost, apart from the red rimmed eyes. Amelia palmed the wall, sliding slowly against the white, cold tiles and sat on the floor, knees up to her chest and head buried in her hands. Her white lab coat was thrown a couple feet away from her. Taken aback Meredith stood still, maybe she should have let Owen come in after all. Tentatively, she sat down beside her, cross legged and leaning against the tiles.

"I'm fine." Her voice was creaky and weak making all the more obvious that she was anything but fine. Meredith didn't say anything, wanting to be there for her, but not knowing what to say or what to do, hell, she didn't even know what happened, let alone how to fix it. She just sat there, hoping that the comfort of having someone there would be enough, however when she heard Amelia's breathing change, coming out in shaky almost silent sobs, her mommy instinct kicked in and she turned to her sister in law. Putting a hand on her shoulder she now worried genuinely and not out of some moral imperative she felt because she was her husband's sister and was currently living in her house. "It's fine, I'm fine." Amelia cleared her throat making a real effort to pull herself together. "You don't have to be here, I'm fine."

Meredith knew how to translate that perfectly, almost too perfectly, and therefore didn't move and inch from her position on the floor. "Is this about the kid?" with that she got Amelia's attention, who turned to look up at her with big, wet blue eyes. Meredith realised they looked exactly like Bailey's eyes. "There was nothing we could have done to save him-"

"It's not – I know we did." She took in a sharp, but still shaky breath and turned back to stare at the floor. "You really don't need to sit here on the floor with me."

Meredith smiled. If only Amelia knew. "Believe it or not this is not the first time I'm sitting on a bathroom floor with someone. I even laid on the bathroom floor once," she tried to lighten the mood. "But then again it was my bathroom, so I didn't think twice about putting my hair on the floor." She smiled thinking back at the memory, it wasn't a particularly happy one, but Cristina was there and Izzie was there and George was there, Doc was still alive and even though Derek was still with Addison, she now thought of that time fondly. Her trip down memory lane, however, was interrupted when she saw Amelia literally shaking beside her. "Amelia?"

"I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay." She kept repeating like a mantra and every time she said it, she sobbed harder and harder until she was gasping, unable to breath. Meredith started rubbing her back, whishing she would stop crying, she didn't do crying, couldn't handle it, she had cried enough since she started working here, she was done and didn't want to have to deal with it anymore.

When Amelia started breathing again at normal intervals she sighed, she had absolutely no idea what to do, but at least she wasn't crying anymore. "You couldn't have done anything about the baby either, you know, right?"

"I know that!" she said harshly, turning to glare at Meredith, who was surprised at her reaction and instinctively wanted to defend herself, but then she noticed Amelia's eyes were sad and sorrowful and she felt sorry instead, whatever this was about it was obvious she was in pain. Meredith had a very good idea what that was like, regardless of the reason she was feeling this way, she still had the tendency to bring stray home. Amelia was already living in her house, but only because she was Derek's sister, but now Meredith felt a kinship with her, saw the sad and lonely and broken that Amelia was usually so good at keeping hidden, all covered up, something she was never really good at. "I'm sorry, I know you're being nice and you're trying to help-"

She just put her arm around her and pulled Amelia to her and, just for a moment, she reminded her of Lexie. Amelia leaned her head on Meredith's shoulder and taking deep, long breaths she slowly started to calm down.