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.