A/N: See below for author's note regarding the conclusion of this story.

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Two days later, Owen was back in Dr. Wyatt's office, an empty journal in his hands. Plenty of thoughts had swirled around in his head in the interim, but nothing coherent enough to write down. She reassured him that this was not a performance, that the journal was for him to use as he saw fit, then invited him to make himself comfortable on the couch, either sitting up or lying down. He opted for sitting up. Lying down on a couch in a shrink's office was just too much of a cliché.

"There's a technique I'd like to try with you. We'll see how it works out. It's called guided visualization." She paused to see if he was going to ask what that was, then continued when he just sat there. "It's not hypnosis, in case you're wondering. It's a technique that allows us to work more closely with the subconscious by visualizing and experiencing things in your head, and I think in your case this will help us to move forward more quickly. Some of what we do in the visualization may seem a little strange, so I want you to be prepared."

"Like what?" he asked.

"We'll be dealing symbolically with some of the material. You'll see once we start."

Dealing symbolically...What is this, a literature class? Owen looked askance at her, as if she was the one who needed therapy. He was too much of a doctor's doctor to have a lot of patience for any healing modality that wasn't firmly rooted in science. Working in a hospital-based practice, Dr. Wyatt knew that look; she had dealt with more than her share of doctors. "I realize this is all foreign to you, so I'm asking you to bear with me and just give it a try. You have a lot of walls up around your feelings, and I need you to get into a more receptive state so we can start to uncover some of what's going on. The stress and anxiety you're experiencing currently will get in the way if we simply launch in and try to talk it out. So sit back, try to relax, and just do what I tell you, ok?"

Owen looked at her skeptically, but realized he had already made the decision to trust her last time. "Ok."

"Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths." Owen tried to settle in and do what she asked, but he still felt kind of awkward. "Now... imagine yourself in a place that feels very safe to you. It could be out in nature, at the beach, in a forest... somewhere where you know you're safe and you can relax. When you're there, say ok."

Owen closed his eyes and allowed his mind to drift. He found himself in his mom's backyard, sitting back in one of the old Adirondack chairs, looking out into the wooded area behind the house.

"Ok."

"This is a place you can come back to any time you need to. It's safe. No harm can come to you here. Ok?"

"Ok." Whatever.

"Now, in your mind's eye, I want you to get up from wherever you are and start walking. You're leaving your safe space, searching for that swamp we talked about last time. It might be close by, and it might be very far away. Whatever distances you need to travel to get there, do that. Even very long distances will only take a moment. Let me know when you're standing by the swamp."

Owen pictured himself getting up from the chair, cutting across the yard, through the woods, and then fast-forwarding across land, sea and finally the sand pit of the Iraqi desert to reach an enormous mucky lake of black, putrid water. He had not wanted to come here, not expected when he closed his eyes for this 'visualization' to go anywhere near Iraq. His heart rate started to climb as he assessed his surroundings. Horrible odors emanated from the swamp, and the surface trembled with slimy bubbles. Ooze sloshed menacingly onto the banks in little waves that nearly touched his shoes, and he took a step back, heart pounding. He noticed that the fear he felt was real, even though he knew in his mind that the swamp wasn't.

"Ok."

"Look around. There's a rope coming out of the swamp. It's within easy reach of your hand. I want you to bend over and take hold of it."

"Ok."

"This rope is attached to a huge drain plug, like a bigger version of the kind you find in old fashioned sinks. Once you pull this plug, all the swamp water will drain out and you'll be able to see what's in there. Now listen carefully, because only you can decide when you're ready to pull that plug. It must be done with intention. Feel the rope in your hands. Feel the weight of the plug at the other end...."

She was watching him and could see that he was holding his breath. "Keep breathing, Owen... Good. Now, when the time is right, I want you to pull out the plug."

Owen stared at the surface of the swamp. The rope felt clammy in his hands, and his heart was beginning to race erratically. What makes her think I'm stupid enough to pull this thing out? At least here, standing on the bank, he was safe. He could stand here forever if he wanted to. His life could go on as before. It wasn't that bad.

Dr. Wyatt's voice had receded into the distance, and he stood there for what seemed to him like hours, contemplating his decision. The tendency toward inertia was strong, in spite of all that had occurred recently. True, his current existence was no way to live, but at least he knew what to expect. It wasn't until he looked beyond the edge of the swamp to the other side and saw Cristina standing there staring at him, arms folded, that he knew he had to act. He had made her a promise, even if he hadn't made one to himself just yet. He gave the rope a tug, but the plug was jammed in firmly and his first effort was not enough to dislodge it. He pulled again, and felt it budge just a little. Finally he wrapped the rope around his waist and tied it in a knot, then braced himself and used all of his body weight. This time he was successful, and the lack of resistance when the plug popped out threw him backward so suddenly that he almost lost his balance. He heard a sucking sound, and the fetid water began to recede with a loud gurgle.

Owen had been so fixated on accomplishing the mission that his success caught him by surprise, and he stared in horrified silence as he realized what he had done. His heart was pounding so hard it felt like it would leap out of his chest, and his breath became labored and ragged. This was wrong. He couldn't do this. He didn't need to do this to deal with what was really bothering him right now, which was all about what he had done to Cristina and how he was going to get her back. The rest of it was unimportant in comparison. Iraq was a distraction, a red herring. If he worked on what had happened right here in Seattle, got Cristina back, all the rest would fall into place. His frantic mind wondered for a moment if there was any possible way to rush in there and jam the plug back in the hole. He looked back across the swamp for direction, but Cristina had vanished. He was all alone, watching the water level go inexorably down, seeing shapes start to emerge from the muck - twisted human shapes, distorted and bloated, some piled on top of each other, some in pieces, others thrown to the sides in impossible positions.

This was wrong. This was all wrong. He didn't need to be here, didn't need to see this. He couldn't look, and at the same time he had to. Like passing a car wreck on the freeway, there was no turning away. His eyes were drawn to the carnage even though his mind told him to look elsewhere. He stared, and a slap of recognition made him shut his eyes more tightly to block out the images. He felt the acid sting of nausea rising into his throat, and opened his eyes. "Oh, god, I'm gonna be sick."

Dr. Wyatt calmly passed him an empty trash can, and waited silently while Owen puked his guts out.

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Owen rinsed out his mouth and washed his face in the sink in Wyatt's office, then sat back down and eyed her warily. He had trusted her, and now he felt like he had been blindsided. She should have warned him this might happen, although he also knew that if she'd told him, he probably wouldn't have stuck around long enough to find out for sure. He was deeply rattled. The intensity of his physical reaction to the mental process he had been going through had certainly gotten his attention and given him some healthy respect for the power of visualization. He tried to shake off the embarrassment he was feeling over losing his lunch in her trash basket. "Was that... supposed to happen?" he asked.

"There's no 'supposed to' with this, but yes, it happens sometimes. It's not a bad thing, though I know it feels pretty bad right now." Her matter-of-factness helped to normalize it a little. " Now, tell me what you saw."

Throwing up had left him a chalky shade of white, and Owen blanched even more at the question. It was hard to get the words out, but finally he managed. "Bodies... lots of...bodies..."

"Did you recognize them?"

He nodded without saying anything. Tears were threatening to spill out and he blinked them back.

"Tell me who you saw."

"I saw Cristina."

"Was she one of the bodies?"

"No, she was... standing on the other side, watching me."

"Is that what made you throw up?"

"What? No. That was what made me pull the plug, though. I don't think I would have done it if she hadn't been there."

"And are you doing this for her?"

"Yes... No... Mostly yes."

"You can't be, Owen. You have to want this for yourself, or you won't get where you need to go. I can see you really care about her, but you're not doing her any favors by involving her in this. Based on what you told me, she's probably got her own work to do around what happened. You need to leave her out of it."

"I know. I know that's true, but none of the rest of it matters to me right now."

"I disagree. People don't usually puke over things that don't matter."

A flash of anger lit his face. "How do you know what made me puke? You weren't inside my head."

"No, but you said you saw bodies, and you said it wasn't Cristina. That doesn't leave us with too many options."

She had him there. He just stared at her and said nothing.

"Tell me what you saw. Tell me what made you sick."

He realized he was fighting her too hard. And she was making sense, even if he didn't want to hear what she had to say. He was sitting here already. Might as well answer the question. "I saw... everyone... just everyone. My whole platoon... everyone dead." His voice had dropped till it was almost a whisper.

"And seeing them made you sick?"

"Seeing them that way... they were mangled... blown apart."

"Is that how you saw them last?"

He swallowed hard and nodded without saying anything.

"What were you doing when you saw them like this? I mean in the actual situation, not in the visualization."

Owen heart started to race and his palms began sweating. He shifted in his seat and rubbed his hands back and forth on his thighs. "I can't talk about this. I'm sorry. I need to go now." He got up to leave.

She rose too. "Sit down."

He let out an exasperated breath. "I'm not a child. You can't just order me around."

"No, but I can make a strong suggestion. Sit down. Please."

"Why? What's the point? I'm done here today."

"Because I can't work with you unless you're willing to work with me. Now, either sit down, or walk out and find yourself another therapist. I do a lot of things in here, but chasing my patients down and dragging them back is not one of them. There are plenty of other shrinks out there. I'm sure you can find one who'll put up with this crap if you look hard enough."

He gave her a long look, and finally sat down again.

"I know this is hard, Owen. That's why I'm here to help you with it. But you have to let me. You have to trust me."

His lips were set in a tight line. He nodded but said nothing.

"Why is it so hard for you to talk about what you were doing when the ambush happened?"

After keeping such a tight lid on it for so long, Owen practically exploded when he finally spoke. "Because clearly I was doing NOTHING. Because if I'd been doing SOMETHING I would have saved at least one of them, right? I'm good at what I do. These were my friends! How is it possible that I couldn't save anyone? How is it POSSIBLE that they were all hit so hard they were too far gone to save, and I was barely scratched? How can that be? It makes no sense." He rubbed his hands over his face, as if he were trying to erase what happened. "Pieces of them were all over...everywhere. When the first RPGs exploded, I got hit in the face with someone's hand... just the fucking hand. I don't even know whose it was. Shrapnel was flying everywhere, tearing them apart, and it was like I was bulletproof or something... All I could do was run around and try to revive people who were already dead."

She let him sit with his emotions for a minute before she spoke. "What are you feeling right now, Owen?"

"What do you mean, what am I feeling? If there was anything left in my stomach I'd be throwing up again - THAT'S how I'm feeling. I feel like SHIT. I feel like the most miserable piece of shit that ever walked the earth. I feel like every one of those people deserved to live more than I did. Some of them had kids, families. Why am I still here if they're gone?"

She let his words die out and allowed for a few moments of silence as he sat with what he'd just revealed. "Is it possible you just got lucky? Just happened to be in the right place at the right time? It happens all the time, in airline crashes, car crashes, natural disasters... that lucky person who survives when everyone else dies. People who live through things like that typically feel just like you do. It's called Survivor Guilt."

"How does that help me, to know that? It doesn't change how I feel."

"And yet you still come to work... still save lives every day...What's that about?"

"I don't know. Maybe I'm just on autopilot. It's what I trained for. It's all I know how to do anymore."

"I heard you say you should have been able to save at least one of your buddies. Is that what you do, Owen? Save people?"

He looked at her like she was some kind of moron. "Of course it is. I'm a trauma surgeon."

"That's not what I meant. You weren't born a trauma surgeon. That was a career choice you made. I'm asking you how you define yourself as a person."

He gave a frustrated sigh, "I don't know. I just... do my job."

"This is about how you see yourself, what you think your role is in the world. If saving people is just a job for you, that's one thing. If it's part of your mission in life, it's another."

He thought about it for a minute. "Cristina accused me of having a "Savior Complex," if that tells you anything."

Wyatt gave him a knowing look. "I'd say it tells me a lot."

"So what does it mean?"

"Well, for starters, it means that someone like you will react much more strongly to a failure like the one you had that day than someone who doesn't define themselves that way. It means this incident isn't just about survivor guilt. It's also about your personal failure to uphold one of your core values. It's no surprise you feel like you don't deserve to live, because in your mind, you have to earn that right by saving people."

Owen shook his head. "I find it hard to believe that anyone would walk away from something like that without it really impacting them, whether they had a savior complex or not."

She smiled. "You just made my next point for me. You have to learn how to give yourself a break, Owen. None of this is your fault, even if you insist on taking responsibility for it."

"And this is something you can fix in here?"

"No, this is something we can work together to understand, and when we do, we can find ways for you to live with yourself even when you're not perfect."

"I don't think I ever expected myself to be perfect..."

"No, but in an incident where you were as much of a victim as everyone else, you hold yourself to a standard no reasonable person could possibly fulfill. And my guess is, this isn't the only time it's happened. It's just the most dramatic."

Owen thought back to the homeless man who had gotten mangled in the garbage truck, and how deeply he had been affected by his death. It wasn't just about the way he had related to Tim Miller's story, it was also about a deep sense of personal failure. He had desperately wanted to fix him, to set him back on his feet and give him a life, to show it was possible to come back from such extreme devastation. He, and the rest of the surgical team, had failed. Aside from Callie, who had worked so hard to rebuild his legs, Owen was certain he was the only one who had taken this particular death so much to heart. "Ok, you might be right about that."

"This is good, Owen. Talking about it like this is a first step. It gives us something we can work with. I'm really pleased with how this went today."

"Does that mean we're done?"

"It does. But I want you to really think about what we talked about. My guess is you'll come up with some insights before we see each other again."

"Ok. I'll... I'll see you later." Owen got up and let himself out.

Dr. Wyatt sat quietly for a moment after Owen left, then jotted down a few more notes. She cared about all her patients, but this one had touched her heart today more than most. The idea that someone could sacrifice so much, go through such hell, and then still judge himself so harshly, tapped into a well of compassion that almost compromised her professional detachment. Though he tried to hide it, she could clearly see his pain and vulnerability, locked down and buried under a mountain of self-judgment. Given the way he raked himself over the coals for not helping others enough in impossible circumstances, she could well imagine how severely he must be castigating himself for hurting his girlfriend. This guy deserved a break, but he was unlikely to give himself one without intensive intervention.

That's where she came in. Whatever it took to help this man, she was going to deliver.

THE END

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A/N: I had other intentions for this story when I began it, the first of which was to complete it before the 4 week hiatus in the show ended. But the story expanded as I wrote it and became bigger than I'd planned, and I didn't manage to finish it in time. Once the show started up again, I wanted to see where it would go before writing any more of this. Now that the final episodes of Season 5 have aired, I'm finding it too difficult to go back and complete this story without going off canon - something I'm loathe to do.

The show ended up delivering the basic plot points that I intended to cover, and they did it well enough that I feel no need to augment what the GA writers have given us. Had I wanted to add to what they did, I would have given you more of the encounter with Owen's mom, which I've already done here. I would also have given you more of Owen's therapy with Dr. Wyatt, and I've already done that too. I do have additional therapy material written already, and I intend to include some of that in other stories. If you're following my work, you'll see it pop up somewhere else under a different title.

So for those of you who are disappointed that I'm not taking this one further, I feel badly about disappointing you and I hope you know I didn't intend to leave you hanging. Please forgive me for not taking this to a more definitive conclusion. Consider the place where Cristina and Owen are now in the show as the logical conclusion to this story, and keep an eye out for my future work that will hopefully take it a few more steps down the road over the summer.

Thanks to all of you who have been reading my work, and thanks for all the reviews. It means a lot to me that people enjoy something that I've created. If you've read this story and still haven't left me a comment, it's not too late! I'm always delighted to hear from you.