"I am neither pro- nor anti- merger. From this point on, everyone has a clean slate." At that, Mark gets into the elevator before he realizes that the only person there is an incredibly startled Lexie. He makes a really slow attempt to get out of the elevator, and it was I think unfortunate timing on Eric Dane's part as he made the attempt to leave too early, so the doors were still totally open and he could have just walked out easily if he wanted to. But this calls for them to get stuck there together. Lexie looks at the numbers as the elevator moves and begins to crumble, but keeps her hair covering enough of her cheek that Mark can't tell until the doors open, and with half a sob she rushes out as he seems to finally grow up a bit and makes a move towards her retreating figure. Derek VO's, "I am not focused on the past." See? Because Mark totally is? Ah, so deep. Fortunately, Mark finally has the good grace to look ashamed.

Cristina gets home and finds Hunt wringing his hands in her apartment. She's still incredibly pissed, and goes straight to the fridge to pour herself a beer as he tells her that he's trying to understand her. Cristina counters that he's trying to screw her into submission, which he denies, but she says that it's true and that she let him because it was really good sex and his ego was bruised. He replies that he's just trying to understand, know, and love her but that he doesn't know how because she doesn't give him anything. Uh oh, wrong approach -- she yells at him about her burn, which is like a brand. He finally yells that he's trying, and repeats that she doesn't give him anything to which she growls angrily that she gives him everything. What this really comes down to is Burke, and she's stunned to hear him ask about her former fiancée. She tries to shut him down but he persists insisting that with everything that he's done he's just trying to connect to her, and that she has to give him a little something. This goes back and forth some more, and she tries to convince him that Burke is irrelevant to the conversation, but he's not buying it, and after he pleads with her to let him love her, she gives the tiniest of bits.

After thinking a moment, she tells him that Burke took something from her -- little pieces over time, that were so small she didn't notice until one day she had made herself into something she wasn't. She admits that she was lying for him, jeopardized her career, and then agreed to be married and then found herself, "in a wedding dress with no eyebrows," and she wasn't herself anymore. She's breaking down, and Sandra Oh just knocks this out of the park, finally facing and reliving the Burke stuff that all felt sort of shoved under the carpet after Isaiah Washington left the show. Tearfully she admits that even then she would have married Burke, and it's unspoken that he was the one to stop the wedding. She admits haltingly that after losing herself like that and then finally getting back to being herself again, she can't do it again. She admits that she loves him even more than she did Burke, but that when he asked her to ignore the page he took a little piece of her and she let him. With horrible resolve she promises, "And that will never happen again." She finally totally crumbles, but Hunt stands there and holds her hand while she cries, and for the millionth time I'll exclaim over how these two seem to want to actually work through problems and be a functional couple and I absolutely love them together. Fine, I also love that he's searingly hot.