She needed to find Derek. He hadn't said anything after they'd left Jen's husband, and then he'd disappeared. This was hard on him. She got that. He'd been finding the loss of patients harder and harder since the clinical trial. He cared more, he was harder on himself, and sitting through all that, listening to Jen's husband calling him a murderer didn't make it any easier.

Meredith knew where to find him. He always went up on the bridge when he needed to think. He liked it up there, he'd said. He could see the outside world. It was a great place to watch the sunsets.

The crowd gathered in the opening to the bridge set off alarm bells in Meredith's head. Something was wrong. Something was definitely wrong.

"Excuse me." Meredith pushed her way through the crowd. As they spotted her, people began to move, and it wasn't long before she had made her way to the front. There was a crowd on the other side of the bridge too. Meredith could see Owen staring, transfixed, at the ground. Meredith followed his gaze. Two people in white coats and scrubs—doctors, no doubt—were rolling on the ground, throwing punches at each other. For a moment, she couldn't tell who they were, but then she caught a glimpse of those blue eyes, and felt the shock douse her like someone had dropped a bucket of ice water on her head. Derek was fighting? With…oh God. Mark's face was clearly visible; as angry as he was, it seemed like part of him was trying to hold Derek back.

Owen was moving now, wrapping his arms around Mark in a bear hug, pulling him off, to fully expose Derek, lying on the floor, face red and bloody. He struggled to his feet, dazed, as if he couldn't believe what had happened. Meredith moved towards him, hardly able to believe it either. Derek didn't get into fights; he wasn't the fighting type. And yet, here he was, struggling to his feet after having fought his best friend in front of half the hospital. Had either one of them been flung over the bridge, they would have been killed. Meredith didn't want to think about it.

Up close, Derek's injuries weren't so bad. The bridge of his nose was bloody and swelling a little; there was a deep cut running across his eyebrow, and his lip was spilt. His jaw looked like it was beginning to bruise too

There were so many things Meredith wanted to say, but words failed her. Seeing Derek like this made her realize the magnitude of his grief. This thing with Jen, it was a big deal. He wasn't going to bounce back right away.

Derek dabbed at his lip, trying to staunch the bleeding. Meredith, unsure of what to say, guided him away, hoping to find the ability to put her feelings into words.

She opened her mouth to ask what had happened. "Are you all right?" was what came out instead. The way he was hunched over, almost stumbling made her fear a head injury.

"I'm fine," Derek mumbled, shaking his hand out; the way he flexed his fingers told Meredith that was the hand that had done the punching.

Had the situation not been so dire, Meredith would have laughed. Fine? Nothing about this was fine. "Let's go fix you up," she said instead. She understood. She was a person who retreated inside herself when the going got tough. She lied about the way things were all the time. She'd give him space and when he wanted to talk, she'd listen. Until then, she'd just give him space.

In the end, the cut on his eyebrow was the only thing that needed stitches. Derek said nothing while she sutured him up, but she hadn't expected him to. The silence stretched on into the car ride home, even though Meredith listened to the pop station, which she knew Derek hated. It was like he wasn't even there anymore; there was nothing left but a shell, a lifeless doppelganger.

Meredith watched Derek from the kitchen. He sat on the couch, staring into space. She had never seen him so lost, so down. The silence was starting to get to her. She, for all her introvertedness and unwillingness to talk wanted to scream at him to snap out of it, to just talk to her. It wasn't because she couldn't take the silence, the bottling everything up; she could, but she didn't think he could. Derek wasn't the silent type. He liked to talk and share his feelings with people. Communication was never a problem for him. Meredith, on the other hand, had no idea what to do in situations like these. Derek, in her position, would try to get her to talk to him, to share her feelings. She should probably do the same, but she had no idea what to say that would get him to talk to her. If only Cristina were here to give her some advice…

Meredith sighed and ran a hand though her hair, turning away from Derek. There had to be something she could do. She couldn't do what Derek would do in this situation.

Maybe she was going about this the wrong way. Maybe she was worrying about it too much. Derek was so upset, so far gone into his own mind and his own pain that he was practically pulling a Meredith or a Cristina. So what would she do if it were Cristina out there on the couch? She'd turn the music up really loud and they'd dance it out. That wasn't going to work; she'd tried it once with Derek and it had been a disaster. He wasn't the best dancer, and she didn't think he was in the mood for that kind of thing. So if they couldn't dance it out…

Her eyes alighted upon the bottle of whiskey sitting on the kitchen counter. Derek had brought it over for the nights that Meredith drank tequila, and it had yet to be opened. Grabbing a couple of glasses from the cupboard, Meredith picked up the bottle and headed out to the living room. A drink was what everyone needed to make them feel better.

Derek barely glanced up as she sat down beside him. It wasn't until she set the whiskey and glasses on the table that he actually turned and looked at her. The way he looked at her was awful: it was as if he was surprised that she was still here, looking after his pitiful self. This proved what Meredith had suspected: Derek was not himself. They lived together, how could he not expect her to just leave him to fend for himself? And what was it that Derek had said after that fight they'd had about who was going to succeed the Chief? "I'll always show up." Well she was always going to show up too.

Silently, she poured them each a glass of whiskey. She had never liked it much—tequila was more her thing—but she didn't want to pour Derek a glass and none for herself. She was here for him; this was her way of showing it. Maybe after a few drinks, he'd loosen up enough to talk.

The speed with which Derek downed the first glass of whiskey and reached to pour another was disconcerting. He was a man who savoured his drinks— especially good whiskey like this—and watching him drink one, two, and three glasses so quickly scared Meredith a little. It was almost as if Derek believed that the faster he drank, the faster he would be relieved of all his pain. With his beat-up face and rapid whiskey drinking, he didn't look like himself at all. With a pang of sadness, Meredith thought of her father. Was this what it had been like for Lexie after Susan died?

Meredith glanced down at her untouched glass of whiskey, unsure what to do. The alcohol had seemed like a good idea; but now it seemed as if it might have been too good of an idea. Drunken Derek was no better than silent Derek.

"Mark's dating Lexie."

The sound of Derek's voice startled Meredith, so much so that she almost spilled all her whiskey on her lap.

"What?"

"Mark. He's dating Lexie." His voice was quiet; he refused to look at her, staring instead at the half-empty bottle of whiskey on the table.

"Lexie is dating Mark Sloan?" Meredith couldn't disguise her surprise. Mark doesn't date. He sleeps with women like it's nobody's business, but he doesn't date them.

Derek nodded, pouring himself another drink.

"How do you know?"

"He told me." Derek sighed. "After the surgery with Jen, he came up to me and told me."

It's as if the fog has finally cleared and Meredith can see everything. "That's why you were fighting. He told you he was seeing Lexie, and you punched him." She can practically see the scene unfolding in her head: Derek, up on the bridge, lost in his grief; Mark, unsuspecting, coming up behind him and blurting it out, as only Mark can do; Derek, needing a way to express his grief, lashing out at Mark. And Mark, being Mark, would have fought back. Of course.

Derek stared into his drink, as if hoping to uncover some great truth from within the depths of the whiskey. Meredith tried very hard not to say anything. As much as she wanted to pounce and ask Derek all her questions, she knew that she had to take it one step at a time. Let him do all the talking.

"It wasn't supposed to be this way," Derek whispered. "I was supposed to save her. I was supposed to save her."

Meredith rubbed his forearm gently. "You can't save everyone, Derek. You're not a god. There are some people that you just can't save."

He shook his head, frustrated. "But I should have been able to!" he cried. "Her husband was right, it wasn't complicated. It was a simple procedure, one I've done a million times before."

"People make mistakes, Derek. Nobody's perfect. You're not expected to be perfect." Meredith wished he wouldn't blame himself so much. Even the best surgeons made mistakes. Her mother had probably made lots of mistakes.

"I was a god," Derek mumbled. "Addison—she said I was a god, and then she wanted me to go back to being tiny and insignificant." He chuckled darkly. "Well she got her wish."

"Derek," Meredith sighed. "You're not insignificant. You're still a world-renowned neurosurgeon. There are still people all over the country who want you to operate on them. You made a mistake. You're only human; humans make mistakes."

Derek downed the rest of his drink and ran a hand through his hair. His eyes were bloodshot; he looked on the verge of tears. "I didn't want her to die," he whispered. He sounded so regretful, like a child who had broken their mother's vase, that it broke Meredith's heart. "I didn't want to be a murderer." He was crying now, the tears slipping silently down his cheeks. "All I wanted was to save her."

Meredith wrapped her arms around him, pulling him in close and rocking him back and forth, the way he had done in the supply closet for her, so long ago. "I know, Derek," she whispered, stroking his hair and trying to stop the tears from rolling down her own cheeks. "I know."

How long she sat there rocking him, Meredith had no idea. All she knew was that, eventually, she noticed the silence had descended once again, only this time it was because Derek had fallen asleep, not because he had retreated back inside himself again. Moving slowly, as so not to disturb him, Meredith went upstairs, changed into her pyjamas and brushed her teeth. She lay in bed, waiting for sleep to come, but unable to dismiss the thought of Derek downstairs, alone on the couch. Quietly, she rose from her bed, found a couple of blankets in the linen closet and crept downstairs. Moving Derek over, she spread the blankets and curled up on the couch next to him.

Would Derek be back at work tomorrow? Meredith wondered as she fell asleep. God only knew. If he needed some space, he could have it. They'd just take it one step at a time.