Prologue
"Meredith, why are you doing this?"
Meredith Grey turned around in the rain outside of the Seattle airport to face Derek Shepard, who was had reached out and put a hand on her arm. She jerked out of his grip and stepped back, her hand tightly gripping the handle of her suitcase.
"Because I have to, Derek. I have to go. It'll be better—for all of us."
Derek gave a derisive laugh and pushed his hands into the pocket of his jacket. The rain had soaked his hair and he didn't seem to notice that it was flopping into his face. "It'll be better for our child not to have a father? I never thought you'd say that. Do you hate me that much?"
A look of shock crossed over Meredith's face. "No," she said, softly, her hand resting on her abdomen, which had expanded to hold the baby growing within it. "No. I could never hate you, Derek. But we've tried," she said, vehemently. "We've tried and it hasn't worked out."
"We can try again! For the baby!"
"No!" Meredith said, vehemently. "If we try again, just for the baby, and don't work, we'll want to stay together, just for the baby. Do you really want a child to grow up with the knowledge that she's the only reason her parents live in the same house?"
There was silence for a second, and then, "She? It's a girl?" Derek said, taking a step towards Meredith, who nodded.
"Yeah. I found out last week. I figured it'd be harder if I told you…. Look, I'm not going to keep you out of her life. I could never do that. But she doesn't deserve parents who are unhappy."
"How do you know that we would be unhappy?" Derek demanded, pleadingly. "We can be happy."
Meredith took a breath, and then looked up at Derek. He could see that her eyes were full of tears. He could not tell if they had fallen or not, because of the rain that dripped off her bangs and down her face. "Happy endings don't happen. Remember? You can't just be our knight in shining whatever, just for the baby. It'd all come crashing down around us again, and I couldn't do that to her."
"You don't know that would happen!" Derek said, in exasperation.
"But it could, and I'm not willing to risk that. Derek, I- I'm sorry. I wish—but you can't change the past."
"No," Derek agreed. He stepped forward again. "You'll—" he swallowed, cleared his throat. "You'll miss your plane." He looked away, so that he wouldn't see that there were tears in his eyes too. A car went by them, splashing Derek's legs with water.
"Yeah," Meredith said, nodding.
Derek stepped back, and Meredith slowly turned to the doors of the airport.
"Meredith!" he called, a note of desperation in his voice.
"What?" Meredith said, turning back just a little bit.
"I love you. Still," he called, his voice cracking on the last word.
Meredith didn't say anything, just went into the airport, and checked her baggage. When her seat was called she filed onto the plan like all of the other passengers, and slid uncomfortably into her window seat. She turned her face to the small window and rested her cheek against it. Quietly, so that no one else heard, she said, "I love you too." The tears that had been held in her eyes began to fall, but her sobs were so silent that the man sitting next to her, reading a novel, did not notice that the otherwise tiny pregnant woman next to him cried steadily for the entire flight.
A/N I lied when I said no long fics this summer. This one won't be as long as some, but I'm excited about it :D
