So, this is something that popped in my brain in a train ride back to my university apartment, and it wouldn't leave me alone. It's just one of those stupid fix-it fics that don't fix anything at all, but it's out there, and you can decide to read it or not.
Post 11x03, Got To Be Real. I'm still spoiler free, so this one is spoiler free too. No sneak-peeking in my neck of the woods, so I might be completely off-base as far as the show is concerned, and you can completely hate this. I'm pretty okay with that, too.
The song is Baby We'll Be Fine by The National. Just listen to it on a loop like I did when writing, otherwise the one-shot won't make much sense. Or maybe it will, but you'll lose a lot. Listen to the way the lines in bold are sung, you won't regret it, I promise.
Enjoy!
Baby, We'll Be Fine
I put on an argyle sweater and put on a smile
I don't know how to do this
I'm so sorry for everything
Baby, come over, I need entertaining
I had a stilted, pretending day
Lay me down and say something pretty
Lay me back down where I wanted to stay
Just say something perfect, something I can steal
Say, look at me
Baby, we'll be fine
All we've gotta do is be brave and be kind.
They are the last ones going out of the conference room after the board meeting is over. Bailey's excitement fizzles out and they just stand on the opposite sides of the table, glaring at one another, dropping their masks of happiness, as the room empties and only their silence and the hum of the hospital remain.
"Let's go get the kids." Meredith's voice has a slight echo in the room, and the rift between them deepens.
They shuffle towards the daycare in silence, their bodies close enough not to make anyone suspicious, but distant enough not to touch. The only thing they're grateful for at the end of such a day is the fact that the daycare is on the same floor as the main conference room where they hold board meetings so that they can avoid an awkward elevator ride. They would gladly erase the rest.
Derek watches closely Meredith's reaction to the kids as they notice her when she crosses the threshold. Her face lights up as Zola sprints towards her, her arms waving in the air as the girl ends up in her arms. Meredith holsters her up and lets her wrap her legs around her mid-section, their noses brushing in Eskimo kisses.
Something gnaws at his chest, something that feels a lot like guilt.
Bailey is quick to crawl over towards them as well, and it's Meredith he seeks. He's crawling like a champ already, babbling nonsense as he moves swiftly on the carpeted floors, his tongue sticking out of his lips in concentration. He reaches his mother, then uses her leg to stand up and catch her attention.
"There's my boy!" Meredith smiles, lowering Zola on the ground, to pick up Bailey and blow raspberries on his neck. The boy laughs with abandon.
There's something in her eyes that makes Derek feel uneasy, something that pushes Meredith to pull Zola closer into a hug once again and squeeze both kids against her, her eyes closing slowly, almost as if she's committing to memory this single hug, the precise moment she connects with them.
"Daddy!" Zola squeals then, finally noticing Derek, and it's his turn to be showered with love from their children.
Derek cracks the first smile of his day as soon as Zola is in his arms.
He ends up carrying the girl down to the car, as Meredith holds Bailey and both backpacks on her free shoulder, her tote bag swinging against her side as well.
Derek is already bracing himself for the most awkward ride home ever, until Amelia stands up from one of the chairs in the waiting room in the entry hall.
"Awesome, I was hoping I could catch a ride with Meredith." She rolls her eyes, eying the family before her eyes, as she gathers her stuff to move away from them, disappointment etched in every feature.
"Auntie Amy!" Zola squeals again, right in Derek's ear. "We goin' home!"
"I can see that Zola." Amelia replies with a sad smile, barely glancing at Derek.
"Ya comin' home?"
The three adults share a poignant look at the request, Derek pleading with the women, who are clearly teaming up against him in a silent conversation.
"Of course she is." Meredith replies before Derek can object. "Come on, let's go."
It's Meredith who leads the way halfway through the parking lot before she even looks around, checking in with him to see if she's going in the right direction. For a second Derek wishes they could have moved his reserved parking spot, that way he'd have a good reason to have her talk with him.
"Mama you next to me." Zola orders Meredith around, and Meredith is grateful her daughter is as bossy as she is sometimes. It makes avoiding Derek so much easier.
"There isn't a better place to sit than between my babies, right?" She smiles at Amelia, who would clearly murder her for leaving her in the front seat if the circumstances were different. Derek is definitely not the most popular person tonight.
Derek ignores them as he places Zola on the ground and lets her scramble in her booster seat, while Meredith secures Bailey in his seat, then fastens Zola's seatbelt, before crawling in, mindful of Zola's legs.
Derek gives her a pointed look from the rearview mirror, before he revs up the car and exits the parking lot.
The silence of the car is filled only by the kids' babbling, Zola talking to Meredith about her very exciting day in daycare, Bailey talking animatedly to his stuffed bunny in his own language, sometimes even trying to engage Meredith in the conversation by offering the bunny to her with a smile.
Derek can see the exhaustion in her features every time he glances in the back, the way she's barely holding things together, or how she's constantly touching the kids, one hand on Bailey's thigh rubbing slow circles, the other caressing the nape of Zola's neck, lulling both of them into a doze.
Meredith watches both children sleep, turning her heads in intervals, her gaze resting on each one of their beyond perfect features, her eyes lingering a little too long on Bailey's closed eyes, memories of Derek's sparkling blues popping back into her mind, memories of easier, happier days.
Her head snaps up from her reverie as she hears Amelia and Derek trying to mask their squabble in between angry whispers, their indigo eyes fiery with blazing anger. Meredith feels too full to shoulder even that burden, so she keeps staring at her children, trying to drown them out.
It works.
I'm so sorry for everything.
"Derek, you went completely over my head there. How am I supposed to get the respect I deserve that way?"
"Amy, I'm just...It's just..."
Meredith knows that he would pin this on her too, and she doesn't want to prepare a speech to defend her dignity from that accusation too. She doesn't want to fight any more battles until morning.
The car plunges into an uncomfortable silence once again, Amelia staring out at the blurred darkness, Derek's eyes unmoving from the road and the headlights of the car in front of them.
Time stretches and bends strangely by the time they arrive home, the usual twenty minutes seeming like an hour or five minutes all the same.
When their front door closes, the day is supposed to end, and yet, Meredith knows it's just a pipe dream by then.
The kids need a bath, and she's the one that gladly stashes both of their sleepy selves in an inch or two of water, watching how Zola quietly plays with her ducks in between yawns, and how Bailey almost falls asleep as she washes his hair. Their baby boy is out for the count by the time he's wearing his pajamas.
Meredith lays him in his crib with his hair still slightly damp, smelling like the sweetest peach.
When she goes back to Zola's room to tuck her in, Zola is still wrapped in her fluffy towel, staring at a spot on the floor, her gaze empty and tired.
"One last hurdle baby, then you're in bed." Meredith whispers, picking up her pajama top and passing it though her head.
"Mama?" Zola whispers, blinking slow and steady before she stares deep into her eyes, putting her arms in the right holes for the sleeves. "Is Daddy going away again?"
"I don't think so, no." Meredith swallows, her heart clenching if she lets herself wonder how much of the tension her kids have absorbed in the past couple of weeks. She crouches in front of Zola, giving her undivided attention to her daughter after she has slid her pants on.
"I like Daddy here, but his smile's not so pwetty as before."
Meredith feels tears prickle her eyes, and for a moment she regrets the tequila binge she had indulged during the day. She should have been with her kids, explain things to them. Except, she has no idea what to think herself, how can she explain that to her babies?
"He'll smile pretty, I promise. You are allowed to be sad for no good reason sometimes, and these days, he's just sad."
"Daddy's just sad?"
"He is."
Zola nods, stretching to press a kiss on Meredith's cheek, before she sighs slowly and curls up in a ball.
"Make Daddy smile again." Zola whispers, before her eyes close for good.
I'm so sorry for everything.
Meredith exits the room in a daze, feeling sad and guilty and confused and angry, her emotions all over the place. Mostly, she's just tired.
She sees Derek exiting Bailey's room and their eyes meet, emotions unleashing silently as they stare down the other.
It's Meredith who moves first, walking away towards the master bedroom and their paths cross while Derek goes in Zola's room to kiss her goodnight.
He looks at Zola's sleeping form for what feels like forever, studying all the details her nightlight shows, the dim glow wrapping around her innocent form, giving him courage and instilling in him a little bit of fear too. He can't lose this, these moments, this kind of love, no matter how many awesome trains might pass through his station and stop just for him. Zola and Bailey are his solid ground, his feet down to Earth, he can't loose footing now that he has finally gained it.
Meredith is changing into an old t-shirt when he walks back in their room. She smells of lavender as she passes by him, ignoring him, her hair tied in a messy bun, her shoulders hunched, her eyes sad.
She can take his breath away and yet fill him with rage.
He yanks off his pants, scurrying through the dresser for a clean t-shirt before he decides to have a quick shower to regroup his thoughts and delay the awkwardness.
It doesn't help a bit.
The haze of the warm water only jumbles his thoughts even more, and his horrible day blends in one giant unit ready to snowball down the slope.
Yet, when he exits the bathroom, he's stunned to see Meredith staring at the wall with vacant eyes, her gaze on his tumor and their post-it, not a hint of malice or anger in her look.
She looks lost.
He sits next to her on the bed, afraid to start an overdue conversation, but the ball of nerves in his throat keeps telling him that it's time they cleared up the air, it's time he asks her why she's so unhappy after he has done what she wanted him to do.
"The new Head of Cardio is my biological sister."
Her voice is emotionless, plain, almost as if she has rehearsed this. Derek needs a full minute to process whatever she has said.
"What?" He croaks out, and he's afraid Meredith is not going to repeat herself as she stares him down.
"That's the reason I'm hungover and I called in sick. She told me that last night, and I had to check if it was true. And it is."
She turns on her side, away from him, her eyes still on the wall, and Derek feels frozen by the clinical way she's explaining it to him, how emotionless she sounds, how...
"You should have gone to DC."
Her voice breaks at the end, and he can hear her deep intake of breath following the last syllable. He swallows thickly, ignoring his hurt, trying to push it aside, but he can't, not anymore.
"Maybe I should have."
I'm so sorry for everything
Meredith's wet sniffle takes aback Derek for a moment, and the anger turns from boiling to simmering inside him, the sight of Meredith in tears something he knows doesn't happen often.
"Why did you stay?"
She might be crying, but she cuts right to the chase, stunning him even more. She'll render him speechless before morning if they keep up this way.
"Because you forced me to stay."
"I did not!" She snaps, turning sharply towards him while wiping away her tears with a brisk flick of her wrist, her intense glare kindling the ashes of that long buried confrontation.
"What part of 'I'm staying in Seattle' wasn't forcing me to stay?" His anger bubbles out too, and he raises his voice just a little, just to make his point clearer.
"Plenty of people do the long distance thing. Married people. People who serve their country do it, even – "
Soldiers, she's comparing him to a soldier! Derek loses all resemblance of composure at this point.
"I don't want to see my kids grow up through Skype! I don't want you to shoulder all their responsibilities and juggle all the balls alone. I..."
"Derek, you promised me this would be my year, and it's falling apart. I could have easily stopped working, you would have made enough money to send both Zola and Bailey to college in a single year's salary."
"You're not supposed to stop working!" He growls, and he knows he's growling, because her eyes are gray with anger by now, tears still stubbornly streaming slowly down her face.
Meredith shakes her head, still stubbornly continuing her speech. "There's one thing I wanted to do well in my whole life, and it was being a surgeon. Now it's falling to crap, and I'm a crappy mom too on top of that, because what kind of mother wants the father of her children on the other side of the country? Except I do, because you're not happy, and we both know it, – "
"No, I'm not happy! There, it's out."
"Well, I'm not happy either! I guess we'll have to suck it up and deal with that!" She shouts back, before she turns her head away once more, flopping back on her side of the bed, her body raising and falling as she tries to suppress her tears.
I'm so sorry for everything
They revel in the aftershocks for a moment, trying to process it, trying not to shout too loudly and wake the kids, exercising all kinds of self control.
"Meredith..."
"Derek, please, it's pointless. I have bigger things to worry about." Her voice is broken, making him feel guiltier and angrier at the same time.
"What could possibly be bigger than our marriage falling apart?"
From her deep intake of breath he knows he has hit the mark.
"If your job is more important than our marriage, then the fact that I have sisters popping out of thin air definitely trumps that."
"My job is not more important than our marriage."
Meredith snorts and sobs all in the same grunt of indignation.
"I'm here, ain't I?"
"Poor baby." She shakes her head, turning towards him, wiping more tears. "You are always the sun, bright and hot and blazing so that people worship you and no one can ever get near your level of awesomeness. I'm tired of you being always at the center of things, Derek."
On another day he would have turned this into a dirty joke, commenting on the fact that she just dubbed him hot. Now he's too stunned by the sincerity in her words to formulate a reply.
Until he heaves out a breath, and the words snowball out of him.
"If you want to be the sun too, you need to shine. You need to expose whatever is bugging you, you need to put yourself out there and make room for you so that we can shine together. I want you to be the sun with me." He's rambling, he knows he's rambling, but it seems to be breaking her carefully chiseled shell. "And I'm not the sun, not here, not in this house. You are Zola's sun and you are Bailey's sun in a way I will never be able to be. You are my sun, my breath of fresh air; you are my choice."
I'm so sorry for everything
She bites her lip, more tears spilling down her cheeks in an endless stream, during their endless stare. She curls up into a ball slowly, her knees drawn close to her chest, her hair spilling wildly on her shoulders, her eyes turning green.
"There can't be two suns..."
Her voice is so small it reminds him of Zola, and his anger drains out of him in a blink. He engulfs her smaller body in a tight embrace, closing his eyes as she sobs into his chest, her fist clutching his shirt while she wraps her body around him, enveloping him into a vice grip.
Honestly, he's a little afraid of letting go of her as well.
"Nothing is right in my world anymore, how can I be the sun?" She mumbles into the fabric of his t-shirt, her grip loosening just enough to make breathing slightly easier.
"You just are."
She shakes her head, confused, tired, broken. He did most of that, and he's ashamed. He can hold her now, and that feels like the most progress they have made in the entire past week. He has missed holding his wife.
"I was five, I would have noticed if my mother suddenly got fat, right?"
He blinks for a moment, trying to reconnect the train of thought, then buries his nose in her hair. "How much do you remember of that period?"
"Not much." Meredith says honestly, but there's a hint of something else there, something she's hiding.
"What's your most vivid memory?"
"Ellis slitting her wrists in the kitchen at the old house. I guess the rest was overshadowed by that."
I'm so sorry for everything
Derek's eyes widen, and he pulls away from her to stare into her eyes. He can't see anything but the truth there. He feels dizzy and nauseous.
"You were there?"
"I called the ambulance when she passed out. I couldn't let her die as she asked."
Derek pulls her closer to his chest once again, trying to shoulder her pain, trying to absorb some of the hurt and the confusion and the terrible memories. She sinks in his arms, trusting him to keep her afloat.
"Don't even try to imply that I'm like my mother, Derek, because what happened at the ferry dock was not a suicide attempt and..."
Derek shakes his head, kissing the top of her head. "God no, Mere. You told me what happened, that's not...I was just..."
"Don't pity me, Derek."
She pulls away from him, but he doesn't let her. He knows what's it like to see a parent die right before your eyes, and he needs to keep her close.
"My dad bled out right in front of me too. I was there when they shot him for his watch. I was there. I understand."
Meredith's head slowly moves up from his chest, and she rests her hand above his scar, studying his eyes, seeing the mist he can clearly feel building up in his way she cradles his face becomes a blur through his tears. For her, for his dad, he doesn't know why he feels like crying anymore. An onslaught of emotions hits him like a freight train, memories of a long buried past and a more recent one resurfacing and making his heart clench.
I'm so sorry for everything.
"I'm sorry about your dad."
Her words are sincere in a way that only her words can be, just like the hug she envelops him with.
"I'm sorry about your mother too."
Meredith shakes her head. "Ellis wanted to die, that's different."
"Not from your point of view."
"She wanted to die and instead she realized she was pregnant. How twisted karma is?" Her chortle is hollow, forced, sad.
"Is that when you moved to Boston?"
Meredith nods.
"And you don't remember much from that period of time, right?"
"I remember Aunt Delia pouring me orange juice, I remember a lot of snow, maybe a visit to the mall with a few other little girls?"
"That's something."
Meredith is still not convinced.
They remain embraced loosely for a while, listening to their breaths and moving in sync, calming their spirits, allowing the somber mood to settle around them without ruining the moment.
It's the closest they have been in weeks and they both don't want to let go.
"I know that right now you hate me and my choices and everything, but can we please forget about it just for once? Just for one night."
She's pleading with him, begging him to let go of a hatred that disappeared the moment he has set it free during their screaming match. She's forcing an open door and preaching to the converted.
"Of course we can." He kisses the top of her head, her body molding even further into his. "I love you."
"Even when you hate me."
"Probably more when I hate you."
It's not much, but at least it's something. They can deal with more tomorrow. Sleeping with his wife in his arms definitely exceeds his expectations for the night, in a wonderful way. Yeah, there's time to be angry and talk and fight some more tomorrow.
"I love you too, Derek."
I'm so sorry for everything.
That's it.
I hope it wasn't a complete waste of your time and that it can help tide you over to Thursday.
Thank you for reading and feel free to drop a review in my inbox!
Irene