Title: photograph
Author: Cath
Disclaimer: Characters do not belong to me. More's the pity for me. They're probably quite glad about it though…
Summary: She has a thing about photographs, but this is one that focuses her attention unlike any other she has seen. MerDer. Future fic.
Notes: Another rather ridiculously fluffy fic before I attempt to deal with the longer, angsty plot bunny that currently refuses to leave me! I'm almost apologetic about the fluffiness of this one. Almost, but not quite.
XxX
She cannot sleep. The pregnancy has this effect on her. At times when the baby is still and she can get comfortable, thoughts and fears race through her tired mind, refusing to allow her the peace of a restful sleep.
At eight months into her pregnancy, her night time fears are dominated by questions of her ability to be a good mother, to love her child. The fears, lessened decidedly during the day, are magnified at night; doubts creeping in with the knowledge that she lacked appropriate role models in her own parents.
She knows that her fears are mostly unsubstantiated; she couldn't have begun to predict or explain how she feels with this being inside of her – this unique mixture of Derek and Meredith that neither of them can wait to meet. She'd never been overly bothered by babies or understood the power of a fuzzy ultrasound picture until it happened to her.
But still, uncomfortable and unable to sleep, questions and worries invade her every sense, rendering sleep an absolute impossibility.
The time is 3:18am (so her clock informs her) and she lies on her side, eyes wide open, and thoughts of her mother driving her crazy. With maybe one exception (and even that is possibly imagined) they never connected in any real, warm, mother-daughter sense of the word. And tonight, it bothers her. It bothers her that she misses her mother. It bothers her more that had her mother been around, what advice would she be able to provide?
"Meredith," she imagines her mother saying sharply, "don't allow this child to distract you from your career. Surgery is the most important thing. You've spent years training for this, dedicating your life to this job and if you cannot understand that, then you're not the daughter I thought I'd raised."
In her later years, Ellis's own questioning of her decision to have a child plays heavily on her mind.
There is no question but to get up. This way madness lies and she wants water and her current fixation on ice cream – the pint in the freezer being another distracting element – adds to her decision to force herself from the overbearing warmth of the bed.
Watered and fed, she waddles (alas, she has come to waddling now, as Cristina is so quick to point out) through the house; the house that she conceived one night in candles and came to fruition sometime later. It has not been so long since they moved in; the odd box of unpacked items pointing to this fact.
Unpacked boxes never really bothered her before and yet now, she has this desire for everything to be in place before the baby is born.
Wide awake and with nothing better to do but to fixate on her thoughts, she makes the decision to unpack now.
She settles herself in the lounge, awkwardly placing herself on the floor, resting against the couch, a box of indeterminate origin beside her.
It's one of the boxes from her mother's house. She knows this immediately as she opens it. She also knows that this is a box that remained unopened during her time living in the house. And for a moment, given her current thoughts, she questions whether the best time to sort through the items within is now. Curiosity gets the better of her.
The items she discovers mostly pay homage to her mother's earlier achievements. Her college yearbook. Her undergraduate diploma. A journal article detailing the early trials with the technique her mother pioneered.
Her eyes well up as she takes out each new item and reads it in detail. Pregnancy also has caused her, much to her frustration, to become far more emotional than she had ever anticipated.
And then, near the bottom, she finds something that piques her interest far more than even the other articles she has uncovered.
A photograph: a single photograph, slightly creased, unframed.
She has a thing about photographs, but this is one that focuses her attention unlike any other she has seen.
It's a photograph of her mother and a baby: her, Meredith. Sure, she's seen maybe a couple photographs with her mother and her as a baby, but they were of Ellis, almost detached, holding a baby with only the slightest hint of emotion. She has never seen this one.
She suspects that the photograph was taken without her mother's knowledge.
In it, her mother gazes in awe and wonder at the newborn baby in her arms. A slight smile is across her face, one that tells of far more emotion than a posed grin would.
She can't take her attention away from this photograph; this evidence.
She doesn't notice Derek's presence in the room until he sits beside her.
"Can't sleep?" he asks.
She shakes her head. "I found this," she tells him, showing him the photograph.
His eyes widen in interest.
"I think… Looking at this photo, I think, maybe she did love me the way normal mothers love their children. At least, maybe at the beginning. I don't know," she qualifies, having a fleeting thought that the late night is contributing her to lacking in sense.
Derek places his arm round her, hand resting her on her stomach, head resting wearily against her shoulder. His eyes remain on the photograph, drinking in the details. "You should frame this," he suggests.
"For what, a reminder that even if it all is bright and shiny at the beginning, everything can still go to crap?" she asks, but it's with a small amount of humour. She's getting better at not being so neurotic and dark these days.
He shakes his head against her shoulder. "Maybe as a reminder that she loved you. Or maybe as a reminder that we should try not to screw the kid up."
She looks at him, eyes slightly narrowed with vague amusement.
"It's nearly four in the morning, Meredith; you can't expect me to make a whole lot of sense when it's this late. Early. Whatever," he says. And then he grins at her, that same Derek grin that lead to the baby being conceived way ahead of schedule. "I love you," he tells her. "Come back to bed. I can't sleep when you're not there."
She rolls her eyes. "Seriously?" she asks, but again, it's a little in jest.
"Seriously."
He helps her up with only a small amount of difficulty.
"You're going to be a great mom," he tells her as they ascend the stairs.
"You're seriously going with the cliché?" she questions, but her smile betrays the reality that she's happy that he made the comment.
"Yeah, I'm going with the cliché," he replies with a grin. They enter the bedroom and Derek pushes back the covers, sliding beneath them. "Y'know, this kid is going to be the luckiest kid in the world."
"Because it has me as its mother?" she asks with an amused smile, climbing into bed next to him.
He pauses for a moment. "Well, mostly since it'll have me as its father," he shrugs, nonchalant, before the smirk appears.
She cannot help but roll her eyes at his ridiculously wide grin. But as the light turns off, she smiles. And then, with one hand over his on her stomach, sleep overcomes her.
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