The Road Not Taken

Author's Notes: Hi all! So nice to see you again :)

As promised, I'm back with another story. This is the first story in a two part series that will provide a 100% fix for S11 MerDer (up to and including Derek's death). So, for those of you who weren't completely satisfied with the ReVerse leaving Derek disabled, hopefully this will be a good alternative for you, where, in the end, both he and Meredith will be alive and well and happy. The first story in this series, The Road Not Taken, is novel length. The second story, thus far untitled, will be a short story or a novella at most.

This story is 18 chapters + a small epilogue. It's finished at this point. All I have left to do is edit, so you needn't worry about long delays between chapters. I'm going to try to post 3 chapters a week, MWF evenings. I'm posting this chapter a teensy bit early as a treat. Thank you so much to my betas, my editor, and my ebook cover designer. You ladies helped make this story shine :)

So, this story.

This story is ... um. I'm just going to say that Shonda opened the door for this with near death whatevers, AU dreams, ghost Denny, George in his uniform after death, and wtfever other crazy shit she's introduced since I stopped watching, so I don't feel like this is entirely out of bounds. I was and (if I remember right from the fan reaction on Twitter at the time) most of the MerDer fanbase was displeased by the completely inexplicable shift in the attitudes of both Meredith and Derek between 11x17 and 11x18. Meredith went from barely taking Derek back to YAY MY LIFE IS PERFECT WOOHOO, and Derek went from conflicted to utterly zen about retiring his ambitions, in a matter of days, and I remember wondering if LSD or psilocybin was involved somehow. I always thought the both of them needed months to make the progress they made in a matter of days. So ... I gave them months. You'll see what I mean.

I hope, hope, hope, that even those of you who don't normally enjoy this trope will enjoy this story. I promise it's a fun ride :)

Chapter 01 - Love is a Battlefield

"Meredith, I can't live without you," he says in the dim light. "I don't want to live without you. And I'm going to do everything in my power to prove it."

She stares at him for a long moment. This is what he always does. Tries to sweep away his mistakes. Tries to wax poetic in a way that makes his screw ups sound so pretty. But ….

She kissed me, he said. I didn't kiss her. I swear.

How exactly did she kiss you?

Um. He frowned. What do you mean?

I mean how? Meredith asked, trying to understand this. You saw her coming. You tried to get away. She got you in a headlock or something and planted one on you? She knew men could get raped. Hell, she'd seen the results in the emergency room. She didn't find the idea of an unwanted kiss farfetched.

Except, once he understood what she was driving at, he blushed. And he swallowed. And he said, No, it wasn't like that.

Well, what was it like? she demanded. Explain this to me.

I … saw it coming, he admitted. I didn't try to stop it until it was happening.

So, you encouraged it?

No, he replied vehemently. I just didn't discourage it. And that was wrong, and I'm sorry. I stopped her right after, and I came straight home.

Meredith blinks, pulled back to the present. Derek's still standing there, waiting for her response.

He said he didn't encourage it, but … that just … doesn't ring entirely true. Renee had to get the idea to kiss him from somewhere. Kisses don't just happen in a vacuum. Nobody would kiss someone else without even the slightest social cue suggesting that there's interest. Not unless he or she is already intent on committing sexual assault.

So, there was encouragement. Somehow. Either imagined or real.

Derek says "imagined."

But "real" is how Rose happened, complete with another contentious kiss. And "real" is how he met Lexie, complete with a ballsy admission that he enjoyed flirting with her. Hell, "real" was the cause of the whole Meredith and Derek thing, which only started because he concealed the fact that he was married.

"Real" is his modus operandi all the time, and lying while he does it is his modus operandi two times out of three.

He gets unhappy with his current relationship and seeks fulfillment elsewhere.

And he lies.

So, while he says "imagined," and Meredith wants to believe "imagined," "real" is a helicopter full of guys with semiautomatics, circling. Waiting for a clean shot. And she's not sure where to seek cover. Behind a bush, or in Derek's arms?

How in the hell can she trust him?

She has no freaking idea.

But she's tired. She's so tired of missing him. His eyes are wet, and he's staring at her with this hopeful, contrite expression that slays her, and she can't. She can't tell him no. It's just … not an option.

All she can do is love.

Maybe, that means she's a pushover. Maybe, that means she's screwed up. Maybe, that means she's dark and twisty and pathetic. But she can't care.

"I can live without you," she admits, scraping up a little of her dignity, and she sees some of that hope in his eyes dim. "But I don't want to. I don't ever want to."

She doesn't know how to trust him. But she wants to.

His smile is hesitant and blooming like a flower. She watches it burgeon. She loves it when he looks at her like that. Like she's the only thing worthwhile to look at in the world. But then she wonders if that's the kind of look that gave his lab assistant the wrong idea, and her blood chills.

"Thank you," he says, oblivious to her bristling. "Thank you, Meredith. I won't ever make you regret it."

Something about his assurance rubs her like sandpaper going against the wood grain. She gives him a flat expression and folds her arms. "Don't make promises you can't keep, Derek."

He flinches like she's slapped him, and his beautiful smile bleeds away, but he doesn't retort. He has no words, for once. No comeback. No judge-y, mean-spirited remark. Only curled shoulders, guilty eyes, and a sudden intense interest in his shoes.

Awkward silence ensues. She's not sure what else to say.

He swallows. "So, what now?" he says.

"I'm tired," she says. So much so that her eyes are burning, and her head is a little spinny. "I think I want to go to bed."

He tries to close the distance between them, but she skips back a step like a frightened bird. He holds up his hands in surrender. "Sorry," he says. "Do you … want me in the guest room tonight?"

She peers at the hallway that leads to the second bedroom - the one done up with billowing, indigo-colored curtains and a queen-sized bed. "Yes," she says. He nods and doesn't protest. She hates how dejected he looks. And she's tired, and she's tired of missing him, and she feels … conflicted. Sad and angry and betrayed, yearning and hopeful and relieved. She's not sure how to deal with all these disparate sentiments swirling together in the same choppy sea of emotion. They shouldn't all coexist. She knows what it's like to be in his arms, though. The world goes away. She's tired, she misses being in his arms, and she doesn't have to be alone tonight. She has options, now. "No," she says. He looks at her with raised eyebrows. She thinks about stepping toward him, closing the space between their bodies, and wrapping her arms around his waist, so that he can hug her and tell her everything will be fine, and she can, in that moment, believe him, because when she's in his arms, she's safe, and his lying poetry is easy to believe. But then she remembers the helicopter, still circling in her mind's eye, and she yanks her fingers through her hair. "I don't know, Derek. I don't know how to do this."

He stares at her for a long, stretching moment, eyes deep and dark in the dim light, and she can't read him. "We could … talk?"

She sighs. "We've talked for hours already."

"We talked about …." He looks at his shoes again, like he's so ashamed, he can't even repeat his sin - that he let that woman kiss him - aloud. He gathers himself, and when he looks up at her, the hope is back, loitering in his eyes. "We could talk about what to do, now, instead of what happened," he suggests. "We only talked about yesterday, not tomorrow."

A lump forms in her throat.

Talk.

She can't think of much she'd like to do less, in this moment, than talk more. She's tired and wrung out, and they suck at the talking thing. They've always sucked at the talking thing. But … maybe, it's what they need to get past this awkward impasse, where she wants to let it all go and move forward, because she loves him, but something isn't letting her do that, yet.

"Okay," she says, the word a bare croak.

She's tired, and she loves him, and she wants that to be enough, but it isn't, yet. She heads into the kitchen to grab a wineglass from the rack. She's tired, and she loves him, and she wants that to be enough, but it isn't, yet, and in the meantime, maybe alcohol will offer the stopgap she desperately needs.

"I don't want you to go back to D.C.," she says as she pours herself a glass of merlot.

He sits on the other side of the couch, only three feet away, but the emotional distance between them would dwarf the Gulf of Mexico. "Meredith, I have to go back," he says in a hesitant, exasperated tone that says he expects her to blow up at him. When she sighs, he rushes to add before she can speak, "Not for long, but long enough to wrap things up. I never even gave my two week notice. I just … left."

"I don't want you near that … that woman," Meredith snaps. She takes a sip from the wineglass, barely pausing to enjoy the explosion of berry flavors on her tongue before turning the sip into a chug. And then a gulp. And another gulp. "Not ever again."

He looks crushed. "You don't trust me," he says.

"No, Derek, I really don't think I do," she says. "You let another woman kiss you."

"But I told you about it," he says.

"But you did it," she counters.

He licks his lips and glances at her wineglass with an unreadable expression. Then he stares at his lap. "I know I did, and I'm sorry. It was a horrible mistake. I was wrong to do it, and I'd do anything to go back in time and fix it, but that's not possible." When he meets her eyes again, his face is bald emotion. Pleading. "What else do you want me to say or do? Name it, and I will. I mean it."

The lump stuck in her throat aches. "I don't know."

"I thought we were going to talk about where to go from here," he says.

"You never going to D.C. again is where I want to go from here," she replies.

"But that's not a possible scenario," he says in a placating tone that makes her want to smack him, "so, what compromise can we make?"

She snorts and takes another chug from her wineglass. The wine is gone already, and her cheeks are starting to feel hot. She sets the glass on the coffee table with a clink, not bothering with a coaster. This whole talking thing is the Exxon Valdez, just like she expected.

"Do you want to go to D.C. with me while I close things out?" he says. "Would that make you feel better?"

"I don't know what will make me feel better," she retorts. "That's the problem! What I want to feel, and what I do feel, are two different things."

He's silent for a long moment. "Okay," he says, conceding, the word spoken long and slow. He sighs. "Maybe, we should shelve this for tonight, after all."

"Fine," she snaps. "Let's shelve it."

He nods, giving her that crushed look that makes her hurt. Then he presses his palms against his thighs and stands. "I'll check on the kids."

She doesn't watch him go.

She bristles when he skulks into the master bathroom without knocking. She stops her toothbrush mid-swipe, and watches in the mirror glass as he slinks behind her to his side of the vanity. "I'm out of toothpaste," he rushes to explain when he notices her scrutiny. "I'm sorry." He grabs a tube of Arm & Hammer from the lip of his sink and shuffle steps behind her, making his way back toward the door. "I'll get out of your hair, now."

The lump in her throat is back again. She spits out her mouthful. "Derek, put it back," she says. He stops to look at her. "Just …," she continues. "Sleep here tonight. This is your bedroom, too. We can …. You can sleep here."

"Are you sure?" he says.

She looks at the sink, watching the used toothpaste ooze toward the drain. She turns on the faucet to wash it away. Water swirls in the sink, and she stares.

"Meredith?"

No, she's not sure. She's not sure about anything except that she wants the awkwardness to go away. She wants to trust him and not to be angry. She wants.

She wants love to be enough.

"No, I'm not," she admits. "But sleep here, anyway."

Their first hour alone in the dark is awkward. She can tell from the way he's breathing that he's not asleep. He rolled onto his side when he lay down, presenting his back to her, like he was trying to give her privacy. His shoulders are stiff and his breathing is stilted, and there's no way he can be asleep. He's a mirror to her as she lies on her side, back facing him.

She thinks about breaking the line of demarcation and curling up beside him. She's missed him, and she loves him. But she doesn't translate thought to action.

She can't.

Something inside is broken. He broke it.

All she can hear is every big lie he's ever told her, and all she can think about is how much it hurt when she realized she'd been swindled. Again, and again, and again.

"What happened?" she blurts as she darts into the hallway outside the trauma room. Cristina and Richard block her path. Ominous, sad expressions loiter on their faces.

"A bus in front of him," Cristina says, gripping Meredith's shoulders. "It hit a telephone pole. He tried to swerve to miss it, but-"

"How bad is it?" Meredith snaps, interrupting her.

Cristina steels herself. "Meredith, you have to be strong."

And all the while, Meredith can hear the flatline pulsing in the background. She runs to the window and sees Derek lying on a gurney, eyes closed, intubated, bright red arterial blood spreading like an oil slick across his naked chest.

"Derek! No! No!" she shrieks at the window. Bailey backs away from the gurney. Mark is shaking his head. They're giving up. They're giving up on Derek. The flatline pulses so loud it's like a pneumatic drill inside her head, carving out her thoughts. "No! No! Derek!" He can't be dead. He can't be. "No! N-

"-edith!" she hears, a loud, insistent peal of thunder against her eardrums. She's screaming. She's screaming, and she can't stop. "Meredith!" Derek says, and his arms wrap around her, a warm vis. "Meredith, you had a nightmare." He shakes her. Earthquake. "Wake up. Meredith!"

She can hardly catch her breath as she claws at his t-shirt, panting. The canyon of space between them is gone, and she's wrapped in his arms like she's been imagining and wanting all night. His chest is a warm, solid assurance that she resides in reality, now. She can smell his aftershave and the faint remnants of his sweat.

"You died," she croaks, nonsensical. Tears escape like runaway trucks down her cheeks, heavy and roaring and impossible to stop until they crash into her pillow. Her eyes burn. "You died, and you left me."

"Shh," he soothes against her ear. "Shh, it's okay. I didn't die. I'm right here."

"I don't want you to die," she says.

"I'm not going to die, Mere," he assures her. "I'm right here. I'm fine." He pulls his fingers through her hair and shushes her. "Shh, it's okay. It was just a nightmare." He kisses her, and she lets him. It's hard not to relax when he's right beside her, warm and alive and saying things, and she slowly rescues herself from hyperventilation.

A knock at their bedroom door fills the quiet. "Mommy?" a bewildered, scared little voice says. "Mommy, why yewwing?"

"I'll be right back," Derek assures her in a low whisper. He kisses her. "I'll be right back. I'm still here. It's okay."

"Okay," Meredith says.

The mattress creaks as his weight shifts across it, and the absence of his warmth leaves her chilled. She listens, eyes closed, as Derek pads out into the hallway to calm Zola down, shutting the door behind him. The comforting, tenor murmur of his voice - his call to their daughter's cherubic responses - replaces silence. Derek and Zola have a brief discussion right outside the bedroom door, and then their chatter wanes in volume as they move away, back to her room down the hall.

Meredith imagines him tucking their daughter in. She thinks she hears him singing. He'll probably check Bailey's room on the way back.

A lump forms in her throat. He's such a good father for their kids. Even when he was swamped with work in D.C., he made sure to call the kids every single day. He made sure to let them know they were loved, and they hadn't been abandoned.

God, she loves him. She loves him so much. Why does he have to make it complicated? Why does he have to make it hard?

She pulls her pillow over her head as the tears renew, and all the stuff she's pent up since before he even left dribbles out onto the fitted sheet like she's a freaking leaky faucet. He returns in a matter of minutes to find her sobbing. He wraps his arms around her and resumes his shushing and soothing, but all she can think about is what he's said, and all she can do is doubt.

Why did you let her do it? she said. Derek, why?

He swallowed. I can't explain, he offered lamely.

Well, try, she snapped.

He fell silent for a long moment. I don't want to fight anymore, Meredith, and we will if I talk about this.

I don't care, she said. I want to know.

You practically pushed me out the door, he said softly.

I did not! she said.

You did, he said, holding his ground. You pushed me out the door, and all we did was fight when we talked on the phone. I was lonely, she caught me off guard, and she was there.

You can't make this my fault, she said. That isn't fair.

He sighed. I'm not trying to make this your fault, Mere. But you asked me how I could do that, and I'm telling you how. I didn't feel like I had any support from you, I was lonely, I wasn't thinking, and she was there. Did I respond to that situation appropriately? No. Am I proud of it? No. But I can't change it. And all I can do, now, is tell you that I know it was wrong, and that I'm sorry, and that you mean the world to me, and that it shouldn't have taken somebody else kissing me for me to figure that out. It was. I am. You do. It shouldn't have.

She couldn't think of how to respond to that at the time. How does one respond to that?

It wasn't a satisfying answer. It was just an answer. But she doesn't think there is a satisfying answer. At least, not one that will satisfy her.

She wants to punch something. Or scream. Or cry some more.

She sniffs. Wipes her eyes with the backs of her shaking hands. He tries his best to comfort her, but ….

"I hate you," she whispers.

He's quiet for a long time. A long time.

"Meredith," he says when he finally speaks. The word is old and weary and defeated, nothing like the three-syllable prayer he used to recite whenever he spoke her name. "I really don't want to fight anymore."

"I don't want to, either," she says. "But …."

He heaves a disappointed sigh, like he thinks they're about to enter round forty-million-and-six of Meredith and Derek Fight Club, and she can't take it anymore. They suck at the talking thing. And she's sick of feeling like a conflicted failure.

So, instead of finishing her sentence, she kisses him.

They haven't kissed in months. Not like this. Not in a way that melds them into one being. And this is a language they've always been able to speak, no matter how messed up things are outside the bedroom.

At first, there's a kind of desperation to their union, tasting and touching in a tangle of limbs, and for a moment, she thinks she's found an answer to her woes. She always feels safe and replete in his arms - trouble wanes, fights go away, and she can find respite from anything for a while. Or, it used to make her feel that way.

It used to.

His past lies are like a poison, spreading with each heartbeat, bringing her coveted safety closer to death with every thump-thump. She kisses Derek, but all she can see is Derek kissing Renee, willingly, wholeheartedly, tongue plunging, and every good thing Meredith used to feel about kissing him sickens and succumbs. When Derek plunges home with his erection, she's not lubricated enough, and she can't help but cry out. He feels like a steel spear inside her, sharp and unyielding and awful.

He freezes when he hears her gasp. "Did I hurt you?"

She can't say yes. She can't. She's never had bad sex with Derek. And she can't let Renee be here in their bedroom, in their private, holy place. She can't.

She closes her eyes and tries to push away Renee by filling her mind with thoughts of Derek, naked and aroused and gorgeous, housed in a slanting bath of sunshine as he poses. He's like a prostrate Adonis, all for her, smiling a smile that could stop hearts - could stop her heart - and she lets herself watch the apparition, hoping for asystole.

"Meredith?" the real Derek says.

"Just keep going," she says, breathless.

"Meredith, I'm not going to keep going if it's hurting you," he says.

It's dark in the bedroom. He can't see her eyes. She can't see his. She swallows. "It's not," she says, mustering up lying assurance in her tone. "I'm fine. It's just been a while."

"You're sure?"

"Yes," she says, perhaps a bit too quickly, because he hesitates even more. "I'm fine," she snaps. "I just wasn't expecting you to feel so big. Really. Please, keep going."

He's silent for a long, long moment. Doubting.

"Please, I love you," she says, and for all her discomfort, that is not a lie. She does love him. She loves him more than, perhaps, she should.

Her assertion seems to appease him, at least, because he closes the space between them and kisses her. "I love you, too," he murmurs against her lips. He tastes of salt, and she nips him, catching his lower lip between her teeth. He laughs.

"I love you," she repeats, because it bears repeating. She loves him, and she wants that to be enough.

She closes her eyes and goes back to watching her Dream Adonis in the sunlight, hoping she'll find enough desire somewhere in her fantasy to replace its utter lack in realty. But then Derek starts to move again, and it hurts. It hurts. It hurts.

And Renee keeps laughing and laughing. What a moron, she says. Why the hell would you believe a word out of his mouth?

And then Derek is there. I met a woman last night. Flirting with her was the highlight of my week.

I used to be the love of his life, you know, Addison adds.

It's been so long since Meredith and Derek joined that he doesn't last more than a few minutes - or, maybe, he's just not trying to last. When he stops thrusting like a piston inside of her, she camouflages her relief as pleasure with a breathless moan that sounds - she hopes - maybe passionate. His whole body tenses, he makes a noise deep in this throat, and then he slumps, panting as he meets his release.

She waits, eyes squeezed shut. Her insides hurt. Every heartbeat is a pulse of discomfort between her legs, and he pulses, too, making it worse.

He slides out of her as he goes flaccid, still panting, and he's a heavy, crushing deadweight. When he regains his wits and his breath and his wherewithal, he picks himself up. He reaches between her legs and tries to finish the job with his hand. He kisses her over and over and over, keeping her lips as busy as her lower body.

She tries to let her mind go. She tries to get into it.

You can't trust anybody, Derek said. And no matter what I do … you're always going to look for reasons not to trust me.

His breath is hot and hungry against her skin, but all she can think of is how they've done this before, and how it took a few years, but they're having the same cyclical problem again. She feels like she's stuck in an agonizing threesome with him and her and their gigantic pile of oversized baggage.

He caresses and touches and kisses. He does each and every one of her favorite things. But she's crushed under the weight of all the bad that came before, and none of his pleasuring tactics find themselves effective. This is the most awful sexual experience Meredith's had in years, and she just can't.

She can't freaking finish.

"You're not into this," he says darkly after a few minutes of fruitless stimulation.

She swallows. "No," she admits, the single syllable a broken thing.

Her chest hurts, and her insides where he plowed her hurt, and hopelessness is a big bag of weights, pulling her under. They don't have bad sex. They never have bad sex. They occasionally have … unsuccessful sex. Where his hydraulics fail to function. Or she just can't finish, no matter what they try. But it's not bad. They've always laughed stuff like that off before, enjoyed being close for the sake of being close.

How the hell will they ever fix this?

You can't, clearly, says her annoying little voice. Too much is broken.

Derek pulls his hand away from the space between her legs. She can't see his expression in the dark, only the glisten of his black, bleak eyes. She imagines a glower.

"Sorry," he says, glum, embarrassed, awkward.

"I want to trust you," Meredith confesses. "I want to, but I can't."

"I wish I could fix it," he replies. He sounds as broken and hopeless as she feels.

They lay side by side in silence. The minutes pass in an awkward march that feels eternal. She stares at the ceiling, aching, throbbing.

"Please, don't go to work tomorrow," he says, so quiet she barely hears him.

"Why?" she replies. "Maybe … space will fix it." Though, somehow, she doesn't think so.

The covers rustle as he shifts. "We had months of space, and nothing is fixed. Maybe, closeness is what we need."

She can't imagine being trapped in this house with him all day tomorrow, wondering how she'll ever get herself past this. She needs air. She needs to think.

"We could go see a movie," he says, oblivious to her musing. They haven't gone to see a movie in forever, and Meredith can admit the idea holds at least some appeal. "Or … a walk. We could walk to the lake." That idea is even more attractive, but ….

"And do what?" she says.

"Be."

She swallows against the lump in her throat. "I'll think about it," is all she can promise him.

A quiet, defeated, "Okay," is all he says in return.

The silence stretches, and neither says anything else. The dull throbbing in her lower body is what makes her retreat to the bathroom to find some painkillers. She downs two ibuprofen and two acetaminophen in hopes that something will be effective at erasing the wildfire of hurt inside.

He's never once made her hurt like this before. Never.

They've always fit before.

Now, they don't fit.

She sighs, flips off the bathroom light, and heads back to bed. Derek says nothing, though she can tell he's not sleeping. Thinking, maybe. But not sleeping. She resettles. Though the empty canyon passing through the middle of their bed is wider than ever, their backs aren't facing each other anymore, at least.

She's exhausted.

Her eyelids dip, and reality begins to slide away. She can't feel the bed underneath her, and her limbs and body diminish until she's weightless. She finds the liminal space where she's aware of both worlds, the dreaming and the real.

Derek the Adonis is laughing while he chases Meredith around the house, playing a flirty, adult game of tag with her. He's smiling when catches her. His body is alive, and his presence fills her universe when he kisses her. There is no lying, or any words at all - only the heat of his skin and the whisper of his breaths. In her Dream Derek's arms, she finds the safety she's been yearning for all day and all night. She finds her fantasy place where love really is enough.

She toes the liminal line for a while, half in and half out of sleep. She's only just stepped over the line when she hears a very real, very broken, very quiet, "I'm so sorry, Mere. I didn't mean to fuck it all up."

And that sad, futile apology is what takes her into slumber.

She wakes up in the bright OR, lying on the table, wearing nothing but a skimpy hospital gown, staring up at bright lights. She squints. An OR, but not really. There's no one in the room, which is painted a painful, immaculate white. The scent of antiseptic tickles her nose. A bleeping sound pierces the silence like a dagger. She follows the sound, looking left. An EKG monitor sits next to the table, and now that she's looking, she sees another table on the other side of the monitor, but that table is empty.

The stats on the EKG monitor are … not good. The pulse ox is down. Way down. Whoever's on this monitor is circling the drain, but as far as Meredith can tell, there's nobody being monitored. The machine has no leads.

She sits up with a groan, her muscles shaking a little with the effort. What the hell? She slides off the table. The floor is like a glacier, frozen underneath her feet, and she grimaces. She spots a patient chart lying on the instrument tray by the EKG monitor. She makes a grab for it.

Her eyes widen as she reads the label on the folder.

"Meredith and Derek," it says.

She flips open the folder, skimming the contents. She sees phrases like, "excessive scar tissue," and, "reports of chest pain." The thing that makes a lump form in her throat, though, is the DNR order stapled to the front of all the notes. Like it's more humane to just … let them die.

What the hell kind of dream is this?

"You're about to make a horrible mistake," says a familiar voice to her right.

She whirls on her feet, and sure enough, there he is, large as life, leaning against the table she just climbed off of, looking fabulous in his navy blue scrubs. She blinks. The room has no doors. How in the hell did he get here? Wait. The room has no doors. How in the hell did she get here?

She shakes her head. Who the hell cares how they got here?

"Mark!" she says, jaw dropping.

He smiles at her. "Hey, Big Grey."

The pads of her feet slap against the freezing floor as she closes the distance between them.

"Whoa," he says, rocking back a step upon impact with her.

"Oh, my god, Mark," she says, a lump in her throat, and she wraps her arms around his waist. His body is warm and solid, and he's alive, and she doesn't care what kind of dream this is anymore, really. She presses her ear against his chest. His heartbeat, strong and steady, pounds against her eardrums. She hugs him as hard as her arms will allow. It's just … so freaking nice to see him. So many people leave her. They don't come back very often. "Mark," she repeats.

"Wow," he says, grinning as he looks down at her. He rubs a palm down the curve of her spine. "Good to see you, too."

"I've missed you," she says. "Derek's missed you." Derek doesn't say much about it, but every once in a while, she'll catch him just sitting there, staring, with this … wistful, sad look on his face. Whenever she'd ask him about it, he'd clear his throat, and he'd say something like, Just thinking of a fishing trip I went on. But it's clear he'd mean, Just thinking of a fishing trip I went on with Mark, instead. "Derek's missed you so much."

"I know," Mark says. He sighs. "I'm sorry I couldn't stay."

"Me, too," she says. She swallows. "I'm sorry I wasn't there when you …." Died. When he died. "I …." Freaked out. Panicked. "Had stuff."

Mark shrugs. "Hey, I would have skipped it, too, if I could have."

She snorts with amusement. They pull apart.

"Lexie says hello, by the way," he adds.

She blinks. "Lexie … what?"

"She took the other job."

"Job."

"There were two," Mark explains, "and she said I'm too emotionally stunted to handle the other one." He glances at his wristwatch. It's black, with a funky digital display Meredith can't read at this distance. He hits a few buttons. Squints. Nods. "She's busy elsewhen." Else … when? He looks up again before she can ponder that too much, and he smirks. "You guys are more than a full time job, you know."

Meredith opens her mouth. Closes it. "Come again?"

"I'm here to help you," he says slowly, like he's talking to a kindergartener.

"Help me," she repeats.

"Yeah, you know," he says. "Kind of like Clarence."

"Clarence."

"Yeah, I know. I thought that movie was bogus when I saw it, too." He snorts. "Can we move on, now, or are you going to repeat that sentence, too?"

"Wait," she says. "Wait, wait." She shakes her head. "You're trying to tell me you're my freaking guardian angel?" She's not sure which is more unbelievable. That she has one. Or that it's Mark.

He rolls his eyes. "I said kind of like, Clarence. As in there are some similarities."

She stands on her tiptoes and peers around him. "I don't see wings," she says.

He sighs. "Yeah, that's a big nope."

She folds her arms and raises her eyebrows. "No bells rang?"

"Very funny," he replies in a flat, wry tone. "Look, I'm just an advisor with some fancy skills. Can we get to the advising part?"

"Okay." She frowns. "What are you here to advise me on?"

He gives her a long, serious look, but says nothing for a moment. He backs up to the operating table and slides his body onto it, sitting on the lip. He motions to her to follow suit. Her hospital gown makes the movement awkward, but she manages. They sit next to each other, hip to hip. Her legs dangle. She can't resist swinging them a little bit, like she's sitting on the dock by the lake on her and Derek's land.

"Now … don't panic," Mark begins.

She folds her arms. "Whenever somebody says that, panic is the next thing that happens," she grumbles. "It's inevitable."

Which is when a woman Meredith doesn't recognize pops in. Literally pops in. As in … materializes out of nowhere.

"Holy crap!" Meredith blurts.

The woman, a dirty blonde with the deepening laughter lines of someone in her early forties, is wearing jeans and a bright red t-shirt that says, 'Don't wear this on Star Trek.' She frowns at them. "Uh …," she says slowly. "Is this Admitting?"

Mark shakes his head. "No, this is Limbo. Go up one floor."

Limbo? Seriously?

The woman blushes. "Sorry, I'm new."

"Yeah, this place is a bit of a maze," Mark replies.

"Oh?" The woman gets a predatory, flirtatious gleam in her eyes, like Meredith's not even there. She smiles. Her teeth are a perfect, pearly white. "You should show me around, sometime."

But Mark merely holds up his left hand and displays the simple gold band on his ring finger. Meredith gapes. "Sorry," Mark says. "Married."

The blonde's I want to jump your bones look drips away like water. She sighs. "Damn it, even all the dead ones are taken."

"There's a singles bar on sub-level two," Mark offers helpfully. "It's called Rapture. They serve good cocktails."

"I'll take that under advisement," the woman says with an eye roll. And then she poofs out as quickly as she appeared.

Meredith blinks. And blinks again. She needs to make note of the wine she was drinking, and never drink it again.

"Now, where were we?" Mark says.

Meredith grabs his hand. He slips off the ring and hands it to her, so she can see it. The band is white gold, not yellow. The metal's been made warm by his hand. Inside the band is one word in looping script. Eternal.

A lump forms in her throat. "Lexie?"

Mark nods. "Yeah." He smiles. "She makes me happy."

Meredith swallows. "Really?"

"Really," he says with another nod. She hands him back the ring. He slips it on. It gleams in the bright light. She doesn't know how she missed it earlier. He continues, "But we're not here to talk about me. We're here to talk about you." He doesn't give her a chance to protest or pester him for details before he barrels onward. "Where you're headed with Derek?" he says. "You don't want to go there."

A sinking feeling pulls at her gut. "… Where are we headed?"

"You'll try to work things out," he says. "You both will. You'll try harder than you've ever tried at anything. But … you won't make it past Labor Day."

Her frown deepens. "What do you mean, we won't make it past Labor Day?" she snaps.

He raises his eyebrows and nods toward the EKG monitor with the dying heartbeat. "I mean, you're getting divorced in about four months."

She shakes her head. "No."

"Yes," he says, nodding. "It's unavoidable for you right now, really."

"That's what you're here to advise me on, then? How to fix it?"

"You can't fix it by yourself," Mark replies with a shrug. "That's what unavoidable means. There's nothing you can do."

"Then why even tell me?" she says, exasperated.

He grins. "I said there's nothing you can do."

She sighs. "Dying has made you pretty freaking cryptic."

"Ever heard the phrase, 'Be kind. Rewind?'" he says, eyebrows raised.

"Um." Her eyes narrow. "Yes."

"Well, that's what I'm going to do for you," he says. "I'm going to give you a chance to have a few epiphanies you couldn't have any other way."

She frowns. "What does that mean?" She folds her arms. "And why aren't you visiting Derek, anyway? He's the stupid one who screwed up."

But Mark only keeps grinning his stupid, cryptic grin. "You'll see," he says. "And who says I'm not visiting Derek, too? Honestly, this is a kill-two-birds-with-one-stone type of operation."

"But-"

"Look," he says, cutting her off. "Let me and Derek worry about Derek's story and Derek's epiphanies. Okay?" He puts his arm over her shoulder and gives it a squeeze. "This is your story, Grey. Do you want to tell it, or not?"

"… Okay …?"

"Great," he says with a nod. "Buckle up."

She has a chance to look up at him and say, "Are we going on a trip or something?"

And then everything flashes white, and she leaves the weird, doorless operating room behind in Limbo.