Author's Notes:

Hello, all! So, it's been a while, hasn't it? Nice to see you again :)

This is a follow-up to the other stories in the ReVerse (Recover - Request - Reclaim). If you haven't read at least Recover and Reclaim ... you will be utterly lost in this one. I'm not kidding. Go back and start with Recover, or your brain is going to be hurting by the end of this chapter. You've been warned.

This is a short novel. It's a prologue, four chapters, and an epilogue. I may split one chapter due to length. I'm still debating on that point. I have no specific posting schedule, but I am going to shoot for two chapters a week. This is the prologue, so it's fairly short, but I promise the other chapters are much meatier.

Anyway, we've spent so much time with Meredith, I figured it was time to visit with Derek. I wanted to follow him a little bit through his grieving process, explore the depths of what he can perceive versus what he can say, and touch on his growing familial bonds with Meredith, with his children, and even with Stewart. This is not a fluffy story, though it does have some fluff, and it deals with some pretty serious subject matter, so be prepared for a bit of a rocky ride. That all being said, I do hope you enjoy this. And, please, if you have some time, leave feedback - I love hearing from everybody :)

Lastly, I want to thank my two tireless beta readers, my cover designer, and my editor. Without these four ladies, this story wouldn't be nearly as pretty or polished as it is today. Thank you!

Prologue – January 2017

Wind rolls over the hill, bending grass blades and forcing flowers to bow. The field is awash in yellow, quarter-sized blooms as far as the eye can see – daffodils or … dandelions or … who the hell knows? – and the movement fills the space with a distant rustling. He stands next to Meredith on the crest of the bluff, naked. The breeze laves his unshielded skin.

Meredith glances down at herself, frown deepening as her gaze roves lower and lower, starting at her chest and ending at the tips of her bare toes. "This is seriously how you want to get married?" she says, folding her arms over her breasts as she shifts to face him. She gives him a look of consternation. "I thought you were joking."

He smirks. "Well, I was." He lets his appreciative gaze roam south of her navel. "But you have to admit, this isn't the worst way to get it done."

She snorts. The field melts away, and then they're in a dark bedroom, lying in a bed with blood-red sheets. She shifts so she's on top of him. Her hair falls down around his face. She dips to kiss him.

"There are worse ways," she agrees in a soft voice.

"Mmm-hmm," he says. "Like at the roller derby."

She laughs. She smacks him lightly on the shoulder. And then her face gets serious. "Izzie's going to make this into our nightmare, isn't she?"

"I'm afraid so," he replies. He returns her kiss and takes control. Their positions trade. Her lithe body lies underneath him. He straddles her, his weight on his knees and arms. "Just so you know, though," he says against her ear, "I'd marry you anywhere. Any way. Any when. Even in a nightmare. Even in scrubs with a bouquet of scalpels and clamps."

She looks up at him, eyes full of stars. "There you go again."

"What?" he says.

She grins. "Always around. Saying things."

"Hmm," he rumbles. "I plan to do that for the rest of my life, you know."

Her eyebrows raise. "'Til one-hundred and ten?"

He nods. "One-hundred and ten."

Her gaze hardens like stone. "Well, if that's your plan for yourself," she says, suddenly a glacier in her coldness, "how the hell can you explain what you did?"

He pulls back, frowning. "Meredith?"

"Seriously," she continues with an eye roll. "How could you be so freaking stupid?"

He watches, a triumphant grin on his face as the covers rustle and Meredith arches backward in his arms. Tiny, blustering noises of what he would identify out-of-context as distress spill from her lips. Her fingers clutch at the meat of his thighs like she thinks she's falling. She freezes in place, and then bursts into motion. Her abdominal muscles and uterus contract rhythmically, the movement so pronounced he can feel it beneath his palm when he splays his fingers against her navel. Her legs twitch from thigh to toe. Her breathing relaxes as bliss settles into every pore. The contractions slow, and she relaxes in his arms, limp.

He strokes her belly with his fingertips, happy to relax and be silent and still with her as long as she wants to be silent and still.

"Thank that good," she murmurs in a soft, drunk-y, sated tone.

A quiet garble of unintelligible noise fills the space between the three words he was able to identify, and he knows he didn't catch it all, but … he caught … enough, he thinks. Enough to piece it all together. Thanks, that was good. Or, maybe, he's gotten enough practice, at this point, that she said, Thanks, that was really good. Either way, he's pleased to hear it.

It's the end of the day, though, and his brain is sluggish to connect with his vocal cords. He takes a long while to reply, "I … I'm … g-glad." He swallows. "I get … better?"

She snorts. "Better sense Mozart good piano."

Which leaves him stumped. She tips her head to the side and kisses his shoulder. Her lips are loosely parted, and he feels teeth press against his skin, and then rake. He grins while she toils at the crook of his neck.

"M … Mere … I … tired. Please … please, say more slow?"

She gazes up at him. She kisses him. "Sorry," she says, giving him an affectionate, apologetic look. Her eyes glisten in the moonlight. "I said," she begins, the sound of each individual word protracted by a long pause at the end, "You're 'better' in the sense that Mozart is 'good' at the piano." And before he can ask what the hell that means, she adds, "Mozart's not just good; he's a genius, or something like that."

"Oh," Derek says. He lets a pleased smirk overtake his expression.

She rolls out of his arms and onto her stomach. She props herself on her elbows and looks up at him. She reaches up to stroke his face. "Have I mentioned you're a fast freaking learner?"

His grin widens. "Yes, one or two time."

The mattress squeaks as she rises up to kiss him, and then they settle under the covers together, her on her stomach, him on his back. They peer at each other across the rumpled plane of Derek's pillow. For a long while, neither speaks, and he's content. Content that he's pleased her, and content that she doesn't seem to expect much conversation out of him right now. But for all he hates to talk when his head is this raked raw by an exhausting day, he hasn't seen her since breakfast, and he's missed her. He loves to talk to her.

"Yours … different," he says as he rolls onto his side to face her.

She raises her eyebrows. "What's different?"

"When I make you … orgasm."

"How is it different?" she replies.

"You feel … all … all places," he says. He runs his palm along the inside of her thigh, groin to knee. "Like here." He kisses her. He draws a circle around the small of her back and drags his finger in a wending trail from there, along the curve of her spine, to her shoulder blades. He spreads his palm flat against her skin. "And … here." He kisses her. Drinks her. He can taste the salty remnants of himself in her mouth. "It is … whole body."

Her eyebrows raise. "And yours isn't?"

"Mine … here." He gestures to his groin. "Like …." He gathers his fist to demonstrate. "It … it … it all …." But he can't describe it in words. The way his awareness gathers to a pinpoint, and his lower body becomes a black hole where all his feelings condense like a star, collapsed. He can't describe how spilling himself inside her, giving a piece of himself to her, is a spiritual experience. An almost come-to-god moment of inner clarity. He can think these things in a vague conceptual sense – they can be beautiful, exquisite pictures in his head – but figuring out how to speak them is … so far beyond him that the explanation might as well be in another galaxy. "I … I don't know word."

Sometimes, she can fill in her own blanks and make sense of his gibberish, but in this case, he's been too vague. She has nothing to go on, and he's stumped her. He can tell by the way she bites her lip and frowns. Months ago, this would have been a frustrating, ruined moment for him. Now, though, he doesn't let himself dwell on what he can't do. Not when he's with her. Laugh or cry. He chooses laugh.

"We should do until I figure out," Derek says with a wink.

She snorts with laughter. "Dr. Shepherd, are you suggesting an entire night of dirty, dirty sex?"

"No," he says.

Her eyes narrow. "Well, what are you suggesting, then?"

He scoots closer and captures her lips with his own. "I think it take more one night."

Another giggle. If there's one exceptional thing about the laugh-not-cry approach it's that … god, he loves her mirth. It's ambrosia for his ears. "Maybe, forever?" he adds with another wink. "I'm not good with word."

That gets him a whack with her pillow, and they laugh as their limbs become a tangle. The covers rustle as their bodies shift. It's been long enough since she took him in her mouth that he's aroused again, and he searches for another coveted come-to-god moment as he pushes into her. She makes a soft, pleased noise as he enters. Heat envelops him. Her green eyes meet his, unblinking, as she runs her fingers through his hair, and they share this connected moment in stillness.

"I love you," he says. "I love … very many." That's not right. "Much. I love … very much."

"I love you, too," she replies without hesitation. She glances at the clock, and then back to him. Her smile widens. "Happy New Year, Derek."

"Yes," he replies. "Happy New .…" He can't finish his sentence.

The sensation of his body forming a union with hers strips his words away. He can't speak and do this, too. You know, it's not every girl who can say she literally makes her husband speechless, she said once, when he tried to apologize for his inability to multitask. Another reason he'll love her until his last breath. That he can be himself with her, less than he was before, and yet never feel diminished.

"You better pay me back with a lot of coffee tomorrow," she says. "I have early rounds, and New Year's Day is a car accident cornucopia."

He's not sure what a cornucopia is, but he can sort of guess via context. He grins, nods, and kisses her. "… Yes," he tells her.

They settle into impassioned silence after that, and they whittle away the night together, wordless.

The sliding doors swish open, and a blast of warm air that smells like cedar rushes against his face as he steps inside the pet store. The bell rings, signifying a customer is entering. Latoya looks up from the cash register, sees that it's him, grins, and waves.

"Hi, Derek," she says. "How Felix?"

Derek returns the wave. "Hello," he says. "Felix is okay."

She nods. A man with a big black dog lines up to check out, and her attention is split. "Know can help you anything," she replies in a rush, looking away. Let me know if I can help you with anything. He knows that's what she said because he's heard her say it so many times.

"Thank you," he says. The doors close behind him, and the traffic noise melts away.

The first thing he does — the first thing he always does when he comes here — is stop by the eight windows in the back to look at the cats and kittens. He can't take any more of them home, but looking at them and playing with them through the glass is an amusing way to make time pass when he's waiting for Meredith to pick him up. When Derek has a lot of time to kill, and the store isn't very busy, Latoya sometimes takes him into the back, and he sits with them, just to give them some human company. From personal experience, he can understand how scary it is to be trapped in a new place, not knowing what's going on, and the cats seem to appreciate the petting, regardless. Today, though, he just glances at them, pausing to grin at two youngish gray tabbies who are curled up like pretzels together in one of the cages. Out of reflex, he glances at the index card that has their information, but all he sees is a neon blur of unintelligible color, and he doesn't try to decipher it today.

He moves to the cat food row in the back of the store and wanders up and down, trying to locate Felix's preferred kind. He and Meredith are out, and he promised he'd grab some today to save her some extra lugging at the grocery store. He frowns as he paces up and down, looking at each shelf with slow care. The cat food he wants isn't where it usually is, and he can't find it anywhere else in the row. He takes one more slow trip up and down the long block of shelving. The food isn't there.

He could ask Latoya for help. Latoya learned Derek's name when he and Meredith came in to pick out a cat, and since then, she always says hello when she sees him. She's never once given him the impression she thinks she's talking to an idiot. She doesn't speak louder, like she thinks his ears don't work, and she doesn't speak in that awful, patronizing tone some people adopt when they realize Derek can't talk very well — she waits for him to ask for clarification and otherwise assumes he gets her — and it's a comfort, being treated that way. He doesn't mind talking to Latoya.

But … he's been trying. He's been trying so hard to get over his reservations about talking to people he doesn't know. It's hard to function independently in a world where he only feels comfortable conversing with a handful of people, and … he wants that. He wants to be independent again. So, he searches the store until he finds an employee he doesn't recognize, ignores the horrible pit in his stomach, like he's practiced so many times, now, and walks right up to her.

She's pointing a gun-shaped thing at a tag, and a beep follows. He waits for her to finish.

"Hello; can I help you?" she says with a smile when she looks up. Her hair is black and straight and shoulder-length, and her figure is small and svelte. She's pretty. He glances at her name tag. Mei Xing.

He swallows, and the pit in his stomach grows. He doesn't even try to say her name, because he knows he'll butcher it. His throat has stopped cooperating already. With some effort, he says, "… Yes," in a quiet tone to stall while he gathers his nerves.

He pulls out his phone, swipes it open, and navigates to the photo gallery. He has a picture of a can of Felix's food, just in case all words abandon him. He keeps pictures of a lot of different things, so he can point when his throat closes up, or he forgets words. He likes having a backup for basic communication.

The girl leans in to take a look at the picture. He takes a breath. Talk. Just talk, he tries to tell himself. If you screw it up, you screw it up, but at least you said something. "I …." He swallows again. He taps the photo with his index finger. "Can you tell … w … where to find?"

"Oh, I'm sorry," the girl says. "We don't stock this kind anymore."

He blinks. "Why?"

"The manufacturer discontinued it," she explains.

"What …." He snaps from knowing what he wants to say to not knowing how to ask her in an eye blink. The words are just … gone, and he gets that frustrating it's-on-the-tip-of-my-tongue feeling he sees even normal people getting now and then. With him, though, it happens all the time. He closes his eyes and thinks for a moment. How else can he ask, working around the sudden blanks in his vocabulary? "Please, can you … recommend me?" he says in a wobbly, disconnected tone as he detours around the traffic jam.

The girl frowns. Just a little. The fluorescent lighting in the store begins to feel impossibly hot and bright. He licks his lips.

A tense beat of silence follows, and then comprehension slides across her face. "You want something similar, you mean?" she says.

"Yes."

She smiles. "I'm sure we can find something. Let's go take a look."

He follows her back to the cat food. Mission accomplished. All the tension sloughs away, and he sighs as the trembling feeling in his muscles subsides.

"Thank you," he says as they move through the store.

And he can't help but smile.

The road rushes beneath Stewart's station wagon as he drives them down Interstate 5 toward Portland in a gray, misty cloud of winter drizzle. It's a Friday afternoon, and the Trail Blazers have a home game at 7 p.m. — Stewart's Christmas present to Derek was two tickets to this game, sitting just behind the bench like always. Since the women's teams don't play during the winter, and since Seattle hasn't had a men's team since the Sonics deserted, Portland is home to the closest professional team right now.

"So," Stewart says as he settles into a puttering, cruise-controlled pace and relaxes. The leather seat creaks as he shifts. Rain splatters on the windshield and is whisked away by the wipers. "Did you decide on any New Year's resolutions, yet?"

Derek glances at Stewart's long fingers, which are curled around the steering wheel. The engine fills the relative silence with a low-pitched, rumbling hum. "Yes," Derek says. "I want to drive. But …." He swallows and looks away.

Stewart takes his eyes from the road, takes one glance at Derek, and frowns. "Wyckoff said you can't?" Stewart says.

Derek shakes his head. "He says maybe I can later."

During his last neuro appointment in mid-December, Derek asked about the possibility of driving again, trying all the while not to be too hopeful about it. After a barrage of reaction time tests, Dr. Wyckoff had been cautiously optimistic about Derek being ready sometime within the next year. But only expect to drive in ze day, Wyckoff had warned. Vis your light sensitivity, to drive at night is not safe. Which, to Derek, was like being told, Yep, you can fly to the moon, but only once a day. The restriction was meaningless in comparison to the amount of freedom potentially being offered.

His chest constricts. He wishes … later could be now, though, and not "soon." The bus stop is too far for him to walk to. He still has to ask for rides to get away from the house. He still can't take the kids to the park by himself. He can't run impromptu errands to help Meredith or pick Zola up from school.

He's this weird pseudo adult.

And he doesn't want that anymore.

"I wish it's now," Derek says.

"I know," Stewart says, sympathy in his tone. "I hated not being able to drive right after my knee exploded into tendon shrapnel."

"Shrapnel?"

"Um," Stewart says. "Fragments in an explosion. Like … oh." He snaps his fingers. "The Death Star exploding. The metal pieces after would be shrapnel. Kind of."

Derek frowns. "This is a bright picture." He glances at Stewart's knee. Stewart's wearing his lightweight brace underneath his jeans. "How do they fix this?"

"Well, okay, maybe, I wouldn't call it tendon shrapnel," Stewart concedes. "But I had way more pieces of tendon after I blew out my knee than I did before."

Derek snorts with amusement. He watches the dull green trees slide by in a blur. He remembers doing this. Driving. Sort of like how he remembers sex from before the accident. Not with any amount of clarity, but … he can see himself behind the steering wheel, and he has wisps. Incomplete moments he can grab from the tangle in his head.

I don't do brunches. I don't miss surgeries. And I don't do Valentine's Day.

"It is … Meredith," Derek admits. "I'm … worry about Meredith."

"Oh," Stewart says with a weightiness that drops his tone into the bass registers. "She doesn't want you to drive?"

Derek shakes his head again. "She doesn't know I want. I'm … nervous to bring it up. She get … many scare. Scared. When I go places. And … a car makes my injury." He sighs. He can't remember it, but, "They say the accident is my fault."

"Oh?" Stewart says. "You never mentioned that."

Derek shrugs. "I don't remember. I don't remember … any." His car had been blocking traffic in both directions, parked across both lanes, perpendicular to the dividing line, when the truck hit, according to the accident report. The problem was … nobody had been able to determine why his car had been parked like that,and his memories are gone. So, he knows it's his fault. He just … has no idea why. He ignores the growing pit in his stomach and continues, "I think … my old car is shrapnel."

"Car versus semi is an argument that never goes well for the car," Stewart agrees. He passes a truck and pulls back into the slow lane. "She's gotten a lot better about you going places, though."

"Yes," Derek says, though he still takes care to let her know where he is, down to the smallest side trip. He takes a deep breath, pushing away the sudden crush in his chest. "But this is … still other people drive."

"Maybe, you can think of a way to ease her into the idea," Stewart says.

Derek nods. "Yes," he says. And then he grins. "This can be another resolution."

Stewart snorts. "So, item one. Relearn how to drive moving death traps. Item two. Figure out how to tell your wife you want to drive your own moving death trap, rather than letting your buddy Stewart do it for you."

Derek laughs. "Yes, I suppose this is one way to say."

Stewart quirks a thin eyebrow toward his hairline as he looks quickly at Derek before returning his attention to the road. "Anything else?"

"Another resolute?" Derek says. He winces, but the irritation is only a flicker of flame, and it's put out in moments. "Resolution?"

"Yeah, is that it?" Stewart says.

Derek looks at his lap, futzing with his ring finger for a second, and then back to the road. "No."

"So, what's item three?" Stewart prods.

Derek sighs, but it's a relaxed, pleased sound. He smiles, despite the drear. This one is easy. He doesn't even have to think. "I want to get marry again," he says. "I want to remember. I want …."

He pulls another wisp from the tangle.

I'm in love with you. I've been in love with you forever.

He wants the wisps to be a complete thought.

He wants to say his vows.

"When do we vow again?" he says on Saturday morning as he and Meredith lay side by side, cuddled together under a fluffy down comforter. He got home so late last night, he didn't have a chance to talk to her, then.

The sun rises behind clouds thick enough to hold, filling the room with dim light as though it were an hour glass, and the light, the sand. Thin lines of frost grip the edges of the window panes, beyond which, the world is dreary. Some trees are dead, gray skeletons. Others – Meredith calls them conifers – remain, but they're a drab sort of green that feels a bit gloomy in the absence of the full, verdant palette of summer. Birds chirp here and there, hopping between naked branches. The kids aren't awake, yet. He's rested. It's one of the few truly quiet times in the house, and the only quiet together time that also intersects with when he still feels like he's all in one mental piece.

Meredith tips her head to the right to peer at him. "The vow renewal?" she says, and he nods. "When do you want to do it?"

He frowns. "How long is plan?"

Her brow furrows for a moment. "You mean how long will it take to plan?"

"Yes, sorry."

She gives him a dismissive wave. "Don't apologize," she says. She always says that. And he still always apologizes. He hates saying wrong things. "Um," she continues, thinking. "Izzie had our aborted wedding planned in less than a month, but she was … rather militant about it. Not to mention she had all day every day to plan, because she wasn't working at the time."

"So, more a month," Derek says.

Meredith nods. "Yes, plus warning."

"Warning?"

"Giving people time to plan to attend," she clarifies.

He shakes his head. This is a common dance between them. Little misinterpretations, stacking like Bailey's blocks. But it's their life, now, and they wend their way to the same page in the same language. "No, I mean who to warn?" he says.

"Our local friends shouldn't have as much of an issue, but your family probably can't just come at a drop of a hat," she says.

He sighs. "Drop of …?"

"Sorry," she rushes to say. "Sorry. Um." She bites her lip, thinking. "Spontaneous. Unplanned. So …."

"Spring?" he suggests.

"How about sometime in May?" she says. And then she grins. "Sort of a one-year anniversary thing. And that gives us about four months."

He frowns. "Anniversary of what?"

Her gaze softens. She touches her palm to his face. "You'll have been home one year, soon. Seems like a good thing to celebrate."

"Oh," he says, meeting her grin with one of his own. "Yes."

He tips himself onto his left side and reaches for her. The mattress squeaks with the shifting weight. The covers rustle as he scoots even closer. He runs a palm from her shoulder to her hip, buried under warm, feathery down. And then he leans close, and he presses his lips to hers.

"You're insatiable lately," she purrs against him.

He winks. "I make up for time lost," he says, and he presses closer still, until his forehead touches hers, and their noses mash together. "I love you."

He feels her hand against his waistband. Her touch slides lower. He presses closer, and she cups him. She rubs gently, readying him. His eyelids dip, and he hums with pleasure.

"I love you, too," she murmurs, nuzzling him. "Very much."

He sighs, content, as he pushes her panties down her legs.