We all know that the finale made us angry and sad and depressed. So here's something else that will make you...a little less depressed and sad because I had a little too much quirk, but still depressed.
It's been a long time since Izzie and Meredith and Cristina have had a good...conversation, I guess, together. Just them. So. Just something that's been floating around my head. It's good to have my Cristina muse back.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
"Can you vacuum?" Meredith rolled over, careful not to fall off her bed. The ceiling beamed down at her, and she wondered if it had always been speckled. "Meredith, can you or can you not vacuum?"
"Cristina..."
"I'm not very good at vacuuming," Cristina said over her. Meredith wondered if it was such a good idea to leave her alone after a few hours, but Cristina had insisted, and now she was getting woken up by a scarily calm Asian. "I'm not very good at cleaning, in general, but the vacuum is like a...it's like a tiny rock in my shoe, it's tiny and stupid, but it's also about to paralyze me forever. And I need someone who can vacuum."
Meredith ran an eye over her own messy bedroom, which was woefully empty. And any other day, she might have called Cristina and complained about her woefully empty bedroom, but she was on the phone now with Cristina, and somehow Derek problems weren't so important.
But the unclean state of her carpet (was that even her hair? Or Derek's?) told her that she definitely needed to learn how to use a vacuum.
"I'm sorry, Cristina. I don't know how to vacuum."
"Well can you find someone who can?" Meredith held the phone against her chest and waddled out of bed, feet stiff on the hardwood floors. She shuffled down to hall to Izzie's room.
"Hey, Iz." She rapped the door once. A buzzing sound emenated from the device in her hand, and she brough it to her ear.
"What are you doing?" Cristina demanded.
"I'm getting Izzie. She can vacuum."
"No, you can't get Izzie! Izzie's...Izzie's..."
"Izzie is better at vacuuming than I am, Cristina, and what you need is a vacummer." Meredith stopped herself before she said something along the lines of getting married to Denny...
The door opened, and a red-eyed, un-polished Izzie stood in front of her. "Do you need something?"
Meredith held up the phone and pointed at it. "Cristina needs someone who can vacuum."
"I can vacuum."
"She can vacuum," Meredith confirmed to Cristina. "Are you sure?" she directed at Izzie.
"Yes, I can vacuum. I've been vacuuming your house for the past year."
"I didn't mean that. You don't look so—"
"Meredith, if she can vacuum, she might as well come over," Cristina interrupted, resignation heavy on her voice.
"But you just said—"
"She's the one who's been vacuuming your house for the past year."
Izzie looked tiredly at Meredith and her invisible conversationalist. "I can vacuum," she said again.
Meredith wavered for a few seconds, and then replied, "Cristina needs you. She's at Burke's apartment, and she needs someone who can vacuum."
"I'll go."
Meredith put the phone back to her ear, only to realize that Cristina had hung up in the two seconds of hesitation with Izzie. "Okay."
----
The phone rang again thirty minutes later, during which Izzie packed the vacuum cleaner into their car and probably made it to Cristina. Meredith groaned and depressed the button. "Hello?" she slurred.
"Meredith, you need to be here," Izzie hissed. Her voice had lost the lethargy that plagued it earlier, and it was obvious that whatever bothered her before wasn't bothering her now.
"What's wrong? Did the vacuum not work?"
"You just need to...We need dark and twisty and cleaning therapy, and bring some limes."
"Why limes?"
"Because Cristina doesn't have any limes."
"Oh. That makes sense."
"Meredith!" Meredith did roll out of bed this time, and hit her head against the floor.
"Ow."
"Get up." She sat up, scratching the side of her head that wasn't dully aching.
"I don't like Angry Distressed Izzie. Just let me get dressed."
She heard muffled speaking in the background, and then Izzie said, "Don't worry about it. Just come over."
----
Meredith stood outside Burke's apartment, dressed in thin flannel pants and her Dartmouth sweatshirt. She hoped no one was watching.
She stared stupidly at the wood for a few seconds before realizing that she hadn't knocked yet, and then drummed her knuckles against it in a very pitiful imitation knocking. Izzie cracked it immediately, only half her face visibly in the dim morning light. "It's bad," she whispered.
"Is it...is she still in her dress? I mean, her...underdress whatever?"
Izzie just repeated, "It's bad." Her eyes shifted to Meredith's hands. "You brought limes?"
"I brought limes."
"Did you bring a knife?"
"Why would I bring a knife?" Izzie pushed the door open, and, under her arm, Meredith could Cristina sitting demurely at the minibar. She was still in her underdress whatever, but coherent, to an extent.
Several bananas lay around her. Meredith stepped into the shaded apartment, set the limes down beside the sink, and picked one up. The peel was split down the middle, and sutured back up perfectly. Several times, judging from the slight imperfections of the stitching holes. Cristina perched on a stool, working on another one.
"What are you doing?"
"I have to cut something," Cristina answered, her voice calmly neutral. "I have to cut something and suture it back up. I have to finish something correctly, and Bailey is not going to let me do that, and I'm a little too tired to try." She sliced open the stitches on her latest banana with a fruit knife. Several others lay in organized rows beside her. "Preston left his knives. Well, some of them. He took the good ones." She accidentally veered off course of the line and cut a small notch in the peel. "Dammit."
"This isn't healthy," Meredith started, but was interrupted by Izzie saying "That's what I said."
"Yeah, well, lying on the bathroom floor for days isn't the picture of psychological condition, either," Cristina shot back. Izzie pretended not to hear.
"Is this why we need our own knife?" Meredith asked Izzie. "Can't we just wash one?"
"No," Cristina said. "Are there limes?"
"There are limes," Meredith confirmed.
"I'll cut them." She selected another knife, took a lime from Meredith's grasp, and quartered it. Izzie made for the tequila.
Meredith continued the lime-slicing cycle, until she finally spoke up, "Cristina, I really don't think that—"
"Okay, look, at least I'm not seventy years old and still wearing my wedding dress and keeping my fifty-year-old cake in my bedroom and stopping all my clocks. You know, at least, at least I'm not like, kidnapping some little girl and teaching her that all heart surgeons are evil and that she should go destroy as many as possible." She paused to look at Izzie, who was pouring out several shots of the tequila. "At least I've enlisted the vacuum squad."
"Well," Izzie said, "there's a lot of other things you can be besides Miss Haversham." She set two glasses in front of them, located the salt, and took up a lime.
"See, Meredith, Izzie gets it. I'm coping. I'm slicing apart bananas and putting them back together because I'm not going to be allowed to do it to people. So...shut up. And make sure my wedding cake isn't rotting anywhere. And drink my tequila." Meredith and Izzie obliged once.
----
A few hours later, Cristina had worked her way through five more bananas, and Meredith had use up an equal amount of limes. Izzie still remained sober, and had made up the bed, cleaned the bathroom, reorganized the refrigerator, and vacuumed the entire apartment. Twice.
She sat next to Meredith on the couch and frowned. Meredith said, "I think we should do something."
"Well, you're dark and twisty now, why don't you go do it?"
"Because you're...dark and twisty-er."
Izzie froze. "I am not. And you were first. You're her...person."
Meredith sighed and stood tipsily, lurched from the couch to the minibar. "Look, Cristina—"
"Nu-uh," Cristina said. She pointed the fruit knife at Meredith. "I'm coping."
"Well, stop. It's not shiva, okay? He's not dead. Burke was just stupid, he was stupid and you need to stop acting like he just drowned you puppy—"
"I hate puppies."
"Well it was a really bad analogy anyway," Izzie muttered.
"Hey. I'm trying, okay?" She turned back to Cristina. "Now this I would expect from George, and Izzie..." (Izzie made a distressed sound) "And maybe even Alex, when he's in the wrong mood, but you? You are the best surgeon out of all of us, and you cannot fall apart. You're better than this, you're better than...murdering hapless fruit, okay?"
"Okay, who said you're allowed to tell me not to fall apart?" Cristina waved her knife hand around, gesticulating. "You almost went Jack Dawson on us. I mean, seriously. You almost died on me, and I'm just cutting up fruit. I could, I could make a fruit salad out of this. Seriously, vitamin C, I'm saving you all from getting sick!"
"Cristina," Izzie said quietly. Meredith shook her head. Jack Dawson was over the line, but it was true, and maybe this was what Cristina needed.
"Seriously! Just...I just needed someone who could vacuum because I couldn't vacuum and it was getting a little gross. I don't need...people restricting my suturing rights, there should be an amendement."
"Cristina," Izzie said over Meredith's silent protestations.
"Why am I ranting to you guys, anyway? I don't rant, now see what you've done, you've turned me into a ranting...emotional...idiot."
"Cristina!"
"What?"
Izzie sighed. "You're still in your underdress whatever."
And somehow, even if they all knew it, even if Cristina was being irrational and Meredith was being un-helpful and nobody was feeling okay, this, this stopped them.
"I am," Cristina said.
"She is," Meredith said.
"You are," Izzie confirmed.
The knife clattered to the countertop. "Dammit," Cristina whispered. "Dammit, I am."
Meredith said, "Cristina—" But couldn't find any other words. They stayed in that position for a while.
----
"I'm sorry," Cristina finally found the energy to say a few minutes later.
Meredith frowned. "For what?"
Cristina inhaled, shuddered, and laid her head down next to the eviscerated banana. "Thank you, Izzie," she non-sequitired. "You didn't...you have your own...I'm...glad you know how to vacuum." Izzie stood and pulled Cristina from the stool and set her on the couch, where Meredith joined them, wedging Cristina in the middle.
"It's okay," Izzie said in a detached voice. "It's okay...to do this. It's not okay to cut open bananas all day long, but this is okay. I can't...I'm sorry I can't make you any muffins."
"It's okay. I don't need muffins," Cristina mumbled.
"It smells different in here," Meredith remarked. Izzie's eyebrows shot up, and she looked bewilderedly at Meredith. "It does!"
"It doesn't smell like him anymore," Cristina explained. "It's why I wanted to clean. But since my vacuuming skills are nonexistent, I called you two. And now we're just...Sex and the City without the sex. Ew."
They thought of the implication of no more sex, though more important things were going on.
"You feel better now?" Izzie asked, looking closely at her face.
"No."
Izzie's attention snapped forward again. "Good."
"How is that good?" Meredith enquired from the other side of Cristina, her coherent mind having given out during her motivational speech and now prancing around the fields of inebriation.
"She's not delusional."
"What?"
"She's not delusional about being okay. She's not okay. We're...we're not okay. Not now. But we will be, okay? We're going to be okay, we are, we'll all be...okay, just...not...today. Today we're not okay." Silent tears slipped down Izzie's face. "We're not okay!"
"We're not okay," Meredith confirmed.
"I didn't get you your happy ending," Cristina said, in apology, as though the entire couch scene in the middle hadn't happened yet. "I'm sorry."
Meredith sniffed. "Don't be."
"But I am."
"It's okay," Izzie said, her voice cracking. "We don't get happy endings."
"What happened to Optimistic Izzie?" Meredith asked.
"What happened to New Start Meredith?" Izzie asked.
"What happened to us?" Cristina asked. "And why am I crying?!"
Meredith shh-ed her. "It's okay to cry."
"But I thought I was done crying!"
"It's okay. It is, it's okay to cry," Izzie said from her other side.
"Shh," they whispered together. "It's okay. It's okay. It's okay."
They didn't hug her so much as coccoon her from the rest of the non-Burke smelling apartment, whispering, cajoling, fooling themselves for a little longer and wishing that this would all stop.
"It's okay."
All right, so it has no resolution. But it was just...a...It just makes me feel better after that last scene with Cristina in the episode. DAMN YOU, SHONDA! Jack Dawson, of course, is Jack from Titanic, and Miss Haversham is from Great Expectations.
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