A/N: Due to a lack in post-S10 finale MerDer fics, I was motivated to write this. I'm very anxious for the impending storyline that faces my OTP in season 11, so I'm eager to explore the possibilities. Let me know if you think this should be continued! There will be angst, but I think the title of this fic says it all.
"I am simply saying: I am not going anywhere. I am staying here."
He gazes sharply at her as he tries to digest the words he has just heard. Her blue-ish green eyes are glistening as the dim light shines on them. He knows her well enough to know she's fighting back tears.
Liquid fills his skin pores. Cold sweat drips from his forehead. His heart muscle is pounding erratically against his thoracic wall. He clenches his fist firmly while blood gushes through his veins. His stomach drops, and he feels a nauseating feeling in the pit of his gut. He can't believe what she's saying. It physically brings him pain.
Their eyes lock together. He can tell she's emotionally hurting inside. He's struggling to understand this sudden outburst. He doesn't understand where this is all coming from. Earlier, she seemed fine with their move to D.C. Now this. It's been weeks since he told her about his new job in Washington D.C. Weeks. She's had weeks to tell him how she felt. Yet, this is the first he's hearing all this. Why now? He's at a loss for answers.
"Why now?" he asks his wife, lowering his voice. They've been yelling for long enough, and he'd just gotten the kids down. The last thing he wants to do is to wake them up. "Why didn't you tell me how you feel weeks ago? Why did you wait until the night before I need to have the house papers signed?"
She glares furiously at him. "You never even asked my opinion," she spits harshly, not lowering her voice one bit. "You continuously talked about how amazing Washington D.C. is, and how much I'm gonna love it. You just assumed I was on board, Derek. Don't put this on me. If you'd taken one moment to look at me, you would have seen I wasn't happy. Honestly, Derek? Ever since you've taken this job, it's been D.C. this and the president that. It's all you talk about."
"That's not true!" Derek protests. He knows he's been putting a lot of time and effort into his work, but he thinks she's over-exaggerating. It's been a year busy for them both, as they'd just welcomed a new baby into their lives, and they were both very career-driven individuals. He knows he broke a promise to her, but you don't pass up an opportunity to work with the president. No man in his right mind does that. He knows Meredith knows that. They have already had this conversation so many times. "It feels like we're going in circles now. You hate my job. You've been so adamant about that since I accepted the position. If the tables were reversed -"
"If the tables were reversed, we wouldn't be having this conversation, because we would both be established in our careers, Derek! The tables can never be reversed. You were already an established neurosurgeon when we met," she says hastily.
"That's not my fault!" he shoots.
"I didn't say it was! I'm simply stating the facts!" she retorts; she crosses her arms and glares heavily into his eyes. His eyes sink. He doesn't know what to tell her. There's nothing he can tell her. She's hard-headed, always has been, but he's never known her to be this selfish.
"The Meredith Grey I fell in love with didn't only think about herself," he says coolly. "The Meredith Grey that I fell in love with cared about other people more than herself. She was willing to stick her hand in a body cavity to save lives. She was willing to stand in front of a gunman for me."
"Well, that Meredith Grey is gone," Meredith says flatly. "It's a dog-eat-dog world, Derek, and I have to do what's best for me if I'm going to succeed."
A loud, screeching scream comes from their son's room.
"Look what you've done," he spits. "I just got them down."
"Oh, and it's all my fault, right? Everything is my fault, isn't it? After all, I was the only one yelling," she yells dramatically, cringing as she raises her arms above her head to emphasize her annoyance.
"I was at least trying to keep my voice low," he says hastily. "You were just thinking about yourself."
"Because I'm a cool, selfish bitch!" she shoots. Now she's putting words in his mouth. He hates when she does that. Instead of worsening the situation, he scoffs and walks toward his son's room without looking back.
Meredith is livid. Anger permeates her entire body; blood soars through her veins rapidly. She clamps her fists together tightly. She's so infuriated that she feels like she can pull her hair out. Did her husband just tell her that she wasn't the woman he fell in love with? She's fighting tears. She knows she's being selfish, but in all fairness, she believes she has every right to be selfish.
Her heart throbs with a dull, deceptive ache. Her love for Derek is unreasonably painful. She realizes this is potentially the largest, most real-feeling fight. There was the Alzheimer's trial ordeal - she thought she would lose Derek forever, that he would never forgive her. Not even that was this painful, though. She knows this isn't about something either of them did. This is about their careers. It's something normal couples face on a regular basis.
Meredith knows it's not Derek's fault that he's much farther in his career than she. She knew this from the beginning. However, it isn't something that once crossed her mind as something that could cause them conflict later on. It was a definitive from the beginning. Why does it bother her so much now?
Though, Meredith Grey isn't the same person she was then. Derek's right. She's not the same Meredith he fell in love with. That Meredith was a weak, puppy dog, who was flabbergasted by the fact a sexy, hot neuro god was interested in her. Meredith had never once thought of her as anything extraordinary. She considered herself to have average looks. She wasn't the type of girl the jocks even gave a second look to. Suddenly, she had a hot neurosurgeon jock chasing her, and she couldn't help but fall in love.
Derek had changed her: In some ways, for the good, and in some ways, for the very bad. Before Derek, Meredith didn't believe in love. She was very strong-willed in her ways. She lived life independently, and her only sex partners were one-night stands. She'd never been in a committed monogamous relationship, ever.
Derek helped her to believe in love. Though, she realizes now that love makes a person do stupid, stupid things. She allowed him to change her. She allowed him to control her. In some way, she felt like his puppy dog.
For starters: the house they live in. It is gorgeous, but it isn't her dream house. It is Derek's. Meredith would have been happy living in her mother's old house, better known as the frat house, for the rest of her life. She misses having roommates over the age of three.
Their family: Meredith will never take back her children for the world. She sees so much of herself in both Bailey and Zola, even though Zola wasn't hers genetically. Zola, at three years old, is already starting to ramble like she does. And Bailey is a splitting image of Meredith when she was a baby. Meredith loves her kids, but she'd first only wanted a family because she knew Derek would never be complete without one. She loves children, but she truly never imagined that she was cut out for motherhood. She still has her doubts.
Her career: She is a general surgeon only because she'd left neuro because she couldn't work with Derek. Truthfully, she loved neuro, and there isn't a day she doesn't miss clipping brain aneurysms and cutting out intracranial teratomas. She had worked on a couple neurosurgeries in the past few months, and now she really realizes how much she misses it. But she knows she can never go back to neuro. She will just be in Derek's shadow again, if she does. In some ways, she feels like she's already living in her mother's shadow in general, and that's a factor into why she cannot succeed. General isn't her passion, though. It never has been. It never will be. She feels screwed.
Derek thinks his career is more important than hers. He expects her to give up hers and move across the country just because he's more advanced in his career. The old Meredith, who gave up everything for Derek, would have gladly obliged without a second thought.
He's not the sun. You are.
Cristina's final words continue to ring in her head.
"Momma?" she hears a tiny voice behind her. She turns around and sees her daughter standing before her. The little girl rubs her eyeballs. She looks sad.
"Zozo, what are you doing up?" she asks her little girl.
"I heared you and Daddy yelling," she sticks her little lip out, fear plasters her tiny face. "Are you broking up like Sofi's Mommies did?"
Meredith's heart sinks, saddened by the fact Zola actually remembers Callie and Arizona's fight last fall.
"No, baby. Your daddy and I just had a fight," she tells her little girl, leaning over to pick her up, then she carries Zola to her bedroom.
Derek cradles his son in his arms, rocking him back and forth in his rocking chair. His eyes are heavy, and he knows he should be asleep now. He's been traveling back and forth to D.C. numerous times over the past month, so his internal clock is all screwed up. The three hour time difference is killing him.
He peers into Bailey's deep blue eyes. They're his eyes, but everything else about the little guy screams Meredith. His forehead, his smile, his nose, his little dimples: All Meredith. He was Meredith's son. Even his gestures mimic Meredith. The way his face lights up when he is excited. The cute little hand thing he does. Even his laugh. He is his mother's son.
Derek has noticed his son transforming into his mother even more so in recent months, and he knows he was partially to blame for this. Derek had been Bailey's primary caregiver during the first few months of his life. He'd stepped back and taken care of the kids, but now that he's taken on this new job, Meredith is with the kids more than he is. Though, Derek doesn't think it's a bad thing that Bailey is picking up his mother's gestures. In fact, he thinks it's quite adorable.
"Your mommy's an amazing woman," he tells Bailey. "You're lucky to have her. She'll never know how much I love her. She's my hero."
Bailey coos. "Mama," he says.
"Now, I know one day you're going to grow up, and you're going to be a teenager. One day, you're going to fight with your mom just like I did, and you might even call her some names. But you know what? You're not going to mean it, and then you'll tell her you're sorry later, right?"
"Baloooooga," Bailey coos then yawns.
"Balooga is right," Derek sighs, not even sure what balooga means, but if it has anything to do with the buffoon he feels like right now, he decides it's right. "Now, you need to go to sleepy, okay? Daddy needs to be on a plane tomorrow morning, so he needs to get some sleep too."
Bailey puts his thumb in his mouth and slobbers all over his fingers. Derek starts to hum the Barney tune I Love You. Bailey's eyes drift shut. Derek continues to rock him, just to make sure he is actually asleep before placing him back in his crib.
He tiptoes out of the nursery. Anxiously, he looks in the living room to find it empty. Perhaps Meredith has gone to sleep? He walks lightly down the hallway to his daughter's room, to make sure she is also sleep. Then he hears a low voice talking.
"You know, I love your Daddy very much, Zozo," he hears Meredith's voice; it is soft and a little raspy, like it is when she was fighting back tears. "Sometimes grown-ups fight, but I can promise you, your daddy and I will never leave each other. We might not always be together, and sometimes your daddy might be working far away, but your daddy will always come back. He loves us all very much."
Derek's heart fills with warmth as he overhears Meredith talking to their daughter. He smiles, tiptoeing away from the room, not wanting his wife to know he has overheard her words.
Meredith lies on her side on top of Zola's twin bed. She looks down at her daughter's face and sees Zola's eyes are closed. She's asleep. Meredith exhales a deep breath as she carefully slides off the bed, making sure not to wake up the little girl. She tiptoes out of the room and enters the living room, where she finds Derek lying on the couch.
"What are you doing?" she whispers hoarsely.
"Well, I figured you'd want the bed," Derek insists. A smile breaks her lips. He actually thinks she's kicking him out of the bed.
She takes a seat next to him on the couch. "You can sleep in the bed, I mean, unless you really don't want to sleep next to me," she says. She looks at him then carefully sets her palm on his hand.
Suddenly, the door swings open and Amelia enters. Derek instantly whispers, "Shhhh" as his sister walks through the door.
"I know, I know," Amelia whispers. "The kids are asleep. I've been here over a month now, I know the drill." She studies her brother and sister-in-law, raising her eyebrows. "You two look beat. Everything okay?"
Derek shakes his head. "I'm going to turn in," he says; Meredith notices the quick glance he shoots at her before leaving the living room. Meredith watches him walk toward the bedroom; her heart sinks.
"Mer, is everything…?" Amelia starts to ask, but Meredith cuts her off.
"You know, it's late. I'm going to hit the sack too," she says. She follows after Derek without a second thought. When she enters the bedroom, Derek has already taken off his shirt and is laying in bed.
"I don't want to fight any more tonight, Meredith," he says. "My sister's here now. It's bad enough our kids have heard us bickering. I'm done, Meredith. I need to sleep."
"I don't want to fight any more, either," she says adamantly, sitting down on the bed. Derek's faint, tired blue eyes stare down at her. She swallows, not sure what to say. "I don't know what to say to make this right. I don't think there is a way to make this right, but we have to get through this."
"Now you're trying to fix things?" he asks. "You're the one who started this, Meredith. You created this battle."
"That's not fair," she says. He sits on the bed next to her and stretches his legs on the bed, leaning on his pillow. "We're a partnership, Derek. Marriage is a team sport. We're in this together." She swallows, then she notices he's looking intently at her.
He grabs her hand and intertwines his fingers with hers. "I know," he says softly.
"We'll get through this, Derek," she says. "We've made it this far. This is just a new obstacle we have to face. It's how we grow."
He kisses her fingers. "I love you, Meredith," he says softly. "You know that, right?" She sees his eyes are glossy with tears, and she feels a tear forming in her own. She nods.
She leans in to kiss him. "I love you too."
"I'll never stop loving you, Meredith. True love never dies," he whispers in her ear and his hot breath presses against her eardrum. Those are the exact words she needed to hear.