A/N: This story is the sequel to Saving Lives, which can be found at my profile. As this one follows a mostly new story line, you could probably read it without reading that first, but I think it would make more sense in context.

Many thanks to EscapismRocks, Karevsanatomy and boofadil for beta-ing, discussion, reassurance and everything else.

There is love, of course
And then there's life, its enemy

Jean Anouilh

Chapter 1 - Maybe You Still Love Me, Maybe You Don't

When Mark woke up in the early hours of the morning, the first thing he noticed was the sound of heavy rain pounding against his bedroom windows and a rumble of distant thunder. A few months ago, his first thought would have been "typical fucking Seattle." Now, though, he didn't mind the rain; he even liked it a little; he even liked Seattle. The second thing he noticed was that the reason for this change of heart towards the city and its weather, Meredith, was curled up in his bed next to him and sleeping soundly.

He had gone to bed early and alone, exhausted from a long, difficult emergency surgery and overwhelmed by his appointment at the end of the day with Julia Lindstrom, his oncologist. After the tiring day at work, his brain hadn't worked quite well enough to process the news she'd given him and he was still having problems adjusting to it.

It was dumb. It was good news. It was just that it he'd lived for a year with the fear that he might be told at any time that his immunotherapy program wasn't working and that he was going to die. And today Julia had told him he was in remission.

It wasn't official. As Julia had pointed out, no responsible oncologist could tell you after one year that you were in complete remission. You couldn't make that call until the 5-year mark. But she'd run all the labs and re-run them and they kept coming back clean. There wasn't any sign of cancer. The metastatic tumors had cleared months ago and now there was no active disease in his small intestine. And since he was another doctor in the same hospital, and since she liked him, she had told him the news.

Realizing that he was holding his breath as he went over this in his mind, he forced himself to exhale. For the first time, he really got what Julia had said to him. He understood the caveats. He would have to continue with a modified form of the treatment program and have regular check-ups and, like she said, it wasn't official. But fuck! He couldn't prevent a grin from spreading over his face. He had been feeling better, but he hadn't expected this. He didn't have cancer, at least for now, and he wasn't going to die.

Meredith stirred in her sleep and, after turning on the bedside lamp to get a better look at her, he leaned over her protectively. "Hey," he whispered softly in her ear. "I didn't even know you were here."

She made a sound that resembled "Mmghh," before rolling over in bed and turning to face him. Drowsily, she sought out his hand and held on to it. "Key," she mumbled, meaning that she'd let herself in while he was sleeping. She opened bleary, confused eyes and blinked at him. "'S busy," she said indistinctly.

"Yeah?" he asked, smiling at her disorientation. "Seems kind of quiet to me. Just you and me here, Mer." Probably what Mark liked most about being with Meredith was the easy, casual intimacy between them; the combination of freedom to be himself and having a warm place to fall. She wasn't always perfect; stuff got in the way. But it wasn't like he was perfect boyfriend material either and somehow they made it work. Like nothing he'd ever known before.

"No." She flailed the hand that wasn't holding his in a befuddled attempt to communicate. "Not here. Hospital. 'S busy. Patients." She frowned. "Patients and . . . and interns . . ." Her words trailed off as she lapsed briefly back into a doze, then immediately woke up again, startled.

She opened her eyes fully and her face registered surprise as she focused on him, before breaking into a delighted but confused smile. "Hello!" she said. "You're awake now!"

"More than can be said for you," he teased her.

She shook her head. "I'm completely awake," she protested unconvincingly. "I was waiting for you to wake up." She lifted his hand to her lips and tenderly kissed his palm. "Hey," she said dreamily and, without warning, her eyes closed again and she fell instantly back to sleep and started snoring.

Mark laughed softly to himself. It wasn't exactly the sexiest sound he'd ever heard come from a woman, but he'd more or less gotten used to it and because it was her, he even found it cute. If he'd been an easy mark for evil redheads, he was a total pushover for insecure blondes.

"I have something to tell you," he said to Meredith's sleeping form. This could be a rehearsal for when he told her later on and hearing himself say it made it seem more real. "Apparently, I'm in complete remission."

On some level, she must have heard, because she smiled at the sound of his voice and once again uttered the "Mmghh" sound.

"Good to know you feel that way about it," Mark joked in a low voice, not wanting to disturb her. "Makes a guy feel really special. And just for the record, I was hoping to get laid tonight." He played with her hair, enjoying the familiar silky sensation as it briefly resisted his fingers, then gave way as he ran his hand through its soft length. "That's okay though, beautiful," he whispered. God, he loved this woman. "There's always other nights."

He put his arms around her and drew her towards him and, in her sleep, Meredith nestled her head comfortably against his shoulder. This had to be about as good as life got, Mark thought, as he closed his eyes and drifted back to sleep for a few hours.

"Coffee." It was just after 4:45 am and Meredith, woken partly by the alarm on her cell phone, partly by the smell of brewing coffee and partly by Mark's absence from the bed, wandered into his workout room where he was lifting weights, lying on his back astride a bench made for the purpose. She stopped in her tracks in the doorway, holding two steaming coffee mugs out in front of her.

He was dressed only in a pair of ratty looking sweat pants and his stunningly muscled and now slightly sweaty upper body was on display.

He took her breath away.

She knew that the changes his illness had made to his body had bothered him although, from her perspective, he over-estimated the effects. To her, he'd always been freaking awesome. That had been her spontaneous reaction when she'd first seen him naked and it still expressed her feelings better than anything else. In the last few months, though, he'd felt better and started working out again. And now he was . . . well, yeah . . . still freaking awesome!

Grunting slightly, Mark carefully returned the weight to the rack just above his head, sat up straddling the bench and wiped his face with a cloth. He grinned at Meredith and held out his hand for the coffee.

"Morning," he said happily. "See something you like?"

"You're obsessed!" she replied, pretending to ignore his flirting and rolling her eyes. "It's 4:45 in the morning. You're an attending. You don't even have to be up this early and yet here you are . . ." she searched around for the proper term; she could never remember all the different types of weights and exericses, "pumping iron."

Mark laughed. "Well, I believe I'd call it doing bench presses. But whatever humps your camel, I guess."

"Humps my—?"

"Karev," Mark said, by way of explanation

"Oh," she said drily. "I thought you were his teacher, not the other way around."

"Whatever, dude," he replied, parodying Alex. He took a sip of his coffee and then set the mug down on the floor next to him, caught Meredith by the hand and pulled her down on to the bench, causing her to spill some of her coffee in the process.

"Just trying to stay pretty for you, Mer," he said, planting a kiss on her mouth.

She raised an eyebrow. "Trust me," she said and scanned his body. "The pretty thing? You're already doing quite well with that."

He grinned again and a glint appeared his eyes and, almost before she knew what was happening, he had taken her coffee mug, put it down on the floor with his own and laid back down on the bench, lifting her on top of him.

Meredith giggled. "So could you bench press me?"

"Shit, I should hope so!" he laughed. "You can't weigh more than about 90 pounds."

Cradling her face between his hands, he eased her closer and slipped the tip of his tongue into her mouth, teasing the delicate, responsive skin inside her upper lip and finishing up with the gentlest of bites, just enough that she could feel the slight pressure of his teeth.

"Mmmm," she sighed softly. "Good morning." She brushed Mark's lips with her own and allowed her chin to graze briefly against his ever-present stubble. As she did so, a lock of hair fell forward and hung in her eyes and Mark reached up and tucked it gently back behind her ear.

"Did I tell you that I love you yet today?" he asked her.

She shook her head, smiling.

"Well, I do," he said and then pretended to be hurt as he added, "even though you fall asleep when I want to make love with you—"

"I was exhausted," she broke in, playfully indignant. "I had a bad day and you were sleeping and—"

"And snore . . . and interrupt me when I have something important to tell you."

"You do?" she asked.

"I saw Julia yesterday," he said and Meredith's eyes immediately took on a concerned look. "No, it's fine, Mer. It's good," he reassured her hastily. "I'm in remission." Her eyes widened and he shrugged and smiled in response. "She can't find any evidence of cancer."

"You're well?" she asked uncertainly.

"That's what she says," he replied. "Officially I'm still a cancer patient. But it seems like—"

"Seriously?" Meredith hardly trusted that she'd heard him correctly.

"Seriously."

"You're well?" she asked again, this time with more certainty, although her eyes had filled with tears.

"Still the same answer," Mark said, trying to keep his own emotions under control.

The moisture brimming in Meredith's eyes spilled over and trickled down her face unnoticed by her as she gazed intently at Mark.

"That's all I wanted," she whispered. "That's all . . . now you can . . . we can. . ." She had no idea how to express what she was feeling; an impossible mixture of love and relief and hope and the sadness and fear that she had hardly allowed herself to feel before.

Mark used a thumb to gently wipe away her tears. "C'mere," he said softly and coaxed her into a long, slow, warm kiss.

"So you had a bad day yesterday?" Mark asked Meredith as he drove her to the hospital. He didn't have to be in this early, but he figured he could check on yesterday's patient and maybe take the opportunity to watch Karev rounding with his interns, which could be kind of amusing. At least that was his excuse. Really he just wanted to spend a little more time with Meredith. "Did it have anything to do with 'patients and interns?' Because you had a lot to say about that last night." He smirked. "Snoring, conversation; you're very talented when you're unconscious. You think you could learn to give blow jobs in your sleep as well?"

Meredith, who was rummaging in her roomy purse, responded with an irritated snort that disconcerted Mark enough to make him take his eyes off the road for a few seconds and stare at her.

"Everything all right?" he asked, looking straight ahead again. Partly for safety, but partly because he wasn't sure he wanted to see the look in her eyes if and when she turned towards him. He always forgot about this when everything was good between them. And if he was honest, her sometimes inexplicable mood changes scared the shit out of him.

Without answering, Meredith retrieved a tube of lipgloss from her purse, yanked down the vanity mirror almost violently, and applied the cosmetic to her lips with an angry, staccato movement. When she was finished, she pushed up the vanity mirror and threw the lipgloss back into her purse. She pulled out a scrunchy and twisted her hair into a rough ponytail and fixed it in place, before dumping the purse onto the limited floor space in front of her.

"I'm fine," she said and stared fixedly out the window.

"Did I miss something?" Mark asked uncertainly. "I guess that wasn't a very good joke about sleep-blowing—"

"It's not the joke. The joke was fine!" Meredith broke in, and managed a brief, tense smile. She was still irritated, but not with him. At least not much. The relief and pleasure of finding out that he was well had made her forget about yesterday, and she was annoyed at being reminded of it. None of it was his fault; at least not directly. She had issues. It wasn't like that was a secret. But her issues bugged him so much that she couldn't really talk to him about them. And between trying not to upset him and trying to to deal with everything and trying to make some kind of sense out of it all, the whole thing made her feel torn and cranky and out of control.

"It's not you," she blurted out, against her better judgement. "It's her."

"Her?"

"Cristina's stupid intern," she snapped. "She's everywhere. All the time. Wanting," she sighed, "things."

"Can't she ask Yang for . . . things?" Mark asked. He had no idea what she was talking about. He just knew that you got points from women for making appropriate noises during their incomprehensible girl flip-outs.

"Not intern things," Meredith snapped. "Sister things. Bonding, let's braid each other's hair and share our secrets things." She sighed again. "I'm sorry," she said a little sullenly.

"'S fine," Mark said tersely, keeping his eyes firmly on the road. He hated it when she started on this crap.

"I know you hate it when—"

"I said it's fine," he repeated, much more harshly than he'd intended. But goddamn it! She had to bring this up today? She couldn't just drive into work with him and . . . fucking be in love? He'd just told her he was in remission and she had to raise this one thing that screwed with his mind and left him feeling helpless and angry and pissed off at her. He took a deep breath and reminded himself to stop being an ass. He had said, when this first came up—and despite his own preferences, he'd meant it—that she could talk about her issues with her family, just as long as she didn't insist on him talking about his.

"It's fine," he said more gently. "You can talk about Lexie if you want."

Meredith shook her head. "No," she said determinedly. "You drew a line. That's your right."

"Listen." This came out impatiently, and he made an effort to sound friendlier. "I already told you more than once. I didn't say you couldn't talk about your family. I just said I didn't want to talk about mine and that I probably wouldn't be much use to you." He was starting to get a sinking feeling in his stomach. She'd gone to her "I'm fine" place and he didn't know how to reconnect with her.

"No," she said again. "I understand and . . . it's fine. I'm fine." She turned towards him and gave him what might have passed for a smile if he hadn't known her so well, before turning back to gaze out of the window.

Fucking great! Mark thought. An hour ago they'd been hopeful and happy and in love. Now they were in this fucked-up, scary place where things that were long past their sell-by date, and that they couldn't ever change, mattered more than their feelings for one another right now.

He wrenched the Porsche into an unnecessary new gear, purely to have something to take out his frustration on. As far as he was concerned, her mommy and daddy and now little sister issues eroded their connection, took away his soft place to fall and, yeah, scared the fucking shit out of him. But he pulled himself together and realized that he had to try. Given her mood, he figured this would sound pathetic and probably be useless, but he had to try anyway. "I love you, Mer," he said quietly, only fully recognizing his desperation when he heard it in his voice.

Meredith swallowed, before she said, equally quietly but with much less feeling, "I love you too."

Title song: Either Way, Wilco

Maybe the sun will shine today
The clouds will blow away
Maybe I won't feel so afraid
I will try to understand
Either way