Flicker
And still they come and go: and this is all I know –
That from the gloom I watch an endless picture-show,
Where wild or listless faces flicker on their way,
With glad or grievous hearts I'll never understand
Because Time spins so fast, and they've no time to stay
Beyond the moment's gesture of a lifted hand
And still, between the shadow and the blinding flame,
The brave despair of men flings onward, ever the same
As in those doom-lit years that wait them, and have been...
And life is just the picture dancing on the screen.
-Siegfried Sassoon, "Picture-Show"
A tiny smile is forming on her face as she sits on this hillside and looks over Bainbridge Island and the lights of Seattle drill into her heart like...like something. Something she's been doing all her life. Someone she's known her whole life.
"So you've really been sitting here this whole time?"
Meredith's hair whips around into his face and Derek winces. That maybe wasn't quite the greeting he was anticipating. "Your hair hurts."
She shrugs and finds this is slightly awkward. They're sitting on a hill and they're both freezing. He kissed her maybe half an hour ago in this house of candles that she's constructed around them and now he's broken up with Rose. She feels good. Happy. She's nowhere close to some vortex of depression that happened in Elliot Bay. They are whole.
She scoots maybe a little closer to him because she both wants to be warmed and be close to him and anyway, he's radiating heat. "Hey."
Maybe this was the greeting he needed. "Hey."
"So, um, I was thinking, um –"
He gives a smile and leans in to kiss her. For half a second she pulls back and then he touches a hand lightly to the side of her smooth face and everything in the world seems to go off like a fireworks and there are smiles pressing against her eyelashes, her mouth, her earlobes, her spirit, her mind, our soul, her heart, and maybe- yes, her happiness.
"So." He pulls back and says one word as soft as he can. It is a feather tickling everything. "What do we do now?"
"I can think of a few things," she says, sounding braver than she is.
He raises an eyebrow and she almost shrinks back. Is this extraordinary love? Did I get it wrong? Then he laughs and everything in her world slides into place. A puzzle. That's what her life has been. And she had everything but the corners, the stepping stones. Those corners were extraordinary love.
Now she has them and she's a tad more afraid. Because she is not brave. She's not, she's not brave. But she is not her mother; she cannot and will not and will never be Ellis Grey. That is a small comfort because who knows how things will turn out?
But Derek – is hers. And extraordinary. And she has someone to hold onto.
"What happened?" she says, because curiosity is overwhelming.
He doesn't look at her but bites his bottom lip and looks out towards Seattle. "Mm." What the hell is that supposed to mean? "I told her that she wasn't right for me."
Happiness bubbles inside her.
"I said that I've been in love with someone else for over a year. She said...let's not go there."
"What did she say?"
Derek sighs and turns to her. "You really want to know?"
"Not particularly, but curiosity killed the cat." It's something that she heard Susan say once, and when she said it in front of Lexie her half-sister turned away.
He snorts with – amusement? "She said if you weren't right for me again to not come knocking at her door."
Meredith winces.
The candlelight around them is starting to flicker out into dim darkness; it is a comparison Meredith doesn't like to make to their relationship – flickering too often for comfort. But now Derek's arm snakes around her waist slowly until she covers it with her tiny hand and closes her eyes for a split second. When she opens them slowly again, Derek's blue eyes smile.