Title: Several Arrows Later
Author: LaLaLovely47 a.k.a. Rachel
Disclaimer: Seriously? Do I look like Shonda? I don't own anything except the words.
Setting: I'm not sure in which episode it took place (obviously it was early Season 2), but this is after Derek gives Meredith the "She was my family...11 Christmases, 11 birthdays, 11 Thanksgivings, etc." speech...I'm sorry I can't give you anything more specific, but this is my alternate universe take on things.
A/N: This is Derek's POV (for now) and in the 2nd person...usually, I write in the 3rd person, never in the 1st, but for the past few months or so, I've been on a 2nd kick...anyways, you'll be able to tell when POV's switch.
7/19/06: Part 2 will be up in a day or so.
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Recommended Soundtrack: My Sundown by Jimmy Eat World
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Part 1
When
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She walks out of the operating room behind you, her steps wary and anxious. You scrub out silently and tensely, however still riding the waves from the high of your successful surgery.
She glances at you. You glance at her. You say nothing. She, however...
"I'm sorry," she says, her lips curling into a regretful frown, "You know. I'm sorry for...for not thinking of it that way. I know how you feel...you know, with my mother. I know it's hardly the same thing, but I understand what that's like. To loose someone like that. Grow apart, or be separated or whatever. So I'm sorry."
The thick metal edge of the sink outside of the OR presses into your palms as you lean into it, contemplating her hurried and sincere apology. You know it's just that, sincere that is, because you can see the desperation in her irises, expressing her true need for your forgiveness.
You were never mad. Just frustrated and confused, and you needed something to lash out on. And unluckily for you, she was the first thing you saw, and she had somehow been packing the guilt on over the past few days, so you tore her apart.
You just look at her, your eyebrows knitting together in guilt and the slightest bit of confusion. Her hair is hidden under a scrub cap, but the tiniest strand of hair flutters down over her eyebrow from under its blue linen constraint.
You search her face for something else, an excuse to leave her behind. Something that could tell you that love isn't enough, that you have a reason. But you find nothing. No hatred, no resentment, no selfishness, no immaturity, no bitterness. There's nothing there except compassion and ardor.
She looks at you worriedly. Impatiently, almost. The tears are forming around her eyelashes, because she thinks you're angry with her, holding some sort of twisted, overreacting grudge against her - she doesn't know that's impossible.
The salty, damaged droplets are materializing around the green irises without ever falling because she's hurt. She's hurt and she's confused and she's guilty and she's jaded, but you can't help but think she's the purest, most innocent thing you've ever seen.
"I'm gonna go," she mumbles, before turning and trying to hurriedly escape into the mass of the hospital, but you gently grasp her elbow, halting her movements.
"Meredith," you say, your voice low and empathetic.
Even though you could count on one hand the number of moments where you had wanted so badly to just fall at her feet and beg, grovel, and bribe her to forgive you for what you had done - the moments that passed just as quickly and suddenly as they came, never lasting more than one heartbeat - even though there were very few of them, you still knew how she felt. You were very intimate with that paralyzing, fearful, and soul consuming self-reproach that could rip through you like a fire through the woods.
Oh, yes, you were very familiar indeed.
She doesn't turn to you after you stop her, she stays facing away from you, and you think it's for the best. If you were looking into her eyes at that moment, well...you're not sure what you could stop yourself from doing.
You step closer to her, so that you aren't touching, but you are near enough that the fabric from the back of her shirt and the front of yours intermingle to produce a warm friction and soft rustling that courses throughout your body, from your fingertips that are barely grazing her skin to the tips of your sneaker-clad toes.
You've never seen her cry before, or truly be upset over anything, and you don't exactly want today to be that first. So you know you need to tell her the truth, let her breathe for the first time in the past minute.
"I wasn't mad at you," you say quietly into her ear as she turns her head slightly towards your voice, your breath disturbing a few hairs around the base of her neck that are still trapped underneath her scrub cap.
You can visibly see her ease, her shoulders drooping from their strained position, relaxed. She sighs and you think she close her eyes, but you're not sure.
Your nose meets the crook of her neck as you lean your against her, relishing in this closeness, even if the silence around you is a fallacy. But this is normal for you. Whenever you're with her, the rest of the world seems to fall away, leaving only you two standing there, savoring the moment of just being together.
She sighs again, leaning into you, too, ever so slightly letting a little stress and tiredness ebb away from her.
"Derek..." she begins, turning around to face you, the shadow tears gone, replaced with extreme relief.
"It's ok," you insist, your fingers having a mind of their own and running down the length of her forearms, to find her delicate hands at the end. You lightly grasp her hands, more of a phantom touch than anything, and surprisingly she doesn't pull away.
"I'm not mad anymore," she admits, her voice slightly teasing, her face sheepish and smirking that lopsided grin that she reserves for only you. You smile in return at her, not quite being able to help yourself.
"That's good," you reply, nodding slightly. She can't stop a small laugh from escaping her happy lips.
"Yeah," she mumbles as she nods as well, looking down to the monotonous floor tile, blushing.
"Yeah," you repeat, feeling a little bit of your old self seeping in.
You feel good again, content even. You haven't been a very happy camper as of late, and you're quickly starting to feel alright.
She looks coyly up at you from under sooty eyelashes as you cradle her cheek in your right hand, before slowly running your fingers through her hair, removing the scrub cap along with it.
She smiles and pulls her hair around, letting it loose from its restraining hair tie, and it's completely slung over her right shoulder.
Suddenly, the nearness of her body, the intoxicating scent of her lotion and of her perfume, the way her hair is full and falling around one side of her face, sends you throttling back into memory of the night it all fell apart.
When you remember that - fixing her coat as your wife comes strutting over in all her fur-coat and red hair glory, the only feeling you can remember is horror. Regret, definitely.
Now, looking at her standing with you, looking at you as though you are the only other person on the face of the earth, you know.
You know.
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You meet her for drinks after work - goodbye drinks, perhaps. You walk into the noisy bar and immediately spot her sitting at the bar, nursing a beer, politely chatting with the bartender.
She's dressed in a pair of khaki's and a crimson colored turtleneck sweater, her hair pulled back into a ponytail, her heels clicking lightly against the bar stool as she absentmindedly swings her legs softly.
You sigh as you sit next to her, facing sideways and she looking at an interesting condensation ring on the mahogany bar.
"You're staying with her, aren't you?" she says, and you can't quite identify the emotion on her face or in her voice. Sadness? Grief? Remorse?
You're not quite sure how to answer her. You know she deserves more than you've given her, but you deserve more too. You deserve a chance, a try at making things work. You deserve to know if you could possibly be happy by staying with her, by taking a gamble on love.
"She's my life," you say simply, four words explaining everything you're feeling now, the need to be with her and the need to move on.
She smiles and nods nostalgically and understandingly, knowing that it wasn't really anyone's fault but her own. It was true, there were definitely things he should have done things differently, but it really was her own actions that brought them to this point in time.
"Goodbye, Derek," she says calmly as she gets up to leave, her jacket draped over her arm as she rests a hand on his shoulder one last time before she would head back to her home.
"Goodbye, Addison."
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