This is something quite different for me. It was written for a prompt given by Karevsanatomy on Grey's Haven (where it was originally posted) to write a story based on the song "Just a Dream" by Carrie Underwood. It closely follows the narrative of the song and includes a character death. The full lyrics are quoted at the end and I can recommend listening to the song if you get a chance.
Reviews would be really appreciated.
Baby why'd you leave me
Why'd you have to go?
I was counting on forever, now I'll never know
I can't even breathe
It's like I'm looking from a distance
Standing in the background
Everybody's saying, he's not coming home now
This can't be happening to me
This is just a dream
Just a Dream, Carrie Underwood
Mrs Meredith Sloan, she wrote on the light blue paper for perhaps the thirtieth time that morning. She inspected her handiwork and tried again, sweeping the broad nib of the elegant black fountain pen over the page yet another time, as its dark blue ink traced the loops and hooks of her nearly perfect handwriting. Lieutenant & Mrs Mark Sloan request the pleasure of— She broke off. Something else had to be written first. Dr & Mrs Thatcher Grey request the pleasure of your company at the marriage of their daughter, Meredith, to Lieutenant Mark Sloan.
That was the crucial part. That part had to come before Lieutenant & Mrs Sloan or Mrs Meredith Sloan. And that part, the marriage, would never happen now. With a desperate cry, she savagely scrunched up the sheet of paper into a tight ball and hurled it across the room, only just stopping short of bashing her small fists against the walnut writing desk she sat at.
They thought she didn't know. They thought the reason she sat here in her wedding dress day after day was because she'd lost her wits and had no idea he was never coming home. She heard them talking about sending her to a sanitarium. And, really, she didn't care. It made no difference to her now. At least, if she was sent away, she wouldn't have to endure her mother patiently reminding her what day it was — "It's Friday, Meredith. You have to change into something suitable for the memorial." Or her father asking her what year it was — "1918, Daddy"— in what he apparently considered to be a subtle test of her sanity. She knew the year and the day and where she lived and what her name was. It was just that none of these details seemed to have anything to do with her anymore. Nothing seemed to have anything to do with her since the day the telegram arrived. "Regret. Lt M Sloan killed in action, Amiens 10 Aug 1918."
And suddenly she couldn't breathe.
"Why," she gasped. She bowed her head and pressed her hands against her chest, fighting for the breath and composure that wouldn't come. "Why did you leave me? You were all I wanted and I can't . . . I can't . . . " The ability to breathe returned as she let out another desperate howl of grief.
"Meredith." The door to the small parlor had opened and Derek Shepherd stood there watching her uncertainly.
"Captain Shepherd," she replied evenly, hurriedly biting down her emotions and standing up to face him. She'd known Derek since childhood; she'd climbed trees and illicitly ridden the neighbor's plough horse with him; he'd treated her like a boy and made life more fun for her than it could ever possibly have been without him. Older than her by four years, he was, nevertheless, her friend. At least, he had been until he returned from France and Mark didn't. Until the evening he knelt by her chair and gave her Mark's message and told her he'd died bravely in his arms. Now he was no longer her friend and she was damned if she would ever call him Derek again. He was just Captain Shepherd now. The officer who let his men die and returned to New Jersey to marry Addison Montgomery and have a real life and not just the sad, ghostly dream that she would have to live out.
She swallowed. She couldn't bear it. She would never, ever feel Mark's warmth again. He wasn't coming home. He wasn't real. All he was now was a collection of dreams that would never, ever come true.
"Meredith," Derek said again and when she shot him a glance of pure hatred he briefly closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "You have to get ready," he said softly, his blue eyes taking on a look of intense sympathy and compassion. "He'd want you to be there. He loved—"
She stormed towards him and unleashed a furious slap across his face, shocking even herself at the violent connection she made with his skin.
"You were his family," she hissed, letting her hand drop to her side. "You were his friend. You were his captain." She shook her head in disgust and despair. "He trusted you," she whispered and stared fiercely into his eyes demanding a response.
He stared back impassively, not even lifting a hand to rub his stinging cheek. Worse things than this had happened to him in France. He knew she thought he was unharmed, unhurt, one of the lucky ones. And he knew she resented him for it. He was lucky, luckier than Mark, luckier than so many others. But that didn't make him unscathed and he'd learned to deal with his pain, as he was expected to do, by not reacting, not responding, not ever telling anyone what he'd seen and done and felt and how he would never forget it and how his life would never be the same. He knew she resented his quick marriage to Addison, his high-school sweetheart. He knew she resented his life. But that was all he had to hold on to. To love, as much as he still could and build a family in the rural New Jersey town he'd grown up in. It was all he had.
He took a deep breath before reaching out and briefly pushing a lock of her honey colored hair behind her ear. It was Mark's gesture and Derek knew this, but something made him want the connection with her. It wasn't just Meredith who had lost Mark; he had lost his best friend and he needed someone to share that with.
For a split second she leaned into his touch, but then the bitterness returned and she cuffed his hand away.
"How dare you?" she spat. "You . . . you—"
Again she found herself unable to breathe. She closed her eyes as she tried to regain control of her body and calm herself. And in her imagination she saw Mark, as he was the night before he left for France.
He hadn't even cared about the war. He thought it was all "a bunch of crap" made up by some "dusty old farts in Europe" who "didn't know how the modern world worked." He had cared about friendship, though, and he joined up because Derek was in the army and he didn't want to leave him alone.
Apart from his friendship with Derek and, later, Meredith, all Mark had cared about was having fun, women and becoming a doctor. Everyone knew about his "experience" with women and Meredith, innocent at seventeen years of age, had been both scared and excited at the prospect of what her mother liked to call "deflowering." Her mother didn't know how the modern world worked either!
The night before he left, Meredith had begged him to make love to her.
"Mer," he'd said, uncharacteristically awkward as he looked down at the ground to avoid her eyes. "Take it from me, you don't want to rush this. Not your first time." He had paused. "I don't want to rush this. Not with you."
"It wouldn't be . . . rushing," she'd insisted. "We're engaged. I love you. We're going to be married. I want to . . . to be . . ." she searched for a term to describe what she wanted from him.
"Deflowered?" he offered, smirking and winking suggestively at her and she slapped his arm in embarrassed frustration.
"So what would you call it then?" she'd asked, half irritated and half teasing.
He'd become very quiet. "I could tell you a few words," he'd said. "But none of them would fit you. None of them would fit how I would make love with you." He wrapped his strong arms around her and she could feel the warmth radiating from his muscular body. "I can't describe how I feel about you," he'd growled gently in her ear. "I don't have any words for it. It's the first time I've ever felt this way." He drew back slightly and looked into her eyes. "How about if I just say I love you and then try to show you the rest?"
"Seriously?"
He grinned. "Seriously," he mimicked her. "Damn it, Mer. I did the decent thing the first time; but you didn't think you'd have to ask me more than twice, did you?"
Mark had always been this blend of inappropriateness, irreverence and absolute love and kindness. Meredith had never met anybody like him and she knew that she would ache for him, for his body and his touch and his kiss and for the way he teased her and loved her and made her feel real, for the rest of her life.
"Meredith," Derek said again.
She had been almost happy for a moment, lost in her memories and she wanted to snap at him again for interrupting her and bringing her jarringly back to reality.
Except, as she looked at him, she realized that he could help her. That she could use him to follow through on how she wanted today to end.
"Derek," she said, surprising him by using his name for the first time in days. "Would you please go up to my bedroom and see if you can find my veil?"
"I can't, Meredith," he protested. "You have to change into appropriate clothes for the—"
"Please," she interrupted him. "I want to look at it one last time and then I promise I'll put it away and I'll take off the dress and I'll be what you all want me to be. But, please, just one last time." Her eyes pleaded with him and he gave in and left to go upstairs. And as he did so, she almost ran to the walnut writing desk, opened it and pulled out a box and a long stream of white lace – her veil.
Hurriedly wrapping the veil around the box, she ran to the front door, nearly colliding with her mother's maid and dashed out onto the grassy sidewalk in front of the blue and grey, wooden-sided house. There, as she'd hoped, was Derek's Chevrolet V8 Touring Car, a wedding gift from Addison's rich parents.
She cranked up the automobile and then jumped in the driver's seat, released the parking brake and set off. Of course the engine was noisy and as she looked briefly behind her she saw Derek sprint out onto the front deck. But, thanks to him and Mark, she had driven twice before. It wasn't difficult and she was able to power the fancy new machine up to an astonishing 35 miles per hour, according to the instrument Derek had informed her was the "speedometer." For a few moments, she felt exhilarated. She'd escaped her parents' house and Derek and all their demands for the day and she was on her way to have the day that she'd wanted, that she'd missed and that nobody dared to talk to her about anymore. She didn't want to think about Mark being dead and gone and never coming back; she wanted to hold on as long as possible to him being hers and with her and more than just a dream.
She arrived at the small church that was already filled with the sounds of a military memorial, with the band tuning up and sharp orders being given. She parked the car, lifted the box and the veil from the passenger seat and stole past the uproar towards the entrance to the church, determined to escape notice and not be stopped. But as she reached the entrance, some pale pink roses growing in the well-kept flowerbeds caught her attention. She should have flowers; she needed flowers; and she bent down and picked what she thought were the two most beautiful roses. Their entrancing scent filled her nostrils as, at the same time, a thorn from one of the stems pricked her finger and the dual sensation, of pleasure and pain, seemed like a fitting tribute to her situation and her emotions.
Resting the roses on top of the box and the veil, she silently entered the cool, dark church and found a seat right at the back in the shadows, hoping nobody would see her. She wanted it to be peaceful, gentle; she didn't want to make a scene; but if anybody tried to interfere with her, she would fight with everything she had to make this day go the way she wanted it to.
She took stock. She wasn't really prepared but it would have to do. She didn't have a choice. At this she had to suppress the sob that was about to overtake her. She didn't have a choice in any of this. Her choice would have been to have Mark, alive and with her. Her choice would be to be the carefree girl she'd been, in love and blissfully happy; not a sad shell of herself lurking in the back of a church, wearing a crumpled wedding dress she'd put on a week ago, when she'd learned that she was supposed to attend her lover's memorial instead of their wedding, and not taken off since.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She had the veil; she had the sixpence in a small, porcelain shoe that she'd taken from her mother's bedroom, a memento of Ellis's wedding to Thatcher; and she had something blue. And this thought brought a small smile to her lips. She was wearing a blue, frilly garter that Mark had insisted he'd stolen from a Brooklyn whore house, but Derek always said he'd bought at a ladies' lingerie store specifically to give to Meredith. She'd never been able to decide which version she liked best and still couldn't. But today, she thought, she'd go with the whore house story, because that way it could also be the "something borrowed," and she thought with another unexpected flicker of pleasure that there was something oddly appropriate about Mark Sloan's bride wearing a garter taken from a New York prostitute!
She realized that everything had gone quiet outside and then she heard footsteps echoing on the hard floor of the church. She turned to see Derek, in full dress uniform, standing a few feet from her.
He smiled uncertainly. "I got a ride with your mother and father," he said softly and gave a little shrug. "They're ready. Our . . . my company's out there and your parents, and my parents, and Add—"
Meredith nodded. "I have to do something first," she said. "Then I'll come out." For the second time that day, her beautiful green eyes pleaded with him. When she said, "Please don't get in my way," in a soft but adamant voice, Derek knew better than to argue with her and turned, with a brief nod, and left through the church door.
Almost as soon as he'd gone, she heard the sound of trumpets playing the Last Post. And to this background, she opened the box and took out Mark's letters to her. There were only two as Mark didn't like writing and hadn't been away all that long. And one of these was only a postcard bought in Paris and showing a can-can dancer in a very flexible position, with the message, "Damn, you should see the women here (only kidding)! When the war's over and we're married, I'll bring you here for a dirty weekend. Love you, Mark."
The other was a mud-stained, censored letter sent from the front. Mark had described a football game they had gotten together, lamented the disgusting coffee they were made to drink and asked her to try to be better friends with Addison, for Derek's sake.
Then at the end, he had written that he loved her. And it was this part that her eyes were now drawn to, as she ran her hand over the paper, hoping that some feeling of him might have remained. "I love you, Mer," was written in his endearingly messy scrawl. "I didn't know it was possible to feel how I feel about you. There's nothing I want more than to get out of this god-awful place and come home to you. But there's something you should know." The censor had blacked something out at this point. "—and some guys from our company bought it today. And now I've got this feeling that—I'm sorry, but I've got to tell you this—that maybe my number's up and I'm not going to make it back. So I need you to know, baby. If I don't make it back, I'm okay with that. It was enough for me that you loved me and that you let me love you back. (Well, that and the fact you let me "deflower" you that one time!) You made my life worth living, and how much time I had or didn't have with you is never going to change that. And, Mer, I get that you'll be sad for a while; but don't waste your life, okay? You're beautiful. You'll make me happy if you find another guy and make a good life with him. But whether you find someone else or not, just know that I will always love you and that's never going to change."
Meredith folded the letter up and put it back in the box with the postcard and the porcelain shoe and put the box on the seat next to her. She refused to cry; that wasn't what she was here for.
The congregation assembled outside began to sing one of those military hymns for fallen heroes to the accompaniment of the band, and she realized that she'd never before really understood these hymns. The sadness of it wrenched at her heart and it was all she could do to stand up, unfold the veil and arrange it over her face.
Holding the box and the two pink roses in front of her, she walked slowly up the aisle until she stood before the altar, where she bowed her head. "I love you, Mark," she whispered. "Even though, when I see you now, it will be just a dream, you'll always be in my heart and you'll always be real to me." She swallowed. "I, Meredith Lucy Grey take thee, Mark Frederick Sloan, to be my lawful wedded husband. Even though I'll never hold you again and even though my life may change so much you wouldn't recognize me if you saw me again. I will never forget you and I will always, always love you."
She lifted the veil from her face, turned around and walked back down the aisle in the direction of the door and out into the dazzling sunlight.
As her vision cleared, she saw her mother and father, Derek's mother and father and Addison in the front row of the seats. Derek had been Mark's only family, so these were the people that counted as loved ones. Behind them were friends and acquaintances from the town and senior officers from Derek and Mark's company. And off to the side the band, an honor guard and Derek, slightly apart from the others, holding a folded up flag.
She had only just taken in the scene when the honor guard raised their rifles and fired a volley of shots into the air and, in her shock, her right hand let go of the pink roses, which fell to the ground, even though her left still held tightly to the box of letters.
The shots had broken into the cocoon she had made for herself and she felt as though her heart had shattered inside her. For the first time she fully understood where she was and what was happening and the distance that stood between her and all the other people in her life seemed to fall away. Instinctively, she sought Derek's eyes and at her unspoken entreaty he walked towards her, hurrying as much as he could given his ceremonial duties.
When he reached her, after a fixing her with a reassuring gaze, he handed her the folded flag and she clung to it, this last reminder of her lover, this last proof that somebody other than her remembered him and who he was and that he was a real, live, warm man and not just a name on a tombstone, not just a dream.
"He's not coming home," Meredith whispered to Derek.
"No," he said, his voice almost failing as tears filled his eyes.
She nodded. "I loved him so much," she said.
"I know, Meredith," he said. "He loved you."
She nodded again. "I'm sorry," she said. "I know it wasn't your fault. I know you were his friend. I just— Can we be friends again?" she asked, adding "And Addison?" as she remembered Mark's words.
Lines crinkled around Derek's eyes as he broke into a smile. "I'd like that," he said. "So would Addison."
Meredith allowed herself a slight laugh. "I . . . I think I should take this dress off," she said, glancing down at herself briefly. "Would you give me a ride home?"
"Of course," he said. "It would be an honor."
"Derek," she asked uncertainly. He gave a very slight nod in response. "Would it . . . could I . . . could we sometimes talk about Mark?"
"I'd like that, Meredith," he said softly.
"Because that way I could . . . we could remember . . . who he was and that he had a life with us."
He considered for a moment. What he was about to say wouldn't be everyone's idea of appropriate. But this was Mark's fiancée and Derek's old tree-climbing companion. "Would you like me to tell you about the Brooklyn whore house?" he asked her with a slight twinkle in his eye.
When she gave him a tearful smile in response, he took her arm and walked her towards his car. "Well, the whore in question was called Iris . . . " he began, grateful that they could share their memories and that this and their friendship would help them both to heal.
It was two weeks after the day she turned eighteen
All dressed in white
Going to the church that night
She had his box of letters in the passenger seat
Sixpence in a shoe, something borrowed, something blue
And when the church doors opened up wide
She put her veil down
Trying to hide the tears
Oh she just couldn't believe it
She heard trumpets from the military band
And the flowers fell out of her hand
Baby why'd you leave me
Why'd you have to go?
I was counting on forever, now I'll never know
I can't even breathe
It's like I'm looking from a distance
Standing in the background
Everybody's saying, he's not coming home now
This can't be happening to me
This is just a dream
The preacher man said let us bow our heads and pray
Lord please lift his soul, and heal this hurt
Then the congregation all stood up and sang the saddest song that she ever heard
Then they handed her a folded up flag
And she held on to all she had left of him
Oh, and what could have been
And then the guns rang one last shot
And it felt like a bullet in her heart
Baby why'd you leave me
Why'd you have to go?
I was counting on forever, now I'll never know
I can't even breathe
It's like I'm looking from a distance
Standing in the background
Everybody's saying, he's not coming home now
This can't be happening to me
This is just a dream
Oh,
Baby why'd you leave me
Why'd you have to go?
I was counting on forever, now I'll never know
Oh, now I'll never know
It's like I'm looking from a distance
Standing in the background
Everybody's saying, he's not coming home now
This can't be happening to me
This is just a dream
Oh, this is just a dream
Just a dream
Yeah, Yeah