A/N: Quick note, this is my first Grey's Anatomy piece, it'll have two more parts. Let me know what you think!
Beta'd by the awesome kakashisgf!
Part 1: Everything I Love
He can't unsee her. He can't remove the smell of her blood from his nostrils or the sight of her bruises from his memories. Meredith is a lot of things. Beautiful, brave, caring, a fucking mess. But never haunting. Not like this.
Everytime he closes his eyes, she's there, on the gurney, blue and purple and lifeless. He'd only stepped out for a minute because he couldn't breathe. He couldn't think.
His ears are ringing so loudly they block the babbling of everyone in the exam room. His eyes flit around unseeingly, at first, and then to the room where she was attacked, to the place everything fell apart.
The curtains are bent, the glass cracked, and he feels sick to his stomach. How long did she struggle in there, how much did she scream for help, everyone outside of that room unaware?
He wasn't there to protect her and now she is broken. A man nearly killed her, and he wasn't there to protect her.
Alex spins on his feet to the nearest trash bin and hurls. He heaves for long moments, until his throat burns with acid and his insides churn.
And the second it's over, he hates himself. She needs him there with her, and he's out here being a fucking mess.
Meredith is hurt and it sucks, and he can't do anything to help her. But he has to be there.
He stumbles back into the room, eyes bleary with unshed tears. Owen, April and Warren are turning her on her side, and Webber is holding her head steady, and she makes a sound so raw, so broken—like she's dying, like she's being ripped apart—and his lungs burn, they burn like they're made of coal.
He hastily wipes his eyes against his sleeve, afraid she can see his tears, afraid that she would for a second worry about his pain instead of hers, because that's what Meredith does. She puts everyone first, worries about everyone, fights for everyone when she should fight for herself.
He's distantly aware of Amelia in his peripheral vision, at the entrance of the room, sliding down to the ground like a puppet whose strings were cut, and he so badly wants to give in and collapse too.
"You can't work on your family!" Webber is chastising Maggie, and he wants to scream, to cry, to laugh.
"Everyone in this damn room is her family," he snaps, but it comes out hollow and weak. She broke him ... he can't believe it but she broke him.
Stephanie is asking Meredith, urgently, to move anything, her fingers, her toes, and his body is stone cold and burning all at once when there isn't a single response.
"It doesn't make sense! She responded to pain stimulus." He hates how desperate he sounds, like a broken man looking for a reason not to fall apart. She's damned him. She builds him up and takes him apart like a house of cards without even trying.
"Mer … Mer … Guys, I don't think she can hear us…"
Her jaw is fractured, they can't even get a tube in, and she's suffocating and he's suffocating, God will he ever breathe again? Jackson is saying something, but he can barely hear him over the blood rushing through his ears, throbbing, scalding. And then Jackson pops her jaw open.
She screams and screams and screams and struggles for air, and Alex cries. He cries like that first time his dad beat his mum to a bloody mess. He cries like that time he was shot in the chest and he thought he was gasping his last breath. Quietly. Afraid of being seen. But falling apart, every piece shattering.
…
He watches her eyes fluttering open. Tentative, like the wings of a butterfly, and he's afraid to hope. She's bruised beyond recognition. Swollen, blue, heartbreaking, and still everything he ever wants.
"Mer … " He's talking, and he knows she can't even hear him, but he just wants to say her name, to taste it on his tongue, to pretend everything is okay.
He tries to smile even when it hurts his face. Even when his jaw resists. He tries to smile for her.
…
It's like she's getting worse. The blue and purple take up half of her face until he can barely see her skin. She looks dead, something out of his worst nightmares.
She looks like his mother when his dad's beatings finally put her in a hospital, like the last time he saw her before he was taken away and thrown into a foster home just as bad.
They're taking her in to repair her ear, and he holds her hand—what else can he do? He's utterly useless where it matters, as always.
He wants to cry again, because it might not work.
She might never hear again, and it's too late to tell her he loves her so much it burns him alive. Day and night, every second of every fucking day that he's sure he would die choking on those three stupid words.
He squeezes her hand, rubs at the soft skin ... she's always felt like home, and now she's broken, like home, too.
She gazes at him with empty eyes, and he feels like he hasn't taken a single breath in three weeks, but he tries to speak. "You're going to be fine," he tells her. "I'm here," he promises. And then he smiles and his mouth doesn't work, so he just lets her go.
He watches them wheel her into the operating room and wonders if he'll ever feel whole again.
…
She's crying when he comes in to visit her. Heaving sobs, gasping breaths, strapped to the bed. She's wrapped in so many bandages he's afraid to touch her. And she's crying, and Meredith never cries. She makes those sounds, short, aggravated, so agonising he wonders if his skin will start to bleed, if it'll scratch him raw.
She can't hear him, but he still asks what's wrong. She can't hear him, but she still cries harder.
It hurts so much to watch that for a moment he wishes he could crawl out of his skin and die.
He moves without thought, gets into the space beside her like so many times before, because she is his home, always, and presses his nose against her cheek. He just wants to be home again, for a moment, just a moment.
She smells like hospitals and antiseptic and Meredith, and his body relaxes, slowly.
Blake sweeps by; she pauses to look at them, and he doesn't even care. Not anymore. This is the woman he loves, and he's done hiding in plain sight.
"Shhh," he whispers in her ear, wills his heart to slow down, wills her to stop crying.
"I love you," he confesses into her skin, barely moving his lips, but he thinks he'll burst and disintegrate if he doesn't say it.
She's still crying, still stuck in her personal hell, and he doesn't know how to help her, what to say anymore, so he tries: "Just get it out, get it all out."
He comforts her the only way he knows how.
"The tears, all the …" he trails off, because her crying calms down and now would be the perfect time to make a joke, if she could hear him, God, if she could just hear him. He does anyway. "God, you've got a lot of snot."
She laughs, startled and taken aback.
"I mean, you might have a serious condition," he continues, and he's smiling because she is. And that's all that matters, all he wants forever, to see her smile.
He hands her tissues. He's babbling because he doesn't know what else to do ... she hasn't laughed in weeks, and he never wants it to stop. "Come on, woman, blow your damn nose."
She laughs again, sobs, and wipes her eyes, and God, she's so beautiful she's—
His brain short-circuits, like he's just hit a mental wall. "Hang on. Mer."
She looks at him—Oh, God, she looked at him! He snaps his fingers ... he's so scared to ask, so hopeful, so terrified: "Can you hear me?"
She nods, and he thinks his heart might stop. "You can hear me?" he repeats, and he feels lightheaded with want.
She nods and hums again and a delirious laugh bubbles through his throat as he asks again, disbelievingly, like he'll wake up any second, "You can hear me!"
Meredith nods her head rapidly, grinning, and he could have died that second and not regretted it.
"Oh, my god." He's laughing, and she's laughing, and she's never looked more beautiful.
He can't help himself. He presses a heartfelt, desperate kiss to her forehead—his chest is so full, so tight, he thinks he will finally burst, but it's okay, she's okay, and that's all that he hoped for and more.
He presses his forehead against hers, and he laughs, and she laughs, and his eyes are stinging again, but she's laughing, and he can't cry, not now, not when he can finally breathe without feeling like flames are licking his insides.
I love you, he thinks again, and it's the truest thing that's ever crossed his mind.