A/N: I don't even know...and I've never attempted this character in more than three paragraphs so...yeah. Enjoy-
~-~-~-~-~-~
Death Came and Got Me
- Rosie Thomas
~-~-~-~-~-~
At first everything seems oddly the same. People walk on eggshells, tiptoeing around the subject of the crazy murdering spree (even Cristina, which should seem weird in and of itself, but doesn't). Alex is cracking stupid jokes, Arizona is skating through the halls and sometimes you find yourself thinking that maybe it didn't happen.
Maybe Derek didn't get shot in the chest while you watched helplessly. Maybe there was never a baby. Maybe you're still four seconds from sliding down a wall and bemoaning your silly, trivial love life with Alex.
But you notice the glint of sadness that appears to be prevailing, the melancholy that reverberates through the refurbished walls. Or April will study you while she's busy watching your post-it husband's recovery like a hawk. And then there will be a faint remark from a patient in the pit about this being a cursed hospital.
At first it's awakening, humbling. Annoying follows shortly after.
You're not the same afterward. You aren't meant to be. But it doesn't stop you from pretending. It doesn't keep you from wishing that it was all bad dream that could be washed away with a scalding shower.
Because Derek's frustrated, Derek's ashamed, and Derek's perpetually tired.
And playing the doting wife, nursing him back to health, would be fine if you weren't also trying to hold down a permanent position as the resident to watch while the board flounders in finding a replacement for your angry partner.
(Three months in and the balancing act is getting tedious.)
Sometimes you feel like you are carrying the bulk of the weight in your relationships. You're kind of the superglue keeping everyone from ripping each other's heads off. And what you'd like, what you think you need, is to let Cristina bitch about Owen to someone who doesn't want to maim him, and tell Alex to stop screwing with your sister because that heartbroken look she's wandering around with makes you strangely protective.
You want to tell Bailey to start yelling at interns again, and tell Mark Sloan to grow the hell up, because if you can do it, anyone can, and you want to tell Teddy to get out of Seattle, maybe even Washington as a whole.
But you bite your tongue, because it's a time to be cautious, not honest.
(Five months in and you're starting to realize that things will never be the way they once were.)
Derek comes back to work, stuffs himself inside his office embarrassed about his inadequacies, and simultaneously begins pushing you millimeters further and further away. He doesn't notice, you don't either, at first. A missed dinner or night spent in an on call room is certainly nothing you two haven't shared before. But the little coffee cart meetings and running into him in the hall for your evening kiss, those events get sporadic.
And then you aren't seeing him for days at a time. And it gets easier to resent someone whose face isn't there when you flip over in the morning.
And when the world thinks it's forgotten about the tragedy, Derek is there to remind you. His scars, both emotional and physical are an aching reminder that he could be dead. He wants to name your first child Charles or Reed (a stammering thought after a solid night of drinking), and though neither of those particularly bother you, his incessant need to hold on is getting disturbing.
(Seven months and things are starting to slip out of your grasp.)
Cristina breaks it off with Owen, starts again with Owen, and one night at Joe's, doused with liquor and bad ideas, you contemplate calling Burke back. Cause even if he did do the disappearing act at the alter, he's not as bad as this new guy. You also roll through the idea of calling Addison for some unknown reason but dismiss it with another shot.
Lexie is back with Mark, Alex is in a weird pining place where he stashes himself away with the babies, Callie is on the crazy fertility warpath, and no one is talking to you about the things that were never supposed to happen. There's no way to introduce that topic half a year after the fact with the husband you are busy replacing with alcohol and cool surgeries.
(Eight months past and you see that no one is really talking to you at all.)
You're pretty certain you're doing a bang up job, jaunting through the halls, riding stretchers, sipping your morning caffeine like you're on top of the world. You've got another great year of residency behind you, your husband is the Chief, and this morning there was a pot of purple peonies in your locker for no good reason.
But you've still got the dead mommy, non-existent daddy, a best friend who is both missing in action and irritatingly present, freaky half-sister, the drowning thingy, and a darker past behind you that then you'll ever let anyone at Seattle Grace know about.
You're all whole and healed now. You're in the (dys)functional relationship. You're the advice giver.
(Ten months gone and the only one who isn't fooled any longer is you.)
Derek yells more. He still winds up with his head on the pillow next to yours, but his barbs are getting more stingy by the match. Sometimes you're the unwitting martyr, sometimes you scream back. Either way, he apologizes.
He's forgiving, forgetting, about everything except the one thing he'll never let go of.
He's always afraid you're going to leave him, in some form, and it's a hard thing to fight. It takes a great amount of effort to not give up, because he was right, you wrote that rulebook.
Dr. Wyatt is not impressed when you make a glorious return, she never is. You tell her that you think about it, the bay.
Derek would have been broken, but living for someone else, and this future being the payoff- wordless lunches, group outings that end in verbal sparring, they were not what you were bargaining for.
Dr. Wyatt advises talking about things, a new motto. You figure what Derek doesn't know clearly isn't what's killing him.
(Eleven months wasted and you're starting to question things.)
It comes out one rainy night, because it's always raining and Derek is always ranting about one thing or another. It's a complete non sequitur, has nothing to do with anything, and everything to do with the way his face changes. It's manipulative and amazing.
He's stunned, and for a split second you wish you had your person here instead, but then he gathers you in his arms, and you get to relive the pain you never let yourself experience in the first place.
You finally understand that you want to be the model of excellence they all presume you to be.
(A year later and it all comes together.)
There's a memorial, a splash in the news, and you bury your head for the day pulling extra shifts until your feet are on fire and your head hurts from being crammed full.
He's sitting in the locker room late that evening, stretched across the wooden bench, waiting.
This time you failed him. On the anniversary of his almost death you were shrouded with surgical masks and busy playing make-believe.
But you aren't fixing one another anymore. There are some things that no one can heal.
Between the Alex/Lexie/Mark never-ending drama, and Cristina getting engaged to a certifiably seriously ill man who'd you love to run over, things have begun to slip your mind. You're so swept up in everyone's issues- Alex finally getting divorced, Mark trying to propose, Cristina killing her first patient, that it's easy to overlook home issues.
There's a wooden frame up on a muddy hill in Seattle waiting for walls, and you just can't.
(Fourteen months and it's all feeling like a circle.)
It becomes overwhelming in a quiet way. There's no way to explain it to Cristina, to Derek. Because no one hears you when you speak. You're bouncy Meredith now, you're their model of success and hope. Things are expected of you. There's no room for the dark and twisty recesses.
It's the whispering friend on your shoulder when Derek lays into you about kicking out Alex, an old buddy when you find Lexie mourning her dead mother in a heap of tissue and wasted glass bottles one afternoon.
Dr. Wyatt says you hold yourself back. She says you impede your own progress. She wants to know what is stopping you from building that roof.
(Eighteen months and your life isn't yours.)
It's hard to say what it is to become a ghost, a shadow of someone who was once going somewhere. You turn down a spot at Mayo because Derek's never leaving Seattle. You throw away the chance to work in Spain. You toss whatever comes knocking. It becomes a point of bitterness between you both. Cristina bolts at the first opportunity to escape, begging you to ditch McDreamy (as of late renamed McDrag), promising to keep in touch.
Derek can't fathom why you don't want to be here, why here isn't the most amazing place in the world. He doesn't understand what a fresh start would be even though that's how you met.
So you alienate. Alex is still around, rounding on the floors above you. And Lexie is out on maternity leave, Mark fighting for more paternity vacation from Derek. But they all are as good as gone.
At some point it becomes the rock in your pocket. On some level it's hard to acknowledge it was ever not there.
(Twenty months washed away and you're beginning to think change is impossible.)
It isn't about anyone. It isn't about you. It's neither selfish, nor selfless.
It isn't a culmination. It isn't the lacking.
There's neither too much pressure, nor too little love.
This time you think Derek should be mad at you, he's already angry enough at the world.
(Two years in and you're cheating the ending.)