A/N Thank you so much for the reviews for the first chapter, all of which encourage me to continue….so I will. More reviews would be nice, they are a great way to find out what people like or dislike, but I don't want to nag. This story really is just beginning, so I have time….and so do you.
I have to say, I couldn't resist writing the scene in the first chapter where Derek is told Meredith is alive. If there was one scene missing from the ferry arc story, it was that. Besides, 'missing' scenes are always fun to write. Anyway, onward! Please read and review.
Christina Yang had cried for hours after the wedding. Meredith had let herself in to the apartment and found her friend looking for any sign that Burke would be back. She couldn't find anything. Meredith tried to convince her that maybe he hadn't gone, maybe he'd be back, but Christina knew. His trumpet, his entire Eugene Foot collection, his lucky scrub cap were all gone. It was over.
The finality of it seemed to hit Christina like a body blow. One minute she was looking for Burke's things and the next she was a wreck, trying to drag the choker she wore from around her neck and struggling to free herself from her wedding dress. Soon she was hysterical, sobbing, her breath coming in short, painful gasps. Still she struggled with the fastenings on the dress. Hands that barely weeks before had mastered a running web stitch now shook as they tried to undo the zip on the back of her wedding dress. Meredith automatically picked up a pair of scissors and cut her friend out of the outfit. Once she was free, Christina sobbed harder, the removal of the constricting dress giving her lungs more room to gasp for air as she cried. She stood in her underwear in the middle of her apartment, crying as if her heart was broken. Instinctively, Meredith reached out, grasped Christina from behind and held her while she sobbed. She blinked away any tears that came into her own eyes. It was too late for that. It was all too late.
Eventually Christina wore herself out and Meredith guided her to bed, helping her to finish undressing before tucking her in as if she was a child. They exchanged no words, the only acknowledgement Christina gave to Meredith's presence came when Meredith moved to tuck a blanket around her friend's slight body. Christina reached out, grasped Meredith's hand and gripped, just for the fraction of a second. Their eyes locked briefly before Christina let go, rolled over and went to sleep. Meredith left the room quietly, closing the sliding door between the bedroom and the rest of the living space, softly behind her.
Meredith sat down at the table in the kitchen. She knew she couldn't go home. Christina needed her. She couldn't go home and risk her friend waking in the night and finding herself all alone.
Alone.
The word seemed to hang in the air after she'd thought it, like a thought bubble in a cartoon. It seemed to stick in Meredith's head. Christina was alone. Burke was gone. They were over.
Meredith sat in Christina's apartment and allowed the silence to wash over her.
'Don't you see, don't you understand? You're the love of my life'.
Meredith heard the words in her head. Suddenly it was as if Derek was standing in front of her again in the locker room. He was saying things. He was saying good things, perfect things, and all she wanted to do was run. Christina was getting married. It was a sign. If Christina could do this, if she could marry Burke, then it was a sign that everything hadn't turned to crap. It was a sign that it was possible to be happy. Christina's wedding was supposed to be a sign for Meredith that she could have something for herself, and that she was allowed to be happy with someone she loved. It was a sign that people don't always leave.
It was over. Burke was gone, Christina's wedding dress lay in abandoned white ribbons on her living room floor, exactly where they'd fallen when Meredith cut her out of the dress earlier, and Derek….
Meredith wondered how everything could have just turned around so fast. One minute she was back with Derek, after Addison and Finn and…the mess. They were happy. For the first time since they'd started this thing they were happy. All the months apart, the wife, the guilt, the inappropriate men, the vet and the endless glasses of tequila were gone. The only problems they had were her snoring and his morning breath. They were happy.
Then her father was at the hospital all the time visiting his baby granddaughter. He was there, all the time, with Molly, one of his daughters from his second marriage and her sick baby. His wife was there too, trying to include Meredith in the family. Meredith could see now, Susan was trying to be kind. She was trying to build a bridge between Meredith and the father who left when she was five. Susan tried to talk about Lexie, obviously thinking that finding common ground with Meredith would help. It didn't. Hearing how proud Thatcher was of another daughter who had just graduated from Medical School was just another reminder of all the time he hadn't been there for her. It proved that he didn't care about her. She was nothing more than a figure from his past. He had left and now he had another family, one Meredith would never, could never, be part of.
Then there was her mother. Her mother who had never really wanted her, the mother who had kept box after box of video recordings of her finest hours as a surgeon, but only one small photo album of pictures of her family. There was her mother with early-onset Alzheimer's, who remembered an illicit affair from the days of her residency more clearly than she remembered who her daughter was. There was her mother, who on the first day for five years that she was lucid, told Meredith she was ordinary.
Drowning in Elliott Bay was supposed to change everything. The three hours she'd spent somewhere between life and death were supposed to make a difference. She'd promised herself that from now on she was going to be better. She wanted to be alive. She was going to try. She was going to be happy. Giving up in the water had been stupid, really stupid. Now she had a second chance and she wasn't going to blow it.
When she was dead she'd seen things. She'd seen people, people she'd met before, patients who'd died. They made her see she had a reason to go back, she couldn't just give up. Then her mother suddenly appeared. When they parted for the final time Meredith felt closer to her mother than she'd ever been in life. All the sharp words and put-downs were gone. All that was left was a mother holding her child in one last embrace before telling her to run. Meredith knew it was a sign that she could go back and start again. She had Derek and Christina and her other friends. She could go back. She could undo the mistake she'd made in giving up in the water and no one would ever need to know what she'd done. She was going to be happy.
For a while Meredith meant it. She even swallowed her pride and made an effort with her father. That didn't go so well, especially when over dinner, he was talking about a photograph from years before that he was sure was Molly as a little girl. Meredith knew she probably should have kept her mouth shut. It was just a stupid photograph. Once he'd realised he'd made a mistake the atmosphere had become uncomfortable. He saw the swing outside the house was still there, she'd told him it wouldn't swing any more and he reached over and pulled a pin out from the mechanism. He told her she kept trapping her fingers in it when she was a little girl. Immediately the old swing creaked back to life, moving back and forth like a pendulum. Somehow it was a sign to Meredith that he had cared once, but somewhere along the line they'd lost each other.
The dinner was a success in that it brought Meredith closer to Susan, her father's second wife. Meredith was wary at first. She'd had a mother, she didn't need another one. But Susan persisted, wouldn't back away, even when Meredith was rude. When, just a while later, Susan was admitted to hospital, Meredith was sure everything would be fine.
Susan died. She'd been admitted to Seattle Grace with hiccups and she'd died from sepsis. It didn't make sense. Suddenly it was as if everything crashed around Meredith. Her father, her mother and Susan were all gone, her father was alive, but he was gone just as surely as Susan and her mother. He blamed her for Susan's death, slapped her and told her she wasn't wanted at the funeral. He was gone.
All the time since she'd drowned, weeks when she was trying to be happy, folded around her like a house of cards collapses under pressure. She shut down. Even her intern exam hadn't pulled her back from the abyss she had fallen into. If it hadn't been for the Chief allowing her to re-take the exam, she'd have lost her place at Seattle Grace and her career would now be over.
'Don't you see, don't you understand? You're the love of my life'
Derek had stood in the locker room and said that. He told her he couldn't break up with her, he was in this. She was the love of his life. She could see him begging her with his eyes, asking her to either be in this or put him out of his misery. The intensity of his gaze frightened her. After everything she couldn't just turn around and believe that everything would turn out right. Things like that happened in fairy tales, not to her. She needed a sign that would show her she could be happy with him. She needed Christina to get married.
The wedding went wrong. Meredith knew what it meant. As much as she loved him, she couldn't have Derek. So she walked down the aisle and told the guests they could go home. It was over. The look on Derek's face told her he knew what she meant. She wasn't just talking about the wedding. They were over.
A/N Well, there was a happy chapter folks! Sorry about that, our Meredith isn't exactly a chirpy little soul is she? I hope you can see where I'm coming from with this. I'm trying to show that Derek and Meredith are approaching their problems from different sides. Derek focuses on the drowning; he thinks that is the key to their issues. However, for Meredith it is more complicated. The drowning could have been something that changed her for the better, but then everything else crashed around her and she lost all hope. She loves Derek, really loves him, but she knows how things go when she loves people. They leave her. She won't allow herself to take a chance. Pushing Derek away is easier than taking a risk. More soonish. Even more soonish if you review.
