The sounds of the city were far away. Perhaps it was all the trees, the thick trunks and stretching branches catching the noises of cars and conversations in dense, woody nets. Perhaps the rustle of leaves disguised the hum of traffic, the chirps of birds distracted from the sirens. The throbbing heart of downtown wasn't far away, just short ferry ride, but its reach didn't extend to this little corner of Bainbridge Island.

Meredith wrapped her borrowed coat around her tightly. Habits were hardly disrupted with one night of drinking; she had cracked an eye open at dawn. The sheets had been cool beyond the warm cocoon she had curled into. A note was taped to the bathroom door: Had to check on a patient, be back soon. Soft light came through the cotton curtains on the windows. On the porch a cool, damp wind blew her tangled hair away from her face. A low pulse of pain throbbed at her temple. Dehydration, she thought, just a hangover. She should go inside and find a glass, grab a drink from the tap, but she didn't move. The reminder from last night was a comfort.

She tried to sort out the last twenty-four hours in her mind. The muscles of her thighs felt like worn hair elastics, slipping over hard bones. She remembered why she was standing outside a little aluminum trailer staring across acres of roughly trimmed grass, remembered everything that happened in that little metal bubble. That was just the outcome, however, of a day that she still couldn't quite grasp.

She wasn't sure if she was glad she was only engaged for the better part of a day. She knew she should be, that the pain was better tolerated this way. Derek had said something last night about it being better that she hadn't married Alex, and she was sure that he meant well. What she couldn't shake was how easy it was to walk away. If they had married there would be negotiations, a ritual to follow. It was silly; she was sure if she was faced with a messy divorce she wouldn't think she was lucky. But for all she and Alex had been, for that to be gone so fast, for them to be in the past tense without a single moving van or lawyer's visit, it just seemed too easy.

She was being melodramatic, yet wasn't that supposed to happen with a broken heart?

A spatter of mist hit her neck and she shivered, hugged herself further into the flannel coat she had snatched off the hook by the door. It was so quiet, much more quiet than she was used to living in the tightly packed old neighborhood she had grown up in. No noise of lawnmowers or putter of failing mufflers, no children's cries, no mothers' calls. The wind whistled slightly, the leaves rustled on the trees. This was a place to think.

Meredith began walking toward the tree line as the wind picked up. The rush of air in her ears made her feel like she was wearing earmuffs, the voice in her mind raised over the white noise. She had pushed her way into surgery yesterday like it was her right, as if she had half the passion for Cardio that Cristina did. She asked to be in the OR knowing her attending would give the daughter of the chief anything she wanted. Meredith walked along the edge of the grass under the trees, little clusters of dead leaves swirling near her feet as the wind pushed them on. Most of the attendings would give her what she wanted. No, that wasn't right, they were giving her mother what she wanted. Whether Meredith wanted it or not was irrelevant, she was just the catalyst her mother sent out to do her bidding, to politely insist that she get this privilege or that opportunity. She was a vessel for her mother's aspirations, a test case to see what Ellis Grey could have been if she had been born a couple decades later.

Meredith went along with it, just as she always had. She really did want in on that surgery, she was a scalpel junkie like the rest of the residents. She had the added benefit of her mother, a mother who said she was good for Cardio. A mother who sent her father to clean up after her, to smooth the edges of her rough guidance. Ellis Grey may have been Chief of Surgery, may have been the world class surgeon, may have been a goddess amongst mortals, but her father was the one holding the mortals at bay. Richard Webber was the PR guy, the guy who knew all the right words, who could take the ugly stone of Ellis's words and find the diamond inside, who could persuade them all that she was working in their best interest.

Meredith scowled into the cool, moist wind. They had bought it, all of her friends and colleagues, and her mother sailed her tight ship with the press snapping pictures of her stoic profile as Richard pulled the strings deep below deck. Meredith had told him yesterday that he was small, that Ellis kept him that way. She had said she wasn't going to be small like him.

In the early morning light miles away from everything she had grown used to, with her tears dry and the throb of a hangover prodding her sluggish brain into activity, she knew that she was done with the Ellis Grey propaganda machine. She could not close her eyes and pretend she didn't know what was going on. Her mother only acted in her own interest, nothing more. She knew that now. Her mother used her father to cover for her own selfishness, she knew that too. She just had to find a way to exist in this new world.

Meredith walked toward a break in the trees. The land ahead looked as if it dropped away, and once the trees thinned she could see Seattle across the Puget Sound. The familiar shades of neighborhoods, the mottled mosaic of roofs and clapboard slipping into the steel and concrete city center was a comfort. She had grown up here, had flown in and out of its airport and seen these roofs from ten thousand feet of homesickness when she returned, and yet she wasn't sure if it was the familiarity or the distance that was comforting her now. Would she be able to resolve herself to a new path this morning if she was looking at the same walls of her bedroom that greeted her every morning? Could she reconcile the mother she was determined to escape with the one who used to kiss her forehead late at night? Could she be a new Meredith in Seattle when she was surrounded by the old?

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. The break in the woods must have given her a brief trace of signal from a tower in the city. The wind rushed in her ears as she scrolled through the list of texts: two from Cristina, five from her father, and one from Alex. Last night her father wanted her home, this morning he hoped she had slept well. His last message said he told the hospital not to call, that she was taking the day off properly, and if she wanted in on some incoming trauma to let him know. However her world had shifted and tilted yesterday she smiled to think that her father was still a good man. That was what made him so valuable to Ellis, it made her poison pills easier to swallow if they came from such a caring hand.

Cristina was amused that suddenly she was sought after as to the whereabouts of one Meredith Webber. "They will be off your back for now," she said, "but you better tell me where you went that's so interesting. And it better be good." If there was one thing Meredith felt guilty about, it was making a pariah of the sort of person who would tell April that she was passed out on the couch just so she would shut up. She certainly didn't deserve anything from Cristina.

There were three simple words from Alex: Please call me. Leave it to him to ask for something in spite of everything.

"I hope you didn't miss anything important," Derek said, walking up behind her. The wind rushing in her ears was loud enough to cover the noise of his arrival and she jumped. "The reception here is spotty at best. Part of the charm, I think."

"It's my day off," she said, "but you knew that."

"I checked the board, you aren't missing anything. I even stopped by the pit, but Hunt said it had been a routine morning." He smiled at her, crossed his arms over his wool coat and shook his head. "I see you took my coat."

"Borrowed," she said. "I wasn't planning on being out in the wilderness when I left home yesterday."

"Fair enough," he replied. "Hungry?"

She nodded and they started to walk toward the trailer, the soft gleam of its curved roof just visible in a gap in the trees.

"The view is amazing," she said. "Why isn't the trailer here instead?" She pictured the view, the city spread out behind them now in soft morning light, blue and gray in the mist. She peeked over her shoulder. She wasn't sure she could ever get enough of it.

"I have plans," he said, "dreams really. Or I will have plans." He looked back at her, nodding toward the spot he had found her. "For a house, that is."

"You mean you don't intend to live in a trailer forever?" she asked.

"No." His stride was long, his gate jaunty, and Meredith had to make quick, skipping steps to keep up.

They sat the the tiny kitchen table and sorted through the danishes Derek brought with him from the city. "I felt bad leaving you here this morning. I don't keep much food here. No point really, when I eat at the hospital most of the time," he said, a blueberry danish in his hand, waving along with his gestures.

"I hadn't even thought of eating," she said.

"Too much else going on?" He put his elbows on the table and leaned forward, his eyes not leaving her face.

"Oh no," she said, "we aren't getting into my problems." She took a determined bite of her danish and chewed slowly. "Tell me about your house," she said after she had swallowed.

"Big windows looking out over the Sound. A porch that wraps around the other three sides, big enough to have half the hospital over for a barbecue. A master suite with the biggest, fluffiest bed you can imagine and a tub for two." He smiled, his gaze distant as he pictured it. "I have it down to where the kids' rooms will be," he said, and swallowed, "when I get around to having any, that is."

"Do you have blueprints?" she asked.

"Not yet," he said. "Addison didn't like the idea, preferred living in town. She kept finding ways of putting off finding an architect, she always had other uses for the money I wanted to spend. Then the baby, well, I didn't think I had time anymore." He smiled sadly at her. "I suppose I'm free to move ahead with it, aren't I?"

"You are," Meredith said, nodding.

"Your father says I need to start a clinical trial, though, stay competitive, keep your mother from tossing me out."

"Say what you want about my mother, but she does know how to make a career," Meredith said.

"Which is why I am going to work on it," he replied. "That is, as long as she feels the hospital can still hold both Dr. Shepards."

"You think she would do that?" Meredith asked.

"Your mother is a terrifying person." Derek took another bite of his danish. "And she hates me."

"Luckily you're talking to her daughter," Meredith said, smirking.

"You can't think that I have you out here to save my job." He stared at her, frowning slightly. "You don't think that."

"No," she said, "but you can't deny that there's something of a shade of nepotism to my mother."

"She cares about her family," Derek said simply. "I can understand that."

"She does." Meredith set her breakfast down. "In her own way, yes."

"You can talk to me, you know." Derek tilted his head, the corners of his eyed crinkled slightly. His voice was soft when he said, "We could be friends."

"A friend wouldn't make me talk about my stuff right now," she said.

"You need a friend," he stated.

"I have friends!" she said with a little too much emphasis. "I have," she began, but it took a moment too long to come up with a name. "Cristina," she said, "Cristina is my friend."

"Yang?" His eyebrows raised. "She's almost as scary as your mother."

"She's the reason the cavalry isn't out here right now. She covered for me, said I was passed out on her couch so no one would come looking for me." She stared at him as his eyebrows rose further.

"You told her you were here?" he said, paling slightly.

"No. Now stop judging my friends." She frowned at him.

Derek laughed. "Alright. So Yang is your friend. Why not have two friends?"

"I can only deal with so much," she said.

"I am too much?" he asked.

"Too much."

"Then," he said, leaning back, his demeanor every bit the cocky attending type that she saw every day around the hospital, "you won't have any trouble telling me what to do about this clinical trial."

"What do you want to be told?" she asked.

"I always thought that I would try to cure Alzheimer's. When I was a resident I saw these attendings with their old ideas, their slow progress. I thought I had something different, that I was destined for a breakthrough. I had all these ideas, you know, read all the latest research." He stared down at his hands, one still holding the last bite of pastry, and sighed.

"So cure Alzheimer's," she said. "The funding would be easy."

"That's the thing," he said, "the passion is gone. Years ago, I don't know how, but it's gone from all my work."

Meredith remembered when he had come from Manhattan. It was hard to forget, really, as her mother had secured him just before she began her internship. She could still hear the excitement in her voice as she discussed the benefits of having a world-class neurosurgeon to head the department. It was funny, in a sad way, that the residents seemed to have forgotten altogether that they were working with such an apparently gifted man, instead complaining about his attitude and his marriage and his soul-crushing schedule of routine procedures.

"You don't love Neuro anymore?" she asked. To her, having spent her whole life working toward a career she didn't even have yet, it felt unspeakable. Already most of the people she had grown up with were married and had kids. Some had even managed to get divorced by now. They had mortgages and vacations and babysitters and she was still creating her life, working ninety hours a week when she could get away with it, reading about the latest procedures being developed in her specialty when she couldn't. Her entire life was a build up to what he had, and to find that thing that had driven her so far was gone would be unbearable.

"I do love it," he said, "or I think I do."

"Maybe it's all the laminectomies," she said.

He looked up at her, confused.

"It might be the stents," she added.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"It's all you do. Boring stuff. The residents hate you for it."

"They do?" Despite the news, which he should have thought terrible, he smiled a bit.

"Well, how would you have liked it when you were a resident, with all that passion, to spend your time in the OR draining spinal fluid?" Meredith raised an eyebrow and he laughed.

"I removed a tumor from a baby today," he said. "A massive tumor," he clairified, "although Dr. Percy could have refrained from saying that in front of the mother."

"Did that do anything for you?" Meredith asked.

"I don't know," he said. "Addison was there, we were arguing, and it was like my hands were working without me."

"Apparently you and Charles were preoccupied with the same thing," she said with a laugh.

"Addison?" he asked.

"No one wants to work with both of the Shepherds," she said.

Derek nodded and made a low humming grunt in agreement. "My marriage is a menace," he said with a sad smile.

"Oh," Meredith said with a snort, "like we have suffered more than you."

"Good point," he said. He ran his hand over the thick, wavy hair just above his ear.

Meredith stood, abandoning the last bite of her breakfast on the table. "I need to get home," she said.

"I'll give you a ride," he countered.

"Just to the ferry," she said. "The whole hospital doesn't need to know where I've been."

"You were just spending time with a friend," he said softly.

Despite herself, she smiled at him as he opened the door.