A/N: Thank you so much for all your reviews on this story and excitement for me to continue. So here we go with chapter two. But listen up, MerDers - this story's for you and I want it to be an interactive experience. Read up, hopefully enjoy, and check me in the notes after the story for more on that...


.. Lines and Aftermath ..


You know in those old movies from the 1930s and 1940s, there'd always be a sassy dame – classy, but mouthy – the kind who stalks into the room wearing a fabulous outfit and killer heels, drops a showstopping line and then walks out again? Think Katharine Hepburn. Think Rosalind Russell. Think of the old tube TV switched to AMC, alone at night while my mother is at the hospital saving someone else's life and I'm filling the silence at home with women who seem to know exactly what they're doing.

But it's a funny thing about dropping lines. Those movies never taught me what comes after you drop the line. No one warned me how those lines can devastate. No one told me what happens next can be the worst part.

The last time, the you must be the woman who's been screwing my husband time, Meredith turned around and left. She'd heard enough to know it was time to bury her betrayal in as many shots of tequila as she could fit in her fists. She walked away.

But this time it's her line. Her words are the ones that drop, and from the expression in Derek's eyes he knows exactly where Meredith found her inspiration.

This time, Meredith's not the little intern gobsmacked by a painful truth.

No, this time Meredith's in charge.

Her heart is pounding with power; when the nervous-looking brunette stammers an awkward introduction, Meredith doesn't even catch her name. She doesn't retain any of it from length to consonants. It could be Mary, it could be Veronica, it could be HusbandStealer for all she knows, the name just disappears into the air along with her stammering something between a greeting and an apology.

"I should – I should go." The brunette is looking from Derek to Meredith to the door and back again like she's trying to draw a triangle with her eyes.

"Oh, well, if you have somewhere else to be," Meredith says pleasantly. "Nice to meet you. I'm sure I'll be seeing you again soon."

Okay, maybe I have a few more lines to drop before I'm done.

The brunette looks horrified at the thought of seeing Meredith again soon – appropriately so. And then she's vanished, if not physically then at least from Meredith consciousness. The click of the door makes clear she's left the room, too.

Good.

"Meredith …"

"Let me talk first," she says. "Because I do want you to talk. I have questions, and I need answers – I don't know if I want answers, but I do need them – but not yet."

He's looking at her mutely.

"Derek?"

"You told me not to talk."

She has to force herself not to smile. "Do you understand what I mean?"

"I do. I get it. And it's fair. I want to talk to you, but I can wait until you're ready."

"Okay, then." She nods. "Thank you."

"But, Meredith …" He studies her seemingly bare possessions, the diaper bag and two small children. "What is this? It's a visit, it's a … temporary thing? What?"

"What is this?" She follows his gaze. "This is our family. And our family is not a temporary thing."

The knot of his rises moves as he swallows hard. Gently, he sets Zola down in the soft chair by the door of his office and then turns back to Meredith, speaking quietly. "You're … moving here. You're moving here?"

"We're moving here."

"Meredith … I don't know what to say."

He looks genuinely stunned.

"Say you know a child-friendly place to eat lunch," she suggests, raising her volume so her daughter can hear. "Zola's starving and so am I."

"I'm starving," Zola confirms. "And so is Bailey," she adds, interpreting his needs like the big sister she is. "Daddy … are you hungry too?"

He's staring at Zola's face like he's trying to memorize it. "I'm too happy to be hungry," he says throatily, and then he scoops her off the chair and holds her tightly again. When they pull apart, he uses the end of his tie to tickle their daughter's cheeks like he's done since she was small; she still squeals with laughter and grabs the lapels of his jacket.

Derek meets Meredith's gaze. "We'll talk more? At lunch?"

"After lunch," she says. "We'll talk more after lunch. We'll talk more when we can talk alone." She shifts Bailey in her arms. "I have a stroller at security. And some other things."

"You're always prepared."

"You taught me well. I used to have to prep your OR."

For a moment his gaze is so intense she doesn't want to break it, and then Zola giggles again and he turns his attention to her. "Let's find you some lunch, ZoZo, huh?"

He shifts her to his hip and his free hand settles in the middle of Meredith's back, guiding her through the door he opens and into the hallway.

"Dr. Shepherd, you have visitors!" The warm voice calls out to them as soon as they leave Derek's office.

The receptionist, a friendly-faced older blonde with a bouffant of neatly teased hair, beams at them from her hexagonal post near Derek's office.

"I do." Derek is smiling; she can hear it in his voice. "Marianne, this … is my family."

"Hello, family." She beams at them. "Oh, what beautiful children. No wonder I spend half my time searching for the perfect flights back to Seattle. You miss these faces, and who wouldn't?"

Derek smiles. "This is Zola," he gives her a little boost on her hip. "Zo, you want to say hi to Daddy's friend?"

Zola, who can read a room so impressively sometimes it's almost scary, waves one small hand at the reception and tops it with a big smile and an audible hi and Meredith thinks for a moment the woman might actually faint.

"Hi, sweetheart. She's just darling, Dr. Shepherd. Oh my."

"We think so too. We're a little biased." He introduces Meredith and the softly snuggled little lump that is Bailey before taking their leave.

"Heading out for the day? Or just for lunch?" The receptionist looks from Meredith to Derek.

For lunch, she waits for him to say.

"For the day," he says, "but I'm reachable, and tell Sherman I'll be checking in around four."

"Will do." She rewards them with one last sunny smile. "Bye now!"

Meredith turns to her husband at the elevator bank. "Taking the afternoon off, huh?"

"You're not the only one with surprises up your sleeve, you know."

"Oh, really."

"Really." He nods with confidence. "I have surprises you've never seen."

"You didn't know we were coming."

"A technicality." He reaches out to rub Bailey's back through the carrier, then leans in to see his sleeping face. "He looks so much bigger."

"He changes every day."

Derek looks like he's going to say something, but the elevator arrives and they board, Derek directing Zola to push the button for the lobby. She clings to his leg when she's done it, laughing when he pretends to shake her off, tickling her in the process.

"Zola really missed you," Meredith observes, enjoying watching them together as she always has.

"Zola did." Derek's head is tilted slightly, his eyes very soft. "What about her mother? Did she miss me?"

Meredith shifts Bailey in her arms. "Ask me after lunch."

"You know … elevators used to be sort of a special place for us, not sure if you remember…"

"Don't push your luck." But she can't help reaching up to give his face a quick pat, enjoying the feeling of his faint stubble against her palm.

It's cool enough for a light jacket, the trees starting to bud. All around them, bare branches are starting to come back to life. After flying across the country, Zola doesn't want to be carried, no matter how happy she is to see her father. She insists on walking, clinging to one hand from each parent. And she's thrilled, the busy DC passersby are less so.

Derek finally solves the problem by offering her a ride on his shoulders and a resulting vantage point higher than anyone else's. She ends up delighted with her newfound power, as well as the ready-made handlebars of Derek's thick curls. And now the citizens who just want to get lunch and go back to work can pass them on the sidewalk.

Compromise. Maybe it actually works.

Meredith pushes the stroller, the soothing motion of the wheels keeping Bailey asleep. He'll be hungry too, soon – as Zola predicted – but with Derek here too it won't be the complicated dance she had to do in the airport, on the plane, and so many times in Seattle, juggling two small children, keeping her active little daughter from hurting herself or dashing out of vision while tending to her baby son. There are two of them here now, and two children.

Maybe the odds are finally in her favor after all.

They sit in a booth at a diner where the waitress – who seems to be straight from central casting – clearly has some experience with Derek, greeting him by name and reciting an order that Meredith can tell is perfectly memorized.

"Dr. Shepherd, I can't believe I'm finally seeing you in a group. He's always alone," she tells Meredith. "He always comes in here alone and I always tell him, honey, no one who looks like that should be alone."

Meredith laughs in spite of herself.

"My family flew out from the west coast," Derek says, and Meredith catches the way his lips twitch with pride.

"Your family, huh?" The waitress, hairnet containing her bun, dark pink smock covering a tan dress, looks from one Shepherd to the next, starting with Zola, who is currently using a purple crayon to swirl her name across the yellow placement, and then Meredith, who has swiped Zola's blue crayon to stick through the hasty updo she constructed out of necessity when Bailey attempted to scalp her with the hand not holding his bottle, and then Bailey himself, who is sleeping again in his mother's arms, half baby and almost toddler with his soft hair and round cheeks.

"Your family," the waitress repeats. Her name tag says Glenda. "Well, doc, I guess I was wrong, you weren't alone after all."

"No, I wasn't." He smiles back and Meredith feels a squeezing sensation in her chest that has nothing to do with the greasy French fries she plans to order.

"So." Derek pushes away his plate – the salad was constructed so perfectly to his specifications that Meredith wonders for a brief, not-funny-but-funny moment if fifty-something Glenda is actually the woman who answered Derek's phone.

Zola, who begged for a club sandwich, has managed to make her way through one or two of its massive three layers. (Privately, Meredith is almost certain that her daughter's sudden passion for turkey and bacon was actually a misunderstanding that club sandwich would have something to do with Club Math, her favorite or what Derek likes to call child-propaganda programs.) Zola's mood is mellowed from food and recovered from her brief annoyance when Bailey expressed interest in the pretty, colorfully-ruffled but very sharp toothpicks from her precariously stacked sandwich and her parents hastily confiscated them.

"So," Meredith answers, snagging a piece of untouched bacon from Zola's plate.

"I'm done," Zola announces, looking down at the pile of sandwich parts that's not much smaller than when it arrived. "You can have the rest."

"Thank you, Zo, that's good sharing."

"Daddy, you can share too." Zola holds out a cheerfully threatening handful of bacon toward her father next.

He leans forward to nibble one pieces of bacon out of his daughter's hand – she squeals with surprise and drops the rest on the table and ground.

Meredith props her head in her hand, hoping bacon is good for split ends.

"Well. It's wonderful that y'all came to visit the doctor." Glenda beams at the four of them as she ambles back up to their booth. "I know he's been real lonely – don't get mad, now," she adds, smiling fondly at Derek. "But I will say the table was a little cleaner when it was just him."

Derek laughs. "Sorry about that," he says, and as if trying to prove his point Zola's elbow slides into her – thankfully mostly finished – glass of milk, and tips it over. Red plastic bounces off the tabletop and a puddle of sticky liquid spills out.

"Oops."

Derek rights the glass and Zola stares at the spreading puddle for a moment before grasping a handful of napkins from the pile on the table and using a large stack to soak up the liquid.

"Well, aren't you a smart little girl!" Glenda's voice is bright. "My grandkids would've just dumped out the rest." She turns to Derek. "Check, hon?"

"Yes, please."

Derek leans forward across the booth when the waitress takes her leave.

Zola, in one of her lightning-quick shifts of childhood circadian rhythms, holds her arms up to Derek to be cuddled and promptly starts dozing on his lap. Meredith looks down at Bailey, who's still sleeping.

"Something we said?" Derek teases.

"Jet lag?" Meredith smiles a little. "Or we bored them."

"And here we thought we were interesting." Derek sighs. "Hey…"

Meredith looks up.

"Move over," he says.

She starts to ask why, then decides against it, just bracing herself on the edge of the heavy table and pulling herself and Bailey to the wall. Derek eases out of his side of the booth, holding Zola close, and settles next to Meredith without waking their daughter.

"Hi," he says.

"Hi." She strokes Bailey's back through the carrier. "We're … on the same side," she observes.

"We're always on the same side."

"Don't get all symbolic on me." She shakes her head. "What's with the move?"

"We're done with lunch," he says.

"We're done with lunch," she agrees.

"So…"

She lifts an eyebrow, waiting.

"So, you said to ask you after lunch. Did you? Miss me, I mean."

"Well … I'll put it this way." Meredith strokes Bailey's back again, his sleepy breathing against her chest soothing. "I just left behind the most incredible house I've ever seen, that my husband painstakingly built for me, on some of the most beautiful land in Seattle, to move to a city I have seen more than once described as a combination of all the worst aspects of the other major American cities, with a special hell all its own."

Derek looks like he's trying not to smile, all kinds of emotion behind the curvature in his lips, from amusement to hope.

"…so, based on that … "

But he leans in and kisses her before she can finish her sentence, which should be complicated with a sleeping Bailey cuddled against her and a dozing Zola cuddled in her father's arms, but Derek manages it somehow and she can't resist tangling her free hand in his hair as his lips capture hers, electrically familiar. They're gentle but insistent, asking permission and staking a claim all at once.

She's already staked hers. And later, once they've settled in to the hotel room tonight … maybe she'll stake another.

For now, it's enough to kiss him back, enjoying the feeling of having everyone she loves in such close proximity.

When he pulls back she actually feels a little wobbly. She tucks her hair behind her ears, catching her breath. His eyes are hazy when she meets them; he looks as affected as she does.

"I didn't let you finish your answer. But I guess it's not really fair to ask you now if you missed me … ?" His grin is halfway between sheepish and cocky; she should be annoyed, but she can't stop the smile that's already starting to cover her face.

"No, it's not fair," she agrees. She reaches her free hand out to rest it against his chest, covering the fabric of his shirt near their sleeping daughter's sweet face. She likes feeling his heartbeat. "And yes … I did."

"I knew it."

"But we still have a lot to talk about. Derek," but he's kissing her again, so she decides that talking can wait. For now.

Okay, so sometimes what happens next can be the worst part. You drop a line and then the world caves in. Relationships are split, betrayals are revealed, lives are ruined.

But maybe sometimes what happens next … it isn't worse. It isn't worse at all.

Maybe it's even better.


TBC. Input! What do you want to see in this alternate half-of-Season 11? What do you wish had happened if Mer had taken the babes to DC for a new start? Likes, dislikes, preferences? Is it too obvious that I want Zola in every scene because she's cuter than life? Are you okay with my Grey's style intros and endings because I am really loving doing them and I kind of don't want to stop ever. In other words, think of this as a MerDer choose your own adventure, and ... choose the adventure you want me to write. Review and let me know your thoughts!