A/N: Well, here we are with chapter 3!! I wan't planning on posting this so soon, but I had a very nice review from NNP1981, and she mentioned that it was her birthday today. So Happy Birthday, Natalie; hope you like your present! Cristina is one of my favorite characters on the show; I think she gets the best lines! Hopefully I've done her justice here. As always, thanks and hugs for my wonderful betas, AriaAdagio and samsolace. You guys rock!!!

Disclaimer: Please. I so don't own them. All I own is Seasons one and two on DVD - and three, as soon as it comes out!! I promise to put them back when I'm done, honest!

Testing the Water, chapter 3

I don't know why I'm here. The thought ran through Cristina's head repeatedly, annoyingly, as she stared at the front door of Meredith's house. She welcomed the annoyance. She could understand it, and it usually came with an easy solution. If someone or something annoyed her, she made that person or thing go away, and then she wasn't annoyed anymore. Easy problem, easy solution – simple. But not this time. This time, the problem wasn't that simple, and since it involved her person, that made things even more complicated.

All her life, Cristina had been focused on being a doctor. She'd never had many friends; the details of interpersonal relationships had always confounded her. That was one of the reasons she'd focused on surgery, as it required the least amount of interaction with the patients. The other interns had been nothing more than competition, obstacles to get past to keep her place in the program. She'd recognized Meredith as a major competitor, because her mother was Ellis Grey. She had originally intended to use Meredith as a marker, someone to measure herself against in her quest to be the best. But now Meredith was her 'person', a term that had been transmuted from its original meaning to something closer than friends, closer even than family. Meredith had called them sisters, and Cristina knew how much that meant to her. She also knew that her person had been having a hard time recently, and that meant that Meredith needed her, even if Meredith didn't know it.

She'd been intending to give Meredith a little space after coming home from the hospital, a chance to get settled before dragging her out to Joe's to get her drunk. Meredith always shared once the tequila started flowing; she was a chatty drunk, which Cristina found highly amusing. But she'd woken up that morning, her first day off in two weeks, and she'd had a feeling. Nothing that would lead to bombs in body cavities, of course, but strong enough to force Cristina out of bed and bring her to Meredith's house, to see if she could get anything out of her.

"God, I'm going soft," she muttered darkly as she rapped sharply on the door. "If I don't watch it, I'll turn into Barbie and become the president of Fantasyland!" Her ramblings were cut off as Meredith answered the door, wearing a tank top and a pair of pajama pants.

"Cristina!" she said, pulling the door open to let her friend in. "What are you doing here? Isn't today your day off?"

"Yeah," Cristina shrugged as if it were no big deal. "I can't stay in the apartment too long; it's too clean. So, I thought I'd see if you wanted to go jogging."

Meredith's lips quirked in a bitter smile. "The last time we went jogging, the day didn't end so well," she pointed out.

"Well, I'm not pregnant, so unless you are, we've got nothing to worry about," Cristina countered. "And we already know your mom's sick, so you haven't got anything else to spring on us." She paused, and eyed Meredith suspiciously. "You don't have anything else, right?" Meredith shook her head quickly, and Cristina nodded in satisfaction. "That's what I thought. Now, let's go!"

"All right, just let me go change." Meredith disappeared up the stairs and reappeared five minutes later, dressed in her Dartmouth shirt and a pair of dark grey sweatpants. She sat on the bottom step to tie her sneakers, then stood up and grabbed her keys. "Ok, I'm ready," she said, following Cristina out the door and locking it behind them.

Meredith didn't say much as they jogged through the park near her house, the same one they always went running in. Despite what she'd said, Cristina found herself remembering the last time they'd been jogging, the day they'd found out about Ellis Grey and the day she'd lost the baby she'd been planning to abort. The silence became awkward after a while, and Cristina's feeling intensified. Meredith wasn't as overly chatty as Izzie could be at times, but she usually talked more than she was now. Something is wrong, and I'm going to make her spill, she decided.

"So, what's up with you?" she said finally, unable to stand the silence any more. They had stopped to catch their breath, and Meredith was stretching out, reaching for her toes with both hands.

"What do you mean? Nothing's up; I'm fine," Meredith said, blowing out a deep breath as she popped back upright. "Let's keep going."

Cristina rolled her eyes as they started jogging again, heading back for Meredith's house. "Mere, when you say 'I'm fine,' that's code for 'My life is crap,' and we both know it. Your mother died, and you almost died, too." She pushed away the memories that surfaced with that statement, memories of Meredith lying on the table, so blue and so still. "As if you didn't have enough baggage in your life, now you have that, too. Talk to me; I'm your person, remember?"

"Cristina, if I had anything to say, don't you think I'd say it?" Meredith snapped, slowing to a walk as they reached her street.

Cristina didn't even blink. "No," she said simply, her face expressionless.

"Well, I would," Meredith insisted. She looked down, fishing in her pocket for her keys. When she looked back up, Cristina was watching her.

Cristina didn't say a word. All she did was cock an eyebrow, and Meredith flinched as that simple gesture recalled all the times she hadn't talked when bad things had happened.

"Ok, you're right," she conceded as she unlocked her front door. "I just . . . I don't know what to say, Cristina. It's not like this has ever happened to me before." She sighed heavily as she sat down to take off her shoes. "I need a shower; do you want to go first?"

Cristina shook her head. "I'm good. You take your time; I'll just be in the kitchen drinking all your beer. Don't think we're not still talking once you get out, though." She turned and headed down the hall toward the kitchen before Meredith could say anything else.

Watching her go, Meredith couldn't help but smile. Cristina had always been able to get stuff out of her. As she made her way upstairs to the shower, she remembered back to their first shift, when Cristina had gotten her to divulge her one-night stand with Derek while they researched Katie Bryce's condition. Her smile faded as she realized that she was once again going to be forced to tell her friend what she wanted to know. Once Cristina decided she wanted to know something, she was worse than a Rottweiler; giving up just wasn't in her vocabulary.

Meredith sighed and turned on the water, deciding to give herself a nice long shower as time to figure out what to say. She hadn't been lying before; she really didn't know how to put her feelings into words. Not talking when bad things happened didn't exactly give her a lot of practice at discussing her feelings. But she knew Cristina wouldn't be put off, so she'd have to find something to give her. She stuck her hand under the water to test the temperature. Deciding it was ok, she pulled it back out and suddenly found herself fascinated by the drops of water running down her hand and over her wrist, running-

-down her face as she broke through the surface of the water, gasping desperately for air. Sirens wailed in her ears as she looked around, searching for the dock, praying that she wasn't too late-

Meredith blinked as the sirens began to fade away, heading in the general direction of Seattle Grace. She shook her head, re-orienting herself back into the present, and stepped into the shower. She closed her eyes and stood for a moment under the spray, waiting for the familiar feeling of peace to kick in. She'd always been able to relax in the shower, even falling asleep in it once or twice. It was her safe place, a haven from the insanity of an intern's life. But as she stood there, all that surfaced in her mind was memories of the ferry accident, the smell in the air, the shouts of the rescue personnel mixed with the cries of the victims, the slap of the water against her back as she fell in, the feeling of it rushing down her throat . . . .

With a snap, Meredith's eyes flew open. There were no coherent thoughts in her head, only a driving need. Reaching for a washcloth, she rushed to lather it up and scrubbed at her body with an almost frantic haste. Rinsing off, she snatched up her shampoo and scrubbed it into her hair, following with her conditioner as soon as she'd washed the shampoo out. The familiar scent of lavender did little to calm her as she shut off the water, feeling strangely relieved as she watched the last of it swirl down the drain. She took particular care drying off, and even took the time to blow dry her hair. She usually didn't bother with that, preferring to let it dry naturally, but now she couldn't stand for even one part of her body to be the slightest bit wet.

Cristina had migrated to the living room by the time she got downstairs. "Ok, who are you and what have you done with Meredith?" she asked, narrowing her eyes suspiciously at her person as she dropped down onto the couch beside her.

"What are you talking about?" Meredith asked, confused.

"Mere, I'm not even halfway through my first beer," Cristina said, gesturing to the open bottle on the coffee table. "I was expecting to at least get buzzed waiting for you. You take showers like Izzie bakes, but today you're in and out in less than five minutes. Now I know something's up, so spill."

"I took longer than five minutes," Meredith argued, nervously plucking at the hem of her shirt.

Cristina rolled her eyes. "Only if you count the time you spent blow drying your hair, which you never do. Also the insane amount of time you spent going through everything you own while getting dressed. Factor all that in, and you get . . . about fifteen minutes, Mere. The shower took less than five. Now, are you going to tell me what's bothering you, or not?"

Meredith gave up at that point. She couldn't lie; not to her person, her sister, it just wasn't possible. She opened her mouth to speak . . . and was cut off by the insistent beeping coming from the pocket of Cristina's sweatshirt.

"What the – it's my day off!" Pulling out the tiny black device, Cristina checked the screen and grinned. "Ooh – pileup on the interstate. Sounds like lots of bloody surgery to me!"

Meredith had never been so glad to have a pager go off in her life. Saved by the bell . . . or the beep, in this case. "Well then, you'd better get a move on," she said, grinning in reply. "Bloody surgeries wait on no woman, and Izzie and George are already there. You don't want them stealing your surgeries, do you?"

Cristina's eyes widened at the thought, and she bolted up off the couch. Halfway to the door, she stopped and turned back. "Are you going to be all right by yourself?" she asked, frowning. "You were just about to tell me what's wrong, weren't you?"

"I'll be fine," Meredith assured her, falling easily back into her old routine. "Nothing's wrong, Cristina; honestly, I'm fine."

She hadn't fooled her, Meredith could tell; the way Cristina narrowed her eyes told her that. She opened her mouth as if to say more, but the repeated beeping of her pager drew her attention away, and she settled for extracting a promise that Meredith would call if she needed her before dashing out the door.

Meredith sat on the couch for a while, enjoying the quiet, before heading up to her room to double check her pager. It hadn't gone off, so she headed for the basement to do some laundry, trying to pretend that the feeling spreading through her wasn't relief at having escaped Cristina's questioning. Everything's fine, she told herself, doing her best to sound convincing. Everything's just fine . . .

Ok, you know what to do!! Make me happy; it's my birthday Saturday, so give me lots of nice presents, ok?