A/N: Okay, if you are reading my other stories, I am so sorry that I'm not updating as frequently. I will try to get something up for 'Lacking Simplicity' this weekend and 'If We Had Seen It Coming' later next week.
McMackenzie: This is not a MerMark pairing or any other pairing, really. This story is focusing on Meredith repairing herself with her friends' support. She is going through a lot right now with mental and physical trauma and she needs to be on her own before she can trust someone intimately again. I plan to do a sequel once this is done and in that she will be paired with someone. Toward the end of this fic you will see who she may…or may not J start a romantic relationship with. :)
To your other response, Meredith is not going to go to the police however she will tell…or someone will figure it out in this chapter. There is a reason why she does not go to the police. I promise that it will piece together in the next chapter, just bare with me and remember that I said there are 'two' Dereks.
Well, without further waiting, here is chapter three.
Chapter 3: It's A Broken World
you broke me
to pieces and
brought me
to my knees
you hold me
close to
crush me and
pull me in
to push
yourself away
Meredith sat on the wooden bunch in the interns' lockeroom staring into the thin air. She could hear the others moving around her getting ready for the day but even that did not move her to do so herself. She could feel Christina's eyes burning into her back, watching her like a hawk. "Are you sure you want to work today?" the Asian woman inquired in a hushed tone as she sat down next to her broken friend.
The blonde snapped out of her thoughts and nodded, moving in a robotic fashion to get into the new scrubs she had brought. "I'm staying." she muttered, throwing off her street clothes and moving quickly to put on her scrubs. She was tying her hair up in a loose ponytail when Alex whooped loudly. "Whoa Grey, what dude did you bring home last night?" he laughed, not knowing the underlining cause off the bite mark that now scarred Meredith's neck a deep black and blue.
Meredith turned her back on him, letting her hair back down to cover her neck. "Shut up, ass!" Christina hissed, grabbing Meredith's arm and pulling her out of the lockeroom, the blonde barely grabbing hold of her white lab coat. Alex chuckled while putting his stethoscope around his neck. Izzy and George whispered between each other. There was something going on with Meredith that Christina knew about and they were going to figure it out.
your love, it's
a broken world
misshapen and
out of place
it's a broken world
my heart
beating to a
broken tune
So far, they had gotten through rounds without seeing him. They were on there way to round on one his patients when they were paged to the pit. Christina watched from the corner of her eyes as Meredith visibly relaxed. "Alright, there's an incoming in the pit. Karev and Stevens you go meet the ambulance, O'Malley you're with Shepherd, Yang you're with Burke and Grey…Montgomery-Shepherd requested you." Dr. Bailey gave out the assignments in a hurry but not before giving Meredith a questioning glare.
Something was up, Bailey could smell it. The pleading stare Meredith looked at her with only proved it. The interns moved quickly to their destinations each in their own world. "Something is always up with that girl." Bailey muttered, following Izzy and Alex to the pit.
after all you've
done for me
and all that
you broke of me
I love you still
and I hate you
more
it's hard to know
where the
line is drawn
Meredith found Addison leaning against the nurses' station looking over a patient's chart with a tired look on her face. "Dr. Shepherd, you requested me?" Meredith asked, her voice light with a twinge of fear and nervousness. Addison studied the fragile intern and knew right away that today would be a long day.
"Yes, I did. How are you doing?" the redhead asked, tilting her head to the side. Meredith opened her mouth to reply but shut it like a mouse trap when she felt him standing behind her. She side jumped next to Addison as if it was a natural reflex. Derek looked at her perplexed by the sudden movement and Addison looked quizzically between the two.
"Did you have too much coffee today?" he gave a hearty laugh as if yesterday didn't happen. Meredith shuddered under his gaze, a response Addison could feel because of how close the blonde was to her. "Okay, so you don't want to talk. Alright. I'll see you around Addie, stay away from the coffee Mer." he smiled amused, letting another laugh slip pass his lips. He continued on toward the pit, having been paged for the incoming ambulance.
Addison turned to face Meredith and was met with a shaken expression on the blonde's face. "He won't hurt you, Meredith, he's not him. He…he loves you." she reassured the blonde. It hurt her to tell Meredith that. Knowing that her husband loved another woman stabbed her heart almost as much as all of the other hurtful things that he did o her.
Meredith looked at Addison, wanting badly to tell her the truth. " You don't know that. You don't know anything about pain or hurt. Not this kind. Don't tell me who will and won't hurt me when you don't know anything." she snapped, wanting to run far away from reality. Addison flinched at the sudden burst of anger. Meredith looked around her and noticed several eyes watching them curiously.
"Uh, sorry. I-just…sorry." she muttered, looking down at her scuffed Chuck Taylers. Addison laced her arm through Meredith's and led her down the hall, ignoring the hushed whispers. They continued down the hall toward an on call room until she thought better of it and led Meredith into a linen closet. "I may not know everything about your pain but I know about mine. You can trust me, Meredith. Please trust me. Tell me who did this to you, I may know more than you think." she told Meredith, begging her with her eyes to trust her.
Meredith opened her mouth, ready to just blurt out the truth when the door opened. Light shined through the dim closet and revealed an angry Bailey. The short woman walked into the closet and closed it behind her. She had seen the encounter at the nurses' station and followed the two women to the closet only to hear Addison's strained voice through the door.
"You better tell me what's going on, Grey. You left during your shift yesterday and now I find you in a closet with the She-Shepherd." Bailey ordered, her hands on her hips waiting for an answer. Meredith slipped into a protective shell, clamping her mouth shut as if to keep her inner self from revealing her dark secret.
"She was raped." Addison blurted out. If Meredith wasn't going to speak up and save herself then she would do it for her. Bailey opened and closed her mouth while Meredith dropped into a corner. It was real now. It was out in the open and real. "Uh, ok. Have the police found the guy who did this?" the short doctor asked, her arms dropping to her side.
Miranda Bailey's eyes never left the crumpled thin form in the far corner of the closet. She was going to personally harm whoever broke Meredith Grey. She had begun to see the young interns as her children and she'll be damn if anybody broke Meredith's spirit. A spirit that had already been broken once too many.
"No, she hasn't. I begged her to let me do an exam but she wouldn't let me. You, god Miranda, you didn't see her after it happened." Addison frowned, looking at Dr. Bailey worriedly. Bailey looked at Addison with a knowing gaze. It always hurt her to see the after bruises on a rape victim, let alone one of their own. How could a man do that to a woman?
"Meredith, honey. You need to go the police. Do you know the man that did this to you? It may make it easier for the cops to find him." Miranda questioned cautiously, trying to coax a response out of Meredith. The blonde, suddenly filled with rage and anger, looked up at the two women with burning eyes. She didn't want to go to the police. She didn't want to tell them who it was. Doing all that meant telling everyone and she wasn't ready for that. They were forcing her and she had a feeling that Bailey wouldn't let her leave until she told them who it was.
That was a feeling that she didn't like. It was like saying no to him all over again. "Fine! You want to know so bad?! You want to know who did this to me? It was DEREK MICHEAL SHEPHERD! He did this, he hurt me, he RAPED me! Are you happy now? Huh?! Are you? There I said it, it's real!" she screamed, not caring that anyone could have walked by the closet and heard her.
Miranda's jaw dropped, her eyes looking like a puddle left after a bad rain. Addison fell to the floor beside Meredith and pulled her into her arms. "Meredith, we're…we're in this together. He hurt us both in ways we never thought he could." she whispered to the blonde shaking in her arms. Meredith looked at her shocked, so many questions flowing through her aching mind.
"I knew it was him yesterday, after you said that he hurts us the most. After you told me to keep trying. I didn't know what you meant by that until he…until he raped me too. He told me afterwards that I was the one who wanted to try so this was him trying." Addison admitted, looking at Meredith eye to eye. The blonde sank into Addison's arms while at the same time, letting Addison sank into hers.
There, in a dim corner of a closet, two broken women held onto each other while dealing with their own pain. Miranda Bailey watched on, feeling like she was seeing something she wasn't suppose to. Like this was a moment that she wasn't meant to be in.
She opened the door quietly and left, vowing to hurt Derek Shepherd.
it's a broken world,
you and I,
crashin all around
us caused by
our own
broken will
we're a broken
world together
and apart
no matter
where we go
It had been six hours since the moment in the closet. Both women moved along like robots, leaning on each other figuratively when they needed to. Bailey had gone missing into the Chief's office…and so did Derek. Christina had been lurking near the Chief's door, listening to as much as she could before Patricia, the Chief's assistant, would come to drag her away.
Izzy and George had heard the shouting in the linen closet and had tried to bombard Meredith with comforting words and overbearing questions but were herded away by Addison. Nurses gossiped about Meredith's outburst at the station but neither of them knew the truth behind it.
Lunch came around slower than Meredith had wanted it to. She followed Addison to her office, a place where she knew no one would or could bother her. She knew that because Addison wouldn't let them and vice versa for her new redheaded support system.
The two women settled into the plush couch that rested against wall across from the door of Addison's office.
They laid down, head to feet and embraced the new silence around them. "Do you think he feels sorry?" Meredith wondered, her voice light and childlike. Addison looked at the off white smooth ceiling above her and then down her nose at Meredith who was staring at the book shelves as if they held answers. "I don't know. I like to think that he does. He's…there's something off about him. I've known him since undergrad and I've been married to him for eleven years. This isn't the Derek I fell in love with, the Derek you fell in love with." Addison responded, returning to her gaze to the ceiling.
Meredith pondered this, going over all of her latest moments with Derek. "You see it more than I do. I mean, you've known him longer, lived with him. The only change I've noticed is when he left me for you and looks at me like he wants to have his cake and eat it too." she said bitterly. She wasn't mad at Addison by no means. She was angry because the Derek that broke two women looked and seemed like the same Derek she fell for. The change that Addison saw, she did not.
Addison looked pained for a moment but she knew the meaning behind Meredith's words. "I never thought he could hurt me anymore than he already had, Meredith. I'm sure you feel that way too. But he did and he did it in the worse way possible. if we have nothing else, we have our dignity and our pride. He took that from me." she said, tears slipping through her eyelashes.
Meredith knew that feeling, knew just as much as Addison did. "Now, now we have nothing." she whispered, her voice torn and empty at the same time. They lay there crying, trying to figure out how the hell they got here. "I sometimes wish that this would happen to him. That the one he loved would hurt him and take away what he took from me. But then I just hurt even more. I could never do that to him because I love him. And it hurts so much more, that he could do it to me. It hurts more because he doesn't love me. And that thought, that fact…it makes me believe that he's not sorry. So I ask again, do you think he's sorry?" Meredith asked, this time looking Addison in the eyes.
This time, Addison saw the bigger picture. The question wasn't about if he was sorry or not. It was the question that neither woman would ever ask aloud. 'Do you think he loves you more than me?' The redhead looked at Meredith, thinking back to the night she wanted to forget.
flashback…
It had been a long tiring day, especially after she had found Meredith in the on call room. She had seen pregnant woman after pregnant woman, all of them near there due date. Two of them had a baby with a possible heart defect, one had a brain mass, and the other had bad lungs. As much as she knew about sick babies, she couldn't answer all of their questions.
It bothered her that Meredith had been so hurt and manipulated into thinking that maybe her rape wasn't rape after all. Who could have done that to her? Was it someone she knew personally? Of course it was, Meredith had even said so. There was something in Meredith's final words to her that she was not getting and that irked her even more.
She made it to the trailer, her mind still on Meredith. She walked into the metal contraption she called home and dropped her purse onto the pull out couch. Her movements were mechanical, removing her coat and hanging it in the little cupboard Derek called a closet. 'I hate this trailer.' she thought just as she had every other night she came 'home' from the hospital.
She mentally slapped herself. How could she complain about a trailer after what happened to Meredith? She was the only one who knew and that made the worry on her shoulders so much heavier. Meredith wouldn't open up for her, she knew that. So she tried to get Christina to talk to her. It was harder than she thought because Bailey had walked by before she could tell Christina why exactly it was that she needed to talk to Meredith.
It was when she sat at the edge of the bed that she noticed Derek taking a shower. Should she tell him? She was torn between being a good person and being the jealous wife. She knew that it was wrong of her to feel that way but she knew that Derek still loved Meredith and that hurt. He was stepping out of the shower when she had finally decided that despite her feelings, Derek needed to know.
He looked up at her as he reached for the towel that lay neatly on the bed beside her.
All of a sudden, he threw the towel behind her and pulled her into him. "Derek, stop. There's something I have to tell you." she had told him, pushing him away by his shoulders that were still wet from the shower.
He kissed her collarbone and ran his dripping wet hand under her pressed button up shirt. "Addie, I'm trying to be romantic." He muttered but the tone in his voice was all wrong. The word 'trying' brought Addison back to down to reality. It made her think of Meredith. "Derek, something happened to Meredith." she finally told him.
He stopped abruptly but only long enough to push her onto the bed. She sat haphazardly, shocked by the forceful thrust of the movement. "Please, don't say her name. I just want to have a nice night with my wife." he grinded out, tearing away her favorite Prada pin skirt. She slapped away his hands but they returned with a vengeance, tearing away her shirt and, soon, her stockings and underwear.
She didn't know whether to be scared or happy. He finally wanted to make love to her, something he hadn't wanted to do before. Except, the way he touched her was rough and more like sex than making love. She was so consumed in her conflicting thoughts that she hadn't felt his manhood slide into her wet southern lips. "Derek, we need to stop. Meredith, something happened." Even then it hadn't occurred to her what was happening.
Derek did not listen, he only slammed into her harder, rougher. She kept saying no, pushing him off only to have him pin her arms above her head. She looked him in the eyes but the look that he gave her was not the Derek that she married, not the Derek she crushed an innocent intern's heart for.
He heaved an almost satisfied moan as he finished, emptying himself into her. "You wanted to try, this is me trying." he stated simply, as if he hadn't just violated her in the worse way possible. He slipped under the covers and fell into a deep somber while his wife lay next to him, her arms still placed above her head as if he were still holding them there.
Again, all she could think about was Meredith. 'He hurts me most, hurts you the most. Just keep trying.' the blonde had told her something similar not even sixteen hours ago. It dawned on her then that the same man who had just broke her broke Meredith.
you broke me
to pieces and
brought me
to my knees
you hold me
close to
crush me and
pull me in
to push yourself
away
It was then she realized what Meredith had been feeling, knew why she had questioned what had happened. She and Meredith loved Derek and had been with him intimately. So much so their bodies had become accustomed to his touch, craved it even when it hurt. How could you cry rape when your body wanted it?
end of flashback…
More tears followed the path of the dried ones. "No, I don't think he's sorry either." she replied. Meredith laid her head back, letting it lay on Addison's ankles, the redhead followed this action and laid hers on Meredith's ankles. They silently agreed that Derek loved neither of them, at least not this Derek. They knew that there was still the Derek that wouldn't hurt them to consider but neither brought it up.
after all that you've
done for me
and all that
you broke
I love you still
and I hate you
more
It's hard to know
where to
draw the line
They needed each other more than they needed his reassurance.
when it's a broken world
A/N: Okay, there it is. I think this is my longest chapter to date, wow! It took me awhile to put it all into words and it definitely stressed me out to put them both through the tornado that is the 'other Derek'. There is definitely some pent up anger between the two on the 'who Derek loves the most' storyline however they are putting that aside to be there for each other no matter how much it hurts them. They will need each other because not everyone will understand the things they are going through. I will go into what goes on during the Chief/Bailey/Derek meeting in the next chapter and I will also have some raving mad Addison and Meredith yelling at Derek. I hadn't planned to have Addison raped right after Meredith, it sort of just came to me last minute.
The italicized words is a song that I wrote specifically for this story. It's called, 'It's A Broken World'. I do own this song, so please don't steal it ;).
I wanted to kind of put Meredith and Addison's feelings into a song and set the atmosphere for this chapter and I think that this song did that for me.
As always, please please review review!!! J
xxxNikxxx
