Disclaimer: If I could buy Grey's Anatomy I would. But I can't, so I don't own it.
When Richard Webber first sets eyes on an adult Meredith Grey, it's a bit like seeing a ghost. He's just ramming Alex Karev for not knowing the causes of pot operation fever when her voice breaks in. It's light like wind chimes but a bit rougher like sandpaper. All in all it's entirely too familiar.
Richard turns to her and asks for the correct way to run a diagnosis. She lists of the steps, the words flying from the same thin mouth in a familiar face while tired grey-blue eyes fix on his face with bright determination. She's every bit her mother's daughter and Richard tells her so. "Welcome to the game."
He doesn't mean to really, and he tries not to, but he watches Meredith. He goes through his normal day, operates, manages paper work, and runs the surgical floor, but out of the corner of his eyes he watches the way she works.
She's gifted, that's what he concludes. She shows all of the same skill her mother did as an intern, maybe more. Not that he'd ever tell Ellis that if she was around. According to Meredith she's off traveling and writing her next book. Surely it'll be the next revered text in the medical world once it's published. He bought the last one and he knows he'll buy the next one. Even if he has to hide it from his wife to avoid Adele's accusing look.
The day she has to carry around a penis in a cooler to give to a police man as part of evidence in a rape case, he can't help but laugh a bit. After all, he changed Meredith's diapers as a baby when her mother was too busy. She handles it well though, with exactly the level of exasperation and irritation he would expect.
When there's a chance that he might have to throw her out of the program he knows he's probably too involved. He knows it because if he has to throw her out, he's not sure he'll be able to. It's like a brick is lifted off his chest when Dr. Burke steps up to the plate and proves that mistakes happen. It also proves that Burke may be arrogant and a bit less caring than he should be, but he's shrewd, and thoughtful enough to at least handle the more political side of being Chief. Shepherd is still his probably preferred choice.
That's why he asks Shepherd to run tests when his vision starts to go. He trusts his old mentee to operate on his brain and get the tumor out when it's discovered there. He trusts Dr. Miranda Bailey to watch over everything like a hawk and take the secret to her grave. Then he trusts Meredith Grey to assist in the procedure. Because if an intern has to be present at his brain surgery, he wants Ellis Grey's daughter. He wants the intern to be her little girl.
When he opens his eyes again, the first thing that occurs to him is that his brain is registering images. He can see. Shepherd pulled it off. But then again maybe he didn't because the image forming doesn't make any sense.
The face he sees through the window in the door to his recovery room is Meredith's. Her eyes are a bit watery, her shoulders are slightly hunched, and her face is tired. Tired and being framed by a brown, male, hand. A hand with long thin surgeons fingers that lead down to a wrist wearing a familiar old watch. The watch is a watch with a story behind it that Richard has been told before.
The arm leads up to indigo scrubs and thin shoulder blades. Then up to a head of thick black hair. Every sign points to the man holding Meredith's face in his hand being Dr. Derek Christopher Shepherd.
Derek's tall frame is inclined towards Meredith. His thumb is brushing gently against her cheek and Meredith is leaning in to his touch, her eyes fluttering shut for a moment before opening again.
Even before Derek leans down and presses a lingering kiss to Meredith's forehead the gesture is too close. Too intimate. It's the kind of touch that speaks of whispered words in the dark, gentle touches, secret smiles, and quiet laughing. It's the kind of gesture that speaks of falling down a rabbit hole when the bottom might not come, and if it does it might cause shattering on impact.
"He's an attending," Richard warms her when she comes in to check on him. He delivers the warning because he's lived this story, and he knows how it can end. He warns her because no matter how old Meredith gets, she's still Ellis's little girl.
"You saw us?" she asks momentarily distracted, then her surgical instincts kick in. "You can see." The words are triumphant and pleased as she leans over him and begins to check his pupillary responses.
Meredith's response when he warns her again further confirms his fears that this relationship between Grey and Shepherd has already gone a little too far. It's not scratching an itch, it's already become an investment. From the carefulness of the way Derek was touching her face, the feelings aren't one sided.
He's going to have to do something. This can't continue for her sake. He's going to have to do something before it goes too far because if he doesn't Meredith is going to be more hurt than if this goes on. He can't let Ellis's little girl get hurt. That's how he justifies calling Addison Montgomery-Shepherd for a consult.
It's for the best. That's what he tells himself when Addi gets to town and Shepherd goes from bright and chatty to cold and terse over night. He continues to tell it to himself as Derek slowly begins to defrost and relents enough to give things with Addison a chance. It becomes his mantra when Meredith comes in over the next month or so looking more tired, and more stressed than is normal for an intern with red eyes.
She looks like she's been crying and Richard wants nothing more than to give her a hug, make her an ice cream sundae, hold her until she stops crying, and promise things are going to be alright. Vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce always seemed to fix everything when she was five. But he can't do that because she should be just another intern to him being Chief of Surgery. He can't truly treat her differently because she's Ellis's little girl.
He still looks out for her more than he should. He still does everything he can to maintain status quo. When their is a bomb scare in the hospital and Meredith and Derek are two of the only ones left he purposefully sends Derek towards Addie when he gets to the main floor. Richard knows what he's doing isn't subtle when Adele looks at him with accusing eyes. "That is not the she to whom he was referring."
He knows Derek can tell to and the look of knowing isn't even the worst thing about the expression on his former student's face as he stares over his wife's shoulder. The worst thing isn't the worry or the sadness either. The worst part is the desperately conflicted combination of exhaustion, longing, and the acceptance that the person he wants to be holding in that moment isn't his wife. He wants, desperately wants to be holding a girl who is probably still standing in an OR somewhere with her hand on a bomb
Richard can't be angry at Derek just then. In that moment with a million other things to worry about, they are both thinking of the same girl.
That still doesn't stop the relief he feels when Meredith seems to move on.
Richard hears through the grapevine that she's dating a vet and the relief that surges through him is something he can't control. A vet he can greet, stare down a little too intensely, and shake hands a little too tightly with, and it could still on a level be dismissed as a boss looking out for a promising employee, or an old family friend keeping a watchful eye.
The vet seems to be a nice enough guy named Finn Dandridge. He shows up at the hospital once or twice and brings Meredith lunch. Richard feels glad that at least someone is looking after her, making sure she sleeps enough, and eats something other than cold take out. Other people have families or friends with normal lives for that. It's something Meredith needs.
The prom he throws for his niece with cancer is the first time he gets to hold an honest conversation with Finn. He contemplates having a threatening talk similar to the one he had with his niece's boyfriend, but he has to slip away to take care of something before he can get the words out. When he comes back Meredith is dancing with him and he knows that the conversation is pointless.
It's pointless because Derek is dancing with Addison and Meredith is dancing with Finn. There is an entire room spotted with dancing people between them and their eyes are locked together like the distance between them is less than inches. The looks aren't fleeting, or light, or innocent, or anything that at all resembles something that can be ignored. The looks are warm, deep, and inescapable.
The two of them communicate that way more frequently than should be possible. Derek looks to Meredith in the OR with simple messages. Lift the clamp. Get closer, you can see better over here. Go. Stay. Are you okay? The way Meredith looks back at him makes up the other half of the conversation. Is this good? Okay. Not okay. There's just one thing that they both say, and Richard knows it's one thing that they won't say out loud.
So he turns away and dances with his niece.
There's only so much intervention you can do before it becomes impossible to believe you're doing any good. So he steps back. Richard tries to just watch. He watches as almost every member of his hospital seems to become more and more interconnected with every other one.
His watching comes to an abrupt end when Meredith is drowning and hypothermic and probably going to die. Derek is the one who comes in with her, and his chest compressions in the ambulance were probably the things that have kept him alive. Shepherd's neurosurgical instincts try taking over even when he's panicking and scared out of his mind.
Still, Richard needs him out of the room. No matter how helpful expertise on the human brain are on victims of hypothermic death, you can never have family in the room with the patient while in surgery. Of course by that logic Richard shouldn't be in the room either, but their is absolutely no way in hell he's leaving or giving up.
Meredith does eventually come around. Her vitals finally hold and Cristina Yang manages to get her to speak. When Richard goes to check on her later when most of the ferry crash victims have been at least sorted out a little bit, she's curled up on her side with blonde hair falling over her face the same way she did when she was five. Still a little girl.
She's not that anymore though, no matter how small she might look tucked in to the hospital bed with the wires and machines attached.
The proof of that is especially clear in the form of Derek Shepherd lying with her on the bed. His eyes are screwed shut, his legs sandwich around hers while one arm tucks under her head and the other is wrapped around her stomach. Their fingers are knit together and Richard realizes something. Meredith might have been the one who was in danger of death but Derek was equally as drowned.
He steps back again and keeps on watching. Watching Ellis's little girl is something he does well. He watches through being pushed away by Meredith and Derek both at alternate times, but he lets it happen anyway.
He helps Derek set up his third and ultimately successful proposal to Meredith. He guards the elevator and even goes so far as to play traffic director and funnel Meredith in to the right one. Apparently their are some stories about kisses and silent moments in that elevator. There's probably more to that story, but Richard senses he might not be able to ride that elevator again if he knows all the details.
The proposal is successful and Richard doesn't even feel the slightest bit of guilt for Meredith's annoyance when he clears her schedule and leaves her to the dress up doll inclined, wedding obsessed whims of a cancer riddled Izzie Stephens. He doesn't actually know if he'll get to see the wedding despite Stephens' promise tat she will figure out a way to manipulate him in to the ceremony. That's why he clears a few minutes of time to go by the room turned bridal boutique.
What he sees through the window of the room makes his heartache in a way that's fresh and all it's own. Its not a shattered feeling, it's more like having a cardio specialist crack in to his chest and stretch and twist his heart in to an impossible shape before closing up.
Meredith is standing there, blonde hair tumbling messily around her face with a white veil thrown over the top of her head. The dress moves down her body and then flairs out with some kind of fancy beadwork pattern he can't distinguish. Chipped purple polish is just visible as the tips of her toes peek out from the hem of the skirt.
She's smiling. The smile she had first smiled at him when she was a tiny baby who barely had the teeth to pull it off. It's wide and curls a bit higher at one edge than the other. This smile is a smile that warms her face and makes her green-grey eyes sparkle and shine. She seems to almost glow with nearly incredulous happiness. Ellis's little girl is grown up.
He wants to be there at the wedding. He wants to walk Meredith down the aisle. Not just for Meredith, or for Derek, or for Ellis either. He wants to be there for himself. Richard Webber has grown to care for Meredith Grey in a category all her own.
Because Meredith isn't just the little girl who he always saw as Ellis's daughter. She's not just her little girl.
She's his little girl to.
A/N: How did I do? I wanted to try something that covered a bit more time for this one. I like this style and I might keep it up if you guys like it to. Next up is going to be Alex I think. I felt like this was a good place to end it with Richard but I can always add on with other chapters. Review for me! xoxoxxxxxxxxxxxxxoxoxoxooooooooooooooooxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxxoxoxooxoxoxooxoxxooxxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxo