Thank you for reading and reviewing. I absolutely love to hear from you. I had some sleepless time so thought I'd get this out sooner than planned.

Dreams of Love

Chapter 9: The Cellar

Meredith gently stroked Derek's curly hair away from his temple as he lay with his head pillowed on her breast. They were so close, heart and body and soul, after their passionate encounter. The air was still scented with their love. She knew he was exhausted and desperately needed to sleep. She also knew he wouldn't put his needs above her own. He thought she needed to speak about the Swiss boarding school that she'd attended as a teenager, so he'd sit up all night if he had to, until she was ready to tell him. Meredith drew a deep breath and decided to brave it. She couldn't, wouldn't, make Derek pry it out of her. He deserved the truth about her, no matter how shameful.

"I was a kid, just a spoiled kid," she said softly. He looked up at her and the corners of his mouth turned ever so slightly upwards. Meredith had come around.

"I was sixteen and had it all, really. I lived in a Roman palace, wore designer clothes, attended the finest international school, drove a red Ferrari, and for the first time in my life had loving friends and family, I thought. I wasn't alone. For three years and a few months everything was okay. Of course it didn't last. I should have known."

"Mom divorced Papà and I was sent to Switzerland. I ran away... over and over... trying to get back home. Well you know what happened. What you don't know, what Papà doesn't know is that Papà Guiseppe's father and uncles confronted me one night after I was caught trying to sneak back to him. I finally got it that I couldn't go back... ever." Derek heard what she didn't say. They must have been brutal to squelch any hope in the young girl. Derek nuzzled his face higher into her throat, breathing in the perfume of her flesh, spicy sweet from their lovemaking, "But it was too late."

"Fräulein Richter was her name," Meredith's voice lowered to a whisper as if she spoke profanity, and she clutched at his gleaming bare shoulder for strength, "She was really angry... almost insane with it... the last time I tried to go home. I'd done it so often, no matter what they did to me... they were mean, maybe I should say cruel... I still went home," Meredith remembered being a scared sixteen year old hitch-hiker in the Alps. She remembered bribing a cleaning lady to get the lady's son to drive her home. She remembered walking and taking the train. She remembered climbing walls and fences in the dark. And she remembered, on one occasion, stealing a horse and riding him as far as she could, "My mother was furious. I heard Fräulein Hoffman tell Fräulein Richter that my mother told them to use any means necessary to get me to stay put. I was just a child. It was their job, after all, to teach me lessons," Meredith's soft voice dripped bitterness, "I finally learned my lesson."

Derek piled pillows up behind him so he could semi-sit sideways facing her, "What did they do?"

Meredith gulped air. The darkness in the little trailer started closing in. The edges of her body numbed away and she could no longer tell her physical boundaries. Even her tongue felt numb.

Everything's going to be okay. Everything's going to be okay. Everything's going to be okay.

Derek sat up in alarm. What the hell had just happened? Meredith's skin was icy cold again and her face was stark white. Her eyes were opened extra wide and she stared at nothing. Mer trembled and brushed at her hair ineffectually with shaking hands. She struggled to give Derek words. He wanted words. He didn't understand that she had been trained her whole life to be silent when bad things happen. No one had ever wanted her to say anything. She'd never before spoken of ... Even in her mind her tongue was locked.

"Meredith! It's alright, baby. What in the world happened to you?" Derek gathered her tightly into his arms warming her chilled flesh. He pulled their comforter over both of them and snuggled her in a warm cocoon. Derek's strong heart beat under her ear, its regular rhythm soothing her and bringing her back into her present day adult world.

"I... I told them... I wouldn't leave again. I told them I wasn't ever returning to Rome. They didn't believe me and... they had to keep me there... Mom had promised them a huge bonus if they kept me out of her way while she started a new job so... so they kept me." Meredith looked into Derek's eyes then and something deep inside his eyes gave her the courage to speak, "They kept me in an old cellar under the Chalet... for a long time."

Silence. Dead silence filled the trailer. Meredith wildly sought something to say. Her tongue froze and she glanced miserably up at him.

It was Derek's turn to be white faced. Thin white lines bracketed his mouth as he ground his teeth together. Meredith had never seen that expression on his face before.

"How long?" he asked finally.

"What?"

"How... long?"

"Just... the first three days were the worst when I had no light and no heat..."

"No light. No heat? HOW... LONG?"

"Six or seven... months, maybe." Meredith had never felt more ashamed in her life, ashamed that someone else knew the degradation of her life, "I lived there until I got too sick. Then they had to let me go. My mother sent a plane ticket to the hospital."

Derek simply stared at her in utter disbelief. Meredith Grey had spent six months locked in a cellar? When she was sixteen? What the ...? Derek's blood began to boil.

"Where the hell was Ellis?!"

"Derek, it's alright, that was a long time ago. My mother never knew. I couldn't tell her. It was my own fault because I kept running away, that's all." Meredith did what many survivors of trauma learned to do. She minimized and she blamed herself. They were techniques people used so they could get on with life during and after abuse.

"It wasn't your fault! How sick were you? What was wrong?"

"I was thin and I finally got an upper respiratory infection – then pneumonia, from the cold and damp conditions. They told the doctors I was so thin because I had anorexia, I guess. I was really only thin because there wasn't much food."

Derek's indigo eyes turned black with fury.

"They said it was because I was sad, about losing the Giordanos, I mean. It was true. I really was sad. I didn't talk anymore. There was nothing to say. No one questioned it. Fräulein Hoffman and Fräulein Richter didn't tell them that they gave me almost nothing to eat in the cellar. I don't really think about it any more. I... I'm okay, really. Don't be mad, okay? Okay? Don't be mad." Meredith frantically tried to ratchet down Derek's pain and anger on her behalf. People didn't get angry because of her. It made her too uncomfortable.

Derek's razor sharp mind sorted through what Meredith had said and what she didn't say. He suspected there was more, six or seven months more to talk about, but he doubted his control. He didn't want to start releasing his own reaction to her past when he could see she was barely hanging on now. Enough. Enough for now. God!

"So, the nightmares that you've been having are about the cellar? And about that woman?" Derek needed it straight in his mind, "Not about the surgery? Possibly losing Giordano again?"

"No, I am worried about the surgery but it doesn't give me nightmares," Meredith's respirations accelerated again, "It is that place. It has been haunting me again. That's all. The color was so ugly, Derek, it was a horrible old rusty brownish maroon red brick. It was the color of dead dried blood, the color of torture, the color of pain. It was the color of Charon's uniforms. I hate that color." She said that last almost to herself, quietly, softly.

"Meredith, you don't have to be afraid anymore. We're together now. You and me. We're making a team," he didn't dare use the word "family" yet. He also couldn't forget her violent physical reaction to even the thought of that place, that event, before she regained control over herself.

"I know. I really am okay now. I feel better being with you than I have my whole life. Switzerland is far away and long over," Meredith wanted that to be true, but stuffing and avoiding hurtful things never really healed them.

"Okay, enough for now," Derek clicked the remaining light out. He wrapped his arms around her and settled her against him for sleep. He gently traced a pattern over the bare skin of her back. Gradually Meredith's exhausted body succumbed to sleep. She relaxed and became heavier against him, her warm, moist breath tickling his neck.

Derek closed his eyes and tried not to picture what a grief stricken young girl had endured in silence. For twelve years she'd been silent. He softly stroked his girl and waited for his own righteous anger to drain enough to sleep.

Dark and twisty, indeed, he thought. He was a healer, a peaceful man, but if he ever had a chance to confront some of these people he didn't know what he'd do. Meredith sighed his name in her sleep. He kissed her lips and slid further down into their comfortable bed so he could finally give in to sleep.

Unfortunately, I know people who have been hurt similarly – so yeah, the story is based on truth. I think the way Meredith acts most of the time is indicative of child abuse. I don't know if that is exactly what Shonda had in mind about Mer, but that is how I see it.