A/N OK, first I need to apologise for being disgustingly slow to get back to this. I said it would be a while, but what I didn't expect was a while to turn into an age. I was busy and then I admit, I wasn't in a creative mood. Still, better now, well, almost. Either way, I'm back and glad to be so.
Yes, as some of you rightly say in your reviews, Derek finally gets that the problems between him Meredith situation aren't entirely down to her, he plays a part too. I think with Derek you have to understand he refuses to see things he can't deal with until it all explodes in his face. What I was doing with chapter 9 was taking Derek through the process of being angry again over Meredith's inability to talk to him until he suddenly realises that she hasn't always been like that, at least not all the time. It's as if quite suddenly, he joins the dots up.
I wanted to look at the need Derek has for Meredith too. He needs her in a way he never needed Addison. Meredith has completely changed Derek's ideas of himself and that scares him. It scares him more that he could lose her so easily. The end of the chapter shows how for Derek, Meredith just makes everything stop. All the anger and turmoil he had been in just a moment before vanishes as soon as he sees Meredith. I just thought the hug at the end was a cute way of showing Derek's need for Meredith and how he can see what he has put her through and yet somehow, despite all the problems, she is with him again. It's as if he can see her in a whole new light. He also sees himself differently too and he doesn't like what he sees at the moment.
Anyway, enough waffle! Meredith rambles and I waffle! Enough! Please, read and review, and after such a long gap, it's most important that you enjoy. I promise at least one more chapter up this week. No more long gaps, well, not for a while.
Meredith spent the rest of the day thinking about Derek. That in itself wasn't new, she knew that. In fact, the whole hospital seemed all too well aware that she'd spent most of her intern year thinking about Derek. First there was the painfully embarrassing moment when she realised that the man she had just spent the night with was her boss, closely followed by all the time when she was refusing to go out with him and he just kept right on asking. There were the early mornings when she practically sleep-walked through rounds after nights of the best sex she'd ever had in her life. Meredith smothered a snigger at the memory. At least, she thought, she wasn't the only one who looked like she'd suddenly become an insomniac. Derek was equally exhausted, not to mention Izzie and George…..
The memories weren't all so much fun. At the top of that list had to be the night Addison turned up in all her red-haired, perfectly styled, immaculately dressed, glory and announced that she was Derek's wife. Meredith remembered how she'd stared between Derek and Addison in disbelief, hoping that any second one of them would laugh and say it was a joke. She remembered the air as it seemed to fall out of her lungs when she realised it wasn't a joke at all, that Derek was a married man, at which the disbelief was replaced by cold-blooded fury. There was all the time when Derek was supposed to be ending his marriage, when Meredith was stuck in limbo, not in a relationship, but not entirely out of one, until Derek made up his mind and decided to pick his wife. Meredith remembered vividly the time that followed, where everyone in the hospital seemed to know every last detail about her private life, there were weeks of being stared at and whispered about until the hospital gossip chain switched to something else. Eventually there was the time with Finn and trying to be friends with Derek. Meredith told herself now that she should have known it wouldn't work. Finn was sweet and kind, but he just didn't make her feel the way Derek did. When she was in Finn's arms she knew he wanted to take care of her, but his arms still left her feeling cold and alone. Meredith could see now, it would never have worked with Finn because she just couldn't stop thinking about Derek.
The only times she had really not thought about him at all were the times that Meredith wanted to forget. Moments when she had made mistakes, huge, horrible mistakes that by some miracle had turned out right in the end. By rights she should either be dead and without Derek, or they should be apart because she had broken up with him. Instead, they were together and he had just taken her in his arms in a corridor at work and held her in a bone crushing hug, which was…weird. Definitely weird. It wasn't even that he'd never hugged her in the corridor before. He had, just once, when she was upset over a fight with Susan, before they made friends, and Derek was upset over a talk with the Chief about replacing him….
Meredith's mind screeched to a halt. The Chief thing. Derek was in the race for Chief, but Richard Webber hadn't retired after all. No reason, no explanation was offered, he had just stayed.
Meredith was on a break. She sat, sipping a coffee in the canteen, trying to figure out what Derek's hug meant and why she hadn't asked before why he wasn't Chief. He had wanted the job as long as she'd known him. It was as if he knew that once the Chief retired he would replace him. It was a given. No debate necessary. But Derek wasn't Chief, and as Meredith sat, nursing her almost cold coffee, she realised that she hadn't even realised until now that she hadn't asked him why. With breaking up with him and then getting him back and also being worried about Christina, the Chief thing had faded to nothing, but now it was back, roaring at full strength to the front of her mind.
Taking her mind back weeks, Meredith remembered the day of Derek's interview for the job. He was upset afterwards, certain he hadn't done well. The only thing he would say is that he was distracted. When she asked by what, he said nothing, he didn't know. Meredith could see he was upset, she saw the heaviness around his eyes, but she told herself that he had been worried about the Chief thing for a while and it had caught up with him. So, as they lay in bed, Meredith decided to help him. She asked him on a scale of one to ten how bad it was, using the simple way they measured patients pain in the hospital. When he said 'eight' Meredith kissed him, turning more into his arms. Then, as the scale went down, she went on kissing him, their bodies rolling over and over in her bed. By the time he got to three, his voice was no more than a whispery moan and Meredith knew he wasn't distracted any more, not by his interview anyway. They had sex, great sex, and then, as they lay spooned together, Derek said he was going to talk to the Chief again and see if he could persuade him to support him when the Board voted. The Chief refused to do it, and so Derek and Meredith had comforted each other with a quick embrace in the corridor.
When, within days, everything fell apart again, Meredith totally forgot about the race for Chief. Until now. Now it was there, clawing at her insides. Jabbing at her. Derek had held her again at work, not just hugged, but gripped her like his life depended on it, and he wasn't Chief and she didn't know why.
When Derek had held her before, they were both upset, it was a comfort thing. Now, they were okay, he said they were, but he held her anyway, and apparently just 'because'. The Chief thing should have been decided by now, it was due to be decided….Meredith's train of thought broke. It slammed into her so hard, her head spun. The new Chief was going to be announced on Christina and Burke's wedding day, the day she broke up with Derek.
Meredith wanted to run. A cold sensation washed over her. Derek hadn't got the Chief's job. He'd been turned down because he hadn't done well in his interview, which happened just after she drowned, when he was hovering over her. Derek wasn't the Chief of Surgery and it was her fault.
A/N There we are, a short chapter full of Meredith's thoughts. I decided to give Meredith something to think (a.k.a. worry) about, and as yet, unlike Derek, she hasn't had a chapter where she thinks so much about what's going on. There have been other people around, Addison, Christina and Derek, all pulling Meredith away from thinking the worst. Now she's alone for a while, and she knows something is 'off' with Derek, but she can't work out what that is, though in true Meredith form, she thinks it's all down to her. So now, in their various ways, they are both wrapped up in their own forms of guilt, Derek over the way he has behaved in the past, and Meredith over thinking Derek has lost his chance to be Chief because of her. So now what will they do? Review and you'll find out.