trigger warning: this gets a little mature towards the end for minor scenes of sexual assault. read at your own risk.
There are five stages of grief. They go like this: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. We go through these stages when we lose someone to death or to life's challenges. After grief, however, comes forgiveness. You need to forgive your person for leaving you too soon in the dust. The stages of forgiveness go something like this: stage one is anger. You're incredibly angry with them for leaving you alone with no one to support you. And you have every right to be. Scream in an empty field, punch a bag, growl at everyone and everything. Stage two is sadness. Cry openly. Express how you feel. Don't hold it in. Let it all go from inside of you. Stage three: the hopeful stage. Hoping they'll forgive you, come back to you, and love you. This is most likely the most painful stage as it puts a load on you mentally. Stage four is the reckoning. Accepting what happened, being okay with the outcome, and looking forward instead of back. The main point here is that forgiveness is a lot like grief. It has stages. It takes time. You can't skip steps. You can't wish away what happened. You have to accept it and move on. And you have to forgive them in order to do that, even if it seems impossible. Forgiveness affects not only the perpetrator but also the other party. They need to forgive to move on. They need to exhale the deep breathe they've been holding, unclench their fists, and let go.
"Thanks so much for watching them, Addison. Considering it was my kid and Alex's..."
"Meredith. It wasn't a problem at all. But if you don't mind my saying, both of those kids need you. They need someone to tell them that they're worth it. Amber spent a lot of time with my best friend, the psychiatrist at the practice, while she was here. And she just needs someone to be there, cause I don't think she feels that there is."
Meredith took this in, not really registering it in her mind. She would ponder it later when she wasn't sitting in the airport line waiting for her runaways to emerge from the terminal.
"Mer!"
The first thing she does is hug her aunt. The girl was letting herself be eaten alive by guilt at that point. She felt absolutely awful about everything that had happened. Amelia had rejected her, her father had rejected her...
"Hey, kid," Mer responded, giving her kid a tight hug. Addison had told her that things hadn't gone exactly well with Amelia. She didn't know what she was expecting. And Webber, ever her father figure, had told her to forgive. Because forgiving is not just for the person who did the action, it's for the person who suffered it as well.
She forgave Amelia. She was willing to let her come back to the house. Well, she was until she hurt Cassie. Now she wasn't sure.
"Where is Alex?" Amber asked, scanning the area around them at the airport. It was just Meredith. She was walking, which was great, but Amber needed to talk to her brother.
"Working. He moved his surgery to now so he could spend more time with you later."
"Okay." Amber murmured. It was then that it hit Meredith. Her conversation with Addison on the phone earlier suddenly made sense.
Once they got back to the house, Meredith called out to Amber before she could run up the stairs and hide in the attic with Cassie. Amber rolled her eyes, dropped her bag at the stairs, and trudged over to where Meredith was standing at the kitchen counter. She raised an eyebrow. 'What do you want?' her face spoke.
Meredith didn't hesitate. "I get you. You know why I get you? Because I was you. I was the girl who used to sulk around because my father left to have Cassie's mom and aunt, and my mother was too busy being a surgeon to raise me. And you know what, even though my mother cared more about her job than she did about me, she was still around. She was still the person that I wanted to become when I got older. I mean, not the abandoning mother, but the kickass surgeon that won two Harper Averys. Your mother isn't mentally well. I get that. My mom didn't want me to tell anyone that she had deteriorated from Alzheimer's. I didn't think I'd ever find someone to share my life with or even find someone to call family." She turned to look at the pictures stuck on the fridge. Her three kids. Her and Derek and Zola and Bailey. Her and Lexie (Cassie had put that one up there the minute she saw it), and her and the whole doctor family at one of the dinner receptions they had gone to. She needed some pictures of Cassie and Amber to put up there.
"Your brother, even when he was a scrawny selfish intern, was my family. His ex-wife, my family. My husband and the father of the three kids that adore you? It took me a long time to realize that I loved him. And Cassie's mother? We weren't raised together, so we weren't close in the beginning, but now I would give anything to tell her how her daughter is doing because she was my family. What I am trying to say is that, while our stories are not the same, they are incredibly similar. And I don't want you to think because I have Zola and Bailey and Ellis and Cassie that I won't be your person too. I will be your person if you want me to be."
"Exactly what did Addison tell you?" Amber said, avoiding answering the question her brother's best friend had just posed. It was true, she did want Meredith to talk to her about the stupid things like high school and eventually boys and prom when she stopped feeling that pit in her stomach.
"That you spent some time with the psychiatrist. I've never met her, but she sounds... nice?"
Amber nodded, deciding she would slightly let Meredith into her small circle. Alex and Cassie were the only other two people that she would even remotely consider letting into the circle. And the shrink, although she didn't know what that even meant, exactly.
"I don't know how to describe it to you. She might me feel... safe? Like I wasn't as alone anymore." Erg, she was getting all mushy. What if she started crying again? She couldn't let her guard down again.
"You're not alone. You have me and Alex and Cassie and always will."
Her wall stood strong. "But what if the adoption falls through and the social workers send me back to Iowa?" It was a legit fear, that accepting a place in this house would be ripped away from her before she could even sit down at the table.
"We are not going to let that happen. Do you understand that?" Meredith was still calm.
"You don't know, Meredith... I promised myself I would never go back there again." Her voice cracked. Crap! Where was her guard? He probably ran off to screw some chick or something.
Meredith immediately detected the change in the girl's tone. "Amber... is there something you're not telling me? Is there something you want to tell me?" She needed to make her feel like she could talk to her... she could talk to her.
Amber's breath stopped short.
"You don't like talking about the foster homes. I get that, as a doctor, I've seen too many cases of abuse in foster children." It suddenly clicked. "Were you..." Amber didn't say anything. "... because if you were, then you have to know that it is not your fault in any way, shape or form."
She coughed, clearing her throat so that it was once again hard. "You can't tell Alex. Not yet. Not now. It's not the right time." She didn't really want to tell him ever, but she figured he was already mad at her, and she wasn't going to spring that on him.
"Are you okay?" Meredith asked. "Physically? Emotionally?"
"Meredith, it wasn't an issue when it happened. It's not going to be made into a big issue now."
"Amber-"
Meredith was cut off by the sound of the doorbell. Meredith rolled her eyes and went to open the door. She raised her eyebrows at the sight of Joel.
"Can I talk to her, please?"
"She's upstairs. If I hear screaming, I'm sending Amber up with a frying pan."
The man wearing the Seattle Presbyterian Hospital jacket clomped up the stairs to the attic. Cassie was haphazardly throwing her stuff from her bag onto the bed when she jumped in surprise at the sound of the door opening. Expecting Amber or Meredith, her eyes grew sad at the sight of her sperm donor. That was what she was going to refer to him as in her head from now. Although if he was here, that meant he probably wanted to talk about life or whatever.
Or whatever? She was starting to sound like Alex...
She didn't say anything; she just crossed her arms at him.
"I came to apologize. I don't think I was very fair to you the day we met. You have to understand, seeing you as a grown woman and finding out that you were my child, that I didn't know about you for all this time, that I missed out on all this time, it hurt me. If I had known about you, I would have given up everything for you. I would have dropped out of med school to give you the childhood you deserved. And Meredith tells me that your other aunt found you after some time, but that you weren't happy, that something was missing. Did you ever stop and think that maybe what you were missing was me? I know your mother is gone, and that you never got the chance to be her daughter, but you have the chance to be mine."
Cassie let out a deep breath. "How would that even work, exactly? You live on the other side of the city."
"I might have contacted Miranda Bailey to get a transfer to Grey Sloan Memorial. Well, me and my buddy, the doctor friend that helped you find me at the hospital. We both wanted to get transferred. And we got approved this morning."
"Wait, so you're moving closer to here?"
"Yes. Me and the buddy are trying to find a condo or something. You could come to look with me if you want. And we can go get dinner or something afterward."
"Um... I am going to go ask my aunt." She shuffled past him, and down the stairs.
"Mer! He wants me to go house hunting with him!"
"Househunting? Is he moving closer to here?"
"Yes, so he can start his new job at Grey-Sloan Memorial!"
Meredith rolled her eyes as if to say, 'I really should have seen this coming.'
She was still in disbelief that she and her father were driving to see a house in Seattle as if they had known each other their whole lives. Well, it was incredibly awkward, but they were trying. And it wasn't like they were expected to click immediately.
She eyeballed the Stanford sticker on her father's car. "So you went to Stanford? My aunt's best friend went to Stanford."
"Cristina Yang?"
"How did you-"
"She used to work at Grey-Sloan. She was a few years ahead of me, but she was a legend. Every med student that went through there knew her name. I read all of her journals. I was really rooting for her to win that Harper Avery."
"Goodness knows she deserved it. Stupid rules."
"So... have you given any thought to what you want to do after high school?"
"Well, pre-med and then med school." She shrugged as if it wasn't obvious.
"Do you know where? Because I could get you some connections at Stanford."
"Honestly, I haven't really put that much consideration into it. I was debating just going to UWashington Seattle so I could be close to Meredith and everyone. They're my family. And if anything happens..." her voice faltered. The truth was, she had considered Stanford. But now, it felt too far away, too out of reach...
"Why do you think something is going to happen?"
"My mother died in a plane crash. My aunt has suffered so many traumas that I don't know how she is still walking around functioning as she does. She held a bomb in her hands. She drowned. She survived a shooting, and a plane crash, and gave birth to my cousin in an electrical storm, her sister died, her husband, she was attacked like a month ago... I'm just afraid that something else is going to happen, and I am not going to be there." ... to say goodbye.
"You have Meredith, for now..." Her mother's voice rang in her mind.
"You can't think like that. Yes, you and the rest of the Greys have suffered a massive amount of trauma for just three people. But you cannot live your life in fear that something bad is going to happen every time you walked away from them! That is not how life works."
"I know that I do, but I just found them. And I lost one. I don't want to lose anymore. I mean, I think I would survive, sure, but I don't want them to die."
"No one wants their loved ones to die. But you cannot stop your life. So, will you at least take a weekend and go see Stanford with me? I promise you I will not abide you by contract to go there."
"Oh, that's reassuring."
They pulled up to a condo around ten minutes away from Meredith's. Nathan is standing there by his car, and he waves eagerly as soon as he sees them approaching.
"Mate, I think you'll like this one."
She sees him. Hovering above her. She's there, on the bed, unable to move her bones. They burn, they're numb.
But she's not numb. Well, her mind is, but she feels him, shoving himself into her.
She can't breathe. She's heaving. Her body is giving out on her.
She had originally tried to scream, tried to call anyone that could get her out of there. She thought of Alex, her brother, who would if he wasn't in Seattle, come running in like Superman and scoop her up and run into the night carrying her in his arms.
They've tried a number of different things. It depends on their mood. Sometimes they handcuffed her to the bed, or drugged her, blindfolded her, it really depended.
She'd only been in this foster home a couple weeks. The usual wife who pretended the kid didn't exist, and the husband who saw nothing but someone to screw whenever he wanted to. She'd been in a lot of foster homes that had hit her, sure, but none had ever...
None had ever taken something so sacred away from her.
She needed to get out of there, out of this nightmare in which she was reliving something she wanted to forget before the scene changed to something even worse.
Too late.
"A woman like you is too pretty to be wearing that many clothes."
That was the first thing he had ever said to her. She hadn't even been standing in that house for five minutes when he had said that. He had said that as he had forced her upstairs into their bedroom. She had tried to fight him, but he had her pinned down before she could even move.
It was terrifying that even in her dreams she could hear the sound of her own screams.
She wakes up hyperventilating. She can't breathe. She's going to vomit out her insides.
As quietly as she can to not wake Cassie, she goes flying down the stairs to the downstairs bathroom where hopefully no one will hear her puking out her dinner. Tears are raining down her face. Usually, she would just wake up and go back to sleep. Not today, apparently.
She stands up, turning around. Standing in the doorway of the tiny bathroom are Alex and Meredith. They look at each other before hugging her. She was an absolute blubbering mess. There was no way they were going to keep her now.
And that's how they ended up huddled together on the bathroom floor.