Disclaimer: I do not own anything. Sad.
Author's Note: Hello everyone. It's been a pretty long while . I think we've established that I pretty much suck at updating. But I do always end up updating. So yay me! Okay not really. I don't deserve "yays", but I wouldn't abandon this story unless everyone stops reading because they've had enough of my unpredictable muse. I've had enough of my unpredictable muse! But I'll try to be better. Promise! I want to thank you all for your wonderful reviews. The recent ones were especially inspiring! It makes me very happy to know you enjoy reading this. So thank you so much, and I'm sorry to have kept you waiting.
Anyway, here's the very-late-in-coming new chapter. And it's a transition. Finally. I was finding it increasingly difficult to write the stalemate I had written myself into. Things are taking a step forward. They may seem rushed here, but it'll all be explained in the next chapters. I try not to leave anything unexplained because if something is in there then I've probably thought about it and it plays a role. Somehow, someway. The rushed nature is just a restriction of perspective. Can't jump from Derek's mind to Zack's to Nancy's to Becca's to Meredith's... etc. So please bear with me a little more. This is about to get a lot more interesting, I promise.
Onto the good stuff. Enjoy!
Chapter 21
"I'd show a smile, but I'm too weak,
I'd share with you could I only speak,
Just how much this, hurts me.
Just how much you..."
This Time Imperfect – AFI
He folded the bills and pressed them to the counter-top of a disenchanting green vanity table, his lips twisting in a self-deprecating smile. This had gone exactly as expected, he thought derisively, smoothing the pad of his index finger along a tall thin bottle of perfume. He was certain it smelled like her – overpowering and cheap. There had been a quick perusal, a casual look from breasts to thighs and back again. He'd pretended to survey the scantily dressed women, and then he had nodded slowly at the one that smiled the least. She had tried to kiss him three times before she learned that he wasn't all for that particular display of intimacy. He was hardly in the mood to woe and romance. He was hardly in the mood to be in the presence of another human being. He was hardly in the mood for anything at all, but he'd worked himself into this mood.
His icy resolve had not been shaken in the few tumultuous months since Seattle.
Tucking the rest of his money into the back pocket of his unbuttoned jeans, he looked over his shoulder. She was tidying the bed where their economical escapade had transpired – not that there was much to tidy. He'd been almost obsessively meticulous about everything, as if this was but another of his carefully laid plans. As if the monster inside him believed he could throw this back at her someday, and she would care enough to be hurt. Never mind that he had pathetically envisioned her once or twice during the whole charade.
Derek fumed quietly and shoved the disconcerting truths away, focusing instead on the woman artistically rearranging the bright red pillows against the metallic headboard. He studied her with the objectivity of a connoisseur. She was taller than average, her tanned legs shapely and long. Her breasts were small, and her dark hair fell to her shoulders in dark curly strands.
He didn't remember her name.
His fingers quickly fastened the line of buttons on his jeans, and then traveled to his dark blue shirt, expertly guiding its little buttons into their matching holes. He felt a movement behind him and glanced back to find her fitting her feet into racer-red stilettos that were as blatant as her makeup.
He hadn't paid for sex in a very long time.
Smiling again in self-mockery, he tapped the money he'd left with his index finger and turned away. He reached for the door and contemplatively fastened his fingers about the dirty brass knob.
"Have a nice night," he said politely, which seemed rather inane after sex.
Her laughter was surprised and delighted, and it stopped him. "Your manners are flawless, Derek Shepherd," she remarked with genuine amusement. Her dark eyes sparkled at him with uncharacteristic curiosity. He didn't think prostitutes were particularly interested in the men who visited their beds.
He returned her unashamed stare with an easy lop-sided grin. "Thank you," he intoned.
"I'm Sandra, by the way," she said as if she had somehow divined that the insignificant detail had slipped his mind. "I can always help you when you come here," she intimated wickedly.
Nodding slightly, he turned the knob and the door fell open, an escape from the schemes of the twisted darkness inside him. "I'll keep that in mind," he said in way of parting, his words slow and deliberate, a desperate denial of the urge to flee that manifested itself in his traitorous body. He gave her one last look, one sallow smirk that made him feel emptier on the inside, and only then did he allow himself to leave. The path from the backroom to the front door was cloudy with smoke. He felt slightly sick as he navigated through a sea of swaying bodies, knowing that he wasn't likely to ever revisit the seedy bar in the shady part of town.
When he stepped out into the chilly night, he felt painfully sober. His conscience was alive and viciously ripping into him with memories he fought to suppress.
I drank and I slept with women whose names I didn't remember. I did a lot of things I'm not proud of.
Meredith Grey had stared at him with her remarkable blue-gray eyes, looking like she wished she could make it all go away. Later that night, she had wrapped him against her like a favorite blanket and kissed his brow like a mother would to her sick child. Her lips had been warm and caressing against his skin, and he had felt like a little boy, completely at the mercy of her forgiveness, her tenderness and her acceptance.
Sometimes it's okay not to be strong. It's okay to let someone else be strong and admit that you've been dealt a losing hand. It's okay to sit down at the end of the day and let someone take care of you because you've fought through a losing hand. You've put up a fight, but you knew all along that you were going to lose. You still put up a fight, and that's what matters. You're a strong person because you put up a fight, because you fought until your last breath.
She had spoken the words wistfully, with a well of pain he would have discerned had he known that she was no longer the amnesiac she'd claimed to be. Her quiet even voice had betrayed the longing she felt for someone who would say the same to her – reassure her that just because she had a day where she couldn't fight anymore didn't mean that she wasn't strong. There was just no one to shoulder the fight – no one to take care of her at the end of a day lost in a tragic battle. Derek had known then that he couldn't be that someone for her. He'd believed he was far too cynical to take someone as intrinsically good as Meredith Grey into his keeping. For a while, he'd been content to think that they would both look back at their time together as a pleasant memory. He found himself cursing his naivety. There was little that was pleasant about remembering how well Meredith Grey had played him, how well she had lied to him. He was furious with her and with himself for not being able to rip her out of his mind. She lingered in his thoughts like an unwanted visitor who imposed her presence. He imagined himself pushing her away, physically driving her out of his thoughts, but she laughed at him mockingly because he couldn't touch her. She was light as air and quick.
She was nothing but a vision.
Driven by the darkness of his forbidding thoughts, he found himself at the gate of his building before he knew it. With a heavy sigh, he dug out his keys and unlocked the rusty blue gate. It was eerily quiet, a luxury of the post midnight hour. Taking the elevator to the fifth floor, he closed his eyes tiredly and leaned his shoulder against the bright orange plastic wall. With its habitual whining, the elevator dutifully delivered him to his floor. Derek rubbed the fatigue off his face as he shoved the cranky door open. He had barely released a tired breath when a bright flashlight was deliberately made to shine into his eyes, blinding him. His heart thudded sickly with realization before two burly bodies slammed into either side of him, shackling his arms.
"Hello, Doctor Shepherd," said a disembodied male voice he'd never heard before in a tone he knew well. "It's time to go home," the voice declared with smug victory, and that put a fight in him.
He slammed his elbow into the rigid abdomen of his left-attacker, and the man doubled over in pain.
"Holy shit, grab him," said the voice, colored with unease now.
Derek took his opening with a thirst that echoed in his blood, sending his freed fist flying in the direction of the second officer. His knuckles connected with bone and tissue and something that split. He heard a grunt and a curse, but the hold only loosened slightly before the distinct texture of a gun barrel was pressed into his back.
"I'll shoot you. You know I'd love nothing more."
He hissed furiously, mindless of the slight discomfort and was all for lunging at the offender before the butt of another gun came down on his head – hard. He had but a few moments of consciousness as the pain began to spread at lightning speed.
There were handcuffs and badges. There was a curse on his lips with Meredith Grey's name on it.
And then there was darkness.
----
They were in her living room again.
It was dark, and the rain pelted softly outside, its quiet rhythm wrapping around their entwined forms. The harsh sound of his breathing melted into the cadence of the storm, and it felt warm against her neck, alive, seductive. When his lips met her fevered skin in a soul-crushing caress, she made a small sound in the back of her throat and arched her neck towards him, trapping his face between cheek and shoulder. Derek was heedless of the restraint, and he was everywhere at once – before her, around her, above her – his strong hands making quick work of the buttons on her jeans before sliding around her waist and into her loose pants. Her gasp was caught in his torrid kiss. He was like a hurricane, powerful and destructive – devastating. She opened her mouth to welcome the sweet invasion of his questing tongue. It plunged deep, searching and finding, giving and taking. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't think. She should've fallen, but his arms were around her, urging her closer to the hardening contours of his body – to muscle and heat and sinew and Derek. She couldn't have enough. She molded herself to him, her ridiculous musings desperately trying to imprint herself against him as if she could make him remember, as if she could make herself forget. He released her lips with small kisses that had her hands twining in his dark hair, keeping him close. He said something completely unintelligible, kissed her jaw, her neck, and then her left breast where it swelled above the neckline of her sweater. Wickedly, he dipped his tongue into the valley between her heaving breasts.
When he deserted her, it was swift and sudden, and she swayed, her body aching with frustration. His blue eyes were stormy with desire, and she whispered his name like a mantra.
They dissolved into the woodwork like the mirage that they were.
She was still in her living room, buried under the confines of an ugly green quilt George had found in the attic – one of her mother's less than sane moments. Ellis Grey had hated the color green with a passion. She was breathing evenly as if it didn't feel like the world was spinning wildly out of control, just past the grip of her sanity. She was breathing, and she was alive. Her heart was thudding sickly against her ribcage, protesting against the very chore of sustaining her life. And she realized for the first time that part of her, a part that she vehemently denied with every breath, resented him for saving her. He should have let her be. He should have left her. He should have let her become a news story, a picture in a magazine, a warning against the hazards of driving in the rain. If he had, she wouldn't be curled on her mother's couch, fighting the urge to faint from the intense pain of devastation. She wouldn't feel like a harbinger of death that slowly brought destruction to those closest to her one at a time. First, Carol who had stopped breathing for no reason medicine could justify. Then her mother, the victim of terminal cancer, a textbook medical case that took her life in a few short months. And now Derek, whose image on her mother's television screen made her want to stop breathing.
They were replaying a news clip of his trial – the day of the conviction. He looked marvelous, poetically defeated but with such aching pride that her heart threatened to squeeze out of her chest. He was getting up from a chair, surrounded by a team of competent lawyers who could do nothing to help him just as the talented team of doctors her mother had belonged to could do nothing to help her. Just as she hadn't been able to do anything for Carol. Just as she wasn't able to do anything for Derek. A uniformed man materialized out of nowhere and slapped handcuffs around his wrists. The metal looked odd against the magnificently tailored black suit he wore. With the sharp slant of his mouth, he followed them out of the courtroom, his head held regally high like this was all a terrible mistake and they all ought to be bowing at his feet for forgiveness. He was pride embodied, and masculine beauty at its finest most refined form. And she was never going to forgive herself for betraying him.
She wished she had died that day.
"Doctor Grey, thanks to you we were able to apprehend Derek Shepherd."
Detective Julian Bennett's voice had been pleasant, glad that he was delivering such news. She remembered murmuring an incoherent response and ending the phone call. It took her two seconds to rush to her bathroom and one minute to empty the contents of her stomach into the toilet. She'd thrown up twice since – her own bile because she couldn't hold food down.
The sound of the doorbell ringing resounded in the fantasy fog surrounding her. She heard it echo and bounce like a jubilant child. It was joined by Cristina's voice – far and vague, calling her name.
"Meredith?"
She had forgotten her presence, could barely remember letting her in half an hour after the news broke. There had been attempts at conversation since, none of which were fruitful. She didn't trust herself to speak.
"Do you want me to get that?" Cristina's voice again, confused this time, a little bit louder.
She shrugged noncommittally and buried herself further into the dusty green cocoon her mother had bequeathed her.
When the unwelcome visitor knocked loudly at the door, Cristina left her chair and followed the sound.
Meredith made no effort to uncover the identity of her mystery guest. She did not move. She did not wonder. Staring blankly at her living room window, she thought about Derek, so desperate for freedom, so agonized by the injustice of wrongful accusation, so victimized by circumstantial evidence. She thought about him being led into an isolated dungeon where Seattle's mixture of sun and frigid winds couldn't burn his cheeks to a flushed tan color, where there were no stray dogs to claim him their owner. She thought of the way he would look at her should she build the courage to visit him one day.
It almost made her vomit again.
"Is she awake?"
Mark Sloan's voice filled her foyer, traveling into her living room like an intruder determined to grab her attention. Shutting her eyes against it forcefully, she leaned her head against the sofa's worn back and released a long weary breath.
"No, she's sleeping. She hasn't been feeling very well," Cristina lied.
Meredith could imagine her standing in her red Stanford sweater before Mark Sloan's towering frame, looking him straight into his piercing blue eyes and giving him half-truths. She probably looked terribly impatient like he was disturbing her favorite pastime or making her late for work. She didn't think Mark would particularly care about either discomfort.
As if to prove her right, she heard his footsteps smoothly trailing past the doorstep, and her stomach twisted painfully. Cristina didn't close the door.
"You're coming in," she noted irritably.
"I brought her food," said Mark from the doorway to her living room.
When she opened her eyes, she could see the back of his leather jacket framed by the door. She stared at him unbendingly, willing him away.
"Why?" Cristina asked incredulously.
He shrugged. "Because that's what people do when horrible things happen. They bring food," he reasoned, but he sounded as skeptical of the tradition as Cristina did.
"She's already had enough to eat." Another lie.
"What are you, the prison warden?" he snapped.
"I don't think she'd appreciate any prison humor right about now."
He murmured a string of curses that reminded her of Derek – imaginative expletives she hadn't particularly heard before. There was a shuffling sound when he shifted his weight from one foot to the other and passed the brown paper bag from his right arm to the left. Mark and his groceries. She wished he would leave her alone. She wished he would go away with his concern and his questions. She wished he would take the memories away. There was a painful similarity between him and Derek – pride and bitterness. Despite his jolly, devil-may-care façade, Mark Sloan was as haunted as the characters of his colorful past. He wasn't quite as intense as Derek, not nearly as frightening or as enigmatic. But one couldn't help but imagine them as the best of friends, breaking hearts, throwing fists and falling for the same woman in an explosive supernova. She imagined they would make formidable enemies now, like the hero and the villain of every epic story. She wondered who would play the role of the hero.
"All of this makes me very uncomfortable," her candidate hero was saying. His voice still came from the door to the living room, but he hadn't turned around as if he feared he'd be breaching her privacy.
Cristina was being appropriately uninviting. "Then why are you here?"
He hesitated for half a minute. "I want to help her. Hell, I don't approve, but I can help her," he retorted feelingly.
He was qualifying as the hero. Apparently, Mark Sloan had a remarkable capacity for forgiveness. She didn't need to explain or redeem herself. He accepted her less than savory decisions.
Derek, the evident villain of the broken pair, hadn't forgiven his dead wife.
"I'm going to check on her," Mark decided abruptly, stealing her thoughts away.
"What?" Cristina exclaimed, startled by his decision, but she couldn't stop him before he crossed imaginary boundaries and turned around.
For a long moment he didn't move, as if the sight of her huddled form arrested him. He hadn't expected the extent of her devastation. She could tell from the sad look that rested heavily in his worried gaze. His gray hair was combed nicely, splattered with a hint of rain. A tiny smile broke his grave face. He had resolved to help her, despite her deplorable loyalty to the enemy.
"Hi," said the potential hero, his voice odd in the sudden silence.
Meredith didn't say anything in return but thought that he fit the role well.
She still had a thing for villains.
----
The room was completely still, hissing with a sense of familiar foreboding. In the ghastly light wrought by the tubes of white neon, he contemplated his second downfall with a feeling of dread, but he refused to look at the long panel of mirror to his right. They were watching him, much as one would observe a controlled experiment – a wild unpredictable animal. It made his aching head pound even harder, and it hurt like bloody hell.
His jaw locked in place, he fixed his gaze to a spot on the unremarkable table before him. Insignificant little spot. And he waited with faux patience for them to break the ritual and walk into the interrogation room. He had little to say to them. He had little to say to anyone. Except for Meredith Grey. He had plenty to say to her, none of which she would like. His head protested against the thought of her. He let out a small hiss of consternation and rage, and then he summoned his expressionless face.
The door burst open then.
"Hello Shepherd," said Detective Jack Tray, strolling into the square-shaped room with a practiced confidence. He shut the door quietly after him as if they would converse in private, as if there wasn't a team of their finest behind the thick one-way glass, pouring over his every move. He would give them much to debate.
Derek flicked his gaze over the short stocky man, took in his crew cut brown hair and quick eyes, and then looked away as if in disgust.
"Or should I say Doctor Shepherd? I hear you were quite brilliant in your day, before you lost it and shot your beautiful wife for screwing the best friend. Another brilliant surgeon I hear. Such a brilliant story, full of brilliant people gone over the edge," he surmised as he pulled out the chair opposite his and casually took a seat. He was smiling like he found it all entirely too poetic to be true.
Brilliant, indeed. They had all gone over the edge, just not the edge Jack Tray had assigned to them. It was a different kind of blackness that colored his soul.
"How did you escape?"
Derek almost smiled at that, but he was in no mood to find humor in the situation. "Where's my lawyer?" he asked slowly, his tone as measured as his posture. His hands were cuffed and placed on the table in plain sight.
"On his way, I believe. I thought we could chat before he gets here," Detective Tray suggested with an amiable smile.
Arching an amused eyebrow, he leaned back into his chair. "I'll wait."
"How about Meredith Grey? Do you want to tell me what you did to her?" Jack pressed on, obviously trained to be dogged in his pursuit of information. Things would become considerably less interesting once his book-waving lawyer made his way to the police station.
In spite of himself, Derek felt his expression darken ominously. I saved her life. I gave her my secrets and my sanctuary. I let her go. "Did to her?" he bit out.
"She didn't confess to anything, rather implied that you were a pleasant kidnapper. You better hope she doesn't press charges."
Ah, he was being provoked. That one was old. Pleasant kidnapper. Evidently, she hadn't gone into the lurid details either. "I'll keep my fingers crossed," he replied tonelessly.
That made the good detective frown. "Is there a reason that Doctor Grey would press charges?" he prodded.
"Is this legal?" It wasn't. He was well familiar with the system. This particular faux-pas was frowned upon. His book-waving lawyer was going to have a field day.
There was a knock on the door, a polite entreaty. The detective looked up and nodded at the mirror. A younger officer stepped in, Derek's lawyer in tow. The old lecher was smiling like he was the cat who had just swallowed the canary.
"Detective Tray," the young officer began. "There's been a development. If you would please join me for a moment."
Detective Tray was frowning deeply when he traded places with Henry Harp, who was scratching his scalp giddily as he fairly sauntered into the room. The door closed firmly behind the uniformed men, leaving Derek and Henry Harp in a scenario Derek detested hugely.
"I have wonderful news!"
Henry Harp was fairly bursting with it. His ears were crimson. His catatonic eyes were gleaming victoriously. Derek didn't think any sort of news from Henry Harp could be wonderful, but he humored the man with an assessing look.
"Well, Henry, do tell. I could use some good news," he admitted.
Paperless for once, Henry folded his hands on the table and grinned like a teenager who had just discovered a wicked magazine. "Your sister has confessed to everything: the crime, the gun, the key. All of it. On record. She was brought in by your other sister and Congressman Preston. They've been questioning her for hours. You're as good as free, Doctor Shepherd," he delivered, and he was fairly gushing as if the blood wasn't rushing to Derek's head at the speed of light.
"My sister? What do you mean my sister confessed? What the fuck are you talking about Harp?" he snapped because suddenly his chest was caving in. It couldn't be one of his sisters. It just couldn't. They wouldn't do this to him. They wouldn't murder Addison. They wouldn't frame him for it.
Henry nodded vigorously and scratched the scab on his scalp. "Rebecca Shepherd."
"That's impossible, Henry. You've lost your mind." But his heart was beating too fast because Henry Harp wasn't making this up. He was eager and jittery, but he was honest.
"Doctor Shepherd…"
The door swung open again, making room for Detective Tray and his young colleague who walked straight towards Derek with a set of keys. He unlocked the handcuffs around his wrists and stepped back in a gesture that implied deference. Derek looked at him with a puzzled expression, and then he looked at Detective Tray. The short man had taken an improbably interest in his mundane shoes. When he raised his head to meet Derek's penetrating gaze, he cleared his throat and spoke loudly.
"Doctor Shepherd, you're free to go."