Suggested listening:

"Falling Slowly"- Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova

The ride home was a quiet one, punctuated every so often by a sidelong glance at Meredith from Derek. He had talked to Richard earlier; Meredith had given the police a recount of Thatcher's actions in the ER, and he was being held in jail pending a bail agreement. Driving while under the influence, vehicular manslaughter, destruction of state property…the potential convictions floated through Derek's thoughts as he slowed to a stop at a traffic light.

"How is she?" Richard leaned back in the desk chair, his brow furrowed in concern.

Derek could only shrug.

"I wish I knew…" He sighed, and shook his head. "I wish this hadn't happened. She didn't need this."

"It's going to be okay, Derek," Richard leaned forward, spoke with unfounded conviction: "Meredith is better at this than you think-"

Derek looked up.

"I just wish she didn't have to be." His gaze was serious, and his eyes showed more concern than a healthy man of thirty-five would normally emit.

Richard considered this.

"She has you," he said simply, tracing the line of his jaw in a pondering motion. "She has Cristina, and Izzie, George. Hell, even Alex Karev seems to have a special interest in her, and that boy…" Richard tapered off. "She has Lexie," he offered finally.

Derek scoffed at this.

"Yeah, great," his sarcasm was barely contained. "Ever since she-" Derek too died off, and shook his head. He considered his next words. "Her dad choose Lexie. Maybe not intentionally, but that's how Meredith sees it. He left, and got himself a new family. I can't believe I ever wanted her to give Lexie a chance," Derek spat.

"Why?" Richard seemed perplexed.

"Why?" Derek repeated. "Why not? Her only experience with any real family has always ended in disappointment. I thought it was a good idea," Derek reflected. "Suddenly, she had a half-sister that wanted to get to know her. And now she's finally let her in, what's happened? Susan dies, and Meredith is literally slapped across the face. He tells her it's her fault, that she's not welcome at the funeral," Derek could feel his voice grow bitter now, "What responsibility does she have to him, at all?" he demanded. "What does she stand to gain from it? He disowned her, and the one time the responsibility falls to Lexie, it's Meredith who ends up down in the ER. It's Meredith he said those things too!"

There was a long, drawn silence in which Richard considered this, and finally drew a file nearer him.

"I'm restricting Meredith to twenty-four hour shifts effective immediately, and I want to be kept informed," he ordered, pensively signing off on the forms. "I know I'm not her father," he stated truthfully, "but…" Richard shook his head. The next pause was even longer than the first. "…She's important to me, and I want this thing to work with you two."

Derek felt his sullen mood soften, and he nodded.

"I just want my daughter," he admitted softly. "I want her safe, and I want Meredith to be happy."

"Then show her that," Richard suggested. "Don't be like I was with Adele."

Meredith kept a protective hand against her belly as Derek drove, and as the light turned green and they accelerated through the intersection, Derek cast her another lingering glance.

"How are you feeling?" He tensed, waiting for her to hesitate, to shy away from his concern. But Meredith smiled, and her eyes were soft as she turned away from the window.

"Okay," she answered honestly. She grinned to ease the tension, and after a moment, spoke again: "Are you okay?"

"What?" Derek's gaze slid towards her. "What do you mean?"

"It's just, a lot," Meredith spoke honestly, trying to put into words how she felt. "It's just…hard sometimes. It's been hard," she reiterated. "It's been hard, since the day we knew- I knew," she corrected herself, "and I just wondered. You never really got a say in things-" Meredith's observation was honest, and suddenly, Derek found himself wondering if this was how he came across to her.

"Is that what you think?" he asked softly, and Meredith's reply was immediate, and somewhat reserved:

"I just…wonder, sometimes," she shrugged apologetically, and Derek glanced back in the review mirror and slowed the car to a stop.

"Don't ever for a second," Derek's voice was raw and truthful, and filled with dire conviction as he shifted into park and turned to face her, "think that I don't want to be part of every second of this with you," he stressed, tucking a golden lock of hair away from her face. "There's nothing else," he tried to voice what he was feeling, "There is nothing else that I want more…than to have this baby with you."
Derek's gaze burned into her, and Meredith lowered her eyes, her throat tight.

"Okay," she agreed softly, her voice tiny.

"Okay?" Derek lifted her chin, feeling suddenly sentimental, and her eyes met his.

"Okay," she echoed again, a strained whisper, and leaned towards him as Derek kissed her gently.

"She talked to the police?" Derek's conversation with the Chief had progressed, and Richard nodded.

"She gave a deposition. As did Karev."

Derek considered this.

"So what now?"

"The police have taken him into custody for DUI. The man in the other vehicle died in OR two shortly after surgery began-"

Derek nodded.

"I heard."

"There was too much damage," Richard continued, "If convicted, Thatcher will mostly likely be found guilty of vehicular manslaughter. Not to mention the financial damages he cost the hospital-"

"And Meredith? Did- were you there, when she talked to them?" Derek questioned.

"She did fine, Derek. Better than I expected, to be honest."

Derek thought about this.

"She did okay?"

Richard nodded.

"She did okay," he agreed.

Derek was back to driving, but he kept one hand gripped in Meredith's as he drove.

"She's kicking," Meredith said softly.

Derek impulsively moved the hand gripped in Meredith's to feel, and then hesitated. He glanced sideways, and there was a awkward silence as their argument from the exam room that afternoon drifted through both their minds. It was not something they had talked about; rather, both of them had been careful to avoid the subject since leaving Cristina's apartment, but finally, Meredith spoke again, trepidation in every word:

"Do you want to feel?"

Derek's hand immediately found itself alongside Meredith's on her belly, and he smiled to himself as he drove.

"She could be a soccer player," he suggested.

"She…needs a name," Meredith observed. "We haven't thought about names-"

"Haven't you?" Derek asked.

"Well…yes," Meredith admitted. There was a brief silence between the two. "Izzie saw you reading 'What To Expect When You're Expecting'?" Meredith questioned, to break the silence.

"Well, it's not a book of names," Derek confessed.

"So you were?" Meredith's voice had a hopeful quality to it.

"Well, yes," Derek admitted. "Is that okay?"

Meredith grinned.

"It's wonderful," she sighed happily. "…Very McDreamy of you."

"Of course. I am your 'knight in shining whatever', after all," Derek smiled. "…It's in the glove box."

Meredith glanced at him, and he inclined his head towards the dashboard.

"Go ahead. It's for you, too, if you want," he added.

Meredith pulled open the glove box and retrieved the book. She ran a finger lightly down the spine. She opened it carefully and flipped through it's pages, even though it was dark. Finally, she sighed.

"…We can't have sex, Derek." Her voice was low, and weary of his reaction, and Derek pulled into the driveway beside Izzie's car and turned off the ignition.

Things were quiet as Derek considered her words, and the first few heavy drops of rain hit the windshield and deterred his thoughts. Meredith turned and looked up and him, closing the book carefully, and Derek nodded.

"I know."

Now Meredith kept her gaze averted, and carefully studied the swell of her belly.

"Meredith?" Derek spoke again, and when she looked up at him, her lips were pressed together in a heartbreaking, downward frown as she struggled not to cry. Derek hated that look. It reminded him of ferryboat crashes and drowning, Alzheimer-ridden mothers and mean fathers. And in the six times he had ever seen a look quite this sad on his Meredith, it had torn him apart, each and every time.

"Mer," Derek repeated, "Baby, what's wrong?" He pulled her close, embraced her tightly, and when she finally pulled away her face was flushed and tear streaked.

"I did-" she said miserably, and Derek frowned, because he had idea what she meant.

"Did what?" he asked softly.

"I did," she said again. "You said I didn't ask you to stop, but I did."

It took Derek a moment, and then he realized. She hadn't wanted the sex. He had hurt her, and his hands shook with the thought of it.

"I hurt you," he spoke finally, with miserable, dawning realization. "I'm so sorry, Mer…" he kissed the top of her head, and she sniffed. "It's my fault…" he continued.

"Meredith has a review coming up." Derek spoke it as a statement, but really, he only knew what he had heard from George.

"At the end of January, yes," Richard agreed, and Derek shook his head.

"She never told me about it."

Richard looked surprised and considered this, but finally, he sighed.

"Derek, I've had to pull a lot of strings to keep Meredith in this program. Obviously, you understand this," he continued, "and she did log slightly above the average number of hours expected for a first year resident to complete in their first semester-"

"She worked hard," Derek spoke, slightly defensive.

"She did," Richard agreed.

"She worked too hard, Richard," Derek shook his head. "She was never away from this hospital, and you saw what happened-"

"Which is exactly what I was concerned about in the first place…" Richard intoned. "And now I have a note from Robert Vann sitting on my desk, telling me that Meredith is not to work a shift exceeding twenty-four hours without a minimum of ten hours between, and that's in addition to the already low number of hours logged for this month-"

"She's going to be an excellent surgeon-" Derek cut across. "-You've seen her work…Doesn't that account for anything?"

"I'm trying to make it count," Richard stressed. "Meredith has been in and out of this office twice a week for the past three months; there are a lot of things that accompany this-" Richard explained. "Paperwork, I've got to do a quarterly assessment of her hours, not to mention verify the standard expectation of time worked every pay period…She's been before the board once already, Derek, and she did fine-"

"That was just a formality," Derek pointed out. "Last semester, she put in more time than everyone except Dr. Yang. She exceeded the standards," Derek argued, running a hand through his hair, "she was still in her second trimester…She'll be seven months soon, Richard, and that's something that needs to be considered if they're going to make her stand before the board and…what? Try and validate her credibility? It's ridiculous-"

"It's standard practice, Derek-"

"I don't care," Derek interrupted, "she's hasn't told me about it, which means she's worried. And I can tell you right now what she'll do. She'll work. She'll work anyways, and she'll never leave this hospital, and then the next time she collapses in surgery, you can just tell the board that my daughter was born premature, or has to be in the NICU for the next two months, or- or worse-" Derek's angry demeanor gave way to frustrated concern as he thought of this, and he stood and slammed a clenched fist down onto Richard's desk,"-but it's okay, because Meredith logged all of her time this month!"

Derek came around and offered a steadying hand to Meredith as she stepped out of the truck, and she sniffed, feeling embarrassed.

"Derek-"

But her next words were cut off as he pulled her tight against his broad chest, and kissed the top of her head, inhaling her lavender scent.

"Shh-" He whispered soft reassurances, let his hand navigate the waves of her hair, and he could feel his shirt growing wet with her tears. He wondered what was going through her head, silently cursing himself for the pain he had caused her. He couldn't have sex with her. It was indefinite. But any arousal he might have felt was instantly quelled as these thoughts ran through his mind. Meredith was giving him a daughter. This reason alone was more than worth it.

The wind had picked up considerably, bringing with it more heavy drops of rain. They scattered across the driveway, against his back, onto Meredith's forearms. She shivered, and Derek could feel the baby kicking inside of Meredith as he held her. He glanced up at the dark sky as the low sound of thunder rolled in the distance. Soon, it would be raining relentlessly.

"You're cold," Derek murmured, "let's get inside-" He pushed the passenger door of his truck closed and lead Meredith up the porch steps, fumbled with his keys, and let the door swing open.

The initial silence was echoing. Derek closed the front door and both he and Meredith stood in the foyer for a moment. Meredith swiped a hand beneath her eyes, and Derek kept his own lingering hand against the small of her back. The house was dim and quiet, but the murmur of conversation drifted from the kitchen; Izzie's laugh and Alex's cynical-sounding retort, George's defensive rambling. Meredith smiled, because these were her friends, and they were all here. And although she physically wanted nothing more than to head upstairs with Derek and climb into bed, Meredith found herself propelled towards the kitchen by the need to be around friends (and the slight craving for Fruit Loops).

Alright, several things:

First, the Writer's Strike is over! Four to five new episodes of Grey's out by May, which I'm so happy about and have been meaning to mention! Umm, second…For those of you wondering about the timeline of this fic: June would have been the year mark since Meredith and her friends started their internships, so she's been a resident for a little over six months now because it's December in my story. So yeah, a year and a half that Mer/Der have known each other. Meredith, Cristina, Alex, and Izzie (but not George) began their residencies just after the short summer break they were supposed to get after Cristina's non-wedding at the end of season 3. So season 4 starts, and basically, Meredith has just started her residency, and just found out she's pregnant. And yes, Derek is thirty-five in the show, too. In the current season of Grey's (season 4), episode 4.3, Marks asks Derek if he thinks there will be a time when new procedures will pass them by (because Mark thinks he's getting old), and Derek disagrees, saying: "I'm thirty-five. I'm a fetus."

…It's the episode where Mark and the Chief perform risky new tongue surgery on that woman.

Thirdly, the song I picked for this chapter is on the soundtrack for the movie 'Once' and just won an Oscar last Sunday! I'm very excited, because this is the song that I thought deserved best to win, although I was somewhat-partial to the nominated songs from 'Enchanted,' obviously, because our McDreamy is one of the leads in that movie! But yes, it's an amazing song, 'Falling Slowly' by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, and if you listen to the lyrics, I just think they are so true to Mer/Der's struggles right now.