A/N: WOW! Thank you all so much for the reviews! I hope you enjoy this chapter!

Meredith could not remember the last time she had been filled with so much flat-out fear and panic. Every muscle in her body shook, her nerves still stood on end, her heartbeat attacked her eardrums. Her hands clasped around the thin, cold, metal bar that surrounded Derek's small excuse for an emergency gurney. Her grasp tightened around them until her knuckles turned to a distinct shade of white. Two backup guards had rapidly brought them in the rolling table moments ago and now they were trying to get out of the horrible battlefield of a fight. Meredith, Izzie, Cristina and the two backups were pushing the gurney as fast as their legs would allow them to.

Everywhere around her was disguised as a messy palette of a blurs. Sirens screamed at a nauseating pace, people yelled and attacked from everywhere around her. There were muffled sounds of blasts and heartfelt yells of attack and defiance. The backup of her facility surrounded her, shouting and fighting against the rage and defense of the A&O. She could hear angry gunfire and pained screams, thing that made her flinch and wince all at the same time. It was horrifying. They were almost out.

Meredith almost tripped on her feet as she sprinted, shoving the gurney forward, screaming and ducking away from groups of fighting people. Her hair stuck, clinging to her face from a matted mess of sweat and tears. She spat in an effort to send the chunks of dangling hair out of her sight, but they fluttered back into place. They broke out of the dusty building, smoke clouding their vision as Meredith could feel her feet tap on the cold, muddy ground outside. Cold air met her skin immediately, and she could feel her epidermis tighten, freezing in the winter air.

The moment they had finally gotten outside, Derek gasped, choking on the freezing air. They had had to remove his shirt so they could figure out where to apply pressure to the wound, and he had been in a state of semi-stupor. Until now. As the cold air smacked at his body and rushed down his lungs, he gasped, taken aback by the sudden fusion of the air. His whole body arched and released, arched and released, arched and released… Meredith's stomach churned as she heard him cry out.

Although the wound wasn't as major as she initially thought, and the shock was still keeping his pain low, the trauma and horror of the whole experience was increasing the stress and fear he held onto. His fingers rolled into fists and he squeezed his eyes shut, his expression twisting into a menacing howl. His lips screwed up into a pained purse, and Meredith winced for him. She tried to put her hand on his and whispered, "Derek, we're almost there."

Truth was, Meredith had no idea where they were headed. The two ominous backup spies lead them. Apparently, there was supposed to be some sort of undercover ambulance lurking on the outside of the dense woods, but Meredith's faith and hope in the whole situation was falling apart. It was already proving difficult enough to guide the thin bed along the forest. Her feet pounded and her arms ached from the strain and intensity of trying to make the gurney roll faster.

The cold air nipped at his wound and he yelled, as if the pain had just suddenly reached him. He wrapped his fingers around the bars on the side and pushed downwards, causing his body to arch up in an effigy of the 'bridge' Meredith used to do when she took gymnastics. His eyes shut tight again, biting his lip so hard that Meredith was certain it was on the verge of bleeding. "I…I…I…" He tried helplessly, knuckles turning white as he clasped to the bar with all he was worth.

"Derek, please," Meredith begged him to calm himself. She knew it was hard, she knew it was near impossible as she imagined the flashbacks that attacked his brain. She flicked her head up, silently pleading someone else to help her make him calm, but they were all focused on running, eyes intent on the path. She gulped and staggered with her words, "You're okay. Keep breathing, Derek. You can do that, right? Come on."

He whimpered out, a deep thrumming sound echoing from his chest, then sighed. He let his pained, arched back collapse in a reluctant surrender against the hard gurney, shaking and shivering and biting his lip to keep from making any noises that could be perceived as weak. Derek and his pride, Meredith thought as she pursed her lips.

They ran for what seemed like hours until they neared the edge of the forest. By that time, Meredith's legs felt as if they were on fire and her arms were almost plastered in place, her muscles confused by the sudden intensity of a workout they had. Meredith followed as they rolled the table onto the disguised ambulance. But she let her knowing feet lead her, as her mind was completely within a different state. She felt as if she was watching herself in a movie, just looking down on a ghostly figure that wasn't her. She was in a daze, like watching a horror movie progress slowly and painfully, unfolding in front of her distant gaze. She blinked, a weak attempt of trying to muffle the image that sat in front of her. But in that situation, she couldn't do it. There was simply no time.

The scrabbled at her forehead as the muted sound of the door behind her closing startled her. It brought her back to her daunting reality, the one that literally made her heart ache every time she saw it, every time she thought about it. She shuddered involuntarily and stomped over to the side of the gurney, next to Derek's quivering body. Izzie and Cristina were typing things into the computer screens that were plastered along the van walls, and they shouted frantic orders into the comlinks that sat in their ears.

Derek spoke as the engine roared to life, "Mer…ed…"

"Don't talk, Derek, shhh…" Meredith tried to sooth him the best she could, but every muscle in her body felt as if it was on the verge of collapsing, giving out beneath her. She guided her trembling hand to drop on top his.

"He…He…He…" He fumbled fearfully and helplessly for words and Meredith blinked back tears that were beginning to make her vision fuzzy. She pressed her lips together and tightened her grip around his hand.

"I know, Derek. I know."

"Meredith…" He finally was able to glue the syllables of her name together enough to form a word, but it was still shaking and ridden with inexcusable fear. Meredith nodded and licked her lips, blinking back more tears in the best effort she could. "Meredith, I…" His eyelids fluttered shut, but only after one fat tear rolled down the side of his cheek, leaving a glimmering dampness in it's straight trail.

"You don't have to talk, Derek," Meredith whispered, using her free hand to stroke his soft hair back. Her foot throbbed from kicking the door so hard, numerous times, in a desperate plea to escape what seemed like an inevitable fate. "You don't have to talk. I'm right here, I'm right here with you, okay?" She answered his question for him, "Okay. Just lay down."

"It…hurts…" Derek chided icily. The pain that enveloped his voice nipped at Meredith, sending a large array of fear down her spine. He gripped the small bars even tighter, as tight as he possibly could. His right hand lay limp at his side and he gasped for air, panting as he tried to get a hold of the oxygen he desperately needed.

"I know," Meredith added, her voice cracking and dipping down an octave. She kissed his right shoulder gently, "We're almost there."

Derek just couldn't seem to get himself to calm down, even the slightest. Panic was swept over him in a nasty wave that couldn't seem to be released from him. All that Meredith wanted to do was pull that blanket of horror and fear and torment off of his shoulders, but she couldn't. She couldn't.

"I can't…I…can't…" Derek stuttered, blinking his eyes open. A sea of tears that filled his red-rimmed eyes stared back at Meredith through her blurry vision. She felt sick, her stomach churning.

"You're going to be okay, Derek," She whispered quietly, more for a confirmation for herself than for him. She felt like she was repeating the same thing, stuck on a helpless and mocking broken record. She begged for better words to come, words that would actually help him. She wasn't doing enough, she wasn't… There had to be more that she could do. He bit his lip in pain and anxiety and shut his eyes again, screwing them shut tightly.

Meredith looked up through blurry vision at the figure of Izzie, who had been trying to get her attention. Meredith wiped her eyes with the back of her palm and quietly demanded, "What? What is it?"

Izzie's gaze was completely locked, wide-eyed, at Derek. She had never seen him so weak, so scared…

Meredith suddenly felt defensive. She curled her spare fingers into a fist, then released and tapped on her leg. She wiped off sweat that was gathering on her forehead, dampening her bangs. Derek had his whole pride with him, and she felt a twist of guilt knowing that she was letting all of them treat him like a victim.

But he was a victim.

"Izzie, what?" Meredith snapped. Izzie's attantion was grasped again and she looked up, blinking in a slight flurry of surprise.

"Oh, yeah," She said breathlessly, struggling to meet Meredith's icy gaze. She gulped heartily, taking a deep and hesitant breath. "Meredith, the backup is clearing out of there. They were outnumbered by…a lot. It was too much to handle." Meredith took a sharp inhale of frustration and rage as it bubbled up inside of her chest. "But…" Izzie's sentence was lost in her throat as she looked away, clearly too shaken to finish the sentence.

Meredith flashed her gaze at Cristina harshly, "What is it? Cristina, what is it?"

Cristina's eyes darted from Izzie to Meredith, Izzie to Meredith, then she locked Meredith's gaze roughly. Her voice was scratchy and unfamiliar, "They managed to catch Chris, Gibbs, and three guards."

Meredith felt her insides freeze, as if the gusts of cold air had attacked her internally and created a snow flurry inside of her. She bit her lip and shoved out the words, "Chris…and Gibbs…They got them?" Cristina opened her mouth to answer, but a sound interrupted her fiercely.

"Chris, no, please!" Derek yelled, his voice raising a few fearful octaves. His abdomen lurched forward and he grinded his teeth together in agony. His feet kicked without him being aware, and he snapped them up and down.

Say goodbye.

"Derek, you're okay! You're okay!" Meredith yelled at him, the sudden outburst surprising him. His eyes remained frozen shut, and she gulped. She couldn't tell if it was a nightmare, or a flashback… "Derek, come on, Derek, listen to me!"

"Please!" He begged. The fear encrypted in his voice made Meredith shake on her already weak knees. An uncomfortable, numb feeling spread across her and she felt her legs shake wobbly. She teetered on uncertain balance.

"Derek Christopher Shepherd, you listen to me!" Meredith brought her voice's intensity up, grabbing his flailing hand in hers and pressing it between her palms tightly. She hung on for dear life, clasping onto his clammy hands. He finally seemed to be brought down from his masked stupor, and he opened his red-rimmed eyes at her. They were glossy and empty, a look that made Meredith feel distantly sick. "You're okay, we're right here, you're going to be okay!"

Derek choked on some saliva that had gotten lost in his throat, and the air he was trying to suck up swirled around messily. He coughed and clawed at nothing, trying to grasp any sort of affirmation that it was still him. That it was still his life. But he found nothing.

- - - LATER - - -

"He's awake, isn't he? Shouldn't he be awake by now?" Meredith's voice questioned, wobbling with the small inquisition. Nurse Olivia, the small red-head that stood before her with a chart in her hand, looked at her solemnly. Meredith's teeth clenched, grinding together.

"He should be…" She said quietly. Meredith's hopes raised… "But that doesn't mean he is." And they fell again.

"B-But when will he be up? I mean, a-awake?" She stuttered through her thick tear-ridden throat, gulping down large bubbles of air and sucking in whatever oxygen she could grasp.

"Soon, Meredith," Olivia sighed, clutching her clipboard to her chest. Meredith found herself tapping her foot with impatience. She wasn't a rude person, she was just marked with incredible urgency. In her mind still echoed the picture of Derek lying on the ground in her arms, bleeding out, and… crying. The fear that he held in his eyes, his tone, his everything made her want to just lay down and melt.

"I'm sorry…" She mumbled tearfully, running her skinny hands against the grain of her hair. Olivia looked at her and tried to be as gentle as possible, trying to mend some of the emotional wound that Meredith had suffered herself.

"Don't apologize, Agent Grey," Olivia said quietly. Meredith felt the warmth of her palm on her back. "You went through something… unthinkable. You're scared, you're stressed. It's to be expected after something like this."

How could you expect something after 'something like this?'

Meredith nodded absentmindedly and tried to gather whatever composure she had left. She sighed and walked away without a word. For a moment she felt bad about how she had been to Olivia, but that guilt was washed away instantly and replaced by anxiety for Derek. She felt her knees shake. She was about to make her way back over to the uncomfortable seats in the diminutive waiting room but stopped and turned around. She couldn't bare to sit there, alone with her flashbacks and torrutous thoughts. She gulped and gulped again, pressing her palm against the swinging door as she exited the waiting area. Her feet tapped on the ground as she walked. She had no idea where she was going, but she was going there anyway.

She headed down the hallway. It smelled of cleaner and hospital, and it seemed much more prominent than the last time she had been there. Then again, she was walking around in the ICU, a place she had never been. Only a few beds were full, and the people that lay in them were frail and helpless. Meredith shivered at the amount of sorrow and pain that hung dauntingly in the air. She sucked in a breath and continued to walk down the rows of small rooms, the glass displaying the agents frail states. Her footsteps tapped on the ground and seemed as if it was causing an echo in the entire hallway, as it was nearly empty. The only people that hung around were the occasional nurses and orderlies; they buzzed in grounds and gossiped… that, or their eyes fled back and forth, scanning rapidly and intently over a variety of charts.

Meredith saw a group of the nurses laughing together, smiling and lighting up the whole area with their overly-whitened teeth. For a moment, Meredith hated them. She did. She couldn't see how they could just stand around, chuckling to themselves, having a good time, enjoying life… When her husband was probably in pain in one of the beds, hitting the nurse call button or panicking by himself. She imagined them blowing off the call button easily, scoffing as it rang over and over again. The very thought made her want to slap all of them.

She shook the hate and the thoughts out of her head. All they were doing was having a good time, all they were doing was simply living life. Just because she had been sucked into an impossibly horrific hole didn't mean that they all had to be, too.

- - Derek - - -

"Please don't take it out on us. Chris, I'm begging you. Please. Please."

He could only vaguely remember what happened as he began to stir from his unconscious state.

"That's right. We have some business to take care of, Grey,"

Everything that had went on had been like a quickly-paced blur for him, fear masking every action and every word that penetrated him. Blurred images of Meredith, distorted images of Chris and sounds of a gunshot echoed in his ears as if on a constant repeat.

"Darling, I would suggest that you'd leave the room. Now."

The way he was talking to her… it had made him sick. Literally, sick. His stomach had been doing flips and churning obnoxiously inside of his abdomen.

"Leave her alone."

"Hm, you really do love her?"

He could barely remember the intensity of the fear that had pressed down on top of him as Chris came nearer and nearer to Meredith, him pressed up helplessly against the wall. He remembered feeling alone, he remembered feeling empty, he remembered feeling dizzy and faint and he remembered the anxiety that attacked him at rapid speeds. He remembered trying to fight off the panic so he could at least try and think of a solution, or something that might possibly work as a solution. There was simply no time.

"Say goodbye,"

He remembered a flicker, a burst, of impulse that swallowed him, and he dove.

- - - Meredith - - -

She finally made it too the last bed down the hallway, the one closest to the clear doors to their single OR, and gulped. She pressed her palm against the door and took a shaky inhale, her legs quaking beneath her with rattled nerves. She stood on teetering feet, uneasily pressing against the door until it opened with a hiss. She forced her legs to put one foot in front of the other, making her way into the small room. It shut behind her with a click.

The dim lights displayed Derek's battered figure as it lay on the bed. He looked so… small, so helpless, pressed up against the crinkled pastel sheets. His right arm was tangled in a sling-like contraption, and his shoulder was largely bandaged with a long pad of gauze running diagonally across his chest and around his shoulder to his back. His eyelids were beginning to flutter open, the icy blue centers being exposed to the air and the light. He blinked twice, then moaned, shutting his eyes again.

He was alive.

Meredith blinked back tears and rushed over to his bedside, clasping his cold hand and sandwiching it between her palms in a hopefully comforting warmth. She felt all her emotions tackle her, flooding her with a messy mix of relief, scare and fear. She rubbed his smooth skin beneath the pad of her thumb, "Hey." Stupid Meredith, she thought, that's all you could think to say? Hey?

He blinked his eyes open and allowed himself to finally gaze apon the figure of his wife that stood over him. Her tears that sat in her eyes were glimmering, reflecting the light, and he tried to get his shaky vision to focus. There was a searing, throbbing pain in his arm and he tried his best to form words once again, tried to get his tongue to work to the best of his ability, "Hey."

Meredith bit her lip at his reply. It wasn't fearful screaming, it wasn't tortured flashbacks. Derek was actually talking- talking to her. She blinked gently a few times then licked her lips as more tears gathered. He was right there, talking to her, alive. He wasn't bleeding out in the middle of a room they were locked into. She took a shaky breath, "I love you, Derek."

Derek blinked, trying to crawl out of his painful daze, then mustered a thick whisper through his hoarse voice, "I 'ove you 'oo," He coughed, messing up some of the beginnings of the words. He licked his lips and tried again, "I love you too, 'eredith." He rested his head back against the pillow.

"How do you…I mean, how are you feeling?" She sniffled, wiping her face furiously with the back of her palms.

He twisted momentarily, causing the sheets to rustle. He hesitated, then met her glassy gaze, "'Hurts." The one word broke Meredith's heart. It hurt. It hurt him, in many ways, ways that just gauze wouldn't fix. Derek looked away, casting his gaze towards the window.

"I…" She had so many things she wanted to tell him. So many things. But in the still of the quiet moment, with only the monitor beeping in the background, she lost all use of words. Nothing came to mind. She couldn't form the thoughts that bustled around in her head into syllables, and she couldn't put them on the tip of her tongue. She didn't know what else to say, what else to do. She was lost. She finally got a grip on her words and stuttered, "Oh, Derek…" She began to cry, tears dribbling down her cheeks and splashing onto Derek's blankets. She let her head fold into his chest and he cautiously reached over with his left hand, stroking her back with gentleness and caring.

Derek gazed at her shaking form and rubbed her back harder, wishing more than everything she could erase what she'd just seen from her memory. He blinked, then fumbled messily for words to come to his lips, "I'm 'orry, I'm so sorry, Mer…"

"Don't you ever apologize, Derek," She cried, a muffled noise coming from her chest. She scrabbled her fingers against his blanket, trying to gain any amount of composure that she could gather. "Don't you ever." She cried until her cries became slower, and her chest heaved less. She sniffled against his chest.

He paused for a moment, then tried, "Are you…are you really….pregnant?"

She raised her head and pushed her hair back behind her ears, wiping off her wet, tear-ridden cheeks. "Yeah," She whispered. She unconsciously put her hand on her stomach. It was a weird and amazing feeling that she was growing a little person somewhere, somehow, in there. She blinked and felt her fingers run across the seams of her shirt, and then her eyes met Derek's. He was blinking back tears. "We're going to start a family."

"Oh, Meredith, that's…" He began, but began to choke on his own oxygen. He sputtered for breath, then took a deep inhale. Meredith squeezed his hand for support. "That's amazing. Meredith…I..." He lost track of his words, all of his emotions overwhelming him.

They embraced.

A/N: What did you think? Sorry the last part was so short. There will be more Derek-waking-up scenes, I just thought I'd throw the last part in to give you guys a little bit of closure, if that even helped. They went through quite the event, and it'll take some work to get themselves back to normal. But YES, Meredith still has the baby :)

Woah, almost 40 chapters! Thanks so much for reading, reviews are appreciated!