The water was warm.

Meredith bent and sluiced her fingers through, drawing it up dripping. The waves lapped at her calves, and she rolled her pant legs up. She pressed forward, deeper and deeper and stopped when the waves tickled under her knees.

The air gusted around her. Only the gulls kept her company. Her chest ached. Despite it's peaceful aura, this place was sucking her in...

What was she supposed to do here?

The sand isn't real!

Scoffing, she scrunched her toes, burying them in the gritty mud. Yeah. Okay. Sure... She turned to slosh back to shore.

On the bumpy deadwood log was a familiar sight. Richard. Meredith plodded up to him and sat down. He didn't say anything. Or maybe she couldn't hear. She didn't know anymore. Over time, one by one, her friends had appeared. Richard, Maggie, Bailey, Andrew, Helm...

But she couldn't hear them this time. Couldn't touch them, like she had once before. As much as she tried, she was stuck.

"Hey," she said to him. "I'm still here. I am. I'm not..." she trailed off and played with her fingers. "I'm not dead yet."

I think.

She hadn't seen Derek again. Not since that sappy moment when she fell flat on her face in the mud. Yup. That was her. Falling for him. Always and forever. It tore her, to be stuck in this beachy limbo. She missed her kids, her job-

"You miss him."

Meredith's head snapped up at the voice. Both fear and love struck her heart, painfully sucking the breath from her lungs. "Mom?"

She was smiling. Her mother, Ellis Grey, was smiling.

"Meredith, it's good to see you."

xxx

"You're here. Why are you here?" Meredith's heart flip-flopped. God, if her mom was here, how much of a goner was she?

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"I- I don't know. I'm sick, and I..." she picked at the bark on the tree, blowing out a breath. "Am I really dying this time?"

Ellis frowned, "Why would you think that?"

"Because last time-"

"Last time?"

Meredith blinked, pulling back to gaze at her mother. Did her mother know what happened, all those years ago? Was this her mother? Was that her mother? "I-"

"Last time, you gave up."

"Yes," Meredith nodded. It was never easy to admit that, even after all these years. Even after her happy ever after life with Derek... It was still hard to admit.

Ellis sighed, and reached out, and touched her. Pushed her hair away from her face. Her mother's fingers lingered, warming her cheek.

"Mom," Meredith cried. She touched the back of her mother's hand, pressing it over her spilling tears. She caught that feeling. What she'd felt only once before during a hypothermic dream. Her mother's love surrounding her, embracing her. "Mom."

You are... anything but ordinary, Meredith.

"You gave up, but you still lived," Ellis said. Her thumb erased the wetness pooling under her eye.

xxx

They walked down the beach, picking through bits of shell, rock and seaweed. "I won a Harper Avery award. Well, it's a Catherine Fox award now," Meredith said.

"I know. I'm proud of you."

The words hit her like a truck, made her dizzy with euphoria. She'd never heard that before from her mother's lips. Her heart broke and healed at the same time. "You are?"

Ellis stopped. "I am. And not just because of the award. After I died, I got to see you. Really see you, Meredith."

"You saw me?"

"I saw you. I saw you fall and fail and fight. I saw you grow up and learn. I saw you love and be loved." Ellis poked her toes into the water, her hands tucked into the pockets of her tan khaki's. "You did it without me."

Happy? You're happy now? The Meredith I knew was a force of nature. Passionate, focused, a fighter. What happened to you?

You. You happened to me.

The sun basked her face with warmth, but still she shivered. She'd grown up, become her own person, made her own life, despite her mother's constant disappointment, even after death. But...

"I didn't do it without you," she said. "I did it because of you." Meredith remembered the day she sprinkled the ashes in the scrub sink, putting her mother to rest, she made a pact with herself. That she wouldn't become old and bitter. That she would fight for love. To be loved.

Ellis sighed. "I wasn't the loving parent you needed."

"I still made it okay. And... I wouldn't have this life without you. I wouldn't have met Derek. I wouldn't be extraordinary."

"You think so?"

"Yeah," she said.

xxx

The log was empty when they returned to it. The sun hung low, making the sky pink and orange and warm. It never got dark here. Night never came. There was just endless hues of changing light.

"Do you remember the day I took you to the beach?" Ellis asked.

"You took me to the beach?"

Her mother nodded. "I did."

Meredith tried to pull up the memory, but had no recollection of sharing sand, sun and water with her mother.

"You were a toddler," she said. "Thatcher was out of town at a conference, I had the weekend off, and you... you were tearing up the house. I couldn't study."

"So you took me to the beach."

"I needed to wear you out. And it was actually sunny out."

"I wish I remembered."

Ellis's lips twitched in something of a smile. "It was something else. You brought me every single shell and piece of shell you could find. Filled all your buckets. You ran into the water up to your knees, and ran back. Over and over, going a little further every time, until I got scared the waves would knock you over and I took you home." She shook her head. "I still didn't get any studying done."

"You never told me this," Meredith said.

"I guess... I didn't want you to have any crazy ideas about going to the beach."

Meredith smiled wanely. "Well, here I am."

"Yes," her mother said.

xxx

Richard appeared again. The lines on his face rough and shattered, features tired and bent.

"He comes here a lot," Ellis commented.

Meredith swallowed. She'd put this on him. Her life was in his hands, and she was scared for him. But she'd had no other choice. She put her hope in him, in his knowledge and judgement. She needed him.

"I asked him to look after you," Ellis said.

"He's doing a good job."

"Yeah." Ellis's gaze toward Richard was soft and tender, almost unrecognizable to Meredith. "I love him so much. I'm sorry, Meredith. I let it break me. And you. And him."

"It's okay, Mom. We're not broken anymore."

"No," Ellis squeezed her hand. "You're not."

Meredith looked at the sunlit amber sparks on the rippling waves. Once again she considered her friend. She tried to reach him, touch him, but was repelled, the force pushing her like a magnet of the same polarity.

"Am I going to make it?" she asked her mother.

"I don't know," she said. "Do you want to?"