Chapter Four
Don't dip your nib in the office ink
A/N Bit of an emotional rollercoaster this one, I apologise but some remorse and feelings were needed.
Seattle, Washington - March 2022
"Oh my god?!" Meredith declared to a completely empty room as she was adding to her scrapbook. It was a tatty thing now, but she'd had it most of her life, it was full of drawings she'd down as a kid and now new memories she was making with Derek. Obviously they still had cameras in the new world, but she thought there was something nice about putting it all together with coloured sticky tape and little buttons. Maybe someday she could make one for her kids. If she ever got pregnant. Her and Derek had been trying, not that they needed to put in much effort, they'd been doing it left, right and centre before Cristina had arrived. A single woman who becomes your best friend does have its cock-blocking abilities, but she was grateful for a bit of a gossip. She did feel bad that Derek didn't have anyone like that, maybe that's why he'd been spending so long with the garden lately. Her thoughts often began to drift into unknown corners, but thought of a little Derek running around was something deep inside her bones that would ache every time she thought about it. She wanted two or three kids if she was that lucky, there was something about hearing their little feet running over the wood floors in the mornings, of them bursting in the door and jumping on her and Derek. Calling him 'daddy' and her 'mommy' - it made her heart squeal. But then a horrible, overbearing thought occurred to her in a stifling moment.
"Whatcha doing?" Cristina asked as she sauntered into the room, Derek was outside tending to some 'complaint' the tomatoes had. Mer thought that might've been an excuse to appease his boredom but as it wasn't raining for a change she decided she'd humour his new DIY tendencies. Cristina sat down beside her at the table, folding her arms over the table counter and looking up and her expectantly like a hungry child. Over the last few weeks, they'd grown into firm friends, Meredith was glad to have someone to talk to about Derek, rather than to him. And Cristina was enjoying her time not having to cook for herself anymore, she really was awful at it. They often found themselves laughing over their equally dark sense of humour and when they got going it was hard to get them out of a loop of their giggles.
"Well, I was scrapbooking, but then I thought of something awful." Cristina gave a 'what?' face along with a scowl and Meredith blurted out what she was thinking. "My kids are going to have to have sex with each other!" Cristina pulled another more dark look of confusion and sat up straighter.
"Well that's- that's um, well. Why exactly?" Cristina said, her face concealing a contortion whilst she tried to come up with her own, more reasonable reason.
Then Meredith said, "you know, in order to repopulate the Earth, my babies are going to have to have sex with each other, my little McDreamy babies." Meredith reconciled, finally putting down the roll of tape she was now gripping tightly like a hamster with a piece of celery. Then abruptly she got up and ran out of the front door.
"DEREK!" She shouted at the man standing around 10 feet in front of her, he covered his ears and gave her a judgey look as she ushered him inside. "I need to talk to you." She said in a sing-song voice dragging herself back into the family room of the house and standing with her arms folded in front of the other two, a slight jerking of her shoulders lead Derek to shoot Cristina a confused glance.
"Our babies Derek, our babies are going to have to have sex with each other for the future of the human race to survive, what are we going to do?" Meredith cried out far more dramatically than she needed to, but then again losing every single person you ever knew tended to make things a lot more melodramatic. Cristina rolled her eyes and took a step towards Mer to try and get her to calm down, but she pushed her away."Why is this happening? How did I not think of this before?" She continued, Derek took a step towards his wife and took her by the arm.
"Meredith sit down," which she obliged him and did, parking herself back at the table. Calming herself a little, "ok, maybe we just shouldn't think about it. Maybe some other people will turn up, like Cristina did, it's only been a few months Mer." Derek said, his arm careening down Meredith's side, a reassuring look in his glance. The worries that no one will show up, that the human race will die out and that he'd have to look at Meredith's face falling every time she thought of the future, every time she looked down at those children and didn't know how to determine their future. He knew they could travel, they could try and find other survivors, but what if they were the last. He thought about all the hope and despair and nothing could prepare him for the light in her eyes. As he let a tear float on his eye lid, he closed them shut tight and bent down to kiss Meredith's hand.
"Ok, ok yeah you're right, other people will show up, it will all be ok." Meredith reassured herself and Derek looked up, forgetting Cristina was still sitting beside them, he pulled Mer close to his chest and looked towards the other woman. She saw his hurt, his hope fading and it buckled her. Cristina couldn't look at him for too long and left the room, perhaps she'd never seen love like that before - or she just couldn't bare how mushy they were being. That's what she told herself. That they should just chill out because they had an easy pass at life now, that none of them had made sacrifices. But she knew she was lying to herself.
The next morning when Derek woke up he was cold. Then he noticed the blanket was lying clean over two bodies beside his, bodies not belonging to him. He tried sitting up, wearing only his boxer shorts and a crease on his face where he'd been lying on the pillow. "Um," he started, pulling himself up onto his elbows and rubbing his eyes, he glanced over at the masses in the bed next to him. It appeared Cristina had crawled in beside Meredith in the middle of the night. Nothing about their body language was romantic, far from it, and really he pushed the thoughts of jealousy to the back of his mind. Maybe she needed some support. He knew how bad it sounded in his head, but he didn't exactly consider having a female best friend in your bed as cheating. Plus it wasn't as if Cristina had anybody else. If anything he was glad Meredith had a friend, but she was getting clingy, far too clingy and he wasn't sure how to broach the subject with Meredith.
"Cristina, you gotta give us some space." Meredith said bluntly, her and Derek were sitting side-by-side on the slouching couch opposite a rather tired and confused Cristina. Derek had broached the subject with his wife for her only to agree, and insist they have an intervention. Which he thought may have exceeded his idea of a friendly chat but decided to go with it anyway.
"Oh, I didn't think I was being that annoying. Ill stop now," she replied honestly, she hadn't thought there was anything wrong with what she'd done. but in her mind she knew somehow she was lonely. She'd never really felt a kind of loneliness before, but that was when there was a reason for everything. There was a reason to work hard and to sleep with people, because it got her ahead. Now there was an empty nothingness, other than her new friends, now there was loneliness. And the lack of competition was draining her, she let the tears fall too that day. It had been an emotional week to say the least.
A group hug was ordered. Meredith wrapped her arms around her friend and I think they all sobbed together, we would all like to think they did. Cristina felt an intense wave of belonging, a feat she'd once felt in her life. Her mother had been a bossy woman, demanding that she get married and wear an unscrupulous white dress that lied about her virgin status. She wasn't, and had never been prepared for that. She'd had boyfriends, none that had stuck, and one failed wedding where she listened to her mother for once and in a nightmarish twist of fate, the guy had walked out on her. Her loneliness had paid a visit that day, and the virus hit barely a month later. She'd had time to get over it, but now she felt herself in the arms of friends, and felt herself grateful that they were the last people left.
As the three stood together, huddled in a spot near to Meredith's scrapbooking table, another person lingered close. He was carrying a backpack and wearing a cap to keep the sun off. He stood in blatant camouflage and khaki dress, with boots that could easily kill a man with one stomp. He had applied sun lotion early that morning before loading up his jeep, despite knowing he was coming to Seattle he hadn't brought with him an umbrella.
