Author's Note: This is initially written for a challenge thing at a forum, The Incision. Well I can tell you it's not fab because, it didn't win anything. Heh. Not that I minded, it had been fun writing. So well, I've decided to share it with you guys, only hoping that some of you will actually like it.
Disclaimer: I own no one. Sadly.
Meredith Grey started making her own decisions at a very young age. Decisions that can be from as simple as choosing the color of socks she would wear to school that day, to decisions about what she would do after school. Making decisions has become a very simple task for her. During the days where Ellis Grey would stay over at the hospital, she would call up her trusty babysitter to take over the job of looking after her daughter. The babysitter never minded. Meredith Grey, at that young age, was obedient and responsible, and very much different from the Meredith Grey she is now.
As Meredith grew older, Ellis dismissed the idea of paying for a babysitter to take care of her daughter, leaving Meredith alone for nights where she had to stay over for a surgery or two. Sometimes, Meredith went through days without seeing her mother. She would be asleep by the time her mother was home, or when she woke up the next day, her mother would have left for work. But Meredith understood. However, understanding, responsibility and obedience flew out of the window the moment she reached her teens. Ellis was never there when Meredith needed someone. She was never there when Meredith had her first crush, or when Meredith won an award in school. It was always the excuse of work for her absence in her daughter's life. Hopes of getting her mother's attention as a high achiever were shattered the day Meredith announced that she was ranked the top of her class, only to be dismissed like it was a report of what she had eaten for lunch. From then on, Meredith changed. Her grades dropped, all she did all day was to party, get drunk, and laze around at home. Nights where Ellis came home early, she would find dirty dishes left in the sink, dirty laundry littered on the ground, and her daughter sprawled out on the couch, with a can of beer in her hand and a remote control in another. Initially, she would nag, she would start throwing a fit about how Meredith couldn't understand how hard her work is and about not giving her a break from all the housework. Meredith never minded, she had gotten her mother's attention. When Addison told her that desperate people do desperate things for attention, she understood. And maybe, now that she think about it, maybe that was the reason why she could relate.
Tonight, Meredith Grey has a choice to make. A choice she would probably be able to make in a blink of an eye if so many things haven't happened to her from the moment she had stepped into Seattle Grace as a surgical intern. Tonight, Denny Duquette died. Maybe he wouldn't have died today if Izzie hadn't cut the LVAD wire, just maybe. But he did, because Izzie made a stupid decision that caused her not only her medical career, but also someone she loves, someone she cares about. And just hours before she found out that Denny had died, she was sitting in the conference room, opposite the table from the chief of surgery as he tried to interrogate her. However, the tables were turned on the chief as Meredith slowly put the pieces of the puzzle together about her parents' divorce. She took the opportunity and confronted him, and the look on his face told her that she was right. Richard Webber had an affair with her mother, an affair which caused her family to fall apart, that caused her father to be chased out of her life.
Meredith recalled the moment when relief in the eyes of Addison Shepherd turned to pain. It was the moment when Meredith revealed that she was dating the vet. And she remembered the pain she experienced years ago. The pain of wanting someone to care so much that one would settle for negative attention, the pain that one would feel when even after doing everything, the person that you love so much doesn't give you a single second of attention. Suddenly, Meredith understood the reason for Addison's infidelity.
She stood there by the steps, her eyes traveling back and forth. Derek. Finn. Derek. Finn. Isobel Stevens made a mistake that caused her to lose someone she cares about. Ellis Grey allowed the man she loved to destroy her life. Richard Webber's affair with another woman might not have caused him his family, but it certainly has destroyed another's. Like Camille Travis had said, "Everyone needs to be loved at least once in their life." Meredith Grey wouldn't deny that she had fallen in love with Derek Shepherd within the short period of 3 months. But does he love her back the same way? Finn Dandridge has plans. He respected her, he understood her, he gave her the time she needed. He is someone you feel comfortable and secure around, someone whom you would want to spend the rest of your life with. And then there's Derek Shepherd. But would he follow the Chief's footsteps, promise you the world and then break you like the chief had broke your mother? Or would Meredith wound up following the chief's footsteps and break up a family?
Meredith Grey may have made many decisions in her life, and not many of them were smart or wise. But they had taught her things. Meredith Grey would not be Isobel Stevens, she would not be Richard Webber, and although she had followed her mother's footsteps as a surgeon and broke George like her mother broke her father, that was just so much of Ellis that Meredith would ever want to be. Everyone deserves to be loved at least once in their life, and she is not about to let a man with empty promises break her all over again. Tearing her eyes off Derek, she turned to Finn with a smile before heading his way, slotting her arm into his.
"Let's go."