Title: Sound And Fury

Authors: Sara And Lizzie

Rating: T for language, mild sex

Disclaimer: we don't own grey's anatomy, or any anatomies but our own at that.

Author's Note: Ok. Our first Grey's Anatomy fic. Set after Derek picks Addison and Meredith sleeps with George. Review. No matter how you feel about it, review. Chapters will get longer. Song is by Jack's Mannequin.

I swear I didn't mean for it feel like this, like every inch of me is bruised.

Sex. In this case, it was inevitable. They'd had too much of each other not to want, need more. Meredith was gratified to know he was still the best sex of her life. But it was so much more than sex.

She was sitting on her bed, with her knees to chest and staring at the sheets long after he left. All her questions led her to the same damning answer.

Meredith squeezed her eyes shut. His wife was living in the rehabilitation wing of the hospital. She couldn't walk. And what was Meredith doing? Pulling Addison's husband down on top of her.

"You're gorgeous, Mere." He had whispered. People had been telling her that her whole life. Beautiful.Gorgeous. Just like her mother. Only she hadn't really believed it until Derek Shepherd whispered it to her in the dark.

Mark Sloan sat in his newly leased apartment in Seattle. This wasn't the plan. He was supposed to come and get her, and if he couldn't, he was going to hightail it back to New York. But he couldn't leave her. Especially not like this. Especially when Derek all ready had.

The faint glow from his TV illuminated the living room, and Mark bites his lips in an attempt to keep it all together. Addison couldn't walk. One month later, and she still wasn't walking. It was a bad sign.

Derek walked down the hall looking shell shocked. He had just seen Addison. She was encouraged. Her therapy was helping her legs and the doctors were hopeful. He felt like shit. Until he saw Meredith, and her pale skin, how thin her face looked.

Then he felt worse than shit.

Christina sighed. She didn't live with Meredith anymore, but she sure as hell knew when something was going on. She locked eyes with Izzie over Meredith's bent down head. They knew this Meredith. It was sleep deprived, over caffeienated Meredith. She was picking at her lunch in the manner she had been acting like all day.

Derek sat down at a nearby table, facing Meredith. They had been doing this dance all day. Tense and overbearing Derek confronting jumpy and introvered Meredith. She went through hoops and bounds to avoid him, and he practically shouted at her in hopes of eliciting some sort of reaction.

Derek looked Meredith in the eye across their tables. She got up and walked away, without a word to Christina or Izzie. Izzie got up and followed Meredith. Christina sat, watching Derek look at where Meredith had been sitting. Then she looked in the direction of her fellow female interns. She ignored both impulses, and stayed where she was.

Gray, tumultuous clouds shadowed the sun, and a warm breeze picked up. Meredith could feel how charged it was. The electricity was in her gut, and there was no controlling any of it now.

She sighed, and slumped back against the bench. She should be inside making rounds, but in the hospital was not where she wanted to be today.

She didn't want to talk to Derek. She didn't want to hear that it was a mistake and that he was sorry.

He sat down next to her. Meredith cursed the universe and whatever Gods up there were laughing at her right now.

"Hey stranger." He said, his tone light.

"Hey."

"Haven't heard much out of you today."

She shrugged. "I guess you know how it feels, then. Cause I havent heard much out of you either."

Derek nodded, knowing she was right. Meredith bit her lip and waited for the apology to grace his lips. The one that would wipe that night from memory, and render it never to be spoken of again.

"I can't explain myself Meredith." He said solemnly, "And I'm sorry for that. I know that last night was surreal, but I feel like… like I fixed something."

She blinked at him, her face inquisitive. She was waiting for the earth shattering blow.

"Mere, I went home, and for the first time in so long, I could sleep."

His words hit her, and she absorbed them. She wasn't sure how it happened, out there, under the clouds, but the next she knew, she was kissing him.

When they pulled away, and their eyes locked, she was left with his unspoken answer to her unspoken question. She would never be the same.

She leaves him outside, and collapses onto a bed in the nearest on call room. She could feel herself changing. There were something evil, something that she had been hiding inside since Addison came, and now it was no longer in the depths of her, it was crawling right under her skin, about to break the surface.

It was pure lust, pure love, and the precarious beginnings of wanting, taking and having. She dug her nails into her palm, and she could barely feel the pain. Their delicate balance of restraint, desire, insecurity and control was finally crumbling from underneath them.

It stemmed from their shared, unspoken insecurity that neither one of them would ever measure up to anything.

Meredith feels the crushing realization of a woman who has lost her coveted control. She starts to get angry. She gets up, and leaves the room.

Her fingers wrap around his wrist as soon as she finds him and she pulls him into an empty clinic room.

"Derek." She says, "Do you understand what we did?"

He nods.

"Your wife is currently paralyzed, Derek." Her voice is venomous, laced with fury. "Because of you and me."

"You know." He says softly.

"Yes, Derek, I know." Her angry façade starts to crumble, and her eyes fill up. "And, God, I need to know why."

The usually composed, slightly arrogant doctor's hand are shaking. They've always been steady, but now they're shaking. He steps toward her. "Meredith, you had a bullet in your brain. I couldn't let you die."

She collapses now, consumed by tears. And to her surprise, he was there to catch her.