Kindly Stop for Me

by Chicleeblair

What kind of person flees on the night of her husband's funeral and ends up hitting overwhelmed twelve-thousand miles away to her ex-lover's city? A Meredith Grey type. A "What Happened in San Diego?" fic. Mer/Der Past Meredith Grey/Sadie Harris

11. August 2014 (Part I)

CW: dubious content (dream) between the first and second ~~~

August started, but the heat stayed. Meredith acquired a maternity bathing suit, stalling by not expediting the shipping. At least she wasn't replacing something collecting dust in Seattle. She'd been pregnant with Bailey in a different season and passed the limited street clothing she collected on to a pregnant ortho resident. She must've had the baby. Meredith wasn't sure why that was startling. She knew the carousel in Seattle had continued to turn once she'd just jumped off. That someone she barely knew had had a baby shouldn't almost made her open Facebook, where she couldn't figure out how to turn off "message read" without risk.

What risk? was another question she couldn't answer.

"Do you think she questioned?" she asked, picking up Bailey. He was slick with the sunscreen that was also coating her hands, but until recently she'd held organs on the regular. Holding a slippery child was similar beyond the methodology; it came naturally to her, but she still took inordinate care, and it'd been completely terrifying at the beginning.

"Ellis?" Sadie responded, distractedly, circling the last white patch in on Zola's arm. She'd never had reason to get slathering a kid with sunscreen down to an art, and there wasn't a medical comparison that Meredith could think of, even beyond internship. "She must've. What else did she do for six months?"

"Over here, Zo," Meredith said, taking the small spray bottle out of the side of the diaper bag. "You're being so patient. Almost done. On my count. One, two, three." The flinch was more of a ducking away than a reflex, but she'd done it since babyhood; it wasn't a voluntary action. Meredith had tried bottles with wider nozzles that didn't spray as suddenly; she'd tried spritzing from different angles. More warning, less warning. Any time she was asked, Zola insisted "I don't mind it, Mommy!" and Meredith had to take her word for it.

"Aunt Sadie, do you like my swim cap?" she asked, bouncing over the second Meredith secured it. "Isn't it cute? Look there's butterflies, and this one is smiling." She pointed, getting impressively close to the happy insect, considering that she couldn't see it.

A good kinetic instinct would benefit her in a lot of professions. Surgery happened to be one of them.

"It's great," Sadie enthused. "It matches your bathing-suit very nicely."

"Yup, it's purple. Aunt Lexie liked purple, too."

"She did."

Meredith shrugged the packed bag onto her shoulder, following it with an inflated baby seat for Bailey. Summer would've been such a convenient time to ditch diapers, but so far, he'd shown zero interest.

"Mom…braided my hair?" she offered, self-consciously touching one of the frizzy, pigtail braids she'd managed after arranging Zola's into a bathing-cap friendly style.

Sadie snorted,although her patented disdain was belied by the Frozen-themed towel around her neck, and the preschooler in water-wings holding her hand. "Disinterest in preferred activities."

Meredith rolled her eyes. Sadie was intent on convincing her that whether or not she'd wanted to cut her mortal coil, Ellis had shown symptoms of a depressive disorder, maybe pre-partum, maybe more. "She read a lot. In the diaries, she wrote veritable essays reviewing journal articles; enough that I didn't notice the gap in actual surgeries that must've been in my head somewhere."

They headed out the door by the kitchen that led to the inside hallway, and the kids looked around curiously. Meredith rarely took them through this way. It definitely didn't have the ambiance of opening a door onto the beach.

"She intended to edit them prior to submitting them to an archive, but it wouldn't have been necessary if Mag…that was what she intended to hide." She glanced down at Zola, who always heard, whether or not she was listening. "It took a while for her wrists to heal," she added, softly, shoving open the fire-safe door to the pool. The patio it revealed was empty, but well-tended. The water was a crisp, unnatural blue. Meredith had never been so grateful to smell chlorine instead of salt.

"Long enough for her to be concerned about dexterity?"

Meredith considered that while tossing the innertube-ringed seat into the shallow end and sitting Bailey on the steps. Zola started to wade in, and then turned back to Meredith. She wanted to tell her to stop; to go over pool rules for the fifteenth time that day. But Zola had had self-rescue swim lessons from eighteen months. She was more comfortable with this activity than her mother.

"Stay up there," Meredith instructed, and then retreated to finish arranging their things on the deck chair, not quite walking backward, but checking over her shoulder frequently.

She'd worn the first of Derek's shirts as a cover-up, and she shucked it on a deckchair along with her ragged shorts and the kids' shoes. The latest had lost his scent a month ago, but she'd left Shirt Three untouched. Afraid, irrationally, she knew, that exposure to it would send her into another slump.

"I feel so frumpy in this," she complained, tucking a finger under the waistband of the two-piece maternity suit. The slight curve might not have been visible if she hadn't lost weight since the end of March, but she had, and it was. "Like a…like a frump. Where does that even come from?"

No response. As she turned, she heard the slap of Sadie's feet on the diving board. Her loose, pale hair flowed out in a jet stream behind her, and her black suit made the perfection of her lines stand out against the bright blue sky. The water erupting out all around her as she dove brought forth a rush of memories, daring jumps had been a Die and Death specialty,

How many times had they come within feet, potentially inches, of rocks that truly would've caused death?

Bailey and Zola were wide-eyed. Meredith's heart rate sped up like one of them had already climbed out and headed around the side. It wasn't logical; she got that. It was hypocritical. She'd been beside Sadie on every last jump, including a bungee jump with a questionable cable. Had she truly understood how close she'd come, not only to the death they claimed to court, but from the kind of injury that put young people with immeasurable potential in the beds next to her mother's at Roseridge?

"Mer?"

Meredith blinked. Sadie had loaded Bailey into his swim ring, and was looking at her, concerned, like Meredith didn't have a reason to be frozen on the deck.

"What the holy fucking shit was that?" she exploded, caring less than ever about censoring her words in front of the kids. They needed to know that it wasn't okay. They needed to see her angry, before they weren't alive to be on the receiving end of it. "This is a private pool, with no lifeguard. We can't be sure it's actually eight feet deep."

"Hmm?" Sadie tipped her head, curling her hair up to secure it with the elastic on her wrist. "Yeah, I should've jumped in first to get a feel for it, but I own the property, it's —"

"It's a stupid risk! It's plunging toward a block of concrete head-first."

"It's fun, Meredith. Grown-ups can still have fun." She winked at the kids. Fucking winked. Meredith wanted to pelt her with the shoes surrounding her on the deck. "I wouldn't let these two — "

"This isn't about them! This is about you being thirty-six goddamn years old and thinking you're the only one who'd care if you ended up with a C2 spinal cord injury!" Pool-related SCIs weren't as common as people believed, but she'd been through Derek's files. He'd treated plenty while living in cities with barely three months of summer.

Sadie's loose smile became a firm line. When she swam toward the ladder, Meredith almost expected her to climb out and leave. Instead, she dripped her way over to her, and put her hands on her shoulders. Meredith shrugged away from her; arms crossed as close to her body as possible. It didn't help control the feeling she'd been battling since stepping out the door. It wasn't exposure, but the word "open" kept flashing in her head, like a broken neon sign.

"Hey," Sadie said, moving her whole body to put her eyes directly in line with Meredith's. She'd forgotten the way she did that; not taking control of her movements like the guys that would grab or tap her chin to get her to do what they wanted, but not giving her a choice, either. "No one's drowning today, or getting so much as a back spasm, okay?"

Over her shoulder, Meredith saw Zola start sweeping Bailey's ring in an arc at arm's length. Their dual banshee-type giggles made it easy to track them and argue with Sadie, and had the benefit of reassuring her that Zola wasn't listening in.

"You can't know that. You don't control the universe, or if you do, I don't exist, and you can stop bothering with all the issues I've acquired since I last..." existed would sound like she was mocking Sadie's actual mental health issue, and…she had been. Sort of. "Encountered you."

"Only you would try to use my solipsism to support your argument and beat yourself up about it within seconds. Good God, Grey. You exist to me all the time. Not only that, you're important to me. I deeply regret not being there over the past six years… hell a spade is a spade, eleven years, to mark all the ways life has banged you around. Every miserable—" She lowered a hand to gesture to the collection of scars on Meredith's abdomen, all so helpfully revealed by the stupid bathing suit, and her nails grazed the slight swell. "—and brilliant thing that changed you from the reckless kid I knew to this wholesomely subversive woman. I've only been trying to change that for the past few years, okay? I fail a lot. That —"she pointed at the diving board. "— was a mistake, and I'm gonna make 'em. You have no reason to trust that I don't want to ditch my life, or even this city most of the time. I want to be, like, the San Diego Batwoman, superhero by night, socialite by…earlier in the night."

Meredith scoffed in spite of herself. Where was the lack of emotion when she needed it? —Gone, hopefully, but it would've been nice to occasionally pull "flat" out of the emotional grab bag. She just wanted to be able to return it when she was finished.

"I can't be an accessory to the daredevil thing, okay? I'm not trying to control you," she added.

Their proximity and the heat seeping out of her and into the scorching day reminded her of dozens—Could it be hundreds? —of fights/tiffs/screaming matches that always ended with that accusation. She'd never known if it would be followed by pouting or by a full-on storm out; either one had always left her convinced she was too needy. She'd disentangled herself from Sadie a tiny bit at a time, she got that now. Did she still think things had been ideal until Amsterdam?

"Whatever you do when I'm not around…I doubt Fatimah's as supportive of that bullshit as I used to be."

Sadie folded her lip down and shrugged a shoulder to acknowledge that truth.

"You're your own person, whatever. I just can't know about it. I can't worry about losing another person. I wasn't supposed to have anyone to worry about here except them." She pointed to the pool where the kids' splashing continued. "Somehow, I ended up with you, and Fati, and-and this—" She indicated the curve of her abdomen, which seemed far more noticeable than it had that morning. "— which I couldn't not tell Zo about, because she sleeps on me all the time, because Derek died, and she's sad, and somehow I did something right enough that she wants to lie on top of me when she's sad, not just sick, but if something goes wrong, she could be exactly like I was."

"She's not going to be."

"You can't say that! You don't know. No one knows, and that's what we have to live with. No one knows what's coming next, so you just have to deal with it, and sometimes dealing with it means not putting yourself in a position where the horrible thing can happen." Sadie's eyes widened and then narrowed, quickly. Meredith wanted to call her out on whatever great psychiatric epiphany she thought she'd had, but she was tired of arguing, tired in the way that could lead to crawling into bed in the middle of the day.

"I'm with you, okay?" Sadie responded. "I swear, that's not me anymore, either. I didn't think…junior high dive team, remember?"

"Come to think of it, it sounds familiar." Suddenly, she could hear twenty-four-year-old Sadie bragging to a crew of strangers while pacing on a high-dive. There were at least a dozen near-carbon copies in the same mental drawer. "I get it. My brain surgeon husband played Formula One on the freeway and crashed Mark's motorcycle. Yet, he begrudged Amy a Mustang that I'm sure he ne-ver floored on an open road. We all make mistakes. We're all hypocrites." She strolled past Sadie toward the pool but froze at the metal bar at the top of the steps, taking a moment to simply experience the sparkle of the sun on the water, without the haze that's been almost like cataracts for months.

Another splash signaled Sadie entering the water again from the side, feet first. She was making a point, and Meredith let herself smile. "You can try that," she told the kids—mostly Zola, since Bailey was busy cupping his hands and flinging water up from them. "Diving like Aunt Sadie did the first time is something you're only supposed to do in a much deeper pool, and only if you've been taught how to do it without getting hurt ."

"Is that a fact?" Zola asked, and a surfacing Sadie gave her a double take. "You had a wrong belief, Aunt Sadie."

Meredith could trace Sadie's realization that the four-year-old had been asking a genuine question, not giving her the sarcasm of a higher-level resident. She took the next step while Sadie confirmed that she'd done something dumb, and beyond that, she'd been trained in it, as much as anyone could be. Then, she looked to Bailey, who was still thrilled by his personal boat. He hadn't had the time at the Y that his sister had, and guilt propelled Meredith down one more step. Derek had arranged and chauffeured that activity without either of them saying a word about it. In November it hadn't seemed like a big deal; without Derek around the baby was rarely anywhere near water he could've fallen into. Now it felt like a far bigger omission.

The waves caused by the other three bodies in the pool lapped against Meredith's body up to her abdomen. The light nudges were nothing like the undertow of the bay, but the way the light traveled on top of the water made her see it as a darker, more turbulent body every time she blinked.

"Okay, Grey?" Sadie hadn't called her "Death" all day, and she wasn't sure if she was grateful or not. Whether it was a deminder, to avoid triggering her—which was unnecessary—the water was taking care of that, or a reminder that she hadn't become someone else entirely. That she was made up of all the miserable and brilliant things, the ones that came before and after the ones that scarred.

Bailey floated toward her and leaned forward, angling his swimming ring downward. Her breath caught. She knew it wasn't going to tip him out. The amount of reviews she'd read made that as close to a certainty as it could get. She reached out anyway, towing him closer. Knowing nothing more than he was getting a ride in the big bathtub, and Mommy, Zo-Zo, and Aunt Sadie were in with him, Bailey's response was a shriek of undiluted joy. Zola plugged her ears, shooting him a look of absolute indigence. Meredith hid her laugh by blowing it out against Bailey's ribs, and he made the noise again.

"Bailey-bird, that is too loud," Zola declared.

Maybe in response, maybe because he could, Bailey splashed her. She swept an arm up in response, adjusting the strength at the last second so it didn't bring up much more water than his. They continued in this vein, and while Bailey's splashes ranged from patting the water with open palms to imitating her shoves. Zola watched his face after every strike and adjusted accordingly. Meredith was proud, but she also made a mental note to make sure Zola's interactions with her age-mates were less timid. Siblings weren't exactly the built-in playmate that was advertized. She was beginning to see that Derek had based his positive predictions for them on his relationship with Mark. His concerns came from his sisters. Did he know that? Would he have had false expectations for them? Been surprised by them? How much of this had been there in November?

"You okay?" Sadie's voice brought her back to where she'd pressed herself against the liner.

"Would I have even been good at it? Being Maggie's sister? I haven't been…it's not…not the way it was with Lexie—I always say that, don't I? I shouldn't compare them. It's not like I ever say, 'it's not how it was with Molly,' who's just as much—"

Bailey came floating toward them, and it took a moment of wild gesturing and him sing-singing, "push-a push-a whoooosh!" to understand that Zola had pushed him through the water, and he loved it. It went against every instinct for her to send him cruising away from her, but it might as well have been all he ever wanted from life based on his shout of delight.

"Speculating about a life where I'd been Lexie's sister wasn't hard. Either it would've been a total unrecognizable universe, or there'd be some kind of joint-custody situation, which kinda seems like we'd've ended up where we were by…by the end. I don't know." She batted Bailey toward Zola again. "I can't. Just…."

"Maggie would've shared your life. You wouldn't have been 'Ellis Grey's daughter,' you'd have been 'one of Ellis Grey's daughters.' Less expectation, but less recognition."

"She'd deserve it. I think…I went off on her the night she told me who she was, all about how there wasn't any money, and…it wasn't that. I worked so hard to feel worth Mom's legacy. Maggie…She's so smart. She started reading at two. I'm the only potential next-gen Dr. Grey who didn't skip, or qualify as valedictorian, or start school before the age of five, or any, all, and both."

"Top ten."

"Class of one-fifty. Not that impressive. Maggie graduated crazy early, too."

"High school?"

"All school. While I was a first-year at Geisel. Did it all by nineteen. I don't know when she got all the random skills she has. She's weird, but in, like, cute memorized Harry Potter ways — "

"You— "

"Knows ASL."

"We do ASL," Zola interrupted, a reminder that this conversation could very well be relayed to Maggie one day. Everything could happen one day, though, and hadn't Meredith chosen to keep the kids continuously within twenty feet of her?

"We did baby-sign," she allowed. "It helps when there might be language conflicts." Zola caught Bailey again and took his hands to spin with him. For a second they were loud enough that she could add, "We couldn't be as consistent with her as we wanted, but…." She trailed off. The laughter had died down and bumpiness of that period wasn't something she'd explained to her daughter yet. "I get it, okay? You of all people know that under the leather, and the piercings, and the hair-dye, I was a total nerd."

"Total."

"But I was memorizing Courtney Love lyrics while Mom wanted me to be reading her old textbooks, and — "

"Didn't you once get detention in English because you wouldn't put down a different book?"

"Novels! A surgeon only worries about culture if a patient gives them tickets to the opera."

"Okay, even I know that Ellis read — "

"Maggie was reading her old textbooks. She's everything Richard and Mom would've wanted, and I'm…."

A pint-sized missile came giggling toward them, drifting off far enough to the left that Sadie had to stretch to grab him. Zola came paddling after, arms out, trusting that Meredith would be there to pull her in all the way. Surprisingly, holding onto Zola made Meredith feel less unmoored—that was it. That was the feeling. Unmoored.

"You're Mommy," Zola said, and then tilted her head all the way back, giggling at the way it changed her point-of-view.

"Yeah," Sadie agreed. "You're Mommy, and you're Ellis Grey's daughter. Maggie had two award-winning surgeons contributing to her genes. Cool. The parents who raised her nurtured those tendencies. Also, cool. But for all you know, she would've rebelled against Ellis, too."

"I doubt—omph, I'm not a jungle-gym, Zo." Zola laughed and didn't move her feet from Meredith's upper legs.

"She could've. Thatcher was…is?" Sadie asked. Meredith shrugged. "Is an English professor. You might come by all your quirks honestly—the really weird taste in books, the thing for Italian architecture, the inability to hold an idiom in your highly-educated brain. You'd be different if you'd had any of the little sisters in your life. Everyone would. But Ellis wasn't Maggie's mom. Someone else took on that role, and she became…whatever whomever's daughter, and you are Ellis Grey's daughter."

"Pierce. Diane and Bill. They send her singing telegrams."

"They…? Like in Clue?" Sadie dissolved into laughter, and Meredith could see her doing the same thing in Meredith's bedroom in high school, where they didn't have to pretend to be disaffected by everything. "Who does that?"

"She had a charmed life. Then she met her dark and twisty older sister."

Zola, who'd been bobbing up and down in and out of the water, put a hand on Meredith's cheek. "Momma, I'm dark like Aunt Maggie. You're light. See?" She moved the hand to sit against Meredith's arm.

Somewhere in Malawi—hopefully—lived a woman who'd given birth to her daughter. She might be an expert in something that didn't pay the way being a surgeon in Boston did. She might have one, or several, or no other kids. She wasn't the person Zola had learned to call "Mama" twice. There was a man who'd contributed. Who maybe loved the woman. Who knew, or didn't know, about the baby whose life might never touch his. He wasn't "Dadee"—or "Dada," once Bailey started talking.

Meredith was the daughter Ellis kept. Maybe she was just older. Sunk-cost fallacy. But Ellis had known about the fetus-that-would-be-Maggie when they left for Boston. With thick bandages affecting her mobility, if not her hope for her career, Ellis Grey had taken a five-year-old on a plane, when she could've left her with her father, or the social workers at the hospital. It would be easy to believe that who she was, who Meredith was didn't matter to her, until Zola shifted in her arms, or Bailey's voice reached her ears. They were individuals. She wanted to guide them through the world, yes. To protect them from all she'd gone through, but also to prepare them for difficulties of their own. That didn't mean that she didn't already love every little piece of the people they already were.

Maybe her mother's decision was all about not being able to bear the reminder of Richard, but she'd ignored the ways Meredith mirrored Thatcher—and if she shared traits with Lexie, she shared them with him—Ellis could've done the same for Maggie. Fine, her physical resemblance to her biological father was more likely to be noticeable, but the shade of her skin have been enough to be too much?

"Mommy, are you having sad thoughts?"

"No, Zo. Just confused ones." She looked down at her daughter, and there he was. The concern in her searching gaze was pure Derek. If she'd had a baby who gave her that look in the aftermath of the prom, instead of an inflamed appendix, would it have been too much?

"You need to watch me be a mermaid," Zola insisted, stretching out and kicking frantically to bring her lower body up to the height of her floaties. The questions were going to drive Meredith crazy(ier), but they had the benefit of distracting her from the water. She crouched to support her daughter without thinking, and a blast of the water being dispersed hit her in the mouth. Come on, Grey, you can definitely deal with the bathtub, and that's shower level spray.

Sadie had taken Bailey out of his seat and was dipping him in and out of the water to his absolute delight. I hope you hold onto that joy, baby.

They stayed until he began to fuss, and it was easy to smell why. She had extra Little Swimmers, but they'd already been out longer than the length of most of their beach trips. Meredith held Zola's hand as she carefully stepped on the deck with Sadie and Bay, and then turned back to the pool.

"Momma, where are you—?"

The rush of water in her ears blocked out the rest of Zola's question. Shit, she'd forgotten that part; forgotten the way it made her thoughts echo between too loud and impossible to hear. Her glide took her halfway across the short side of the pool. She could reach the left-hand wall. Her lungs had air. Her eyes had light. By the time she knew what was happening in Elliott Bay, none of that had been true. She pushed forward again, passing through another quarter of the water.

Her lungs started to feel tight with inches to go. She could stop at the wall; it would be a win. It would not be enough; not to make this easier the next time around.

Reorienting was pure muscle memory from her own lessons at a YMCA branch somewhere in the country; she couldn't recall whether she'd been four, five, or six, and in everything else, that made a difference.

Having water bubble around every orifice without relieving the burn in her lungs brought on a flash of panic, and the inhalation she rose for wasn't the neat breathing of a rhythmic stroke. It was the desperate gulp of air she'd never quite managed, no matter how many times she'd managed to break the surface of the water before the darkness totally engulfed her. That didn't keep it from doing its job.

Her lungs weren't full, but they had air. It moved on into her blood; and her limbs weren't seizing up. She was alive. She kept moving. The steps were a far brighter beacon than the dimple of light that kept disappearing further as she sank. For one second, she appreciated the quiet glow around her. The eerie Seattle Grace she'd visited had a similar tint, hadn't it? She could barely remember what she'd experienced while dead, except that her mother had been there, and Dylan, the bomb squad guy, and Izzie's patient-fiancé Denny. If her mind had been throwing out hallucinations based on the last thing she saw, why would Denny have be—and then her hand touched vinyl, and she pushed herself up.

She'd done it. Across a distance of ten or fifteen feet, maybe. Where she could've stood a foot above the surface, sure. But everything was a process. She'd learned to suture at nine; she could conquer a fear of the monster in the deep at thirty-six.

"Yaaaaay!" Bailey's voice was the first thing she processed beyond regularly accessible air, and the doubts that rushed along with it didn't matter all that much.

"That was really good swimming," Zola added. Her sincerity required seriousness, in spite of the bubble of laughter Meredith could feel rising in her perfectly functioning lungs.

"Thank you, Zo." She accepted the towel Sadie was holding out and became Mommy again, putting on minature flip-flops and wrapping the kids up in preparation for the air-conditioning. It took so long for her to stop feeling the water lapping at her skin, and even the minimal exertion made her limbs rubbery. At least, those were the excuses she fed herself that night as she lay awake with Bailey on one side, and Zola on the other. Neither of them was sleeping particularly soundly, but theirs wasn't the squirming keeping her awake.

"Hey, Fati?" Zola said, and from the hall Meredith watched her glance at Fati twice while she was setting up the magnetic fishing game she and Bailey were playing. "Bay and I don't wanna go to the next day-camp session. Right Bay-Bay?"

"Aw'ight!"

Holy crap. If manipulating your baby brother's phrase-of-the-week had been a sport Zola would've just medaled. It must've taken her time to build up to it; Meredith had taken her time getting back from the bathroom; hoping that Fati would finish salvaging her attempt at tomato sauce while she dawdled

"You are a scientist," she'd spat after tasting it.

"One: Not a chemist. Two: Pregnant. My tastebuds can't be trusted. Three: No one ever taught me to — "

"Follow basic directions?"

Meredith had been relegated to chopping the salad ingredients and whatever she was handed for the sauce rescue mission. It was nice to relish the task instead of just performing it automatically—who but a surgeon or a serial killer celebrates the return of xyromania? —but the irascibly baffled energy coming from the stove lessened the buzz, and it hadn't taken long to finish.

"That's something to discuss with your mom," Fatimah told Zola. She'd removed her hijab coming in—"far too hot for this nonsense"—and her hair was frizzing out of its bun in all directions. That felt like a win for Team Meredith. During the first half of B's nap, she'd knotted her attempt at French braiding up enough that it took the next hour and a second small pair of hands to undo. Meredith had expected that to be what Zola revealed when she was out of the room; not a previously unspoken desire to play day-camp truant.

"Yeah, but l don't want her to be upsettled. You work there. You can just tell Ms. Lena, and we stay here, and you tell Mommy there's no more day-camp, and no more beach school."

Meredith had a flash of clinical trials and unsigned divorce papers. She was going to nip this in the bud. They weren't doing lies, or manipulation, or pointed omissions. She started forward, and then held back to gather her thoughts. This was a four-year-old. Logic and lies were new to her. Moreover, what Meredith said would matter in a significant way. This would be a "my mommy says." How many times a week did she find herself saying "my mother always said," or thinking in Ellis-isms?

She continued into the open living room and kitchen and decided that rather than getting Zola to come into the living room, she'd let Zola stay where she was comfortable and more likely to listen. Possibly, she'd paid more attention to Richard's lectures on pedagogy than she thought. With a glance at Fati, who gave her an encouraging smile and then turned back to her cooking, Meredith took a chair rather than returning to the cutting board.

"Zo?" she prodded the girl, who'd flicked on the game, which vibrated loudly. Meredith turned it off. "Bay-bud, can you go play cars? You can practice your fishing later."

"Um, but, Momma we are learning to fish like Daddy."

"I know, and he'd be very proud, but I need to talk to you."

Bailey got down, and she thanked him for being a good listener before scooting closer to Zola. "You don't want to go to the last day-camp session?"

"Or to Pre-K."

"Okay, Pre-K is non-negotiable." Cue lower-lip pop. "We can talk about camp. That's not a big deal. Do you know what is a big deal?"

Zola shrugged.

"I think you do, but I can tell you. Fati is a very good friend to us, but she doesn't make the decisions for our family. I do. It's part of my job as your mom. It's not okay to ask her to lie to me."

Zola's mouth was an "o" of realizing the flaw in her plan, and Meredith had to shake off the physical memory of being caught out by Alex. She still considered her actions correct, if not appropriate, but the lie had almost cost her everything.

"Keeping secrets— "

"It wasn't a secret! It was more like a surprise."

"No, a surprise is a good thing, and it's something you're going to tell. Birthday presents are surprises, because the person you give them to doesn't know what's inside, but they're going to find out. You didn't want me to be upset. I understand that, but secrets always get told, Zo. Sooner or later, they come out, and the longer they're kept the more disappointed and sad the person you're keeping them from will be. And it doesn't make you feel good either. Were you nervous to ask Fati that? And worried I'd hear you?" Full-on paranoid and accusatory, the way she'd been with Alex?

"Kinda. But…but…you've been happy with me and Bailey-bird here, and we had fun at camp, but, so you'd want us to go and want us here."

"You wanted to make things easier for me." Meredith sighed. "Daddy liked to do that. Make choices to protect me. It's better to have all the information. Even when things are bad—especially then, because when the world feels out of control—having a choice makes you feel more powerful." She couldn't gauge if Zola was following her, so she backtracked. "If you really don't want to go to day-camp in August —"

"I don't!"

"That's okay. But when you have big thoughts like that—about something that affects you, and Bailey, and me— I'm the one you need to tell. We've talked before about how keeping me happy isn't your job."

"But—"

"But if I'm not, it affects you. I understand. And if I scared you this month, or—"

"No! You're mad and sad about Daddy, and that's okay, and you needed a break, and Bailey and me do too!"

With her proclamation made, Zola ran off toward her room. Meredith was adamant about not following immediately. She had too many memories of fights continuing into her space when all she'd needed was for her mother to back-off for her to breathe.

She didn't think she'd been doing it at four, though.

"When we did the adoption parenting course," she said, slowly. "They said that showing negative emotions can be a sign a kid feels safe. Her hissy fits were always a mark of us doing it right."

"Are you reconsidering that?"

Meredith turned her head to Fati without lifting it off of her hand. "A kid shouldn't have to monitor their parent's emotions."

"You didn't?"

"I did because I didn't want to set her off. Have you seen Frozen?"

"Uh, yes? I work with kids. I watched it with yours last month. You were napping."

"Oh. Well. Ellis-a. If Mom got mad the whole building froze, instead of just, like, everything in a six-foot radius of her."

"When she wasn't mad at you, did you still avoid her?"

"Duh."

"Did you intercept other people who might say the wrong thing?"

"If you mean Sadie, I always kept her away from Mom. But, yeah. Sometimes we'd be at an event, and if I knew she'd lost a patient, or something, I'd get her out."

"Why?"

Meredith wrinkled her nose. Fati was starting to sound a lot like Dr. Wyatt, if not Beni. "Because I didn't wanna make it worse."

"Because she'd take it out on you?"

"Mostly."

"Mostly?"

"Can you please tell me what you're trying to therapy-question me to, and I can decide if I buy it, and we can move on?" She immediately regretted snapping, but she didn't know how else to express that here, in her home, she needed Cristina-level bluntness, not the beating around the bush.

Fatimah turned away from the stove, wiping the back of a hand across her forehead. "You cared about your mom, about whether she was mad, or upset, long before you were caring for her. Not because of self-interest, or fear, not entirely. You cared because that's family. Heck, it's living with someone. You might not like them or love them, but you care. I understand that you went through something like this at her age, and your mother did not handle it well. That you probably spent your whole childhood afraid that she'd go back to that state, but I don't see that happening here. Zola isn't afraid of you. She won't be, unless you keep intimating that she should be."

"I'm not…! Meredith started to protest, but her own voice echoed back at her. If I scared you this month…. Maybe because she'd done her best to talk it through; maybe because of who she was, Zola hadn't shown any signs of the timidity and desperation she could remember from that period of her childhood. She hadn't been scared.

"Maybe I am doing that," she admitted. "I'm so worried this will break her."

"You're a surgeon. Haven't you seen how resilient kids are?"

"They shouldn't have to be."

"No, they shouldn't, but that's life, isn't it?"

Meredith had opened her mouth to respond when Sadie burst in. The door knocked aside one of the cars Bailey had parked right in front of it, for reasons known only to him, and the confusion and tears that followed moved the evening on.

Over dinner, Zola apologized unprompted for yelling. That was the tell. As someone with a history of trying to avoid suspicion, Meredith recognized that method of owning up to something so that something else wasn't brought up again. Something was up, but instead of mentioning it at bedtime, she decided to wait a couple of days. She wanted the kids to come to her, and this was an opportunity to see if Zola would.

"You wanna go again?" His voice is husky, his breathe hot against her ear. Meredith stops digging through the sock drawer.

"Are you serious? Like, right now, you want to…." He pushes closer, and she can feel the way the fit of his pants has tightened. She laughs. "Oh, no, you are serious."

His hand snakes slowly from her mid-back, around the curve of her hips, and across the taut skin of her belly. Wait, she thinks, but then he undoes the button of the jeans she's just put on. His other hand starts teasing her bare breasts. The confusion evaporates. She moans. She's desperate to be touched; it feels like it's been months. There's a reason why, but she can't— "Feels like you're pretty, uh, serious."

"Mm," she murmurs, grabbing his wrist to make him keep going, until his hand is flat against her. She reaches the other hand back to his face. It's smooth. That's wrong. Something is wrong, but she can't stop rocking against him. It's so good, so necessary. Her wandering hand continues upward toward his hair, mussing it always makes him push harder, his idea of revenge exactly what she—Her nails tap against metal. Glasses. She's been with men that take them off, preferring sex to be blurry in a way that she sometimes wishes she could experience, but he—Derek has perfect vision.

She whimpers. She's so far gone—so close.

Betrayal. The word pops behind her eyes even as she feels herself dripping onto him, and grinds against his hand, needing as much pressure as—don't. don't want to…I have to I have to—"Faster, just'a little, oh yeah, like…like…fuck."

"Say, uh, say my name, Meredith."

"Derek?" she asks in a gasp of breath that ends too high-pitched, right for the moment but wrong; something is wrong.

A finger enters her, the fast jab of a middle finger, not the teasing way Derek likes to start with his index and spread her, inching toward the nerves—oh, oh-shit, no, bad, dirty, wrong. Betrayal. Betrayal. Be —

"Derek is dead," he says, and with his voice at full strength she recognizes it.

"What the —? How—oh sweet fuck—No!" She throws both elbows backward, and starts to fall when he lets her go, catches herself on the dresser, the San Diego dresser, but her body has reached a no return point, and her knees give way, she holds herself up with the drawer as the orgasm rips through her.

"Say my name, Meredith."

She doesn't want to; if she doesn't this isn't real, but her body isn't under her control, her voice isn't under her control. "Regi."

"What kind of fucked up person—?"

"Enough with that, Meredith! You did, and false third-person judgment will not help you determine how you feel about the situation."

"It's not false. I know what would be said if anyone found out that…that I…."

"That you are a human who cannot control her dreams."

"But that… that's not… I must want…."

"Sex? That's natural. To be fucked by the librarian? That's up to you."

"You are nothing like my previous therapist."

"We aren't clones. You're not a clone of your mother. Just because, as far as you know, she was celibate after —"

"She was!"

"Did she know about every person you brought home?"

"Stop! That's gross, Beni."

"Because it's your mother? You and your sister are proof she was a sexual being. Do you feel that she owed Richard that level of loyalty?"

"No…! Not owed. She owed him jack-shit. But she… losing him ruined her. Well, and letting Maggie go. Maybe she didn't want to risk getting knocked up again. I don't know that Thatcher was her first —"

"Any more than you know Richard was the last."

"— but it seems like she was two-for-two."

"You've said she was very intense about contraception."

"She'd worked with HIV/AIDS patients, and it was 1992. Also, I had cramps bad enough to legitimately miss school, and even she noticed the mood-swings.… Sadie told me she got her on the Pill, too."

"Do you think that was a result of her being a fertile myrtle?"

"A…Seriously?"

"Your mom was human. A person. You don't like to be reminded of that. So, yes."

"Yeah, okay, but I…I always used to think I was an oops, and that's not improbable, but it wasn't a shotgun wedding. I saw the marriage certificate while arranging her estate. They were married before she started med school. I mean, meeting in college is the only way to explain them….

"Maggie…I haven't ever…she's an adult, she can figure this out for herself…. There's a chance…. I—with this pregnancy I've been doing a lot of conception math, and there's a chance…Richard and his wife, their anniversary was Valentine's Day. Maggie's birthday is pretty close to Zola's, November twenty-second, and you know, I could be wrong, but Maggie might not have been an oops for my mother either."

"You think she might've gotten pregnant on purpose?"

"It's possible right? And if not, Maggie was still…. Their anniversary. That's so…I knew the whole thing was sordid, but…. I'm doing the thing aren't I? Judging from the outside when I…. I was the dirty mistress. When I found out Derek was married, I hated him for putting me in that position, but I tried not to hurt Addison. If Mom… I don't know, maybe Richard is the one who sought her out on their anniversary; or maybe it was a week before. I just… they never had a kid, Richard and Adele, and they'd only been married a few years, but if there was an issue, he'd have told Mom, and she might've…. That's so mean.

"It's good that she left. I know she hoped he'd follow, and maybe that's why she went through with the pregnancy—or maybe it was just that by the time she came to grips with it all, she was past viability. I just think she put Adele through a lot and leaving was the kindest thing. Maybe I should've…if Mom could've been moved…I don't think he would've followed me."

"Would that have been better?"

"Better? No! Well…. Not for me.… Addison's happy. I mean, she wasn't last time I talked to her, because…. Fuck, I keep hearing it in his voice."

"Hearing what, Meredith?"

"Derek is dead. I keep hearing…hearing him say it."

"Him being?"

"Beni, come on."

"Him being?"

"The…the librarian…. Seriously? I don't want…I didn't want to… Regi."

"Derek is dead. His ex-wife is fine. No one is being hurt by your dreams."

"Derek—"

"What if he were here? How would he react?"

"He…was jealous, but it wasn't…when I… It happened, okay? I had dreams about fucking people who weren't my husband, even while we were trying to get pregnant. I'm a freaking nymphomaniac."

"You know that's not the case. It makes sense that if your libido was active, your dreams would have more to draw from. We dream about things we think about, whether or not we act on it; whether you're stressed or stoked about something. If you were trying to conceive, you were probably pretty concerned with that."

"Yeah. I guess that…. I just…."

"Did you tell him, when it happened?"

"Not always, but sure. It wasn't like it was common, I… I mean, I had a lot of anonymous sex before him, and… less anonymous bad—well, not bad, that was the…sex that was a bad idea. In med school, there was less, but before that there was plenty."

"Why are you ashamed about that?"

"I'm not! I'm not. It's not a big deal. I've always thought that. The first time—well, the first time with a guy, I just wanted to get it over with. No one accepted 'I've done it with a girl, so quit saying I'm a virgin,' and none of the guys who knew what they were doing would…they were afraid I'd get attached."

"Which you didn't?"

"Not…no. Not to someone I picked up. Not until Derek. With him, it was different."

"Does that cheapen what came before?"

"No! It shouldn't. I used to be so…it was just about the physicality, you know? Sex wasn't a connection; it was feeling something. I had a few relationships. Mom and I spent a summer in Seattle, and…this girl…Layla. With her, yeah. Feelings came first. A guy, after her. Junior year there was Raine. We said we were girlfriends, but it was mostly sex. For a while, I thought that was the perfect relationship. Then Sadie happened. Not that we were ever exclusive. There were random hookups, during Sadie, with Sadie. Derek… well…. He knew all of it."

"And?"

"So, he could get jealous. It wasn't…well, envy wasn't a good look on him. If envy is coveting a part of someone else's life, and jealousy is fear that you'll lose part of yours, envy was not a good look on him. Jealousy was hot. Telling him about a dream he wasn't in, and some rando I fucked was? Or, better, not a rando? He'd get rough, but also…Derek was always… attentive, but then he'd…he couldn't do enough to drive me crazy fast enough, and I had to be up to being turned inside out…I mean, if I'd really told him to stop, he would've, no beat, no question, but otherwise…don't make plans, Grey, you're gonna be goo for a while. That's my happy memory, I would prefer to re-visit it on my own time."

"'Coy' is not how I'd describe your demeanor the last time you brought up masturbation."

"That's the thing, though. It's—it's better. Not…I don't feel like I'm doing something wrong, or forcing it, and I haven't—the dreams are mostly Derek, not zombie-Derek, but that…I hate those; still can't touch myself in bed hate those, but the librarian thing feels…he'd be jealous, if he were here, but he's not. I only have him in my head, so having anyone else there feels wrong."

"It's interesting that you prioritize the differentiation between envy and jealousy."

"That's what you…? Okay. They're different words. I'm not great with words, I get that, but when you see the effects—coveting and fear are different. Mark had by the time Derek knew about it, and I think…the whole thing was coveting. Derek might've felt like he was trying to keep what was his—that came out wrong. Addison isn't an object. I'm not. He could be…. He didn't mean…. When I was screwing…. He knew that I didn't really want anything other than what I had with him. That he ruined me for other guys."

"Do you still feel ruined?"

"My mother-in-law still sleeps on the same side of the bed."

"Do you still feel ruined?"

"I…. I was the one who suggested adoption. I'd always assumed it might be how I got a kid if they'd give me one…. It shouldn't be a transaction like that, but it is, which sucked during Zola's adoption. I didn't believe I'd never find someone; I just didn't expect it. By most standards, my stronger relationships were with women. With the daddy issues, I figured either that's where I'd end up, or I'd be on my own, so, I'd thought about it. Derek knew there'd be someone. He and Addison didn't work out, but he'd found someone once, he could do it again. That's what made him so determined to try with her—that they'd done it once. Then…then, the ferryboat, and I wasn't ready. I had been…I wasn't ready to have kids, or whatever, but I was ready for something prior to all that mess."

"Were you?"

"I thought I was. When I was with Finn? The vet? He had plans. I thought Derek was why I couldn't see myself in them, but then Derek had plans, and I wasn't ready. I didn't think I deserved them. That eventually everyone would decide to leave, like I thought Mom had. When I met Derek, I wasn't ready for plans. The anonymous sex and the not-quite commitment were what I could handle. If we'd continued from there, I might not have fallen apart, but we could have. I would've had to either deal with my issues, or not. He wouldn't have waited."

"You don't kn—"

"I do! I know. I know—knew—know—it stays that way, right? Until I forget? I know him. He wouldn't, because he didn't. He was sharing his plans with a nurse while I got my shit figured out. If I hadn't, Rose might be in this seat right now. Except she wouldn't, she was kind of a mean girl, but not messed up. That I know of. She could've been Zola's mom. But she's not."

"No."

"I am. I'm the woman after Addison. And I love my kids, Beni. I'm less okay with my life than I could be, but I'm here. I love Derek, present tense. He was mine. And I was prepared for some devastated researcher from the fucking NIH. to show up at the funeral."

"You thought he might be cheating on you?"

"That he might have cheated. I'd told him I'd kill him if he cheated on me, but Derek…he made a lot of mistakes twice. More. In January, I was gonna go visit him, and I couldn't. I didn't want to fight, but also…I couldn't be the next one to go after him. Addison's great, but I didn't want to put myself in her place. I was there for all of that. He didn't see me as cheating, and last year—he saw betrayal in my decision to stay. Enough that he might not have believed he was cheating? I don't know. What I know is, when he came back, he was staying. I made him say it probably a hundred times that night, because it was like every time he said it became more true. I…I'd been...been scared…I really didn't want to lose him. But. I was an after-Addison. Not…not even after…they weren't even…. And he was in the dark when he left. He…well, he tried. He also pushed me away, and the last time he'd fallen into the dark, he did the same thing. Tried to make me leave. He called me a lemon, and batted my ring, this one, the one he'd been carrying for weeks planning to propose to me…that I was ready for… into the yard, with an actual bat. He was drunk, and he thought he didn't deserve me. If anyone understands that it's me.

"Although, the way he did it…if I had been anywhere near where I…. If I hadn't known that I wasn't worthless…. Hell, if it'd been a bad week…. If Sadie leaving had hurt me a fraction more…. That would've— it w-would've been bad, and…oh. Oh, fuck you, Derek…. I just rejected it, flat. Didn't consider that he meant it because I've been depressed, and drunk, and said horrible things. That's what happened with Sadie. We were going to explode, so I imploded us. The things I said, though…I did believe them. He'd meant…he'd meant to hurt me before. He could've believed he was the stupid mechanic who kept trying to fix me, and he'd been duped. If I hadn't said I was fixed, prom wouldn't have happened, or he wouldn't have left her...or-or whatever. He wasn't great at taking blame. If he were here, he'd have a dozen reasons why—I mean, the accident wasn't his fault, but nothing that led up to it would be his fault—none of those decisions would be his.

"Like… The last day he brought up this…he called it an argument, but it wasn't, really. It was his excuse for keeping Addison a secret. He said it was like he was drowning, and I saved him. That's not a reason. Did he think I'd drop him back in whatever body of water if he'd said, by the way, I'm separated from my wife, who cheated on me with my best friend? Maybe he was saying I saved him, and was reviving him, or whatever, but I don't think he considered that part. He thought of being saved as something refreshing—like you start over. It's not like that. I hadn't drowned the first time he said it, and I still could've told him…relief comes, but initially, it's all desperation, and pain. Cold. So damn cold. It's not refreshing, that's for sure. Drowning is terrifying, and dark, and peaceful, and disempowering. Maybe he felt all of that, but he expected someone to save him. If you don't, it's…everything is different.

"He thought it was a romantic image, but it's not.It's not about pulling someone out of the water, it's about making sure they're going to keep breathing. So, there might have been a…not-even after, but if there was, she wasn't enough. He wouldn't have admitted to it. There would be no way to blame it on someone else—except me. I know he saw betrayal in my decisions—not Addison-level, but enough. In my position, he might find an after-Meredith just to keep from drowning.

"I don't want an after-Derek. Not yet. Maybe not ever. I'm slightly horrified at that. I do like sex, and I'm a little afraid that not having it is what made my mother such a frigid bitch. I don't know if I feel ruined, or if it's that it feels like cheating, and that's always been abhorrent to me. It all boils down to Ellis, except that I didn't run away when it might've been kinder. Also, yeah, I tend to see myself through the eyes of hospital gossips."

"Do you know why that is?"

"Stay curious, Ben. I've got to sign my kids out of play-care. We've got a date with a museum."

Meredith stood outside of the condo—paced outside of the condo—waiting for Sadie to pull into the parking lot. She'd only smoked for a hot second in college, at parties and in line for shows. She'd never been addicted to it, and didn't miss it, but damn did she wish she had something to do with her hands. She'd had to take her watch off in July, when she'd started fidgeting enough that the crown had scraped the skin over protruding bone of her wrist. Seemed like she'd been right not to put it back on, yet.

"Mom used to say you could be a fidgeter or a pacer." she said as Sadie got out of her car.

"You never got enough credit as an overachiever."

Meredith gave her a tight smile and nodded toward the short beach path that led to the rock. Sadie sat, but Meredith kept standing, no longer pacing, and not sure what to do with the nervous energy she'd built up over the course of the afternoon. For the first time in a long time, she wished she had a drum pad lying around. If she'd been sixteen, she would've been climbing on the rock and jumping off, just for something to do, for the feeling, until someone put a bottle in her hand, and she could get her brain to calm the hell down.

"This won't take long, I just need an opinion. W-we have stuff to talk about, but—and I'm sorry, I'm doing the thing where I can't—literally, cannot—think about anything else, and you're the only person here who knew Derek, and you were there, so-so…. Do you remember the serial killer?"

"Hard to forget." Sadie leaned back, flattening her hands against the rock to support herself. She'd been at the clinic; she didn't dress to stand out there as much as she did everywhere else. Her gray t-shirt, jeans, boots, and statement necklace probably cost more than Meredith had spent on her own clothes in the past four months, and it had turned out that she hadn't been thinking "capsule wardrobe" when she'd packed. "I haven't killed that many brain cells, De—"

"Don't. Just. For tonight. Don't." Sadie tilted her head, and Meredith thought of Fati's looking-not-looking thing. She started pacing again, because she had to do something, not watch Sadie watch her freak out about something that might not be a thing. "William Dunn. He didn't have a middle name, I guess. They didn't announce it, if he did.

"There's a moratorium on executions in Washington State, but we were the last state to get rid of the gallows, so-so who knows? Not like we're light on serial killers. It's—I should've expectedto get one, eventually. I left when I was five. and I knew about Bundy, and the Green River Killer, and the I-5 Killer."

There were reasons for that, for why the Pacific Northwest seemed to be a homing site for messed up men who took advantage of the transient, fluctuating population. It was something she'd looked into, after. Something that Derek hadn't understood, and Lexie had. The lack of medical and mental health support infrastructure in a rapidly growing state had been one of the major takeaways; and while that was a problem more from her mother's era than hers. Maybe in keeping Grey+Sloan running she'd helped that stay true.

"He…while he was at Seattle Grace, he told me his grandfather said death smelled like lemons."

"Okay. That's weird."

Meredith laughed. It wasn't the high-pitched, hysterical laugh she couldn't stop, but she wasn't sure she was far from it, and damnit, can I just be sane for a week? "Sorry. Cristina said the same thing. I…" She took a long breath and wondered when she'd started to find the ocean air bracing. "I went to his execution. Did you…? I don't think you knew that."

"I did not."

Meredith spun on her heel at the end of the path her sneakers were digging in the sand. One of the floodlights aimed at the condo parking lot shone directly in her face, and she could've been in that room. Five chairs across. three deep. Bright. It'd been daylight-bright in the whole facility; and although both of them were institutions, and the clocks were the same, and she recognized a particular IKEA desk, it was nothing like the hospital. It was sterile. It housed human beings at some of the worst times in their lives, and she'd never felt more agitated. That was purposeful, she understood that, but if your goal was to keep people somewhere, why make them feel like fleeing constantly?

"They… it's horrible. It's… I don't care what someone—the drugs alone…. They start with a sedative. Sodium thiopental. It's been used induce general anesthetic in OB, because a single dose sedates the mom, not the baby. A medical dose takes thirty to forty-five seconds to work. They were supposed to use ten times that, but it looked to me like he could hold a fist for longer than…." She shook her head. "There was a 2005 report in the Lancet that found that eighty-eight percent of inmates killed by lethal injection didn't have surgical levels in their blood, and-and that's why Washington changed to a single, lethal dose for the one execution after him. The WHO considered it a core medication, but they replaced it basically once the states started that, and you can't import it from anywhere. Doesn't matter, he got the three injections.

"A sedative, a paralytic, and an electrolyte. No analgesic. No way to tell if the pat— the in— the victim can feel not being able to breathe. I've—I've drowned, and I find that cruel. And…and what he did was too, obviously. There's no...I'm not—but it's cruel, and it becomes more unusual every time we revive someone, right? I mean, was he probably a product of abuse, and shitty social services, and mental health care, and all that? Yeah. Was he a monster? I don't know He was awful. He did violent, horrific, unforgivable things. I know he was afraid of death. I know he was a liar. I know he was a murderer, a torturer. I am not…not naive about those things, not ignorant, but he was a person, his victims were people, and his executioners were people. How do they justify…? Medical personnel, how do they…? There's gotta be a doctor in there to call time of death, right? But as long as they don't lay hands on, as long as you wear a damn hood, it's not violating your oath, somehow? The families were celebrating, and I don't blame them. If-if anything ever happened to Zola or Bay, I'd want to hurt them. I'd love to get my hands on the attending on Derek's case, but as a doctor…?"

"First do no harm?"

"First do no harm," Meredith echoed. "That was my golden rule. That's what my mother taught me. It's-it's not literal. Surgery is harm. It's don't do something that is only harm. It's action. Self-defense? That's reaction. It's all do your best to keep life going. That's…that's why…" The beach air was warm, but Meredith shivered. "I know, it's weird to go on about that when I was willing…perfectly willing…to let him die to…but that would've benefited someone, saved someone, andit would've been a choice, and I just…he didn't…he didn't have anyone, and no one should die alone."

Sadie didn't say anything. Meredith turned to her, and the word that occurred to her taking in her posture, the way her eyes were focused on Meredith, even the set of her mouth, was "engaged." Sadie heard a lot more than Meredith had given her credit for, but what had changed was the way that she listened. Her eyes used to flit all over the place, and you, Meredith, at least, always knew she was looking for the next thing to do, the next person to talk to, because Meredith would be there when she finished.

"They put a microphone in the room. To record their last words officially. He didn't…that wasn't….It was so faint, and I half-thought I imagined it, and I don't know if he was…. He lied. He played everyone, manipulated everything, and he could've been fucking with me. I could only verify a few things he'd told me, and one of those was that he knew his grandfather; the rest were about the…the crimes. The injections hadn't started yet, so-so when he said it, he wasn't actively dying; so, whether or not it's bullshit isn't the point—'Lemons.' He said 'lemons. My grandfather wasn't lying after all.'"

Meredith looked up at the sky. There aren't as many stars as she thought there should be because San Diego was a beach town, but also a city, and the light pollution was plentiful. If she looked at them, and ignored the beat of the waves, she could almost be in that parking lot, waiting for the gate to open, wanting to run, just run and keep running, away from that place, away from the obvious disdain for life that they all—all, the guards, the warden, the reporters, the observers, and the inmates, all, all, all—all had, the viable organs poisoned, the devastated families whose daughters had been slaughtered, who didn't know who she was, why she was there, but would've had every right to spit at her, to consider her the enemy, and Derek was there. Derek, who didn't understand her, but tried, wanted to, loved her, no matter how many times she'd sinned in his view, violated his ideals, belied his perception of right and wrong.

When she'd been coherent enough to try to explain, what had she said? After Cristina got her through the worst of it; the way she felt like a villain encircled by the victims of this man; and how she understood how they could want to see him there strapped to that table, could imagine it was too humane for him.

She saw the photos clutched in their hands, she'd heard the protestors chanting outside, and her first thought had been that their pleas for mercy were far too kumbaya for Dunn, but there she was, there so a man who would ultimately become a waste of a life—of so many lives: his victims, everyone ruined by their deaths, the dying people his organs could have revived—would have someone there who wasn't looking at him with apathy or hatred. She almost hadn't been able to do it, almost hadn't been able to hold the gaze of a man who'd caused all that pain, and part of it had been because, for a breathe, and another—as her footsteps echoed in the hallway—as Derek held her elbow and she climbed into his car—as they passed under a sign pointing to Tacoma on the freeway—in the parking lot of Cristina's building—she wasn't sure they were all that different. She'd justify herself away from the thought—I save people—show them respect—comfort families—don't desecrate their bodies—don't relish their pain—don't want to cause pain

remember everyone I've killed

enjoy the power of it

relish seeing what's under the skin.

To Derek, the difference was obvious. We save people; he killed people. Even before he'd lost his dad that filter had been forming. He'd told her that night about being ten during the Son of Sam murders, riding his bike to tail his oldest sisters, brunettes who were within a year or two of the victims' ages, and refused to listen to their mother's directives to stay in the house. To him, she was showing compassion for the people who killed his father. For a man who could've killed his sisters. She didn't think that she was in the wrong because of that, but she also didn't know how he could be there, holding her, comforting her when the real trauma had been. She hadn't been asking him to dismiss it or get over it for her. She hadn't explicitly not been doing that, either.

Two weeks later, they were shouting outside the trailer.

"I can't remember if I told Derek that," she said, finally slumping down next to her and pulling her legs up. She wasn't going to be able to do that much longer. Another month, a month and a half, maybe, before the baby made it too difficult. Why was it so much easier to think of this fetus as a baby? She'd figured the kids shouldn't go around saying "we're getting a fetus," but she'd used "the maybe baby" around Zola last time. Because that maybe baby made it? One successful pregnancy does not another one make. Because hope was winning out? Maybe. She had to be careful; this baby was still a maybe.

"And why is that concerning?"

"'Cause he called me a lemon." She was fiddling with her ring without realizing she'd taken it out from under her shirt. A few times over the years, she'd squinted at it, trying to see if it'd sustained damage that night. She couldn't tell; it was old, and he'd had the place that sized it clean it up. There was a spot along the bottom that dipped in, slightly, but it could've been there before. She knew nothing about jewelry or metals; maybe there wasn't enough force in the bat; it wasn't like he'd had coordination going for him at the time. She'd been astonished that he'd connected.

"What?" This time the familiar move was Sadie arcing her neck away to laugh, like she had to let the whole world know she was amused. "Sorry, I do see the significance, but in what situation did Derek Shepherd—?"

"It was…not long after you left. He was drunk. The drunkest I'd ever…ever saw him. Including the night we met. Actually, I think we both might've been a lot less drunk than we claimed, but whatever. He was six sheets to the wind. Frat-boy beer wasted. Hello, nineteen-year-old Derek."

"The time he quit?" Sadie bit her lip, and it might've been the least performative gesture Meredith had seen from her, in spite of seeing her do it a million times. Shyly biting her lip, and looking up from under her eyelids, before kissing some guy who hadn't dreamed that he had it coming.

Meredith nodded. She'd started unspooling this in that conversation, hadn't she? But it hadn't registered more than a coincidence that William and Derek had referenced the same damn fruit. She'd been too incurious, unable to react to anything with more than mild-to-moderate irritation, and minimally freaked out about that.

"He said I'd written the book on running. On quitting. That I couldn't commit. That I'd lied when I said I was whole and healed. That I was unfixable. A lemon. A lot of that was projecting, and not just the recent stuff. It hadn't been long since he quit and ran from New York. He couldn't make his marriage with Addison work, and he was scared to start over. I saw that, then. Today I was telling Beni about it, and I had a moment. First of all, I'm glad I could shrug it off, because six months earlier? No way. Luckily for us, I knew what I wanted, what he'd been through, and I could withstand a hissy fit. I was going to be…be a fighter. Passionate. A force of nature. Still, it pisses me off that he…. That he was willing to say the shit that could break me. But whatever, he's dead, and it was years ago. The thing is…the thing is lemons.

"Lemons. He meant like a car. Obviously. And I did lie about being whole and healed, once. Before I drowned, I said he'd broken me, That I'd been going to spend the rest of my life with him…." Meredith balled a fist and let out a long breath. She wasn't going to spend the rest of her life with him, after all. Come on, Grey. What you said. Just what you said. "But I was fixed. All glued back together. I believed it. But then…then I let myself drown. I quit, I ran. I made it a lie."

In her defense, she hadn't claimed that the mommy-issues weren't going to be an issue.

"When I said those words—'whole and healed?' I meant it. I did the shrink thing. I made the choices. He knew that. If he wasn't just saying things, he didn't agree. The question is why. Was it the Sympathy for the Serial Killer? Did I represent death to him? Of patients? His career? His old life? He was there for Mom and Susan. The bomb. Choosing to watch a man die. He didn't even know one of my med school profs died on the weekend I was observing! And…and it'd only get worse. Maybe he should've taken his own out. George, Mark, Lexie. Everyone who was killed during the shooting. The miscarriage. Derek didn't get to hope. He faced down a gunman just like his father, and I… Later, that was later, but he-he must've known he wouldn't have stayed in Seattle that long without me. He wouldn't have had so many impossible cases. So many losses." Meredith slid off the rock again. She couldn't stay still, couldn't settle.

"Mer, none of those deaths were your fault."

"Not directly, but I was…. He'd heard you call me Death, and-and he talked like that. Analogies, allusions. Whether he meant it or not—"

"Isn't that why you're freaked out over? That he might have?"

"It's…. What if I am? What if all those years of courting death, of being Death, what if…?"

"If what?"

"I am trying really hard not to think of this— " Meredith gestured to her abdomen. " —as some kind of fucked up trade off. Because it does not make sense to me that I was given…given anything, and he died. All those near-death stunts? Actually dying? Were they fucked up trades? Is there some kind of asshole deity out there keeping a tally? Did I get wasted and open a cursed relic? What did I do? Why does this keep happening? Did he see it in me then? Is it me? Why does everyone keep— "

Sadie grabbed her before she could get the word "dying" out. "Because that's what people do, babe. Because bodies are fragile."

Meredith pulled away from her. "No! No! It can't just be entropy. Not with me. There has to be a reason. There has to be a reason this keeps happening, and-and maybe then…. I don't want to take myself out of the equation, or whatever. Today. Anymore. But-but I'll go live in the woods somewhere, and you can tell the kids about their cursed hermit mom who watches from the hills, I don't know. I don't know. I hate not knowing! There's…there's no book, no search, no one to ask, and no way to know! I don't want to do this again! I don't want to stop my life again, but I don't want to lose someone and not feel it. I don't want someone incredible taken out of the world, because they got to close to me!"

Sadie crossed her arms, and Meredith had probably finally gone too paranoid-bonkers for her, and cursed relic was a stretch, but for the love of... of... of nothing, how the—? "If you'd been cursed, don't you think I'd have been right there?"

"You didn't do the tours. I saw plenty of saints' body parts without you. I-I know I'm being irrational, I do, but rationally there should be a reason."

"I've OD'd twice. Narcan's miraculous. I've had as many near misses as you have, they're just not so spectacular. Shouldn't that have at least taken care of Himself?"

"Sades…. I…damnit, I could've lost you, too? I wouldn't have even— That doesn't help," Meredith groaned, pressing both hands over her face and sliding them up through her hair.

"Yeah, it's a whole story. What I'm getting at is, well, not getting at… I probably have had the same amount of people die around me, but it didn't hit me the same way, and it'll hit you again. You love people, Mer. You love your little sister, and your husband's best friend. You love the stepmom you barely got to know. You showed love to a condemned man, and you couldn't help loving the devastated people he left in his wake. That baby feels like a fucked-up trade-off because you love it already, and it feels wrong for there to be new love that strong so close to his death.

"Maybe you are an angel of death, Death, I don't know, but Derek might as well have been calling you 'love.' That's why he stayed. Even if he saw. Even if that's what he meant, which I think gives him too much credit sober, let alone if his brain was pickled. Your love was strong enough to pull him out of the dark after he'd wallowed a little. After he came to terms with death. Maybe to love it a little, like you."

"I don't! I—"

"You don't like it. You never longed for it quite the way I did."

I stopped. She had. But she'd also swam. And fought. And gotten tired. Everyone stopped sometimes. Even Derek.

"—but you did court it. Wooed it, in your way. Then Ellis got sick, and you hoped…you hope…that you can still have a chance with her. I know you want to believe in some big answer, and you can't, but you have hope for what's after. That's not the same as faith, maybe, but it's how you love life and death."

Meredith took her spot next to Sadie again. "I'm not the hopeful o—I'm not hopeful."

"Yeah, you are. Otherwise, you wouldn't have stayed a risk-taker. Hope is how he could do all those impossible surgeries, and why it was hard to face the fact that it doesn't always pan out. You had every reason to stop hoping, but you never did. Must've been infuriating for him. I'm sorry he said that shit to you, though."

Meredith's sigh became a yawn. The energy thing was fun while it lasted. "Derek did extremes. He was incredibly kind, and that's on the other side of cruel. The voice that buoyed you could also destroy you. D'you think his brain is pickled?"

"What?"

"You said that, and I thought of the embalming stuff without freaking out, and I wondered. Probably not up to Googling it yet, but I'm curious. It feels…I feel like…like maybe I'm becoming a full-on person again, and…and it's okay. I miss him. Every moment of every day, every part of me. But I feel more like a person who misses him. I don't hate myself for Lexie. I hate what happened. I hate that I was in shock and made the wrong… a choice I regret. But I guess I had hope for her. She was my little sister; she should've been bizarrely lucky, and maybe cursed, too."

"Lexie would love that."

"Is it… am I wishing pain on her? If I wish that in some universe she lived? 'Cause somewhere Mark did too. Somewhere just Mark. I think Derek dying would've broken him, especially if Lexie hadn't made it…but McSteamy was her McDreamy, and I'd never want her to go through a fraction of this…. She'd get through, but'm I being cruel?"

"You're being tired. When you start talking alternate universe theory—"

"You loved my Diana Wynne Jones books."

"—you're tired, and your nerd shields are falling. If there are multiple universes, they're already there. Your wishes don't control a thing."

"Somewhere Derek is alive. Somewhere I'm dead. Somewhere…." Somewhere you loved me enough.

Sadie had tried. She'd done her best with what she knew at the time. It hadn't been sufficient. Not at Seattle Grace, not in the house in Somerville where Meredith had pretended moving in together could mean moving in together. Where the number of times they'd fought were only marginally less than the number of times they'd fucked. Meredith hated the term "making love," but it was a thing, and it was not the few times she'd manipulated Sadie into taking it slow. She'd tried to delude herself, tried to convince herself that she didn't even want commitment, or romance, or coupliness; that she and Sadie were the same; always chasing the adrenaline rush, never standing still long enough to be caught, working it up on the dance floor, and continuing the party in bed until someone cried mercy.

"Come for me, Death!"

"Ah-ah-aw. Fuck you, Die, I was gonna…was there…unh there… why do you always do the…? The…the voi— oh god—"

"At least I'm calling on something that exists."

"Fuck off and die, Die—D-Die—Die! Oh god, Die!"

"D'you think there are people who think they once lived next door to some queer death cult?"

"Devoted to Queer-deth Grey?"

"Ha. I was not the scion of anything, thank you."

"Bullshit. Every roommate we had was one of your friends, or a runaway you met in Harvard Square."

"That was once."

"An intern at MGH."

"He was being discriminated against by his landlords!"

"Half a soccer team."

"Lacrosse. They weren't roommates. They had sleeping bags in the basement."

"For a whole semester."

"A great one."

Sadie laughed again, and Meredith, looking half at her, half at the water, thought of the trapped princess in Swan Lake. Well. More accurately, The Swan Princess. The prince in that version was named Derek.

"Did you bang all of them?"

Meredith snorted. "Not even close. Most were just…my bros, I believe I said unironically circa-2001."

"All I'm saying is, you were the one who showed me how someone who's not…I don't know, Oprah? Someone really open and nice —"

"If Oprah was open, she'd tell us all Stedman is a beard, and when she goes down on Gayle, she doesn't try to sound like she's summoning Beelzebub."

"Whatever. You were guarded. Not all wide open with the emotional stuff, but you cared about all these people, had a network. Same in Europe. By the time we left London we had… those girls with us. See? I can't even remember their names!"

"Keely and Freida. You called them Frito Lay."

"Oh, yeah!" Sadie cackled the way she had coming up with the nickname. "The redhead and the blonde."

"Wrong way 'round, though," Meredith pointed out, the same way she had dozens of times through the UK and France. Those two had spun off from their ever-changing group around Avignon. Did they ever figure out they were into each other? She hoped so. They'd hung around plenty of backpacking duos who claimed to be best friends, and noticing sparks wasn't a rare occurrence, but those two had serious chemistry. Keely had ID'd as pan, she was pretty sure. Freida claimed straight, but Meredith had caught the way she watched her and Sadie, who'd been willing to kiss her around people,an ocean away from her father. Meredith hadn't understood being comfortable with queer people, in queer spaces, even, and claiming to be straight. Then she'd moved to Seattle, and while she'd never said, "I'm straight," she understood how easy it could be to let assumptions stand.

"Those girls, that whole pack of Canadian dudes you out drank at that pub in Brighton, and then tracked us down in Brussels. The hand model from Belize."

"And what he could do with those hands…. Did that ever…? You always encouraged me, and I kinda did it to spite you..." She'd never wanted to be anything save exclusive with Derek, but she hadn't hated having options while she was with Sadie. A couple of other relationships she'd had had been open, or casual enough to be called that. Maybe it was because Derek wasn't a poly-interested person at all that the idea of a future partner felt more like cheating than something done with a spouse's consent.

"Not at all. Sorry if you want another answer. I don't know how to explain how apathetic I was about that, because I'd need a second if Fati wanted to be open, but I literally did not care."

"That's okay. Derek got jealous, but that was way more about being from a family of five kids than me. If he'd been different, we never would've happened. In some universe he and Mark would've just…." Meredith meant to sound jokey and casual about this alternate reality, but her breath hitched. If Derek, Addison, and Mark had formed some Manhattan-doctor power thruple her life would be entirely different, and Derek she knew—she'd known—wouldn't have existed.

"Did they ever…?" Sadie waggled her eyebrows.

"Definitely not with her. I bet Mark would've been up for it, but Derek? The jealousy thing. And it'd definitely be one of those weirdo, homo-erotic, 'making a friend feel good' situations. Derek was absolutely a Kinsey zero, and if McSteamy subbed in for the other team, I'd have heard."

"You've gone under the radar."

"Not totally. He knew about me. Would he have been more discrete? Was he capable of discretion? I'd say he would've preferred to be known as a ladies' man, not a general slut, but that's based on knowing he was a little… 'I'm not a homophobe, you do you, no homo,' and if he had been queerthat'd change. It's all very circular." Meredith leaned her head against Sadie's shoulder. "Told you and Beni both that Der got jealous, and he did, but he trusted me about that. After Addison cheated, after he found out that I…I'd…gotten around. I hung out in my friends' beds, and he, um, never assumed anything. I would've understood if he had hang-ups."

"Of course you would've. I've learned to see through other people's perspectives. It's taken a lot of work. A lot of therapy, but I can do it. It comes so naturally to you that you don't realize how much of a skill it is."

Meredith stared out at the dark water, It wasn't trying to lure her by reflecting the same bright hue as Derek's eyes, the way it had o several days of the past week, but even though she knew the only difference was the color of the sky it reflected, the darkness felt truer. She was more allured by the truth; it didn't mean she wasn't afraid of it, too.

"Where'd you take the kids today?"

"Science Center. We were going to do the NAT, but I think they need more background on dinosaurs first, and the Science Center had great— " She yawned again. Freaking hormones. "—stuff for the five-and-under crowd. Then we came home and played the magnetic fishing game, which is the best opening for talking to Bay about-Daddy. He really likes the pictures and videos from the times they went out together. Thank goodness for ErgoBaby, or we would've waited 'til he was older."

"I'm proud of you."

"For what? We've been doing photos for weeks." Should been months— I started when I was ready. As soon as Zola asked.

"For that, and that you let him take the baby out in the water at all."

"Not saying it didn't freak me out, but I understand that it's an unlikely danger. I, uh." Meredith sat up so she could see Sadie's face. "The beach was packed this morning, and there were two lifeguards within my sightlines, so…we walked into the swash zone."

Sadie yelped. "Mer! I didn't know that was a goal. That's awesome!"

"It was and wasn't. I wanted to have you or Fati there to I could take them one at a time, hold onto both hands, and not just because I'm paranoid. I had to pick Bailey up; he kept getting startled. I wanted to get on his level and help him see the pattern. Zola could've gone out farther if I could've held her upright. She loved every second.

"What about you? You, you, not you, their mom, you."

"I am me, their mom, me. That's the thing. I was nervous. Very. I tried not to go over the rules too many times, or act like it was a big deal. Zola knows there's something…weird…with me and the water, she's Zola, but she doesn't get what. We have a couple new squirter toys, and that waterwheel thing. I told them we should start bringing two buckets of water up to our spot, and I'd needed them to help carry one. I think we ended up with one and a quarter. Might be generous. Once we were down there, the ploy didn't matter. I didn't love it, but …it's hard to explain, I connected with why they did."

Sadie shook her head. A couple pieces of frizz had fallen out of her bun and framed her face. She looked less like she had while they'd been together as adolescents, than the girl in the flowing dress Meredith had met in a hotel ballroom. Her style didn't scream Southern California; Meredith would've never pictured her somewhere that wasn't known for having a nightlife, and yet, San Diego suited her. Maybe she suited San Diego.

"I think it may've seemed like I wasn't taking you seriously the day we took them to the pool," Sadie said. "I didn't understand until I saw your eyes when I jumped off the diving board. The water is something that takes, and you feel like you don't have much more left to lose."

"More than I thought I did," Meredith admitted. "How'd you end up here, Die? How'd you figure it out?" They were the questions she should've asked almost two months ago, and that was giving herself leniency. "I want to know." I want to listen. Last time I could barely hear.

"Another time." Sadie stood and pulled her up. "You're half-asleep as it is."

Meredith groaned. "I slept through July."

"And look how much better you're doing,"

Meredith hated it. She hated feeling drained from an hour with Beni, walking around one museum, and spending maybe an hour at the beach. She hated being paranoid about something Derek had said six years ago. That shouldn't be better.

It was. She could see a faint light at the top of the well.