It feels like scooping up glass shards with bare hands, soft skin vulnerable to the hungry razors. Dozens of nicks and cuts oozing memories and emotions that all taste of the icy waters of the ocean. Almost as if she's still breathing through one lung that's filled with that same water. Heavy and metallic, the detritus of the port and the carnage of the crash tainting it all.

She can feel it in her nose, her eyes, heavy in her chest, and it's so terrifyingly real, that if it weren't for the warm arms wrapped around her shoulders and the steady pressure that keeps her close to Derek's chest, Meredith might not have been able to differentiate between the present and the past.

It hasn't been this bad before, not since the first night waking up in the hospital and for several long minutes uncertain if she was still alive, or if she had just woken up in that weird afterlife zone once again. But now the wall is gone, the mental box with everything to do with the ferry and the water and the cold is in tatters.

Perhaps it is the doubt Derek has finally shown her, knowing that he thought she may have gone in the water on purpose, that has sent her so far down the rabbit hole. Before, before it was easier to hold it together, running on the assumption that he supported her every step of the way. The same way it was him that brought Meredith to the hallway where she saw her mother. But now, now she knows what he thinks of her.

And that slashes an already wounded soul.

"Just keep going; don't be a dam," her mother's last words circle back, "you are anything but ordinary Meredith."

The irony of that moment isn't lost on her; the greatest gift Ellis Grey ever gave her daughter was when they both lingered on the cusp of death, before they parted ways forever. Meredith can still feel her mother's scrubs in that final hug, a hug she hadn't felt in years.

"Now run, run."

Maybe time passes, maybe it doesn't, just like when she was dead, but eventually the shivers subside and the weight in her chest eases slightly. The shredded box is shoved aside in favour of imagining a metal one, complete with padlock, but Meredith is only capable of stuffing away the sensation of drowning and the last moments with her mother into it; the rest continues to swirl about. But it's enough to let some of the tension out of her shoulders and stop her breathing from coming in gasping sobs.

Derek senses the moment when something changes and tightens his grip, stomach tightening once again. His eyes feel scraped raw, emotions heavy, a sick sort of guilt swimming in his gut. He doesn't know exactly what's happened, but he can't stop replaying every single thing Meredith had told him before running away. Parts of it wound him, her retelling of the water that reminds him exactly what it felt like to pull her from the ocean and seeing her blue and still, but other parts, he can't quite understand.

He doesn't know if he wants to.

(Is this how she knew? How she knew her mother was dead?)

"Meredith?" he asks softly, broken voice wavering.

For a moment she's still in his arms, head tucked to his chest and arms pressed between them.

Then she shifts back so she can look him in the eye, and that's another punch to the gut. She looks wrecked, eyes gleaming with pain and hurt and some emotions he doesn't even think he could name. Something slides through her gaze as she studies him.

"Are we fine?" she asks softly, voice raspy through the tears. Derek winces, because he knows in that minute that they aren't, not with her throwing the same question from earlier back at him. Sure is not the right answer. Not now, and not then. The hurt is made worse by how quietly she asks, when she has every right to be accusatory.

They've both been hiding things from the other, and in this case, his assumptions have led to this rift.

Sighing, Derek closes his eyes in pain. "No, I don't think we are," he whispers.

Meredith offers the tiniest of smiles, bitter and sharp. Something in her has switched away from flight and is ready for fight, teeth barred and blood ready to be shed. "At least you've stopped staring at the ceiling," she murmurs.

Derek huffs out a breath, blinking to focus on her instead of the dark behind closed eyes. "I deserved that."

Meredith doesn't say anything, just continues to study him from ravaged eyes.

"Do you want to tell me about it?" Derek asks around the heavy silence.

Grimacing, Meredith shifts. "No I don't want to tell you," she starts, "but I will. At least a little bit of it."

She rolls away from Derek's grasp and he lets her, sitting up from where they had balled up in the middle. He wants to say something when she moves further into his trailer but stops when he recognizes the cupboard she's headed for. There's a glimmering second when he recognizes that he no longer has a place to say anything, not until Meredith finishes whatever it is she needs to.

She returns moments later, moving slowly and still a bit unsteady, with a bottle of cheap whiskey in her grip, and climbs into the bed next to him, settling against the headboard.

The cap gets tossed to the side, clattering onto the camper's small bedside table, and she inhales a mouthful as if it is the only thing in the world that can chase away the darkness. She doesn't offer it to Derek and he doesn't ask for it.

"First, I know this is going to sound crazy, I know that, and I need you to not say anything, okay?"

"Okay," Derek agrees, well aware of the foot of space between the two of them, a chasm he realizes now he has no business reaching across first. It feels hollow and cold and hot words bubble at the back of his tongue.

Meredith studies him for a long minute, before nodding and taking another small sip. "When I drowned… when I died," she starts, anguish creeping across her face when she says the words out loud. "I went… somewhere. It was the hospital, but at the same time, it wasn't."

With a shudder, she reaches out to bridge the gap, grasping Derek's hand tightly. He can feel the shivers wrack their way through her tiny body, small fingers cool in his. He holds on.

"And Denny was there. And so was Dylan, the bomb guy? And Doc, he was there too. And a few others. And it wasn't just memories of them, they kept telling me that I had to talk about the water, but how was I supposed to? It didn't make any sense!"

Breathing sharply through her nose, she powers onward.

"But when I went into the water, I tried so hard to get out. I tried, I really did. But there was a moment, just a moment, where everything and nothing made sense. Do you understand that? Do you know what it's like to suddenly have nothing else matter but that one moment?"

Derek can only nod, fresh tears trying to prickle hearing her say it.

As the story unfolds, he knows instinctively she's still not telling him all, but now he understands that she can't. And that him asking for more than she had been ready to give for so long had only been driving the wedge between them further.