Title: Crumpled Up Promises
Authors: Sara and Lizzie
Rating: T for language, sex, you know.
Disclaimer: We happen to own our personal anatomies, not Grey's. Or Patrick Dempsey's. Sadly.
Summary: An alternate take on the Code Black incident. Meredith is seriously hurt by the explosion, and Derek has to make his choice all over again.
Author's Note: We are differing from the plot lines, and dialogue in the show. We've added much and changed a lot but you will recognize the occasional line or two that we kept.
Originally, we didnt intend for Derek to have his little upcoming revelation, but those of few who have read out fics know how we ship, and probably assumed this was coming soon anyway. And we're really particularly proud of the last Addison sequence. I think this is how she felt for a long time.
All we can say is enjoy. Review. And love.
REVIEW.
Addison sat in Richard's room with him and Adele, a look of undeniable satisfaction on her face. This young, wide eyed girl, this girl with her hand on a bomb. What was it about this girl?
What was it about her that made her husband's eyes darken with desire, that broke his smile, that made him love this girl? What was it about this girl that made Richard fear her fate more than anyone else's?
As far as Addison could see, she was just a girl.
Richard Webber lay in a bed, surrounded by silence. His wife was there, and Addison, but it was silent. Meredith had a bomb in her hand. The hand that had wrapped its tiny fingers around his own as he held Ellis' baby girl in the gallery.
That same hand was now washed, gloved and holding a ticking bomb.
Adele sat in the room, watching Addison cast nervous glances at her husband and absent mindedly chewed a thumbnail. Richard said that Meredith Grey had her hand on the bomb.
Adele shook her head. When Richard had been seeing Ellis, he used to look at her with guilt flooding his eyes. It was a look so poignant; it broke her heart every time. A look that was filled with guilt, and love and regret.
Now, Adele's heart was breaking for a different reason. It was breaking for Addison, because Derek had stopped looking her way all together.
She was thinking about how flippantly people say they would kill for things. How nonchalant they were about it. Herself included. I'd kill to for that surgery. I'd kill to be back with Derek. Only now, she could die.
At any minute, she could burst into a cloud of torn flesh and blood, cover the OR with her insides and be gone. And the thing was, what would she leave behind? Sure, Cristina and Izzie and George would remember her. Throw flowers on her tombstone every year or so.
But her mother wasn't going to remember. And the person she wanted to remember more than anyone, he would forget too. He would be sad for awhile. He'd be at the funeral, maybe he'd cry a little bit, but he'd settle with Addison. They'd probably leave Seattle and after enough time passed, he would stop looking back.
She'd had a feeling. And Addison had her McLife. She looked at Burke. "Dr. Burke?" She asked, quietly, her voice shaking.
"Yes, Dr. Grey?"
"When Dylan gets back, will you make sure that we, um, that we don't do anything until Derek…" she stopped, willed the tears out of her eyes and tried to keep some level of composure. "I won't do anything until Dr. Shepherd has vacated his OR."
Burke looked at her for a long time. She was still green, still young. She wasn't hard yet, and he was surprised to find that neither was he. He wasn't the cold, hard surgeon he'd thought he was. He looked her in the eyes. "Dr. Grey, no one is going to die."
She looked back at him, and saw Preston Burke, the man, the person. She wanted to believe him.
Relief. It was a sensation not uncommon to doctors. You save a life, and you're relieved. All the relief in the world didn't compare to saving Miranda Bailey's husband. He watched the scrub nurses close him up, and took a moment to savor the relief.
Cristina entered the room. "You're finished."
"He's going to be fine." Derek said, his voice flooded with that old emotion. "How are things over there?"
Cristina's eyes darted everywhere but his face. She hated this guy, right? He's the reason your best friend is a shell of a person. She didn't care if he suffered. But something in her made her hesitate. "You know Burke. Confident as always."
Her eyes. That was the part of Dr. Yang's typically hard as nails, composed, eager demeanor that was throwing him off. Her eyes. The feeling was making him uneasy in a way he couldn't really define. It was pulling at something in his gut.
"And the girl with the bomb?"
Cristina bit her lip so hard she tasted metallic blood in her mouth. "Dr. Yang, the girl with the bomb?"
Derek watched her lips twitch and her mouth open and close several times, and he knew what she was going to say in that miniscule fraction of a second before she actually said it.
"It's Meredith."
It was like he had been sleeping for most of his life, and was finally waking up again. There was no fear, none of the heart clenching, all consuming terror he should have felt. Just an overwhelming sense of clarity.
It was like waking up. "I love her." He said. The room stopped moving. Cristina stared at him, the scrub nurses all stopped making motion, because motion would create noise, and this, oh, this bombshell was something they wanted to hear.
Derek smiled, feeling calm, peaceful and whole since that night he had seen his own hell walk into the hospital on four inch heels. "I'm leaving Addison." He whispered to himself. "I love Meredith, I'm leaving Addison."
He walked out of the OR, and Cristina followed him. "Um, are you on something?" she asked. "Cause she's got her hand on the bomb." Derek just stood there, looking dazed.
"Did you mean that?" Cristina asked.
"I really do." Derek said, shedding his scrub clothes and running a hand through his hair. "I can't believe I've wasted all this time."
Cristina wanted to say something rational. Tell him it wasn't going to be that easy. Meredith was broken now. She was scattered all over every place she'd ever laid eyes on in the company of Derek. She was in bits and pieces. But it sounded so perfect, so raw and so utterly real; she didn't have in her to ruin it with reason.
Heart clenching, all consuming terror. It was eating away at her. At both of them, really. Meredith was fighting the instinct of her hand to shake with fear. Dylan was saying something about evacuating.
She heard her own voice, she was talking about explosions and being glass half empty, and the next thing she knew, she was walking. Walking with a stupid man on a stretcher and her hand on ammunition.
Is this all my life will be? Dartmouth. Med school. Finding and losing the love of her life. Ugh. Love of my life. She tried to deny it, but she figured at this point, why bother? She could die at any minute, maybe now was the time to be honest.
She heard Dylan saying things, things that were supposed to be threatening, so she looked up, and when she did, she saw Cristina and it snapped her out of her numbness.
"Cristina?" she said. "I had a feeling. And now I might turn out to be right, and maybe this is a pathetic last confession, but Derek? He's the one. The one. As in only one. For me. Ever. If, um, if I had a feeling, and it was the right feeling, will you tell him that?"
Cristina nodded. Two sets of huge eyes locked into each other and it hit Cristina. Best friend. Bomb. Feeling. She was scared. "Tell me something." Meredith urged.
Cristina nodded. "I told McDreamy. You know, that you're here. With the bomb."
"What'd he say?"
"I love her."
"Seriously?"
Cristina rolled her eyes. "Would I lie to you now, of all times? Oh, and Burke said he loved me."
"Seriously?"
"No, I'm lying to you. I'm making up vicious, untrue lies. Of course I'm serious. Oh, and Izzie called Addison McWife to her face." Cristina held up her hand. "Yes, seriously."
Cristina could only stand back and watch as they wheeled the stretcher through the doors of the OR. Burke was already inside, waiting for them. He looked at Meredith again, testing her, trying to gauge her strength, see if she could really do this.
This time, there was a new spark, some sort of determination in her eyes that had been missing before. He nodded at her, and starting preparing the patient. They were going to get through this.
Her left thumbnail was bleeding. She watched as the redness seeped into the lines of her finger, and just sat there, covering her Chanel nail polish. Addison had bit that thumbnail for too long. Now it bled. She raised it to her lips again, tasting the metallic taste.
A sudden hush came over the nurses' station and all the activity that had been in full swing just stopped. She looked up at the elevator, and saw her husband standing there, a hero in navy blue scrubs.
She got up, and ran to him, throwing her arms around him and squeezing him tightly, as if feeling him take up space between her arms would convince her that he was okay.
"Derek, thank God." She whispered in his ear. She felt his strong hands pulling her arms down from him.
"I have something to take care of. I'll be back." He told her. And as he walked away from her, towards the still waiting elevator, she could see a tiny spot on his right shoulder blade that was darker than the rest of his scrubs. Her blood.
And in that moment, she knew. It was over, for good this time. For better or for worse no more. He was bowing out, and now he could do it gracefully because he had tried.
She was like the stain she had left on his scrubs. No more than a tiny spot on his back. Her thumbnail hadn't reached the front of him. There was no mark of her in his future.
Burke looked up first. He felt another presence in his OR. He was the first to see Derek, standing in the door way, looking rumpled and rugged, as usual. His fiery blue eyes were locked on Meredith.
"You can't be here." Burke told him. Meredith's gray eyes looked up and immediately found his.
"Derek." She breathed.
Forever And A Day. One Hell Of A Racket. Keeping The Faith. The Best Laid Plans. A Tale Of Two Cities.
Check them out.