Title: A Tale Of Two Cities
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: Another shot at Post Prom. It's going to be a little silly. It will be our version of what happens post prom, and then jump a few months in the future when uh, some bicoastal high jinx ensue. So we'll start right after the prom.
Author's Note: Thoughts that go in first person inside a characters head are in italics. This is basically just tying up a lot of loose ends before we skip ahead into the future, and take it to New York. The reviews for all of our fics have been amazing. We love you all. Keep reviewing!
"You are, aren't you?" Cristina asked her, staring as Derek slid his hand out from under Meredith's sweater.
Izzie, on her first day back to Seattle Grace, gaped. "You're pregnant?"
Meredith smiled weakly. "I just found out. This morning."
"You two are having….I mean it's definitely…" George was stammering.
Alex rolled his eyes. "You're definitely the one that knocked her up?" he asked, looking at Derek.
Meredith's jaw dropped. Izzie and Cristina both hit Alex in the arm they were closest to. Derek nodded. "It's mine."
"I never slept with Finn." Meredith said. Everyone stared at her. "What?" she demanded. "Is that so hard to believe?"
When he friends had departed, Meredith looked up at Derek. "Thank you." She said.
"For what?"
"For being all Derek about this."
He smiled. "I was going to try and channel someone else, but it seemed more appropriate just to be all Derek about it."
Meredith pressed her lips to his cheek. "We're having a baby." She said, abruptly sitting up straight. "An actual tiny little human life form. And it's going to be our responsibility to take care of it, and be parents and stuff."
Derek laughed. "That is the idea."
"I have a person in my stomach. How'd that happen?"
Derek smirked. "They skip sex-ed at Dartmouth?" He asked. "Cause I can refresh your memory if you need me to."
Meredith shook her head. "We need to do stuff."
Another cocky smirk. "That's what I'm saying, Mer."
She rolled her eyes at him. "Not that stuff, Dr. McSex A lot." She stood up. "I mean, I need to like, talk to the chief, have someone do tests, make sure everything is okay. We need to figure out what we're going to do."
Derek nodded. "When we're getting married." He said, casually standing up and sliding his arms around her waist.
Meredith's eyes widened, and she arched an eyebrow at him. "What did you just say?"
"Well, I assume that eventually, there will be vows exchanged between us. Nuptials. A union, if you will."
"Marriage?" Meredith repeated stupidly.
Derek nodded. "Marriage, Dr. Grey. It's what people do when they want to spend the rest of their lives with someone."
Meredith smiled. "And you'd want to marry me?"
Derek. "I want to marry you."
Meredith reached out ruffled a hand through his hair. "Let's wait for your divorce first, okay?"
He kissed her softly. "Are you sure? Cause if we moved to Utah, it wouldn't marry."
Meredith rolled her eyes and kissed him back, harder this time. "Shut up, Derek." She murmured into his lips. They broke apart when a cough from the doorway interrupted their reverie. Meredith looked over Derek's shoulder, and flushed a bright red color.
"Dr. Montgomery Shepherd." She said, looking down. Derek spun around.
"Addison."
"Hi." She said. "Sorry to uh, interrupt." Her tone wasn't cold, exactly, but it definitely wasn't overflowing with the warm fuzzies either. "But Meredith is pregnant. I thought she might need a doctor."
Meredith looked at her for a long time. "You'd do that?" she asked, sounding like an idiot to even her own ears.
"I'm offering, aren't I?" Addison asked. "Let's go Grey, I don't have all day." Meredith nodded and left the room quickly, without looking up from the floor.
Addison started to follow her, but this time Derek grabbed her arm. "Addison?" he said. "Thank you."
Addison scribbled one last note on Meredith's chart. "Everything seems fine, Dr. Grey."
"I'm so grateful to you for doing this." Meredith said, looking her in the eye, and sounding, thankfully, a thousand times more mature than she had earlier. "And I'm so sorry that you found out that way."
Addison nodded. "So am I, Meredith." She checked her watch. Comprehension dawned on Meredith.
"You're leaving, aren't you?" she said. "That's why Mark, Dr. Sloan checked himself out of the hospital."
Addison nodded. "I don't know what else to do. I can't be alone right now. I can't dive into work, because work is in Seattle. So I'm just going to turn around and go the other direction."
Meredith let her eyes travel over Addison. Isabella Rossellini. This immaculate creature, in Burberry Prorsum and Gucci. Not that Meredith knew that, of course. But as her sight roamed over the perfection of a woman before her, she realized something.
"You were kind of made for New York City anyway." She said, articulating her thoughts. "And for the record, Addison, I'm just as shocked about this as you are. Compared to you, I don't know what he sees in me."
Addison smiled, slowly and sadly. "Oh, I'm not shocked, Dr. Grey. This doesn't shock me. I just knew it was coming. If anything goes wrong with the baby, you can fly up until eight months."
She walked towards the door and Meredith knew this might be the last time she would ever see this woman. "I was so jealous of you." Meredith said, not meeting her eyes. "I was always so jealous. You came in here, in your fur trimmed coat, with your hair, and your wardrobe and your surgical background. You were everything I wasn't. You had Derek. And I was just so jealous."
Addison blinked back the tears in her eyes. "It's funny." She said quietly. "Because you're wrong. You had Derek. And that's why I was jealous of you. I'll see you, Dr. Grey."
Derek was waiting down the hall when Addison emerged from the room. She pulled papers out of the briefcase she was holding and held them out to her husband.
"Sign." She instructed. He took them from her, and she didn't wince when the ink flowed from the pen in the shape of his name. Derek Shepherd. No hesitating this time. She pulled her own pen out of her lab coat and signed. Addison Forbes Montgomery Shepherd.
Derek looked at her. "I'm a brain surgeon, Addison." He said. "It didn't take me that long to put two and two together. Mark checked himself out of the hospital. Divorce papers. You're going back to New York."
She smiled. "Someone has to file the papers."
He nodded. "Does this feel like it should feel sadder to you?"
She shrugged. "Maybe we're both moving on to where we're supposed to be."
Derek smiled. "And usually it's me being all philosophic."
"People can change."
"People like Mark? What was he doing here, anywhere?"
Addison smiled at her soon to be ex husband and shook her head empathetically, sending red curls shaking. "Trust me, you don't want to know." She looked back towards the room where she knew Meredith was pulling her scrubs back on. "Take good care of that girl, Derek. She loves you so much it almost killed her."
Derek nodded. "Take good care of yourself, Addie." He said, kissing her cheek, and heading down the hall towards Meredith's room. Addison smiled slowly. It was fitting. She was the one going three thousand miles away, yet when it came time to walk away, she was still watching him.
She shook her head, took one last look around, and went to say goodbye to Richard, and meet Mark at the airport. She had thought for a long time that it would all work. Her sham of a marriage. Her covering up her feelings for Mark. Her in Seattle.
It didn't work. Derek had moved on. Hell, she had moved on, even if it wasn't so obvious to her at first. And Seattle? Seattle was a lovely city for some people. But for her, New York City beckoned.
Derek entered the exam room. Meredith was still sitting on the table, in a hospital gown. Derek sat down next to her. "How's the baby?"
"Young. Tiny. Fetal."
"I love you when you're verbose and articulate."
"She's leaving. Because of us."
"She's leaving because of a lot of things, Mer. One of them is us. But then there's Mark. And New York is her home."
Meredith nodded. "I just don't want to be my mother. That did something to Richard and Adele, whether they can admit it or not, that did something to them. I don't want to hurt…" she trailed off.
Derek nodded. "I know." He kissed her, softly at first and then a little deeper. "Mer," he asked her, his lips against hers. "Remember prom?"
"How could I forget?" she said, her mouth curving into a smile.
"You know, this exam table……" Derek said, sliding off, and facing her, again, reaching under her hospital gown, and pulling off her underwear.