A/N: Hi guys! I'm so, so sorry for not having updated in a veeery loooong while, I sincerly apologize. I'm not blaming this on anyone, but myself and my stupid computer. First, as you may know, I had a very serious writing block so I had big time trouble finishing this chapter. Second, my internet connection screwed up so I couldn't get out on the net when I had finished this chapter. Third, when the internet connections were okay again and not scred up, I couldn't load the document on which this chapter is written in on the stupid computer I've got at my mom's place so I had to wait until yesterday when I got home to dad to update. But when I finally got to dad's, I had not computer to update from cause dad had it with him to Danmark. But now I'm FINALLY here! So there's nohing left to do then introduce you to: I Raise Her; the 14th chapter of This Puzzle of Mine... hope you don't think I'm a screw up, like my computer...

Chapter 14 - I Raised Her

Meredith found herself sitting in the strair well. It was quiet, almost too quiet. The only thing being heard was her own troubled breaths. Crying made her breath troubled. Truth told she didn't know why she cried. Maybe it was because of the owerwelming feeling of being back or the fact that Derek had turned his back on her again. Or maybe she was just tired of hiding. She didn't really know. All she knew was that everything would be over soon. Derek would get even more upset hearing he has a daughter then he got when Mark walked up the stairs.

Her friends. Friends sounded pathetic to Meredith, but they'd be hurt that she hadn't told them. That she knew. Meredith knew alot had happened in the past years. She knew they had kids now. Lily and Laura was Izzie's daughters, but she didn't know the names of Christina's and George's children. It was sad.

If she had known back then how it would feel to face everyone fifteen years later, she wouldn't have moved. Then she would have stayed, fought. Let Zadie know her father, let him be a part from the beginning. Now she didn't know if it was too late.

When she and Derek were together; those two best, most wonderful, up-on-cloud-nine-months, he had talked about children. He had talked about the future, their future. That all disappeared when he chose Addison, chose to stay with her. Then, that all vanished into the past.

The past was something Meredith had tried to forget, to stay out of, but it wasn't that easy. Every time she looked into the eyes of her daughter, they reflected him and the older she got the more they showed. The soul is to be seen through your eyes, some say. Meredith saw Derek in Zadie's eyes. The one thing she lacked, Meredith saw. So maybe the eyes doesn't only show your soul, maybe also what your soul lack.

Suddenly the door flung open. Meredith raise her hand to wipe away the tears from her face, but stopped in her motion as Derek appeared at the foot of the stairs.

At first he didn't notice her. It was dimly lit as there were no windows and the light in the cealing wasn't helping much. He had his hands against the wall, leaning his head against it. He was breathing heavy too. All of a sudden he smacked his tighthened fist into the wall in anger and turned around, looking up the stairs, at Meredith.

She just sat there, unable to either move or talk. She had never seen him like that. If that was only because of Mark, Meredith didn't know what to expect the rest would unsolve. She was taken aback by his action, she just... She just looked at him...

He just stood there. The pain in his hand was almost unbareble, but he wouldn't show weakness. Not infront of her. He didn't know what to say despite the fact that he had re-played, almost rehersed this moment in his head over and over again. The moment when he'd meet her again. He had known what to say, but now it was all washed away. Washed away with the anger of seeing her together with Mark. He didn't even know why he felt the way he felt. Meredith wasn't his wife. Addison was. That desicion he had made a long time ago. He just looked at her...

"Does it hurt?" Meredith finally said, cursing herself for saying that. She could have said something else, but that was what came out. The old habbit of caring for him showed.

Derek looked down on his, still closed fist. It had started to turn slighly blueish, and it did hurt. "No, I'm fine..." he said coldly, still looking down.

Meredith swallowed and nodded with a tear falling down her cheek. "You have no right to be angry..." she said quietly, almost breathing it out.

"So there is something to be angry for?" Derek stared blankly at her.

"No..." Meredith answered in a breath. "There isn't..."

"But why is he here?" he asked. "Why are you here?"

That made Meredith react. Even Derek did himself. Why did he say that? It wasn't like he didn't want her to be there, that he hadn't missed her because he had. Even though he wasn't up for admitting it. After all he had chosen Addison.

"Why I'm here...?" Meredith bit her lower lip, trying to take a discreet breath as she was truly hit by the question. She even had to repeat it, checking so that he hadn't said wrong or something. By the look on his face he hadn't. "I'm here because I want to..." she lied, trying to convince him and herself.

He nodded carefully not showing any expression. "Since when do you want to be here? There has been complete silence from you for the past fifteen years. Why do you wanna come here, now? You moved away without telling anyone. I had to threat O'Malley to tell me where you had gone... When you had gone... Why you had gone..." Derek took a step up the stairs and his eyes glowed both of sadness and anger. "He didn't know why you had moved. But he looked at me like it was my fault... It was my fault... You moved because of me." he stated. "I didn't want you to go..."

"... but I had to go..." Meredith murmured, nodding, yet again to reasure, this time more herself rather than him. "I had to go..."

"No, Meredith you didn't... We could have been friends, you could have stayed... I would have done anything just so you had stayed..."

Meredith shook her head in chock and stared a him. "We couldn't have been friends... I couldn't have been friends... You would just hurt me again... I didn't want to stick around for that. I loved you... I told you that, but it wasn't enough for you... You chose Addison, you left me... You broke me..." she stood up and took a step down, making their eyes meet in the same level. "Don't you dare make me feel guilty because I moved..."

Derek looked at Meredith for the better part of a minute. Her face didn't show him anything, nothing was being revealed. "I just wanna know why... I want to understand..."

She shook her head. "You don't understand... You won't understand... You just couldn't understand..."

"You keep telling me I don't understand... Of course I don't understand if you won't tell me!" he began to sound frustrated. "Just tell me!"

"I have told you! Do you listen to me!" Meredith shouted, being an inch from hitting Derek. "You broke me! How hard can it be to understand!?"

Derek looked at her and shook his head. "I know you, there's something more to it... You had you're friends here. You could have demanded me to move, instead of you doing that yourself."

"You don't know me Derek! You think you do but you don't. I've changed, I'm not the same person anymore... I've moved on!"

"Have you really?" He looked in disbelieve at her and she looked surprisingly back at him. "Some how I doubt that, cause if you did I don't think you'd stand here telling me that every little bit of it is my fault. That I broke you, that I left you..."

"Well, maybe the earth spinns around you after all!? You don't know me Derek. You never have and you never will!" Meredith said and tried to get past Derek down the stairs. "I don't even wanna be here!" Meredith almost shouted and Derek grabbed her arm, pulling her back. "What are you doing?!"

"What did you say?" he asked. "I thought you..."

"I don't wanna be here..." Meredith repeated, closing her eyes. "I didn't come here because I wanted to..."

Derek looked oddly at her. "But you said... You said you was here because you wanted to..." he paused giving her a long gaze. "Why are you here, Meredith?"

"I didn't come alone..."

"Well, that I think I know now..." Derek said, referring to Mark Sloan coming up the stairs earlier.

Meredith gave him a glare, but as she looked into his eyes she saw Zadie. She looked down, taking a deep breath. Was this it? Meredith imagined it to be. The end. She didn't know how to say it.

After a minute of silence, Meredith felt his hand under her chin, and she took a quiet breath as his skin touched his. "Don't do that..."

"Meredith..." he said gently.

"I have a daughter..." Meredith pushed down his hand and walked down to the bottom of the stairs. There where silence from behind her, again nothing else was heard than their troubled breaths.

Derek ran a hand through his hair, not kowing how to react. "You have a daugther..." he repeated. He could see her nodding. "You have a daughter." He didn't know how to react, she had a daughter. Derek didn't want to think of it the way he did, but he did. Meredith had a daughter, and he didn't know about her and as far as he could figure out Izzie, George or Christina didn't know either cause if they did, as big as their mouths were, he'd know. "Does Christina, Izzie or George know?" he asked.

"No..." she answered, still with her back against him.

"Why haven't you told them... How come you ha..." he stopped and it suddenly struck him, the impossible. "How old is she?"

He could see her tilting her head. "How old is she?" he demanded even though he had a feeling coming up his spine that something was not right and looked at her, his eyes turning serious.

Meredith looked down on her feet. Now it really was the end. She stood there doing nothing, saying nothing, just hearing her own and Derek's breaths. As he asked her again, she had the strong urge to say ten, but another lie wouldn't make it easier, even though it may have seemed like it, she knew it wouldn't. She turned around facing the person whom had left and hurted her deeply fifteen years ago, but whom she had never really let go of. How could she really?

"How old is she Meredith?" he demanded yet again, almost shouting in anger and frustration. Derek didn't know what he wanted her to say. He just knew that one answer wouldn't better than the other or more right. In a way he would get hurt or to say disappointed what ever she would said as she just stood there letting him wait. Letting him wait he builded up small and tiny expectations. Either way, whatever she was going to say. He'd be hurt...

"She's fifteen..." Meredith said quietly, looking down again as the horrible expression she had dreamed about spread over Derek's face.

"Is she mine?" he said coldly and Meredith lowered her eyes to avoid his. "Oh..."

"Derek, I..."

"No!" he demanded and took a step closer to the small-framed woman infront of him. "No, Meredith! Now you listen to me!"

She nodded carefully, a tear rolling down her cheek.

"I have a daughter and you didn't have the decency to tell me! I'm her father!"

"And she has made it through without you!" Meredith shouted, tightening his fists.

"I had the right to know!"

"The second you chose Addison you're rights disappeared..."

Derek eyes widened and they started to get blank. "You... You knew you were..." he swollowed and rubbed his jaws as found it hard to talk. "...pregnant when you left?"

"Yeah, I did..." Meredith looked at him with strong eyes. "I took a pregnancy test two day before you chose Addison and I left..."

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked, ans she looked away for a moment.

"I didn't want you to stay with me for the wrong reasons..."

"Now that's just crap Meredith!"

"NO! It's not!" she shouted at him.

"So you mean that a child is a wrong reason..?"

"I wanted you to stay because you wanted to, not because the dirty old mistress got pregnant..." Meredith explained. "I didn't want my daughter to get hurt, like I was hurt..."

"Our daughter... And you were never the old dirty mistress, Meredith... You..."

"Oh, no?" Meredith scoffed angrily. "I have a hard time believing that... Do you know how people looked at me when Addison showed up here, and do you know how I felt?"

Derek shook his head. "No I don't..." he answered truthfully.

"I really felt like I was the dirty old mistress who had screwed America's best and most respected neo-natal suregon's husband, and that was what people though when they looked at me. And really I was the one being screwed with..." Meredith looked furiously at him as he looked point blank at her. "Don't call her your daughter. I raised her, I went up in the middle of the night to comfort a screaming baby, I watched her take her first steps, I comforted her when she thought there were monster's in her closet, I thought her how to tie her shoes, I followed her on her first day to school, I'm the one she comes to with her problems, I raised her. She's my daughter!"

As Meredith finished her speach, tears were streaming down her porslin skin. With those wors she exhaled every little feeling of anger, hate, sadness and disappointment she had ever felt, granted or not.

A/N: So what did you think? Bad? Good? Hope you liked it. I had major trouble with this one. Though I don't now where to continue from here. I think I'll write a chapter where Zadie is talking to "the interns" as it's where she's now. And of course a little more fine lined how Derek reacts. And Derek have to meet Zadie "for real" too. Well, I have a lot to think about, but I'm very much disposable for advise and thoughts. So I'll be back. Review please...