A/N: So here I am, back with the 17th, which I think turned out okay, a little more than okay... There is a few things I really like, but what I think is not what matters. What you think is what matters... So read, enjoy and review!

Chapter 17 – In Red

Richard could see Miranda in the corner of his eye. She was doing post op notes and certain of her not noticing he reached out a hand towards the door handle.

"Don't even think about it!"

Richard pulled back his arm and looked at her. She was still doing post-ops. He sighed. "When are they done? What are they doing?"

"I'll be damn..." she turned away from the papers and looked at him with a surprised, yet annoyed look upon her face. "You're even worst than William, and he's fifteen and half. Not 69!"

Richard rolled his eyes and scratched his grey haired head. "But you know everything, Miranda. You have eyes, everywhere and ears too..."

"I do know everything and what's going on in there... But I won't tell you..." she looked back down in her papers and the pen started to fly across the paper again. "So, sit still, be quiet, hold your limbs close to your body or go be useless somewhere else..."

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In the years that had gone by since she left Seattle had Meredith never felt so stared at as she did now. Of course people stared at her when she entered the trauma room waddling like a penguin, 8 months pregnant. Of course they did. And sometimes they said: "Sweetie, aren't you a little wrong?" in a humble, yet condescending tone. Especially the older male surgeons, though they wouldn't say it like the nurses. They'd just blurt out: "Gynie's on the 5th floor" and then turn they're back on.

Sometimes Meredith could understand them, meaning how an intern could put herself in the position of being pregnant? Or honestly: how could she be stupid enough to get herself knocked up? Even if Meredith knew people asked themselves that, she did herself sometimes, but even if she did that she didn't thought of the pregnancy as a mistake. Of course she didn't mean for it to happen. She didn't have sex with Derek for that specific reason, but it wasn't a mistake. Saying it was a mistake Meredith thought was as saying she didn't want Zadie, that she didn't love her. It was like practically saying that she wanted to erase the past 15 years of her life. She didn't want that.

Though she could admit peeing on that stick and it turning positive made her slightly freak out, thinking her life was over, and being pregnant and raising Zadie had been, at times, hard but she had had Mark as a great back up. She was so thankful she had bumped into him on that busy New York street, making his paper fly everywhere. Mark had helped her with almost everything. He even tried to put together the crib, but failed heavily when he was to show it to Meredith. It was as simple as that he rested his hand on it which made the wooden bed fall apart. He bought a new one already put-together and swore that he'd never ever visit IKEA again. He had been, as like he was before she was born, very helpful when Zadie was a baby. He even convinced Meredith to move in with him, that way they could take turns working and watching the little monster as he called the younger version of Zadie.

When Zadie reached one and a half years Meredith moved back to her own apartment and put Zadie in the day care centre at St Helen's, and she became the red-alert kid, because when ever she saw an opportunity she escaped up to the 2nd floor where the surgical ward was. Though that rarely happened before the age of three and a half; when she had learned to walked properly and find her way to the surgical wing.

Meredith's fellow interns as well as friends were all known faces to Zadie and they always said that she had been raised at the hospital. Meredith really couldn't debate that. She was born at St Helen's, she made her second visit at the hospital at the age of three days, her day care was there and sometimes Meredith brought her to the staff meetings and Zadie would be under the table, taking of everyone's slippers and tickle them. And people found that funny. Zadie was the one who could get most grumpy surgeons to crack a smile and if Meredith had stayed, she knew Zadie would have been Bailey's best friend. Bailey would have loved her. Derek would have loved her...

"What do you want me to say?" Meredith finally said, breaking the ice cold silence that had formed since those last words of anger had left her lips.

Derek shook his head and ran a hand through his dark brown curls. He kept on looking at Meredith who still had traces of where the tears had made their way. He noticed she wore the old Dartmouth t-shirt. He loved it, and it looked so good on her, and still did in a way. But that wasn't what he was going to think about. His mind was supposed to be all caught up by his daughter. A daughter he didn't know, didn't know what she looked like, not even her name. No nothing.

"You're right..." he said, looking down in the floor searching for his words. "I didn't raise her... I didn't see her first steps... I'm not the one she comes to with her problems..." Derek looked up with steel eyes, piercing the porcelain face in front of his. "But whose fault is that?! You, Meredith, excluded me out of her life, not the other way around. Don't ever blame me for not being there for her!"

Meredith opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She was out of words. As she stood there unable to speak, unable to move just looking into the blue eyes feeling guilt, the door flung open and a certain red head looked oddly at them.

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Addison didn't know what to say, she wasn't entirely sure of what she witnessed after opening the door. "So this is where you've been hiding..." she finally blurted out looking from her husband to the woman she hadn't seen in a so long time. That she didn't want to think about the feelings that most likely were being teared up in this moment. "I have been paging you... We said we were going to have lunch and now you are here in the dark with..." Addison couldn't actually say her name. In some weird way she felt sick, thinking about what could have happened. "... With her..."

"Addison..." Meredith exclaimed quietly, and the red head looked at her with cold eyes.

"You have been crying..." Addison stated and Meredith instinctably wiped a hand over her cheeks to see if there were any pearly drops left, but it wasn't. It was all dry,

"I haven't-"

Addison didn't care. She knew she had been crying. She had seen Meredith's post-crying eyes before and she hadn't forgotten them. She turned to Derek again. "I have paged you. Have you forgotten your pager? Is the batteries charged?" she started, and she could see Derek getting frustrated.

"The batteries are okay..." he sighed and looked from Meredith to his wife. "I've just been busy..."

"Well, I can see that..." Addison looked at Meredith who lowered her head.

"No, Addie... Don't pull Meredith into this..."

"What?!"

"Don't pull her into this just because you're having a bad day..."

"Into what?"

"Your bad day started this morning, don't blame her for it..." Addison crossed her arms as Derek took a deep breath. "Look, I had a lot to do... Ms Pearlman had a seizure, a girl fell down the stairs and I was trying to find that Zadie girl you talked about..."

When Meredith heard him say that she looked up, feeling her eyes tear up. He obviously didn't know that was his daughter. The one they had been fighting about, whom they still were. And she felt guilt, towards him, towards her friends. And most of all towards Zadie. "It's... I... She... That's..."

Derek looked at her. She had seen her looked up, so quickly she had reacted and her eyes had gone diamond. She was rambling. She did that when she was nervous. He remembered that and... He remembered, he remembered that from earlier too.

"And I ramble when I'm tired and nervous…"

"Addison!" he called out and she stopped her words that had gone by long since he stopped listening. "What did, the girl...? Zadie wear?" he swallowed. "What did she look like?"

Addison looked oddly at her husband who looked terrified yet so calm. "Ehm, she was cute... She wore this shirt..." she motioned towards her chest. "With red letters... She had..." Addison stopped as Derek swished past her. She looked at the door, out where he had disappeared, and then at the woman left a few feet away. "She had..." she started as also Meredith swished past her. Then the bad feeling spread. "Oh, god..."

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Zadie looked at the grown ups as she stood up and walked towards the door on stumbling legs. She could feel the eyes of them burning in her back. She turned around. "I know what you're going to say, and I'm fine... Seriously, look!" she started to balance on her right leg, but soon had to put the other down to not fall. "Okay, so I don't have the best balance..."

"Where are you going?" Izzie asked as Zadie touched the door handle.

Zadie turned around and took a deep breath. "I'm going to find my dad and tell him I exist. Then I'm going home, cause I have a strong feeling that he has a life, a life that won't slow down just because I came around..."

"No, Zadie... That's not wha-" George stopped as she gave him a glare.

"Yes... And do you know why I think so?" the grown-ups looked down. "Cause the only thing you have been talking about is what colors you prefer on you scrub caps... You haven't mentioned a single word about him, or about how mad you are at Meredith... I know you're angry; you must be so, so pissed off... She left you. You were her best friends, you did everything together... I mean you lived together for heaven's sake. It must take a lot of love to do that when you already spend 80 hours a week together..." Zadie closed her eyes. "I'm going out now, okay... Thank you for updating me on the scrub cap department..." she smiled.

Alex nodded, and then turned to George. "Are you really sure?"

George looked at the back of Zadie as she disappeared out the door leaving the five of them left. "I don't know..."

"What aren't you sure of?" Izzie asked, looking from Alex to George.

"Didn't you see how she stumbled over to the door, and how she couldn't hold her balance?" George explained.

"So she's tired..." Christina exclaimed and dug her fingers into the wave of curly hair to scratch her head. "I mean flying across the country to find her father must do that to you..."

"But haven't you seen how she's been squinting her eyes and touching her head..." Alex added on to convince.

"Another sign of tiredness! Come on, we're not her parents, not her doctors... She's fine; she can take care of herself... After all Meredith's her mother..."

"Christina..." Burke said as he saw the look upon Izzie's face.

"How can you say that?" Izzie said with big eyes, feeling her lower lip shiver. "She's our friend... Through everything..."

"Well, it didn't sound like that before..."

"No, maybe it didn't but people can change..."

"Well, we all know that..." Christina shrugged.

"Meredith did a few mistakes... A few rather big mistakes..." Izzie shook her head to right her self. "But that's not the point... Friends stick up for each other, we stay, maybe not figuratively, but we stay... I don't think Meredith moved because she felt like it. I think she was scared and she panicked... When you got pregnant, what did you feel, what did you do?"

"For the first: I told someone, I told her... I didn't run away. I stayed...I-" Christina said but stopped as Izzie interrupted her.

"I know you didn't run away, but Meredith couldn't handle it... You didn't have an ex-wife at your heals, trying to out do you, did you?"

"No, I didn't..." Christina looked down.

"So try put yourself in Meredith's situation for once..." Izzie crossed her arms. "And stop acting like the victim here when the real victim is, maybe not Meredith, but most certainly her daughter..."

Christina looked down, not wanting to admit that Izzie made sense.

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Derek couldn't think, he just ran. Everything swished past him. Everything was blurry, except for the nearest things in front of him. He could hear two voices behind him. One pleading and one demanding. He tried to keep them out, but he couldn't. They kept on behind him, but he wouldn't waste any time to tell them to shut up. He felt he didn't have the time, that he didn't have the time to lose any more of just that. Not with her. With Addison he had had years, with Meredith months, but with her; with his daughter; with Zadie, he hadn't had a single hour. But he had looked her in the eyes, talked to her. He touched her fore head. That was the closest he had been to being a father. Her eyes he actually had noticed where deep blue, as his, even if he hadn't given it a closer thought then. Her hair was like Meredith's, honey blond. Of the most golden color.

"Derek..." he heard from behind him, but it soon faded as he stopped. A laugh came to his attention. He recognized it. It sounded like Meredith, but it didn't come from behind him. He looked a little longer down the hall. It was pretty much empty besides a girl in a shirt with "Down Under" written in red across the front, a pair of jeans and worn-out blue converse. She was talking to Miranda Bailey and Richard Webber, who were both smiling. She smiled back at them, and as Derek stood there heals started to slowly click behind him and the girl turned at the sound. The smile upon her lips faded and a seriousness entered her face. The former happily gesturing arms fell to the sides and a tear that reflected the light, looking like a diamond fell down her porcelain face.

"Zadie..." Derek exclaimed quietly.

A/N: So, how was it? Good? Bad? Horrible? Well, I want to know either way... Constructive criticism is what I need to make this story good... I think it's soon going to end... I haen't descided yet, but I think I won't exceed 22 chapters. So I'm planning out a end... We'll see hop the pairing works out and so on... The line "This looks like freakin' Rocky Horror Picture Show..." is going to be said by someone in the last chapter. Guess who is going to say it... Well, I should stop now, so I don't say too much... And review... I'll try to get the 18th chapter up as soon as possible... Bye!