She gave him an extra twenty seconds before opening the garden's door and stepping out into the full driveway. She almost forgot that so many kids came with massive cars with only god knew how many seats. At least none of them had had a baby in the last four years. That was….progress.

She stepped round them to find Derek in the middle of the grass, seeing as the cars were taking up so much space, head in his hands.

"Hey...are you okay?" She asked softly as she approached.

He didn't move.

"Derek, Kathleen is an asshole. Please don't listen to her."

He sighed as he removed his palms from his eyes before looking up to her with anything but the despondency that she presumed she would be receiving after their sister's outburst. "On a scale of one to ten, how much do you love me for getting you out of that conversation?"

"Derek!" She exclaimed.

"What?" He questioned through the start of a chuckle. "It certainly shut them all up."

"You are a terrible brother." She sighed, shaking her head.

"I am a terrible brother to three out of my four sisters. But you hate them too, so you're not allowed to be mad. By the way, they're idiots for not seeing who you really are."

"Thanks." She replied before walking slowly towards the old tyre swing that hung from the front garden's largest tree. He smirked as she climbed a top it, a five-year-old Amelia with untamed hair, scraped knees and a pair of white socks that had turned brown with mud appearing in his mind in place of the grown woman truly in front of him. "You sure you're okay?"

"I'm so tired."

She stopped her attempt to swing. She knew he didn't mean he was I-want-to-go-to-bed tired (although with a new-born, he probably was that as well). "You're not okay."

"I am okay. I'm just..." He sighed. "-I'm just not good. I'm not...happy. Is this my life now? Trying to convince my family that my life doesn't suck?"

"Apparently. No matter how many times you say it, they can't seem to get it through their thick skulls tha-"

"Okay, okay. Maybe hold back on the insults Amelia. But...also, yeah. How many times do you have to say something for them to believe you?"

"Maybe don't ask the black sheep who finally has a put-together life with an amazing job and hasn't touched drugs in years. I don't think you're going to get the answer you want from me. Because my answer is never. Literally never-ever will they believe you. But at least Golden-Boy De-"

"Don't call me that-" He interjected, but she didn't stop talking.

"-rek is now my equal!" She exclaimed with a smirk. "Now, we can be rejects together! Not that I mind. You know, you, Meredith and your kids are a way better family than the Judge-McJudge-faces. Oh- speaking of kids, maybe you should get Zo and Bailey one of these."

"I think they're spoilt enough as it is." He returned, smiling at his sister as she finally managed to get herself secure on the swing. He dreaded to think how old it was.

"They are happy kids though."

He smiled in agreement. "They are happy kids."

"Were we happy kids?"

"I- no. Probably not." He admitted honestly.

"I'm sorry that they're so-" She paused. She has no idea how to describe the terrible trio. "Uh…Kathleen-y, Nancy-y and Lizzy-y."

He smirked. "Those are not words."

"You know why they're like that?"

"Because they're my sisters and they love me so seeing me in 'pain' makes them sad?" He suggested, both hands landing back on his lap when he was done with the air quotation marks. Everyone always seemed to think he was in pain. He wasn't, that was the whole point of not walking.

"Pfft. No. They don't know the joys of parking, idiot."

"One of these days, I think I'll break your spine so you can stop dragging me places for the freaking parking." He replied, rolling his eyes.

"What did we even do as kids?" She asked, returning to their previous conversation.

Derek smirked. "Cry?"

"Woah, I never knew we had such a similar hobby!" She quipped, although she wasn't really kidding. With Michael and their dad, Derek's childhood constantly beat him down. He learned to repress that by hiding all those things in a little box in his mind and taking on the responsibility of his dad. Amelia didn't do that. She learnt that later; after she had permanently stained her life with an opioid addiction.

"Hate to break it to you Amy-" He joked back. "-but that isn't a good thing."

"I...I'm going to-"

"No." Meredith interrupted loudly. She couldn't believe how brutally she had just torn apart her own brother. He had had worse, but the fact it was from her...Kathleen knew how important it was for him that they accepted what had happened, and none of them were doing very well. In fact, they were doing the complete opposite of accepting his disability.

"Meredith. Please. I should talk to hi-" She protested as she stood and walked towards the door leading to the front garden.

She stood, and marched to the space in front of her. "Are you going to apologize?"

She swallowed, but didn't speak. Meredith quickly concluded an answer from that.

"So you want to go and talk to him, but not apologize? That's great Kathleen. Exactly what Derek came here for." She said sarcastically.

"Why did Derek even come here?" Kathleen asked, nostrils flaring with a sigh.

"Because you asked him to come. Forced him. And you know what, for someone who really wants to see him more often, you're making it so damn difficult for him to be happy here. To exist here. You know, first you make him get a plane-"

"Get a plane? What's so hard about getting a plane?"

"I don't know, maybe sitting in the boarding area for twenty minutes, waiting for someone to come with some spanners so you can fix the chair that the airline just broke? Just a thought?"

Kathleen was stumped by that for a second, before quietly asking, "That's what you meant by accessibility issues?"

"Yes, Kathleen, that was what I meant by accessibility issues. Maybe if you bothered to talk to him- if you bothered to do anything more than tell him what's wrong with his life when you don't even know him then you would know that th-"

"Okay, okay-" A voice boomed over them. Carolyn, of course. "Seriously, calm down. Both of you, just sit down."

Meredith sighed, and both women reluctantly returned to their seats.

"What are we doing now?" Derek asked as he followed his sister down the pavement. He didn't even know why she was leaving, nor why he was trailing behind her.

"Escaping incase they come looking for us. Also, I fancied going for a walk. Or a uh-" She glanced at him.

"Please don't finish that sentence Amy." He pleaded. He still couldn't decide whether or not he preferred it when people adapted their language for him. If it contained a lot of hesitation and thinking to come up with one that fit him, he would rather the person just exclude him from their sentence. Some people were fine though, and found a inclusive verb within the second. Like Zola. He didn't know how, but she was great at avoiding those words, despite the fact that her vocabulary was much smaller than that of an adult.

The house besides their mother's to the left was empty, so neither of them mentioned it as they passed it together. The woman living there was about eighty when Derek visited just before he moved to Seattle, eleven years ago, so neither of them had to discuss where she went; they could take a, rather morbid, guess.

"You reckon Dan's dad still lives here?" Amelia inquired as they passed one of the first houses down the road.

They both paused outside the house to look at it for a moment. Someone had up-kept it well. "How do you know Dan doesn't?"

"Moved to France years ago, online friends." She answered.

Derek quirked an eyebrow at that, remembering their previous…history when they were both in early High School. "Online friends, eh?

"Oh, shut up." She sighed. She was smiling though.

"You're quiet. Very quiet." Derek noted, a hand settling on his sister's shoulder to force her to turn to him.

She exhaled deeply. She told herself it would be fine. She was sure it was. But she was also sure that he would go and talk to the man, possibly threaten him if she had accepted his invitation, demanding that he didn't screw her over. He was overprotective. He was like an aggressive, no-one's-good-enough-for-my-daughter dad. Mainly because they didn't have a dad to be one of those people. Derek was her dad and brother rolled into one. Sometimes mother too. Sometimes a best friend as well. He was a lot of people. "Dan Brocken asked me to prom."

Derek paused immediately, Amelia walking on without him for a second before she realized he had stopped. "Dan Brocken? Like- that sporty jock guy who always has a fangirl group following him around. You're not in that group, are you?"

"No, no. I have no idea why he asked me out." She shrugged. "We don't even talk."

"Maybe it was a truth or dare prank."

"Rude! God, you're a terrible, terrible brother!" She exclaimed through a humoured exhale, not truly offended. "You really think I can't get a date by myself?"

"I never said that. It was merely a…suggestion."

"You know I'm kidding, right? He wouldn't be good enough for you."

She smirked. "So sweet."

"Yeah." He returned the smile. "I know."

"This is where that cool older kid lived that we always played at the park with." Derek noted as they passed a grey house, the outside windowsills and door of the house withering a little. It really could do with a good, thorough clean.

Amelia shook her head and, for a second, he thought he got the memory wrong. Until she spoke, "He was not cool. You two ganged up on me as the older boys until that day you convinced me to join your stupid dare game and I fell off the playground equipment. Backwards. I hit my head on the floor."

"Oh yeah. I remember that now. Must have been where all that brain damage was from. It would explain a lot."

She chuckled at that. Two could play at that game. "A quick reminder that you-" A hand ruffled through his hair. "-are the one with brain damage."

"Have you quit your job to become a comedian yet?" He asked as they were met with their local play park.

Neither of them remembered it being so close but, then again, the ages when they came here, the world was so much bigger. Their age difference meant that Derek was often the teenager with a baby sister at the park. It was an awkward age gap until they really got into adulthood and those years between them drifted a little. Neither of them were really their age anyway. If things like trauma added years to somebody, like he had heard people say before, they were most definitely over a hundred. Two hundred perhaps.

"Wanna go play on the swings?" She joked.

Derek nodded earnestly, although they were both aware that all he really wanted to do was look around. He sighed as he let Amelia go first. Had the world been more accessible at the time, he was pretty sure he and Amelia would have used the cement ramp as a toy. Now, he needed it to reach the park at its ever so slightly raised level. Why anyone would do that, he had no idea. "Do you remember me taking you here?"

She nodded as she grasped at the gate, holding it open for him. Luckily, there was a path that led to the middle of the playground, smaller play equipment scattered about on the grass around it. "Of course."

"Do you remember asking me every five minutes and being really super annoying for the whole of my early teenage years?"

"That one, not so much." She responded. "I think I remember being a cute little sister with excellent puppy dog eyes which always made you want to take me out to the park."

"Yeah…I don't remember that at all." He smirked as they met the main attraction of the park. It wasn't quite like it was when she was six, but, if anything, it was better. It was one of those combo-equipment things. There were multiple ways to get up the structure itself including a miniature climbing wall, monkey bars, a rope, stairs and a slide. The latter was, obviously, to get down from it but if there was a child who had ever visited a park without making an attempt at running up the slide, he wasn't quite sure what kind of childhood they were having.

"I remember doing these when I was like…five." She murmured as she stepped under the monkey bars, a hand extending to brush the metal bars, reaching for both the rungs and into her childhood.

He nodded. He remembered that too. "I remember carrying you home once when you scraped your knee so badly from a fall from those bars, you insisted that your leg was broken and you refused to walk home."

"Dewek!" A very familiar voice shouted.

"Aren't you gonna- you know, go and check on her?" Mark suggested, looking up from him homework. The pair were sat on the grass beside a large playground frame and Amelia was...somewhere.

"Have a two time rule. If she shouts twice, I check she's okay."

"Mmm, makes sen-"

"Dewek! Dewek, help! I fink my leg is bwoken!"

"I never did that, did I?" She questioned as she pulled up on the bar, feet lifting above the ground. She made it three before dropping from it, hands slipping too much on the bars. Or, at least, that's what she would say if anyone asked. It was hardly as if she went to the gym every other day.

Derek chuckled and she shot him an angry look.

"Well, I'd like to see you do better." She murmured, crossing her arms over her chest as she frowned at him.

He gave a humoured laugh. "Just you watch."

"I wouldn't speak so fast if I was you." She advised, looking at his hand.

He sighed. Right, he had cut his hand. He over flexed the area around the cut. No pain. That meant he could at least try, right? "It'll be fine."

"Yeah, but now if you fail, you'll just blame your hand." She pointed out. It was the kind of thing that she could totally imagine him doing if he failed. In case of second place, search for an excuse.

"Amelia, I am literally paraplegic, I already have a great excuse to fail at this." He pointed out as he pushed himself to the start of the bars only to pause. It wasn't like he ever forgot what happened…but he did. He did, despite the fact he had literally just stated it, and he found himself frozen, processing as he looked up at the bars. He would never be able to reach them.

"C'mon then." She said as she walked over, pausing in front of him. "I'll be the older sibling helping the younger sibling this time."

He smirked as he grasped a hold of her before pulling a little as he stood. Her arms clung round his torso for a second, positioning them purposefully below his arms so he could reach up to the bar. She released him as his fingers grasped the bar, stepping back.

"You gotta get six to beat me, my helping counts as four points."

"It doesn't-" He murmured, pausing as he griped the next bar with ease. Earnestly, he expected it to be harder, hence the pause. "-but if you want to fill the hole in your soul with six mere points, I won't mind."

"Shit." She murmured to herself as he reached the end, managing to get to the other side, where the bars met the structure. He was good. Really good. Too good. Why did she agree to a competition with him anyway? His thing was literally always winning.

As he reached the end on the bars, he managed to manoeuvre himself so he was sat on the edge, legs dangling over the side of the structure. "See, I don't need those excuses. If anything, it makes me more impressive." He joked.

She shook her head as she sighed. "You are such a terribly mean brother. You know that, right?"

He smirked, ignoring the fact she had just settled herself in his chair. She knew he hated it when she did that. When anyone did that. And that was the precise reasons she did it. "I know. You tell me every single day. And you are a terribly mean sister."

"Am not."

"If I owned one of those click counters, you would see how many times you do that. Thousands of times."

"Can I just point out that if I had done that a thousand times, I would have had to sit here about four times a day, every single day, since the accident. I think you've got to go back to school, do some basic addition classes."

"I wouldn't make track if I did school again."

"Well, that's surprising." She deadpanned. "Now, you getting down anytime soon?"

"Probably."

"You need any help? I know how incapacitated and in need of my constant, annoying, stupid assistance you are. Not like you've been like this independently for like six months now or anything."

Now that did make Derek smile. She was awfully good at impressions of their sisters. "Okay, whatever you say, Kathleen."

Derek returned to the empty front garden, but with his wife rather than his sister. He said it was because Ellis needed some quiet time, but that was a lie. Meredith and Derek were the ones who wanted more quiet time.

Meredith sighed. "It was a terrible idea to bring a baby to this party."

"Told you so." He said smugly as he offered to take the little girl from her.

She obliged, placing the baby into his hands carefully. He pulled her into his chest, lightly swaying her in the hope it would help her settle. She grabbed a hold of his pinkie finger as he offered it to her and she smiled. He wasn't sure which one of them loved the reflex more.

"No, you said it was a terrible idea to take a baby on the plane, not to the party itself." She corrected, watching, a little jealously, as he settled her in just a few seconds.

"Either way, told you so."

She laughed once as she crouched to his level and admired the baby. "You just want to be right."

"There's a first time for everything." He murmured, lost in Elle's now-sleeping face.

"You're saying this is the first time you've ever been right in what- our whole marriage?"

He smirked. "It's a joke Meredith. That thing that you laugh at, remember?"

"Right, a joke." She agreed, tugging on her hoodie's sleeves at a brush of cold wind against the trio. "I'm not really in a joking mood, I was attacked by your sisters while you were gone."

"Sorry. I would love to say I was surprised." He sighed.

"Meredith."

She almost jumped at the call of her name. "Nancy. Hi."

"How's Derek?" She asked, settling next to her on the stairs. Meredith had wanted an escape from them but wasn't quite sure where she could actually go. It wasn't like she could go into any closed off room upstairs; that would be weird. So, instead she had perched herself on the top of the stairs.

"He's fine. But you could just ask him yourself."

"If he's fine, why did he leave so quickly when things escalated?" She asked. It was a good question to pose, if Meredith was honest.

"Because..." She sighed. "Because it took a very long time for him to go used to the idea of being in a wheelchair permanently and Kathleen saying that kind of thing...it really isn't helpful. I mean, it's not like he hasn't had other people talk to him in that kind of way. It's just different when it comes to siblings, I think. He values what you have to say more than strangers, obviously."

She frowned. "How come you can tell me all of that, but you're telling me to ask him how he's doing?"

She shrugged. She supposed she could have given a more extensive answer.

"Do you establish the way he feels a lot? Do you do it front of him so you can convince him to feel a certain way?"

"What? No. I'm just saying, I know how he feels."

"How?" She asked. "You weren't the one in the accident."

"Because I was there. I was there when he was crying over his scans. When the kids prodded him over and over with questions because they just couldn't comprehend it. When patient's next of kins blamed his disability for someone dying when it wasn't even his fault. When they'd just outright offended him, even though he just saved their relative's live." She took a second to breathe. "I was there when he woke up from the coma. From his seizures. I was the one he shouted at when he was stressed. I was the one who hugged him and told him everything was going to be okay when he crumbled. I was the one whose hand he crushed when he was in pain. I was there. All the time. I know what it's like because it was my life too. His pain was my life. Now we share happiness."

Nancy sighed. "Sure."

"Why is it so hard for you to believe that Derek can be happy with the life he has now?"

"Because Derek shoves feelings. So, sure, he looks happy but-" She paused, thinking. "I'm not being ableist here Meredith. I know that a person can live a full, happy life in a wheelchair, but he's my brother. I know him. And Kathleen has told me far too much about depression and defence mechanisms over the years."

"He's not employing defence mechanisms. He's not depressed. Seriously, he's happy. You...you weren't there. And, okay, maybe if you were given the chance, you would have been but...what I mean is you didn't experience the same thing I did. I don't think I'd ever seen him in so much pain and I don't think you have either. Mental, and physical."

Her eyebrows creased, pondering whether she really wanted to say what was on her mind." When Derek was young – I don't think he would have told you this by the way – he- uh, something bad happened. He was depressed. Like, seriously, clinically depressed for a good year."

"I'm going to suppose you're talking about his broken nose origin story."

"You know?"

"The game. Michael. Joel. Even the rugby story after. Yeah, I know." She responded, naming them so she couldn't suspect her of lying so she could find out some secret about him. "I am his wife."

"He never told Addie, that's all. And they were married much longer than you."

She swallowed. Of course, she had to bring that up. There was no mention of the fact that they had survived more together. That they had three kids while him and Addie didn't have one. Obviously, time was the only measurement of how good a relationship was, according to the woman. She was sour about Addison. Meredith wondered whether she just wasn't listening when he said she had cheated on him (she could only suppose he did that, she wasn't there) or perhaps she had her own secrets that did not want to be shared.

"I love him, you know that, right? I stopped being that slutty intern an awfully long time ago. I mean, we have three kids. We've been married for six years."

She sighed, standing from her seat at the stairs. "I've got to go and check on my kids."

"Sounds like Nancy. She never got over me and Addie really."

She smirked. "I could tell. Can I ask...uh, are you okay after what Kathleen said?"

"Yeah. If anything, it was good. Gave me and Amelia a chance to escape."

"Derek!" She chided.

"I know, I'm sorry, should have invited you too."

Her frown disappeared, being absorbed by a pout. "Yeah. You should have." She said saltily.

"I uh- Mer-"

"What?" She asked, looking at her husband, then her baby. That told her what was wrong. Before, he was smiling as he held her tight into his chest. He wasn't anymore. "Oh- god, does she need a change?"

Derek nodded with an apologetic smile as she offered the child back; he couldn't move and hold the baby at the same time. He needed the baby carrier for that and it was still inside.

She sighed. "You think Kathleen is going to talk to you yet?" Meredith pondered. She hadn't apologized. Neither did he. They kind of just stared at each other for the last twenty minutes of lunch when they came back from the park. It was a slow kind of lunch that included more words than chewing.

"Maybe." He shrugged as the pair entered the back garden again.

"Hey…" Derek clutched onto Meredith's arm, causing a physically clash between them when she stopped, but he didn't. He didn't mean to but, had he stopped himself instantly, he would have never been able to reach her.

"You okay?" She asked, alarmed.

"Where's Bailey?"

"He's probably just playing with-" She trailed off as she scanned the field for her son. He wasn't there. He. Wasn't. There. They couldn't have both completely missed him, could they?

"Kathleen! Where is Bailey?" Derek asked across the garden. Those were the first four words he had said to her since their fight at the table.

"Oh, he felt a little sick from all the football so he's in the kitchen. I gave him some water." She explained, walking towards them. "Actually, come to think of it, he's been gone for a long time."

"Crap- give me the baby." Derek requested.

"What?" Meredith breathed, looking at her daughter.

"Give me the baby and check the kitchen." He demanded, hands already sliding underneath her to pull her away. "I told no one to go in there barefoot and Bailey-"

Her mind made the connection instantaneously: Kathleen had made Derek drop a glass, and no one had properly cleaned the kitchen yet.

She released her grip, and fled inside. She almost knocked into a child on her way to the kitchen, but she didn't stop to ask him if he was alright. It was selfish, but a single-second observation told her Liz's son was fine, and she had her own to worry about. Maybe. Possibly. Depending on whether he was just stood in the kitchen with a drink or crying on the floor.

Unfortunately, it was the latter.

His legs were crossed, eyes stuck the bottom of his foot…and the large chunk of glass protruding from it. He whimpered, and tears dripped from his eyes. "Mama. Mama, help!"