A/N: Thank you all so much for the reviews! I understand that some of you were a bit disappointed with the initial introduction of the Shepherds, especially Nancy and Beth. Keep in mind that the characters are evolving, and that first impressions aren't always accurate. Also, keep in mind that Derek really didn't have much chance to stand up for Meredith - sure, he could have done a bit more, but Meredith pretty much stuck up for herself before he even had the chance. Things are changing in this chapter, though, so I hope you enjoy it!

"Derek, the kids are outside with the guys, but Mom and the girls are in the kitchen, if you'd like a word with them," Kathleen said knowingly, coming up behind Derek and Meredith as they entered the now-deserted living room.

Derek looked anxiously over at Meredith to gauge her reaction to him leaving her alone.

"Go, Derek," she laughed. "I can handle being on my own with your sister for a while. I've done it before and I didn't break. Besides, Kathy's the nice one."

"Yeah, Derek, I'm the nice one," Kathy emphasized, laughing as she said it.

"Sure you are," Derek laughed. "I won't be too long."

"Take as long as you want," Meredith smiled. "I'll be here with Kathy, getting all the embarrassing stories about your youth."

"Traitor," Derek teased, kissing Meredith on the cheek before heading down the hall to the kitchen.

"I'm sorry about my sisters," Kathleen said as Meredith took a seat beside her on the couch.

"You really don't have to apologize, Kathy," Meredith assured her.

"I sort of do," Kathleen said. "I think it might be partly my fault."

"How do you figure that?" Meredith asked in confusion. "Maybe it was a bit presumptuous, but I kind of thought you at least liked me."

"Oh, no, it's not that. I do like you," Kathleen assured Meredith. "I think you're wonderful, and absolutely perfect for Derek. It's just, the rest of the family doesn't really know that. All those months before you and Derek got back together, he didn't really talk much about you. I think he was trying to protect your privacy."

"I'm not seeing how this makes the rest of them dislike me," Meredith said.

"I didn't really think it was my place to tell them much about you," Kathleen admitted. "I wasn't sure I could separate what they would want to know from things that you told me in confidence, so I just kept my mouth shut. So basically most of what they know about you comes from Nancy, who, as you can imagine, isn't exactly the kindest judge of character. I've tried to tell them they ought to keep an open mind, but I probably could have tried harder."

Derek sighed as he stood in the doorway to the kitchen, watching his mother and three sisters gathered around the center island.

"Alright, one of you had better have a damn good explanation for what the hell you thought you were doing," Derek snapped as he walked over to join them. "Because if you were trying to piss me off, well, congratulations, it worked."

"What are you talking about, Derek?" Abby asked.

"What am I talking about? I'm talking about dear little Elizabeth here calling my girlfriend a whore in front of the entire family. I'm talking about Nancy agreeing with her. I'm talking about why you think it's alright to treat my girlfriend like dirt," Derek practically seethed. "I didn't want to make a scene about it in front of the kids, and Meredith did a damn good job of standing up for herself in there, but you better damn well believe I'm going to make a scene about it now. What the hell is your problem with Meredith, Beth? Nancy? Mom?"

"I wasn't mentioned in there. Can I go?" Abby asked nervously, slowly slipping off the barstool she was perched on.

"No, you sit," Derek said. "I want you to hear this too, because right now it seems like the only person in this family who cares about my happiness is Kathleen."

"Derek, how can you say that?" his mother protested. "You know we love you, and we only want you to be happy."

"You want me to be happy? You think insulting my girlfriend like that makes me happy?" Derek asked. "I love Meredith, and if you'd get off your high horses and give her a even half a chance, you'd be able to see that."

"You loved Addison," Nancy pointed out.

"Not like I love Meredith," Derek said. "I've never loved anyone like I love Meredith."

"Derek, we know nothing about her," Maggie pointed out. "How do you expect us to behave when you've told us practically nothing about her?"

"I've told you I love her," Derek pointed out. "I think over the past year I've made it abundantly clear that I am head over in heels in love with Meredith Grey. You're my family, that ought to be all you need to know to want to get to know her. Knowing just how much I love her, it's really the least you could do, getting to know her before you pass judgment on her."

"Derek…" Maggie began.

"No, Mom, I'm not done," Derek interrupted, ignoring the look of shock on his mother's face at being interrupted by one of her children. "You say you don't know anything about her, but have you even bothered to ask? Because I'll tell anyone who'll listen, Meredith is the most amazing woman I've ever met. She is brilliant, talented, caring, funny, compassionate…I could go on for hours. She's got this quiet strength about her that constantly surprises me. If you knew even half of what she's had to overcome in her life, you'd know just how much of a miracle it is that she's the woman that she is. And that's really what she is – she's a miracle. She's my miracle."

"Derek, that's a bit over the top, don't you think?" Nancy asked.

"That's not even close to the top, Nancy," Derek countered, shaking his head. "She makes my world spin. When she walks into a room, I can feel her before I see her, as if we were somehow connected. All she has to do is smile and my world turns upside down. She fills a hole in my heart that I didn't even know was empty until she came along. When she's not in my life, it stops making sense. She makes my world make sense. Maybe you've never felt that, Nance, but that's how I feel."

"I've felt it," Nancy muttered too quietly for anyone to hear, her voice laced with sadness.

"I don't know why you all are so determined to not like Meredith," Derek continued. "Maybe it's some twisted sense of loyalty to Addison, I don't know. Quite frankly, I don't really care what your reasons are, because if you keep this up, the end result will be the same no matter why you're doing it. If you keep pushing like this, if you make this the four of you versus her, there will be consequences, and none of you will like them."

"Derek Christopher, are you threatening me?" Maggie asked indignantly. "You can't honestly be implying that you'd pick that girl over your family?"

"That's not a threat, Mother, that's a promise," Derek said forcefully. "I love you, and I love my sisters. It's not a choice I want to make, but if you force the issue, if there's a choice that has to be made, I will pick Meredith, make no mistake about that. It's what I've been trying to tell you for months – she's not just some girl. Meredith's it for me, she's the love of my life, one day she'll be my wife, the mother of my children, the woman I grow old with. Meredith stays in my life, that's non-negotiable. The only people whose presence in my life is in question right now would be the four of you. Keep that in mind the next time you feel the need to judge my girlfriend."

Derek quickly pushed away from the counter and headed out of the kitchen, leaving his mother and sisters to stare after him in shock.

"I guess he really did fall in love with her," Abby said, smiling slightly.

"Oh, shut up, Abby," Nancy snapped as she reached for the plate of oatmeal raisin cookies her mother had left on the counter.

"Sheesh, this girl's got you all stressed out," Beth commented. "You never eat cookies, Nancy."

"So what?" Nancy asked defensively.

"You don't even like raisins," Abby pointed out.

"Well, I like them today. Is that a crime?" Nancy asked. "You'd think you all were the freaking food police!"

Meredith's smile faltered a bit as she watched Derek walk into the living room looking as though he was likely to punch the next person or thing to cross his path.

"Come here," she instructed, motioning to a spot on the floor in front of the couch, just between her legs. Derek sighed as he slumped to the ground in front of her and she immediately began kneading his shoulders.

"That bad, huh?" Kathleen asked.

"I'd rather not discuss it," Derek said. "What have you two been talking about? Or do I not want to know?"

"Kathy was just telling about the time you stole her motorcycle," Meredith said.

"Hey, mine was in the shop," Derek protested. "And she wasn't using it."

"I was nine months pregnant and in labor that day, you moron," Kathleen pointed out. "Of course I wasn't using it. Usually, though, people ask before they take someone else's motorcycle out for a spin."

"Right," Derek scoffed. "Because you really would have appreciated me calling your hospital room in the middle of one of your contractions to ask if I could take your bike to come see you?"

"I would have appreciated it a lot more than being interrupted by an ER nurse wanting to know if I actually knew the idiot who'd just wrapped a motorcycle around a light post," Kathleen pointed out.

"Wait, that was when you crashed?" Meredith asked, her hands momentarily pausing in the air above Derek's shoulders. "You stole your sister's motorcycle and then you crashed it? That's bad manners, Derek."

"I was trying to get to the hospital so I wouldn't miss the birth of my first niece. I really should never leave the two of you alone," Derek laughed. "I have a feeling this could get dangerous."

"Hey, it's not like I told her about the time Mom had to bail us out of jail," Kathleen said.

"Jail?" Meredith asked, leaning down to look at Derek's face. "Derek Shepherd, what on earth did you do to get arrested?"

"I think I'm going to plead the fifth on this one," Derek said. "Other than to say that it was entirely Mark's fault."

"Kathy?" Meredith asked.

"We may have been arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor loitering," Kathy admitted. "I still maintain my innocence on all charges, though, as do Mark and Derek. In all honesty, we were only arrested because Derek here pissed off the police chief by breaking up with his daughter two weeks before prom."

"That girl was insane, and her father wasn't much better. The man had it in for me," Derek agreed. "I honestly thought Mom was going to kill us when she showed up to bail us out, though."

"Mom says she went gray prematurely because of the two of us," Kathy said. "She's laughing her butt off now that I've got a teenager. She keeps telling me she's eagerly awaiting my karma for what I put her through."

"Nicole's too nice to be your karma," Derek said.

"True," Kathleen agreed. "Amy, too. I can already see trouble after that, though. I think I'm really going to get it when Shannon and Connor get older, though. Shan's only nine, and you know what she asked Tom the other day? She wanted to know when she could start dating!"

"I hope he told her she had to wait a long time," Derek said.

"I believe Tom's suggestion was that thirty-five was a good age to start," Kathleen laughed.

Meredith spent most of the afternoon in the living room with Kathy and Derek and outside with the boys, who seemed to have taken an instant liking to her. She couldn't help but smile as she sat on the back steps, watching Derek attempt to teach Kathy's son Connor to throw a football.

"He's really great with the kids, isn't he?"

Meredith looked up to see Abby standing behind her, a small baby cradled in her arms. "Yeah, he really is," she agreed.

"Do you mind if I join you?" Abby asked nervously.

"Go ahead," Meredith said.

"Thanks," Abby smiled as she settled in and adjusted the baby on her lap. "I can't believe he's still asleep. He hardly ever sleeps this long."

"How old is he?" Meredith asked.

"Three weeks," Abby said. "I guess you noticed that it's baby central around here right now?"

"I saw a few clues, yeah," Meredith laughed, thinking of the toys and pacifiers that seemed to occupy the most unexpected corners of the house.

"That's what happens when you add four babies in less than four months," Abby said. "Brad here is probably the last addition we'll have in the Shepherd family for a while. At least we got even numbers this time, two girls, two boys. I think the men were starting to feel a bit outnumbered."

"I can imagine," Meredith said as an awkward silence descended on the two women.

"Look, Meredith, I'm really sorry about earlier," Abby said. "I don't want you to get the wrong impression about our family, because I swear, my sisters are not usually like that. They're good people, they just, well, they're not good with first impressions."

"So I've heard," Meredith said, earning a confused look from Abby. "Addison told me your mother made her cry the first time they met."

"She told you that?" Abby asked.

"She did," Meredith confirmed.

"I really thought she wasn't going to come back after that visit," Abby recalled. "She was tougher than she seemed, though. And if she hadn't come back, well, then they never would have gotten married. And really, maybe they shouldn't have gotten married, but I'm glad they did, if only for the purely selfish reason that I met my husband at their wedding reception."

"Really?" Meredith asked.

"Yeah," Abby nodded. "But what am I doing? You probably don't want to sit here talking about Derek's ex."

"It's okay," Meredith said. "She was part of your family, I get that. Besides, as strange as it might seem, Addison's my friend."

"Seriously?" Abby asked in surprise.

"Crazy, right?" Meredith asked. "It wasn't something I'd expected to happen, but it did. I think it's easier now that she's really moved on."

"I guess we all need to move on," Abby said. "It's just, Derek's not really great at communicating, so we don't know much about you. I think it's been hard for Mom and my sisters to get used to the idea of Derek with someone new. I know it's not exactly comforting, but they just need time."

"I'm in no rush," Meredith said. "I'm not going anywhere."

As Meredith and Abby continued to chat on the back porch, they were interrupted by the sounds of screaming babies coming from inside the kitchen.

"At least I know it's not mine," Abby said, bouncing Brad in her arms to keep him quiet. "Sound like Beth's twins, actually. Her kids have always had incredible lungs on them."

"Maybe I should go see if she needs a hand?" Meredith asked cautiously, as though seeking permission to approach another Shepherd sister.

"She'd probably be grateful," Abby encouraged. "Sean ran out to get a few things at the store. She's done the twin thing before, but I think it still overwhelms her a bit when they're this young."

Meredith nodded and grabbed hold of the railing, slowly pulling herself up from her spot on the steps.

As she walked into the kitchen, she found Beth pacing back and forth, one baby screaming in her arms and another screaming from her spot in the infant swing.

"Do you want me to grab her?" Meredith asked as she came up behind Beth.

Eyeing Meredith up and down, Beth sighed reluctantly. "Give it your best shot," she offered. "But she won't stop, she doesn't really do well with…" Beth's voice trailed off as she heard the baby's cries quiet down. "…other people."

Whirling around, Beth stared in awe as she saw Meredith standing next to the swing, the baby girl in her arms smiling up at her.

"How…" Beth stammered. "She's not crying."

"I guess not," Meredith said nervously. "Um…what's her name?"

"Bridget," Beth said, not taking her eyes off Meredith and the baby.

"Hi Bridget," Meredith cooed at the baby. "You're such a good girl, yes you are, yes."

"Hey, babe, they were out of broccoli," Sean called out as he walked into the kitchen, the bags of groceries slipping unnoticed onto the counter as he took in the scene before him.

"Sean, she's not crying," Beth pointed out, a smile creeping onto her face.

"She's not crying?" Sean asked, as though seeing it were not enough to believe it.

"She's not crying," Beth confirmed.

"I told you Derek got himself a good one," Sean said.

"Is something wrong?" Meredith asked anxiously.

"No, no, definitely not," Sean assured her. "It's just, Bridget isn't really a people person yet."

"What Sean is trying to say is that Bridget screams bloody murder any time anyone other than me tries to pick her up," Beth said.

"Even I can't hold her for more than a minute or two," Sean said. "It was the same thing with our daughter Clara when she was born. She didn't grow out of it until she was almost seven months old."

"I guess Bridget grew out of it earlier," Meredith offered.

"I don't think so," Beth said, sticking her head out the door. "Hey Abs, come here for a sec, please."

Abby walked into the kitchen, settling her son into the carrier on the table. "What's up?" she asked.

"Go hold Bridget," Beth instructed.

"The screamer?" Abby asked. "No way."

"Just do it," Beth insisted.

"Fine, fine," Abby muttered, turning to take the baby from Meredith. "Wait, why isn't she crying with Meredith?"

"That's why we need you to hold her," Beth said. "To see if she's grown out of it, or if she just really likes Meredith."

Abby nodded and took the baby out of Meredith's arms. Almost immediately, a loud scream filled the room. "She's got a good set of lungs on her, that's for sure," Abby laughed as she handed Bridget back to Meredith, noting in shock the way the baby calmed down almost as soon as she was in Meredith's arms. "Congratulations, Meredith, I think you just became Beth's new favorite person."

"You can't go back to Seattle," Beth said. "I'll kidnap you if I have to."

"What are you doing now, Beth?" Derek asked as he entered the room. "I thought we talked about this."

"Oh, you can go back if you want, Derek," Beth assured him. "But I'm keeping your girlfriend. Do you have any idea how exhausting it is to be the only person who can hold your baby? There's no break, no downtime, not even when my husband's home. As Abby said, Meredith's my new favorite person."

"I think I missed something," Derek said in confusion as everyone else burst into laughter.