A/N (01/03/17): Happy New Year, friends! As hard as it is to believe, it's been more than four years since my last "new" update of this story. My sincere apologies to all of my loyal readers for essentially dropping off the face of the earth, and thank you to everyone who continues to read, review, and/or message me about this story while I try to balance my writing time with "real life", whatever that is!

I am working my way through this story, tweaking it slightly to take it in a direction that will better bring it to the conclusion I always intended it to reach. I'll be posting the updated versions of the existing chapters in batches until they're all caught up and we dive in to new material. Most of the changes are minor, although there are a few slightly more substantial changes in the later chapters of this new version. I will date all of the chapters as they go up, so it's clear which have been updated so far and which haven't (I'm also moving away from chapter titles, so all the chapters with just numbers are the updated ones). Thank you all so much for your patience!

"So, uh…where are the girls tonight?" Derek asked, taking a seat at the familiar table in Meredith's kitchen while she poured two glasses of wine.

"Derek, they're nearly twenty-three years old," Meredith pointed out, handing him his glass and taking a seat across the table from him. "They don't live here anymore."

"Oh. I guess I just figured since Evelyn still lives in Seattle, and Annie's visiting…"

Meredith shook her head. "Evelyn did live with me until the kids and I moved in here a few months ago," she said. "But she thought it was time for a bit of independence, so she and a couple of her friends are renting my house from me. And Annie and her family are staying with her mother-in-law. It gets pretty crowded around here with the holidays, and between the younger two kids, my sister and her family visiting, and Mark and Lexie staying up in the attic, this house is a bit too much for three more people."

"Mark lives with you?" Derek asked in surprise.

Meredith shrugged and took a sip of her wine. "Don't look at me, I didn't invite him to move in. After…well, after my husband was killed, I guess he and Lexie thought I needed some help, so they just sort of showed up one weekend and moved in. Of course, that was at the old house, where we had twice as many bedrooms. I'm not sure they would have been so eager if they'd known they were going to be living in my attic again, although they do still own a perfectly good penthouse apartment downtown, so I'm not really sure what they're doing at this point."

"So you didn't raise the girls in this house?"

"I did for a while," Meredith said. "But by the time Suzie was born, it was pretty clear we were going to need a little more space. I mean, we had Mark and Lexie living up in the attic, and then two of Alex and Izzie had one of the bedrooms, and April was sleeping in the study, and then half the time Cristina was on the couch if she was fighting with Owen…Jackson and I had the baby in the bedroom with us, and the twins had the third room…it was like we were living in some sort of weird combination of a frat house and the Brady bunch, and if we were going to keep that up, we needed more bedrooms."

Derek nodded, trying to follow along with the string of unfamiliar names, figuring it would take too much time to ask for explanations of them all.

"What brought you back here, then?"

Meredith sighed heavily. "It was too much. The house we were in, that was Jackson's house. He did a lot of the remodel work himself, and the stuff he didn't, he supervised closely. I couldn't go anywhere in that house without thinking about Jackson. I need to be able to hold myself together for my kids, and I couldn't do that in that house. I figured a change of scenery couldn't hurt, and since I never did get around to selling this old place, moving back here kind of made sense. I thought if I could at least live someplace where not every memory involved my husband, it might help."

"And has it?"

"I don't know," Meredith admitted, taking a shaky breath. "It's still hard to get out of bed every day, the kids are still struggling, but we're all doing the best we can. I don't really think there's a time table on something like this."

Derek nodded. "You really loved him, didn't you?"

Meredith smiled wistfully and nodded. "I didn't want to, I didn't expect to…but yeah, I did. God knows, I tried not to. He was so cocky and full of himself, and no offense, but after you, I had had quite enough of that type. When we merged with Mercy West and I first met him, I thought he was a complete jackass. Even after I started sleeping with him, I thought it was just sex. We had an agreement, it was just physical, nothing more. When we started, I never would have imagined actually having a relationship with him, but I guess he sort of grew on me and then one day it hit me - I had fallen in love with him."

"How did you know?" Derek asked curiously.

"It's a long story." Meredith sighed and closed her eyes for a moment as she remembered the insanity of the day she'd finally realized she was in love with Jackson Avery…

Life was a bitch. That was the only explanation Meredith could come up with for her current situation. It was more absurd than anything she could have imagined - sitting on the floor of a dark scrub room, holding her sister's hand and staring at the wall, while on the other side of the glass behind them, she knew that Jackson and Cristina had just cracked her brother-in-law's chest. Without scrub nurses or an anesthesiologist, just in case things weren't interesting enough.

"I can't do this alone," Lexie whispered, her free hand resting on her stomach as she stared down at it.

"You won't."

"I should have told him this morning," Lexie said. "I had the chance, Meredith, I should have told him. What if…what if he dies without knowing about the baby?"

"He won't," Meredith assured her. "He'll be okay, Lex. Mark's going to be okay, he's going to pull through this for you and for the baby."

"Can you look again?" Lexie asked pleadingly.

Meredith sighed but nodded, slowly easing herself up off the floor and turning to look through the glass. Her breath hitched at the scene unfolding in front of her.

"What's wrong?" Lexie asked anxiously.

"N…nothing," Meredith stammered, still trying to process the sight of Gary Clarke standing there, waving a gun in the air. "Everything's fine. Fine. They're doing fine."

Lexie shook her head. "Fine doesn't mean fine, Meredith. What…he coded, didn't he? Oh God, I'm still a newlywed, I can't be a widow…I can't…"

"Lexie, it's all going to be okay," Meredith assured her, wondering what twisted power of the universe had turned her into the comforting sister. "Mark's going to be fine, you're going to be fine, Jackson's going to be fine…"

"Why wouldn't Jackson be fine?" Lexie asked. "Something's going on, isn't it?"

"No," Meredith insisted, but not quite quickly enough for Lexie, who was on her feet by the time the word was out of Meredith's mouth.

"Oh my God," Lexie muttered as she stared into the OR, bolting for the door before Meredith could stop her.

The minutes that followed all seemed to run together in Meredith's memory. When she heard Lexie begging Gary Clarke to shoot her instead of Mark, she felt a protective instinct that she'd only ever felt toward her children, and before she could even process what she was doing, she was in front of her sister and lunging for the gun in the shooter's hand. She was sure her adrenaline levels were through the roof - if it hadn't been for the sounds of the gun going off and Jackson screaming her name from across the room, she might have thought he'd simply shoved her to ground.

And then an ominous alarm sounded in the room and without warning, Lexie was collapsing at her side, blood staining her scrub pants, and Cristina was staring at her with a stricken expression as Jackson told Gary Clarke to look at the monitors. "He's dead," she heard him repeat over and over again. "Look for yourself." The gun shook in Mr. Clarke's hands for a minute more before he simply nodded and disappeared out the door.

And just as quickly as it had started, the alarm stopped and was replaced by the steady beat of a normal heart rate. Meredith almost laughed at the hint of a cocky grin on Jackson's face as he held up the last of the disconnected leads and shrugged nonchalantly. If their relationship weren't a secret, she might have jumped up to kiss him right then and there - if she'd been able to get up off the floor after being shot, of course.

When it was all over and done with, she'd protested loudly at Owen's insistence that she be hospitalized overnight. A waste of a bed, she'd argued. After all, her wound hadn't even required surgery, and besides, all her normal babysitters were turning out to be otherwise occupied - no one seemed to have escaped that day's shooting unscathed, either physically or emotionally. Nevertheless, Owen had been adamant, and she knew better than to argue at length with a department head, even one who was currently dating her best friend.

She was just about to begin a series of frantic phone calls to every neighbor she could think of when she was interrupted by the sound of someone clearing their throat in the doorway.

"They're at home," Jackson said, taking a step into the room when she looked up at him. "The little monsters have been fed and bathed and are currently fast asleep in their beds."

"Alone?" Meredith asked skeptically.

Jackson laughed and shook his head, lowering the rail on her bed and sliding in next to her. "You don't give me enough credit, Grey," he said. "I went by Seattle Pres to check on Lexie before I picked them up at daycare, and her mother was there. I mentioned I was going to get the girls and you were staying here overnight, and she volunteered to stay with them. She also said you can save whatever protests you might have, tomorrow after she drops the girls at school, she's going home to pack a bag and stay with you to help out with the girls, and to help Lexie with Mark when he gets out of the hospital."

Meredith nodded. "Did you tell the girls what happened?"

"Meredith, they're four years old," Jackson pointed out. "I told them Mommy had a big surgery and would be home tomorrow. Then I told them Grandma was coming and that she'd be doing the cooking for a few days…I hate to break it to you, but your stepmother's cooking beats missing you."

"Smart girls."

Jackson nodded and wrapped an arm over Meredith's waist as he lay back against her pillow and tucked his other arm behind her shoulders, pulling her gently against his chest.

"You shouldn't do that," Meredith whispered reluctantly. "The nurses will see."

"I don't care," Jackson muttered. "Let the stupid nurses gossip."

"Really?" Meredith asked, unsure which surprised her more - the fact that he didn't care, or the fact that the thought of everyone knowing didn't seem to bother her anymore either.

"Do you have any idea how terrified I was when that man shot you?"

"I'm sorry," Meredith said. "I wasn't even thinking, I just saw the gun pointed at Lexie and I don't know, I just reacted. I'm still not used to having a family, but she's my sister. I saw that gun and my first instinct was to protect her."

"I know," Jackson said. "But let's not do that again, okay?"

"Agreed."

For a few minutes, they lay there in silence, both exhausted from the events of the day.

"Jackson?" Meredith whispered hesitantly, unsure if he'd fallen asleep.

"Hmm?"

"I, uh…I don't think this is just sex anymore," Meredith admitted.

Jackson hesitated for a moment before nodding and kissing her softly. "No," he agreed. "No, I don't think it is."