When Meredith opened her eyes, she was on a train platform, with no recollection of how she had managed to get there. Her thin grey t-shirt didn't do much to keep her warm, and the flannel pants she had on were frayed so much that for a moment she had been worried she hadn't been wearing anything at all. She stood up slowly and took inventory of her surroundings. The platform ended maybe 100 feet from her position on both her left and right side, but a set of tracks extended far beyond this point. She couldn't see any stairs leading up or down from her location, and there didn't seem to be anything but darkness below the platform where she was standing. She leaned forward a little to look further, and caught a glimpse of something down the tracks, something so far away she could hardly even make out what it was. She carefully walked to the extreme end of the platform, and the little speck became two puffy dots of red. Winter coats. "Zach? Evan?" She called out anxiously.

She could see the two specs rise, then come a little closer. When they had come just close enough for Meredith to make out their features, the one on the left spoke. "Who are you?" It was Evan. She could tell even from a distance. Evan's hair tended to stick up a little more, and he talked a little faster, at least Meredith thought so. No one else ever seemed to notice. She waved a hand in their direction.

"Evan, it's me. It's your mom!" She called out. "Come back here, it's not safe on the tracks!" She thought she could possibly hear something in the distance, and she began to panic. "Please, come here!" She moved her foot forward to take a step onto the tracks, choosing to step in the middle in hopes if she fell she'd be too big to fall in between the slats. The red coats began to back away again, and Meredith took another few steps.

"Go away! We don't know you!" Zach this time. He seemed to be glowing a little, getting a little brighter. Meredith heard a deafening horn and watched in horror as a bright light appeared behind her boys, the light growing bigger as the seconds ticked by. Meredith began to sob as she sprinted towards the train, towards her sons.

"Stop! Oh god stop! I can't…you can't…stop the train I can't live without them!" Her foot slipped and she was falling into the dark. She felt raindrops begin to fall on her face while she fell, drenching her whole body. She was drowning and then…

Meredith woke up completely drenched in sweat, her pajamas sticking to her uncomfortably. She gagged, rolled over, and threw up into the trashcan next to her bed before beginning to sob uncontrollably. It was just a fever dream, she'd had them before, and yet none of the previous dreams left her gasping for air like this one had. She had to see them, just to make sure they were still there. Her sweat soaked blankets clung to her, and the struggle to peel them off of her sent her further into her tailspin. By the time she finally got herself free, she was having trouble breathing. She knew she was hyperventilating, but she couldn't make it stop. The bedroom was pitch black, and stumbling towards the door proved to be quite difficult, but the hallway lights were on, just as they always were, lighting her way to the solid door of her boys' bedroom. She pulled it open, trying to be as quiet as possible.

The clock on Zach's nightstand flashed 1:02am, the red glow of the numbers illuminating his face in red. Illuminating his small features just has the train's headlight behind him had. On the other side of the room, Evan's lamp was on, just as it always was. He was laying on his stomach with the blankets pulled up over his mess of black curls. He had a book held open by one of his hands along the bottom of the spine. She guessed it to be Swindle, as he'd been reading it again for the past few days. When he'd taken a reading placement test at the beginning of the year, his first grade teacher had called her and told her that she wanted to have him try to read off of the fifth grade book list. He had counted down the list and spelled out his name E-v-a-n G-r-e-y, and picked the book his finger was on when he called out the letter 'Y'. The book had been Swindle, and four months later he was reading it for the third time.

"Evan," she whispered, "why aren't you asleep?" She took a few steps and sat down on the edge of his bed. He set the book down on his pillow and sat up slowly, making sure to keep the blanket wrapped around him. Zach stirred on the other side of the little room and let out a single snore, but he didn't wake up.

"I was reading about the heist again," he told her matter of factly, his voice on the verge of being too loud. "I wish I had an inventor dad like Griffin does in the book. He could invent me something cool like a time machine or something. Then I could go and see the dinosaurs." Meredith paled. It wasn't like her sons had never made a comment about having a father before, but it never got any easier.

"There aren't any time machines yet, but we could go to the library sometime and find some dinosaur books if you want to read about them," Meredith offered lamely. Evan sighed and closed his book, then reached between his bed and the wall and pulled out a few brightly colored books.

"You got me a lot of dinosaur books for my birthday and I read them. I don't want to read about any more dinosaurs I want to have a dad that takes me to somewhere where there are real dinosaur bones," he said looking down at the books in his hands. "My friend CJ's dad takes him to go see dinosaur bones."

Meredith inhaled shakily. "I have to ask you boys about something," she said, keeping her voice down as to not unnecessarily awake Zach. "I want you to think about what I say, and I'll ask Zach in the morning okay?" Evan nodded, his interest peaked in what his mother was about to say to him. "Evan, I'm thinking about moving us all back to Seattle. I have a big house there, and friends, and my old job."

Evan looked at Meredith intently. "But mommy, my friends live here in Boston. My school is in Boston and I have this house here. I don't want to leave," he said quietly. "I like Boston." Meredith bit her lip hard, considering what she should say next.

"Evan, if we move to Seattle, and I have my old job, I can be home a lot more. We can do more as a family, you, me and Zach. We could ride the ferry boats, and go to the park. There's even a museum just for kids." Evan twisted his hands together, lost in thought once again.

"Are there any dinosaur bones in Seattle?" he asked.

"Yeah, there is a museum with a big area with all types of dinosaurs in it bud. I promise I'll take you to see them as soon as we get there, if you decided you want to go." Meredith watched as her son's face lit up. He was definitely interested.

"If you lived in Seattle before, does that mean that my dad lives in Seattle?" he asked, getting a little too excited. His raised voice caused Zach to sit up sleepily and rub his eyes. Meredith was grateful that Zach had woken up, even though she felt a little guilty about it.

"Zach buddy, you can go back to sleep if you want to. It's very early," Meredith told her sleepy six-year-old. Zach just shook his head and stood up, walking to sit next to his mom on the side of Evan's bed, his blanket still wrapped around him. He cuddled into her side sleepily and Meredith put an arm around him and kissed the dark curls covering his forehead.

"Zachy, mom wants us to move to Seattle and I think our daddy lives there," Evan said, pulling back the blankets surrounding Zach's head so he could whisper in his ear. Meredith didn't think she was intended to hear this, but Evan was never very good at whispering. Zach's eyebrows furrowed.

"We don't have a daddy Evan," he said matter-of-factly. "There are no pictures of him and he doesn't have a name." Evan scoffed and put his hands on Zach's shoulders so his brother would be forced to listen to him.

"Maybe there are no pictures of him but there are no pictures of our brains either and those are real. Plus, he does have a name. His name is Leonardo, like the ninja turtle. I decided." Zach looked at his brother incredulously, then at his mother.

"Do we have a daddy named Leonardo?" He asked her. Meredith felt ill again, but she was fairly sure this had nothing to do with her current ailment. She had no idea what to say to them. Her mind was blank on the lie front, and there was no way in hell she was going to tell her sons that they were the accidental result of her illicit affair with a married man. However, they'd been asking about their father more and more frequently, and it was getting more and more difficult to change the subject.

"Evan," she said softly, her voice sounding foreign to her own ears as she tried to block out all of the thoughts coming at her from every which way. "Why don't you tell Zach about Seattle?" Meredith was completely zoned out as Evan began taking.

Meredith was sitting on her bed, head in her hands. Cristina gracelessly sat down next to her and Meredith looked up at her, face drained of all color. "Cristina, I don't think I can do this. The timer went off three minutes ago and I physically cannot get off this bed. My legs won't work." Cristina looked her person up and down. She'd seen Meredith looking various levels of terrible before. Before this particular moment, she thought the saddest and most pathetic she'd ever seen her person look was a few months ago, when she had had so much tequila she had just stayed on the bathroom floor from the time she woke up until dinner time that evening. She looked just as bad physically, but she was giving off a vibe that just screamed fear.

"Meredith," Cristina finally started, "you better get your ass up because I am not going to go in there and touch your nasty pee stick. I draw the line at pee sticks." She put a hand on Meredith's back and pushed her forward. "Come on, maybe it's negative. Then you can relax." Meredith took a deep breath. Cristina was right, it was probably negative. It was just that once time at prom, other than that, she was totally celibate. She was making a sweater. She stood up shakily.

"You're right. It was just one time," she said, trying to convince herself more than anything else. Still, she paused when she got to the door. "Cristina, what do I do if it's positive? I'm not good at coping without tequila and I can't drink tequila if It's positive!" Cristina shrugged.

"Does that mean you're planning on, you know, birthing it?" Meredith looked down at the floor. There was a scratch right by the bathroom door she'd caused as a little girl. The wood warped slightly around the single deep scratch. She'd tripped over a dip in the wood while trying to walk in a pair of her mother's high heels. The heel of the left shoe had dug into the floor, then broken off.

Meredith didn't answer her. She pulled open the door and positioned herself in front of the counter, eyes closed, while Cristina stood right outside. Meredith forced her eyes open and looked down at the stick. Two lines, two bold lines, that could in no way be interpreted as one. Her vision blurred over with tears and she sat down on the toilet seat, head in her hands. Cristina knocked on the door before entering.

"Oh shit Mer," she said, looking from the test to her friend. She took a seat on the floor next to her and awkwardly patted Meredith's back as she continued to cry. Meredith looked up at her, eyes red and puffy.

"I can't tell Derek," she said quietly. All she could think about was her baby, wrapped in her arms as she dropped him or her off for the weekend at Derek and Addison's pretty house they would build. Derek, Addison, and her baby would be a perfect bright and shiny family, and eventually her baby wouldn't even want to come home with her at all. Her child would go and live with Derek and Addison, and Addison would replace her as her baby's mother. "I have to leave, go back to Boston maybe…I just can't tell Derek."

"Mom?" Evan was pulling at her sleeve roughly, trying to get her attention. Meredith looked around for a moment before her gaze found him. "Zach and I decided that we want to go to Seattle," he paused for a moment, "but, only if, only if you promise to be home for more than only dinner time and we can have a dog."

"Also, I won't move if there is no baseball teams," Zach added. "And there has to be a swimming pool in Seattle with water that is deep so I can jump in it and swim for real." Meredith smiled a little at her boys' requests.

"There are definitely baseball teams in Seattle, and a pool with a deep end, and yes, my house in Seattle is big enough for a dog, but I want to get an older one so it doesn't pee on the floor." Her sons grinned, their smiles nearly identical, barring the gap Evan had from his missing tooth.

"Are we going to go very soon?" Zach asked. Meredith thought about this for a moment. She definitely had to put in her two weeks, and talk to Richard about her old job in Seattle. In three weeks it would be Christmas, and Meredith rather liked the idea of spending the holidays in her home in Seattle, which was large enough to put an actual tree in, something that she didn't really care about, but would make her boys happy.

"I think we'll go in two weeks, when your winter break starts from school." That would be an issue too, finding a school nearby that would take two first graders on such short notice. "For now though, I think it's time for all three of us to go back to bed." The boys protested, but it didn't take too long to get them back into their beds. She tucked them both in and turned Evan's lamp down a little so it wasn't quite so bright.

"Good night Zach. Good night Evan," she said quietly, before closing the door to their room once more. She followed the hallway lights back into her room and laid back down.

She made a plan to sell her car. It was old enough that she knew there was no way in would make it all the way to Seattle. She'd have to get a moving truck. They could sell plenty of their things before they moved. Meredith had furniture at her house in Seattle, there was no point in paying extra for a larger truck to haul dressers, dining tables, bed frames and the like all the way there. She'd already have to spend thousands, especially to pay a company to drive the truck. There was no way she felt comfortable driving a moving van, and the thought of being crammed into a truck with her two rambunctious six-year-olds for days on end didn't sound anything she wanted to do. They could fly instead, it would only take around 7 hours, and then they would be in Seattle.

It was a little odd, picturing her children playing in the same places she had as a child. She could already see them there, standing in the foyer. Evan would go up to everything, exploring every last inch of the house while Zach run upstairs to see what his new bedroom looked like. They could paint one of the guest rooms whichever color they wanted, and they'd have a yard to play in. She could see Zach's hair whipping around in the breeze on the ferry as he excitedly talked about what his new school would be like, and Evan's eyes scanning all over the people on the deck and the Pacific Ocean below them.

They would love Izzie. Maybe they would help her bake on rainy days or maybe they would just wait around for the cookies or muffins or cakes to be done. Then there was Alex, he was definitely good with kids. She had a feeling that her boys, especially Zach, would take a liking to him. She could charge them less rent, just because the house would be a bit nosier, and they'd have to be cognizant of the fact that there were young children around, but they could work it out.

Of course, she would have to inform her old roommates that she would be coming home, and break the news to them that she would be bringing the two children with her that they knew existed but hadn't actually met in person. That however, was a problem for tomorrow.

So there you have it, chapter two. It was more of a filler chapter, and chapter three will likely be longer and more interesting. I am incredibly grateful for the overwhelmingly positive response to the first chapter, and hope this second chapter met your expectations. I am considering inserting several more flashbacks throughout this work, so if you as a reader have any strong feelings either way about this, don't hesitate to let me know. Once again, any feedback would be much appreciated!

-A