As clearly as he could feel the shift of the gearstick under his hand, Derek Shepherd could feel his wife shift from masking nerves to masking fear. "Mer—"

"I'm fine."

"Try faking that you're not; that might be more believable." He resented that her need to posture returned when she had every right to be uneasy. She'd come so far in the past year, but some things went deeper than simply letting herself be loved and cared for. There were self defense mechanisms that'd shifted from her mother to him as the person who will tell you what's normal. He fought hard to be the person on her side.

He parked the ranger a few dozen yards away from the shoreline. "We could spread the food out in the back," she suggested. "There's totally room. Come to think of it, we could just leave this in the hospital parking lot; become one of those infamous-on-local-TV things. Let people track the sex van on Reddit." Let's not get the van on a watchlist. He didn't say it. Getting her mad at him might provide the distraction she'd need, but it would make her more likely to challenge him, fear and safety bedamned.

He wanted to give in to the less felonious half of her idea. She'd be comfortable, and getting her to relax in the first place might be the most difficult part of this endeavor. The problem would be the transition; going from the familiar, where the windows were only rectangles of light above her to the full-on pond-side summer's day could be worse than seeing it approach and easing in.

"We're getting out," he declared, popping her seatbelt first. She hadn't moved by the time he unloaded the cooler, blanket, and their bags.

"Just letting you get things set up," she commented when he opened her door.

"Sure."

"I'm not scared of a pond."

"Of course you're not," he agreed, waiting until she had both feet on the ground to add, "it's the water in the pond." He was braced for her shove, catching her hands and pulling her in to kiss her. He closed the passenger side door of the van—sex van, for God's sake, Meredith—and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. They were rigid.

He'd suggested spending a day out on the land to taketaking advantage of the end of the summer. They'd come out to the trails a few times, and he'd brought the contractors he was interviewing around by the overlook, but overall, Meredith hadn't wanted to leave her friends much this summer. Still, she'd been the one to decide that it was time for her to "deal with whole water thing."

They laid out the blanket together, and he'd barely sat down when She plopped onto his lap done. That was something that'd felt contradictory as he started to learn more about her childhood. Once he thought about it further, it'd made perfect sense. She'd never made up for being a touched-starved kid-she'd be a good mom; she'd be so good at loving their babies.-It went without saying that Ellis Grey wasn't affectionate. He had a theory that some of her disregard for caution came because her mother would instinctively tend to her injuries, but he hadn't run it by her yet.

He unloaded the to-go cartons out of one of her L.L. Bean bags. She didn't lunge for hers, a sure sign that she was more nervous than she let on.

"It's nice out here," she offered, belatedly fishing out the bottle of sparking cider from under the repurposed ice packs for him.

"It is." He popped it open and handed it back to her in response to her grabbing motion. She tipped it back, like she was pretending it was something with strength.

"I'd like my central nervous system firing on all cylinders. Unless you'd prefer lemonade?" She'd smiled while saying it at the market, but there'd been strain around the edges of her eyes, the same one he'd started bmapping to the increased usage of her citrus-scented conditioner. A silent request for reassurance. Now, she wasn't responding to his attempts.

"What are you thinking?" He watched over her shoulder as she swirled her fork, dragging the tines through her pasta until the noodles were shredded.

Counterintuitively, her sigh added tension to her shoulders. "It's ridiculous."

"What?"

"What I'm thinking," she said, highlighting her words in duh. He could've done the same thing; not saying which is what had been him wanting to keep things moving, and she refused to go at anyone else's pace. That was good. Better was the sigh that signaled a step toward giving in. "Hearing, really," she admitted. "It's bonkers, because first of all nothing's gonna happen, and secondly, we've talked about it. Kinda."

"If we've talked about it, then you can tell me what it is," he pointed out, handing her a piece of bread over her shoulder. She took it, tore the buttered center out and started shredding that. Then, she slid off his lap and turned to face him. Meredith did not go out of her way to make eye contact while talking about her emotions. She wanted space to say whatever it was—or she thought he'd need it. Her eyes had the intensity he associated with the night she'd brought him Izzie's scans, but they were darting from his face to the trees to the water. She wanted to be certain, and she wasn't.

"If I freak out over this, are you gonna decide I'm a lemon after all?"

He waited for the backtrack that didn't come. She'd made as much progress in the year since her surly love had won the tug-of-war with her fear of scaring him off. Her tendency to make the going tough to get the tough going. She was being honest—honestly pissed, scared, sad—without timidity, the way she had before their lives were fully intertwined. She wasn't throwing pasta against the wall to see what finally made him leave. She wasn't eating it, either.

"I am not," he assured her. "Mer, you...that...you've fixed yourself, love. If there's...further damage...I'll consider myself lucky if you let me help you."

"And...and if I don't? If I can just...just ...I mean, I can...I could swim. You were right about that. I can. Did swim team until I decided that participation was lame, and a sport where you compete against yourself would only give Mom more things to judge, and…and, yeah, that was fifteen years ago, but I've gone cliff-diving, jumped off waterfalls… a lot of stupid, adrenaline seeking, dangerous shit. Shit I wouldn't do now, because I'm not…not interested in giving the universe a chance to correct a mistake..." She winced, like she hadn't expected herself to say that. Whether she'd planned this or not, rambling had taken over the script. "Point is, I can swim. You know that, and… I'm scared, Derek. More than I thought I'd be, and what I keep hearing is you saying that you can't keep trying to breathe for me."

God. Meredith's incompetence with idioms was a hospital joke, and she could mimic any skill you showed her; it was easy to assume she was a visual learner. She coveted Lexie's eidetic memory, but her aural recall was equally powerful. She'd made him face up to the indefensible things he'd said before, but if she'd said "what I keep hearing" the same way, it hadn't registered. He hadn't seen it in her eyes this way. What he'd said was a recording that had been playing in her mind for as long as they'd been planning this excursion, at a minimum.

"You…I know we've talked about how…how maybe I didn't stop, but I experienced it as stopping, and in my eyes, my mother had tried to kill herself as an incredible surgeon with a phenomenal career ahead of her, and I was the one who wouldn't let her go. For so long I thought that she wanted me to be exactly like her, and that was how I'd make up for…for making her keep breathing for me.." Her words tripped over themselves in her hurry to add, "That wasn't what you meant. Obviously. Your life never revolved around me…except, I guess if you thought it was me or being chief…. But I wasn't…I didn't think I could be anything close to that special. That…that Mom had seen those things in me, and she was praising them, when all my life I'd heard 'stubborn,' and 'lazy,' and 'fanciful.' I didn't know what to do with it. That maybe after we'd had that fight, she'd seen me."

She shoved a hunk of chicken into her mouth and held a hand in front of her face. If he said anything, she'd say she hadn't been raised. He'd be shocked if her mother hadn't demanded Emily Post-level etiquette at events like the Harper Avery banquet, and admonitions like "don't talk with your mouth full" or "don't interrupt" hadn't been another way she'd shut her daughter down, intentionally or not. Meredith's tendency to plow past the niceties wasn't any different than her her idiosyncratic speaking habits; she was desperate to be heard on her terms, but she was terrified of the repercussions.

"I wanted to learn from that mistake and let you see me," she continued. "I thought why bother? because it felt inevitable. Like, I'd been destined to get to that point eventually."

"Mer, I know you didn't want to—"

"What if I did?" she burst out, shaking her to-go container hard enough that the chicken pieces she hadn't picked out bounced against the fettuccine. "I was trying so hard to be easy—simple. To be the girl in the bar, or at least…at least the version of me you'd fallen for. But I'd danced on that line for so much of my life; I don't know what I wanted. That's…. It's not being able to swim and thinking why bother, even if in the next second I thought, because I want to.

"I wasn't okay when I went into that water; I wasn't okay when I came out, either but something…did change. I didn't know how to explain the difference, and that what you saw as…as, I don't know, being too needy, even though you were constantly telling me to come to you…. But it was better. That I wanted a chance to exist in the world as myself was better, and...and I didn't really know why I couldn't, yet. It'd...it'd barely hit me that she'd died, let alone that I let who I was revolve so much around her. I...I wasn't gonna put you in that spot forever, if that's…. I don't even know if that's what I was dong.

"I'm genuinely okay, now. I'm happy in a way that I never expected. I feel guilty about it half the time, because of George, and because I wasted time believing I wasn't worth it." She raked her hair out of her face. "But if I screw this up…if I freak out, or if it messes me up again..."

"No! Jesus, Mer…." His throat closed around the words like a vice, and he'd have sworn he felt his heart break at the fact that she'd not only carried that fear; she'd come out here anyway. "I-I don't know what I was…." He grimaced. He wanted to give her something so hadly that he'd gone forward with nothing in hand. There was a lot he hadn't known that night. If anything, that made it worse. Her eyes were marbles; her whole body ready to recoil when he told her how wrong she was—when, not if. He wanted to look away, but it would have the same effect. She'd spring in the opposite direction. "Whatever I was thinking then, I am not going anywhere to be anywhere other than right with you through this."

"You say that. You say that when things are good, and I know we promised…. I know the Post-it says no running—and that last time…last time I ran. Technically, I went with Cristina, but…but…it was June, and my head was a mess, and I—"

"Oh," he breathed, and this time the change went much further than her shoulders.

"You didn't know. You didn't know what Mom had done. You did this year, and even with how horrible everything was with George, it was the easiest it's ever been. That…it made me realize…I told you I've had times where I wasn't okay before. Every time I did something…even with the bomb, I made a choice, and I knew there was a way out. A way to…to survive. I didn't always know I'd get there, or that I'd want to, but I had one. Until the bay.

"Funny, huh? I didn't see a way out of the way out?" She smirked around a single piece of pasta, and then rested her fork on the side of the container. Her eyes flicked away-dropping the challenge. "Every other time, I've found an out. But there's been a time where I didn't, so…so it could happen again."

"It could. And I'll be there. Whatever you need. I would never just let you go. Whatever you said. I swear. We can add it to the Post-it, if you want."

"No, that's…. I just…."

"You wanted to be sure I wasn't assuming you were suicidal and then telling you to get over it," he said, archly. "I'd like to know that, too. If I did…it didn't have all that much to do with you. I was still trying to delude myself, thinking that Seattle was going to be something entirely new—beyond what's possible. That accepting that we were meant for each other meant the rest of it could be forgotten. I didn't see…being serious with you wasn't going to look like my marriage had eleven years in…or five years in, when we were ages away from going wrong. I'd forgotten how much work it'd taken to put our lives together. I've never had a surprise sister—although, I'm sure Amy wasn't planned—but the ones I've known my whole life caused plenty of trouble. I dragged Addison into it head first. At the time? Girl in the bar, guy in the bar, starting over with all the benefits and none of the strings was appealing. Then, we tried it."

A smile flickered on her face, lighting her eyes like one of the tea candles filling up the shed. "Sex and Mockery not your kink after all?'

"Not especially. Not yours, either."

"Surprisingly. But that's…I'm better."

"You are. But Mer, I really don't expect that to mean you're not going to be affected by the stuff that happened before. Your nightmares, they're still about that day, aren't they?"

She craned her neck toward the empty sky. "Some. It's mixed in with the Mom's-bleeding ones…those had been gone for a long time, but, uh… Av-becca bled all over that kitchen floor. Sometimes, the pink mist, and…police cars coming down the road to find me standing vigil. The candle house becoming a freaking memorial."

His guilt came hand-in-hand with love for the way she phrased anything that might sound pretty or romantic otherwise. It was the need to be tough, to separate herself from her mother's poise, and the way she refused to be anything more or less than human. Than herself.

"All I can give you is a promise," he said. "I'm with you. I don't care if you qualified for the Olympic freestyle, or…or if you let yourself fall. I'm here. And if something happens, which I don't think it will, because I'm not planning to let it, I will absolutely breathe for you. Okay?"

"Yeah. I know you'd be my knight in shining whatever. I just needed to make sure I hadn't missed a caveat there. I didn't get the damsel in distress lessons as a kid. Your Prince Charming act is wasted on me."

"Is it?"

"Most of the time," she allowed, her long fingers reaching out to pinch off another piece of his fish. When she put her container down a few minutes later a glance at it made him more certain about humoring her with the cider. She could out-drink Mark, but there'd also been at least once when Joe had glanced at her and flipped one of the bars never-dwindling supply of emesis basins over the bar before Derek caught on.

He'd managed to get her hair out of her face, and when he'd followed her to the bathroom, half expecting to be shooed away, she'd been matter-of-fact. "Shoulda waited another fifteen minutes for the last one. It's all timing when you're small. Safer to be a puker than pass out," she added, sliding down onto the tile under the toilet-paper dispenser, her face scrunched up like the world was tilting, and that was supremely irritating. He'd dampened a few paper towels, handing her one, and sitting next to her to put the other on the back of her neck. She'd pulled her shoulders up, but hadn't tried to resist. "A girl in the grade above me had nonconsensual Polaroids taped up around school. If I'd been as messed up as some guys have assumed…. I was lucky. Careful, generally, but mostly lucky." She'd raised her chin, like she expected judgement. She'd done that a lot after the candle house, and every time he found another way he'd hurt her. "Mom all but made me taste-test rohypnol."

"If I'd ever read Nancy's diary, which I absolutely might not have, it's possible I'd know that ours sat her and Kate down to warn them about Quaaludes."

"Christ, you're old," she'd exclaimed, a reminder that she wasn't sober. She held strongly to Seattle as her hometown, but at times it was obvious that she'd been shapedin Boston. "Quaads were a disco drug. They stopped being a thing before I was born."

He'd shrugged, pretty sure methaqualone had been one of the bottles that'd they'd found in Amy's room the first time. There was no telling how long they'd been in the house medicine cabinet.

"The thing is," she'd gone on. "It's not like roofies were recreational, so even though plenty of people get dosed with shit they might've taken for fun, Mom's lectures always made me feel like she didn't trust me not to hold onto my drink. Like, I was too stupid, or lustful, or oblivious to think about it. If…if anything had happened, it would've been my fault."

"Didn't she…?" He'd hesitated. If he criticized Ellis Grey too much, Meredith got defensive, but some of the double-standards were incredibly difficult to ignore.

"Keep condoms on the shopping list and take me to the gyno more regularly than the dentist? Yup. But a woman had to be judicious. Best to take surgery as your lover. If you present yourself as a sex object; the horndogs would never take you seriously. She spoke feminism from her mouth and boys-club from her ass."

Derek snorted.

"It all makes more sense, knowing about Richard. That she was destroyed by the foibles of being human, or whatever. Wish she'd told me she was trying to protect me. She was tough on me because the world would be worse. 'Least now I know it wasn't just because having me was a burden." Her voice cracked at that point, and she'd retched wetly over the bar toilet. "That's what I tol' her," she choked. "The last thing she heard me say was that she was holding me back."

He'd put his hands on her heaving shoulders. "She heard that during the most stressful year of your life, you were doing everything you could to make sure she was taken care of. You had a whole life she knew nothing about, and you wanted her to be a part of it. Seems to me like she'd gone through as many rejections as you have, and what you were saying? You were refusing to reject her."

She froze for a moment, and when she asked, "You think?" her voice had been almost inaudible.

"I think that she wasn't able to be the mom you needed or deserved. I think you were an incredible daughter, in spite of her."

She'd shrugged and leaned against him. "I didn't know how to do anything else."

Her mother's death hadn't been simply her mother dying—as if that could be simple—it'd been a rebirth for her, in a very real way. She'd needed time to learn how the world worked without Ellis, and he'd left her to do it alone.

Never again.

When he got back from putting the leftover leftovers in the car, she'd laid the blanket out at the edge of the dry grass, and was sitting with her tailbone almost to the top hem. He sat midway down and slid an arm under her knees to tug her forward. She kicked half-heartedly, but he'd felt her use more force to shut him up at a lunch table.

"Here," she said once he'd settled her between his legs. "Be useful." She held up the hair elastic that'd been hidden under her watch. He scooped her hair with one hand and started separating it into thirds. "I suck at hair stuff. Mom and Thatcher let me look like a ragamuffin; I bet the peds ward had stories about the ghost of some dead miner's child from 1849. She learned to braid while she was recovering from…with her wrists."

"Did they bring kids during the initial gold rush?"

Her surprised laugh was shaky, but humoring her digression relaxed her just the slightest bit more. She was a sucker for having her hair messed with, too, though she'd blame him wherever it got mussed.

"If I'd gone to grade school here, I'd probably be able to tell you. I was such a shit when we did units on Massachusetts. It wasn't my home state." She put her hands on his thighs and leaned back, barely giving him room to maneuver. "Not that it was Washington. But if my parents could get a three-month-old cross-country, the prospectors would've done fine."

"Where were you born?" It was a strange thing to not know, but the documents she'd gathered for the marriage license had been refiled before he'd seen them.

"New Hampshire. I was a double legacy at Dartmouth. Saved on tuition. Mom had saved a lot by being a shut-in, but an Ivy's an Ivy.. From what I got between interrogating her for school projects, and the papers I went through moving here, my grandparents came here after the war. Mom and my aunt both went back east for college."

"Which war?'

"Oh. Second. Did your parents…?"

"They were sent to 'Nam before Korea was truly over, I think. Dad opened the store as soon as he'd saved up enough. Mom stayed in until they de-mobbed, just worked stateside after Kathleen was born. I think she basically just kept showing up when they tried to dismiss her."

"No wonder we work. Our parents were real weird for the times. I mean…your dad obviously wasn't Thatcher."

"Doesn't mean you're not right. Did they meet in Hanover?"

"Mm. Math suggests they were going out, or wherever they did, when my grandfather died. He was a pharmacist. Her mom was a housewife, which she took as a personal offense. She was close to him. She told me…well not me, she thought I was a friend she hadn't seen since I was eight…that when he died, the watch he'd gotten her for med school graduation was already in his safe. Engraved. She had a year left.

"Thatcher was…." She ducked her head, almost pulling the tail of her braid out of the elastic he was twisting. He pulled it until she met his eyes. "She thought he was George. George was him."

That made a lot of sense, considering. He'd liked O'Malley far more than he now did Thatcher Grey, but if Thatcher had moved in on Ellis's grief like George did Meredith's, he wouldn't be surprised. "O'Malley was the better guy."

"Yeah," she said, exhaling. "George wouldn't have left a kid. He wasn't a pushover. And...I don't know how they got together, but I could see her settling, assuming the whole passion and romance thing wasn't true, and going for the good guy.

"You know, neither Lexie or I were shotgun babies? Seems unlikely given the circumstances. I actually have no idea when he met Susan, or if he stayed out here for her. Mom got him his job. Dunno when he got tenure. Probably later, right?"

"It would've taken a few more years , I think. Liz's husband teaches Biology at NYU, and he got it while she was pregnant with the triplets."

"That must've had the phone tree going crazy." She giggled. Phone trees were one of many intricacies of having a big family she found hilarious.

"I'm still fielding emails about the wedding we're not having," he groused. "The phone tree took care of that kind of thing."

"I can wear the ring when we visit. Would that help?"

"I'd love that." It'd just change the question to when was the wedding? but he wasn't going to discourage her trying.

"Hmm." She'd noticed the equivocation. He smiled. "Anyway, they were married her fourth year. I think the plan was to come out here and let my grandmother help with me, but she died that winter. The obit just says she 'followed her husband.' No idea what that means. Mom never said, I never asked. I have the will, not the death certificate, and I'd rather not know, I think."

"Heartbreak does happe."

"Funny how that's the optimistic view. Thing is, she'd already signed over the house. Otherwise, my aunt would've contested. She was older, and it was a thing by the time I was a teenager. That's why she left me their mom's pearls. Pure spite."

"Those weren't Ellis's?" he asked wrapping his arms around her, easing the buttons on her chambray shirt open.

"Nope. My aunt would mention them whenever the house came up. Mom did give her a share of the rent, she just wouldn't agree to sell it. That's where we get to the nice middle-aged hippie in the room."

"Your bachelorette aunt's roommate?" Her life before him was like a coloring book she gradually filled in for him.

"Yup. To Mom's credit, I think, you know, if they'd had kids and been in a place to move here…. She'd probably have sold it to them. At a discount. The house was practical for her. She didn't need the pearls to 'get by.' Ellis believed in going along, until you were too good to be beaten down."

"And your aunt wouldn't have liked that," he guessed.

"Not at all. They took me to the beach," she added, holding her arms back so he could peel the shirt off. "Auntie and Rachel." He didn't recognize the bikini top; it covered more than the one she'd dug out of a bag in the closet the last time they'd been out here, two years ago.

"Hawaii," she said, reading his thoughts. "We left so fast; my suit was buried—I sorta thought I'd left it here Figured Addison had ritually burned it, since it hadn't ended up on the bulletin board. At first, I didn't need it. I hung out at the bar while Cristina did water stuff. At least until after the nineteenth. Then…I'd tossed a stack of medical journals in my bag, or had them already, and…and…I stopped doing that. Lay out on the balcony, reading, and realizing how much more I could imagine doing than there'd been a year earlier. And that was with that year been how it was. I wasn't going to be beholden to it. I was gonna be better. So, I bought a suit. I

" couldn't…I didn't want to burden Cristina. She would've been with me every step, but she was doing what she needed to do. This was pre-Wyatt, with that day…both days… right there in my head, but I don't think I'd ask now. We were together most of the time, so when she needed to be alone, I understood. And I knew what it was like to have someone pestering you while you're trying to just…forget real life exists. I loved the partying; I loved Sadie's energy, but she needs people around constantly to shut her demons up. Looking at us from the limited amount of child psych I have, I don't think she ever learned to entertain herself. Life with her mom was constant movement, and apart from being too old for imaginary friends once her report cards sparked Himself's interest, being alone with him was bad."

Derek grimaced. He'd recognized the Harris patriarch's name; anyone who'd worked in medicine in the past thirty years would. He hadn't known much beyond that. Meredith didn't like telling tales out of school, but she'd made plenty of allusions. While Sadie had stayed with them there'd been a myriad of shared looks that he couldn't parse—infuriating Cristina, and that hypocrisy amused him enough to make up for it—but the one that passed between them at the mention of Sadie's family wasn't difficult to read.

"You had imaginary friends?" he prompted.

"Sorta." She pressed closer to him. He let his hands wander over the taut skin of her belly, and his fingers bumped over her narrow ribs. He couldn't count them without a second glance anymore. "Not, like, real ones. Not the kind where you make your parents set the table for them. Not that she would've. Too whimsical."

He scoffed with his mouth on the warm skin of her shoulder, and she bent her arm to rake her fingers through his hair.

"Yeah. Most of my secrets with the universe were about liking whimsical things. Being a kid, basically. Cristina populated a whole university system with her dolls. They had committees and everything. Don't ever tell her you know that."

"Can I dream of it?" It'd be hilarious. Confronting his sisters about stuff like that, when he wasn't supposed to know had always been dangerous, but worth it.

"You do you, bud. I just don't want you dead."

"Be confusing for you. Do you help bury the body, or what?"

"Exactly!

"I, uh, didn't have a ton of toys in Boston. Anatomy Jane got left here, and—" Her chest hitched, and he could hear her swallow. "But toy doctor's kits spawn in any house a doctor's kid lives in, did you know that?"

He laughed and tilted his head to meet her sparkling eyes. She drew her hand down to his cheek. The only reason he considered shaving clean was to have her touch more of his skin, but he loved the way she'd scratch his stubble with her nails, and run her fingertips over the same patches, like she was reading some form of code there

"Maybe we can study the phenomenon in a few years," he suggested. Her eyes flicked over his face, but if she tensed at all, he didn't feel it. He didn't think she'd hide that reaction anymore—but had they talked crappy babies since the woods?

"Maybe so," she said, her response low and a little gravelly; Meredith at her most honest. He caught the bow of her tentative smile with his lips. "Our kids will have more toys to work with, though," she asserted, her head back on his shoulder, and her hand on his chest, tracing a soft series of spirals as she spoke. He kissed the curve of her neck to leave her lips free. She was reacting to the mix of anxiety and comfort by talking, and he hated to upset the balance. "I made my bed into an operating table. You can't do surgery on Happy Meal toys, but I'd…I'd draw, like, these little booklets, first with whatever body part I was operating on. Discoloration and all, if there'd be any. I cut up red construction paper like confetti to be the blood. Then I'd draw the bones and guts picture, which was my favorite. I traced out most of Mom's medical illustration books at some point. Then, she said tracing was copying."

"Jeez."

"It was frustrating at the time, but I impressed my med school study group making diagrams free-hand. I filed the charts in my underwear drawer, freaked out at least one housekeeper. That was the imaginary thing; I'd write out whole medical histories. Everyone had a full life. There were frequent flyers. Danzo Garland had multiple organ replacements."

"Yikes, poor Danzo."

"Right? I did play normal things. One of mom's friends gave me a whole stable of toy horses, and I'd act out scenes from my books. I just didn't have the other kids to boss around. My aunt and Rachel got me a Cabbage Patch doll for Christmas the year I was six. Francesca. I was afraid to take her out of the house. Mom would've said I was too old for it anyway, but I played with her all the time. She's up in the attic in one of the Boston boxes."

He didn't realize he was wondering that until she brought it up. It seemed like everything she loved had disappeared at some point. Then, he imagined the tiny blonde in the pictures she'd let him flip through earlier that year, standing next to a Laura Ashley bedspread covered in jagged red scraps, a potato-faced doll lying on the pillow.

"Wait. Didn't Cabbage Patch dolls have cloth bodies?"

She lifted her head an inch or so, and a tinge of pink appeared on the tips of her ears, allowing him to imagine her wide eyes. "Okay. What happened was, I was eleven Mom was working like always, and the baby-sitter was just a grad student paid to sit in the living room and make sure I didn't die. I started wondering how far they'd gone with the 'real baby' thing—They have navels!—and I might've been warped with my only other doll being Anatomy Jane. So, I followed a seam on her side, just far enough to be able to see. Turns out, her stuffing was white, and I had a whole Saturday to kill…. Have you ever opened a marker?"

"Uh, no."

"Going on the list of shit I've done that you haven't. And don't tell me you never took a limb off a Barbie, or something. You were the youngest for seven years."

He shrugged. "The best…uh…worst, was if…someone cut their hair. You could get a head back in place, but the hair. That doesn't grow back."

"Derek!" She smacked the back of her hand against his shoulder.

"It took Dad a day or two to find a toy shop that did doll repairs, and what they put in was probably worth more than the original thing."

"But no one's petty."

"Nan was vindicated. Nine nieces. I have untangled so much doll hair."

"Oh…you'll be experienced then."

"That's what your siblings' kids are for. You make the mistakes on them, and you're so devoted to yours that you don't care how many times you did the same thing as 'Uncle Derek.' That's what I've heard, anyway."

Her shoulder blades dipped. "Good. You untangle the doll hair. I'll dye it. Probably not with marker ink. You do get a decent amount from them, or you could. I doubt it actually dyed the polyester, or whatever it was. We'd have to check. May've leached out into her skin over twenty years."

"So, you possibly have a Cabbage Patch doll whose fabric is the color of your cheeks right now?"

"Um…partially. Remember those medical illustration books? I couldn't get an exact ratio of sizes or colors. One hunk from the salad tongs pretty much stood in for an organ. I didn't wanna take all her innards out at once, 'cause it'd look freaky, and if I had to close her up and go back in because Mom came home, I didn't wanna feel her all unstuffed overnight." Her tone stayed as chirpy as she got, with a lining of defensiveness, and he didn't dare change the way he was ao much as flickering an eyelid lest she realize she'd admitted to sleeping with her doll past the age of eleven. "If you think about it, I did it laparoscopically. With my salad tongs."

"What you're saying is that we have a Frankendoll in our attic."

"I closed my incisions very carefully, thank you!"

"Incisions. You did that multiple times."

"She had some donor cotton-ball transplants."

Derek let his forehead fall on the back of her head, and she giggled. He kissed the spot of her ear where color had gathered.

"I was the weird kid for sure," she said, sounding more delighted than anything. "I fronted, once I had Sadie and her people skills. But what it comes around to is that I learned to do the stuff that mattered on my own. My mom was a surgeon, but I perfected my whipstitch on my doll." She fidgeted with the strap of her bathing-suit. "I tried to go into the water again by myself, too. Not all at once. Really slowly, actually. In nine days, I got as far as on a deck by the very natural-looking, chlorine-scented pool." The self-deprecation in her sarcasm was untenable.

"You ridiculous woman." He dipped her back over one arm. The first night on the living room floor, he'd let her move herself for the most part, taking whatever she'd give. Gradually, after seeing her holding Karev against a wall, he'd started to notice how much less guarded she was physically. It was contradictory for someone her size, but she was stronger than she looked, and seemed to have a good instinct for when she was safe with someone. Her boundaries were one of a few ways she was on one side of the spectrum or another.

He hovered over her, kissing her randomly as he spoke. "You...are... incredible. Did you see me out here fly-fishing that summer?" As he started to move away from planting a kiss on her cleavage, she pressed her hand against the back of his head, and he followed her lead, moving down toward the edge of the bathing suit.

"No," she admitted, sliding her hand down and bringing the other up to his shoulders.

"I didn't." he told her, rocking further onto his heels to put his hand on her breast. The fluid fabric was far more forgiving than a bra, and as he stroked her visibly hardening nipple, a muscle at the edge of her mouth relaxed. "You like that?" She trended toward highly responsive, sensitivity condensed into every centimeter of her body. Her breasts were generally tender, the only place where being touched got to be too much, and he hadn't been able to find a specific tell before crossing that line. He was sure that if he find and avoid it, he could take her all the way without venturing below her ribcage, but it was a long-term goal.

She nodded, closing her eyes for a moment, and then squinting up at him. "You fish now."

"You caught that?"

"Catch this." She flashed him the finger, moving fast enough that he almost missed the grab for her wrist. "Crap!" she protest as he kissed the tip of her finger and then teasingly sucked at it. She tugged against him, laughing, and he moved the hand above her head, lacing their fingers together. She wrapped her legs around him, and he shifted to put his between them. Her playful squirming transformed into something more purposeful. She still had her shorts on, he realized. They were almost as short as her bikini, but covered far more at the crotch. She'd demand he take them off soon enough.

"You'll recall, I had a neighbor." He circled his palm against the bikini top, and her whole body reacted; her breath coming out in a huff as her calves tensed, her hands using him for resistance as she rubbed against him. "He was big on male-bonding."

She snorted. "So…you didn't want him to know?"

"That I was still shaken up over you dying?"

"When you put it that way…." Her lips pursed, almost a pout, but her eyes drifted downward, and her grasp on his hand loosened.

"My feelings about that weren't something I should've dumped on you," he said. "You were dealing with so much you didn't know how to process, and I was demanding you do it on my timeline. I went from telling you you needed me too much, to saying you weren't coming to me enough, to…God, I met Lexie and more or less told you to rewind and be the girl in the bar, didn't I?"

Her eyes widened, and went unfocused for a moment while she searched for words before she kissed him decisively instead. He moved his hand to her back to support her until she pulled away.

"I kept accusing you of not being ready for a real relationship. Maybe I wasn't. Nancy said that. That I needed to live on my own for a while."

"But you weren't alone. You had Richard to take you fly-fishing." She smiled, and he moved in to kiss him again when she dropped his hand to put hers on his chest. Her mouth twisted like she'd bitten into the lemon served with his fish.

"What?" he said. She'd been upset enough a moment before that he couldn't laugh at the way her eyes were widening with overblown horror.

"Is it…is it weird that we randomly have the same dude trying to be our pseudo-father figure?"

His lips formed the wh of what? No! but then he thought about standing in knee-deep water with Richard. He hadn't been sure the man had done any kind of fishing before, and that put a scrim over the fact that otherwise the excursion wasn't unlike going out with his father. He'd only been twelve when Dad died; they hadn't quite gotten to the 'talking about girls' stuff—unless it was stop tormenting the girls by which he'd meant the sisters.

"Especially when it's him?" she added, and then sucked in her bottom lip. Things had evened out between her and Richard over the past few months, but it hadn't been long since she'd been threatening not to attend her wedding if he was invited.

Derek kissed her cheek."You're allowed to have complex feelings about someone."

"Blargh." She rolled her eyes. "You're not contradicting me."

"I try not to when you're right."

She lifted her head up, thumping in against his shoulder.

"Think about it this way," he said. "If that it wasn't for him being him, we wouldn't be here."

"I guess. Can we not let him stick his nose in our marriage again?"

"That can be a goal, yeah."

"Should've put it on the Post-it."

"There's your next list," he said. "Post-it amendments." She did not look amused. "My point was that it took me a while to be really comfortable out here again. You've gotten away with a lot of trauma without obvious repercussions."

"Just untraceable neuroses."

"Exactly. This has a very significant cause, and you hardly took any time to recover from it."

"A year later, and you're still on about me not taking another week off? I was an intern!"

"An intern with a pneumothorax is not scrubbing in," he protested automatically, but unlike every other time they'd had this discussion he wondered if he'd shut out the facts of being an intern. It'd begun to sound like an excuses for the ways she wouldn't take care of herself. It was what other people cited for why they shouldn't be together. It'd even been what Nancy had latched onto. No one had said he shouldn't marry the first-year resident, because being in the second year of residency didn't have the same connotation.

"This is not a weakness thing, Mer. It's not a requirement. We're going to try it, and if you hate it we can never come out here again, or we can try again next week. All of it's your call, okay?" She nodded, slowly, and he clasped her hand again. "If I think you're pushing too far, I'll tell you. That good?"

"Yeah." She exhaled. "That's good."

She'd only ever heard she wasn't pushing hard enough.

"This isn't new," he reminded her. "You liked the water, before. Tell me why?" He wanted her to think about the reasons she wanted to do this, not why she thought she should.

"Think it reminded me of Seattle," she said. "The first time we went over the Charles, I asked Mom 'what Sound' that was. I learned to swim at the Y after school. Tuesdays and Thursdays. Extracurriculars meant having dinner at the MGH cafeteria, and usually going home with Mom. I felt less alone. I liked swimming, too. Before it was a competition. Not that—" She cut herself off with a laugh. "I used to be the best at holding my breath."

"Maybe that helped you stay conscious longer."

She'd referred to going to Dr. Wyatt as 'saving herself' a few times, but he didn't think she saw how much had gone into her surviving the way she had. Not just the lucky parts, like the little girl watching, not hitting her head on the dock or ending up under it. They had no idea exactly how long she'd been in the water, and the bruise that formed where she'd been lobbed in was bad enough that she was lucky not to have internal damage; it had to have hurt.

"Maybe. I always liked the beach. Weird, maybe, for me to be so into somewhere sunny, but I'm starting to think I'm drawn to it. And no one cares what your real life is like on a beach. Maybe that's why Auntie and Rachel took me there. I just know I had all this dark stuff in me, and it didn't matter. Everything was too bright for that. Kinda like how it was with you, early on. Before you stopped hiding your pain, and mine died down some. We're nice and partly cloudy together."

She gave him a smile that made apples from her cheeks. Happy married Meredith, but also healthy, married Meredith. The picked-over pasta was an anomaly, and her tendencies were the opposite of her sister's stress-eating. Her sleep had still been interrupted by nightmares when he'd returned to their bed, but she slept around them, rather than giving into insomnia the way she had when they'd met.

She'd been gorgeous, always, but she'd already been carrying more than most med school graduates. The stress and degradation of internship did a number on everyone. He'd noticed the changes between the end of Sex and Mockery and the night she'd appeared at his trailer, like an apparition surrounded by candlelight, but she'd had a slightly drawn look again over the past few weeks. That had faded. Maybe whole and healed was more than anyone could be, but the woman in his arms was definitely better.

"And it wasn't that the water washed anything away, then. It was more like…like it held me steady. Under there, nothing was too bright, or too loud. My life always was. But it's not now. So, if I can't do this…it's not a big loss."

"Not at all," he agreed, kissing her, and undoing the button on her shorts at the same time, hoping her busy mind would stay in that place for just a little while.

She pushed up for him to work them off her hips. The inches of fabric between her legs had less give than the top, and sand had already breached the blanket. Days ago, she'd followed up a pronouncement that a man had definitely created the Sex on the Beach, since it didn't leave you itchy and sunburnt with dire threats about how she'd retaliate. If he was sure she'd be fine rinsing in the lake, that would be one thing, but the water bottles he tossed in the back for her to get sand off her legs if she couldn't get past the shoreline weren't sufficient for anything more than that.

Navigating her body in the dark had stopped requiring much thought months and months ago, but a bathing suit made him blind. He got obvious irritation when he moved too far in one direction, speeding up wasn't different enough, and distracting her by swirling his tongue around her navel got her palm pressed against his forehead. "Lemme—." She shoved his hand away before finishing the directive, two fingers scrubbing against the strip of pink. "Great way to get a wedgie, ri—Oh, theeeere."

Her eyes closed. Finally not looking at the water. Definitely thinking about it. He placed his fingers just below hers and pushed them up until he was in their place. She let her hand flop onto her belly.

"Go team." She sighed. "Oh, yeah, that's perfect."

Perfect for now. He circled the knuckles of his index and middle finger against her, trying to plan. He could feel her swelling, the fabric blocking the cloud-like softness of her skin, but holding her more steadily in place as long as he adjusted for her undulating hips. She pulled one leg up, and he moved another knuckle down, trying his best to center her clit against his middle finger.

Her face was flushing, and she moaned as he licked a trail of sweat from her neck. The sounds were more demanding as she moved toward climax. He went back to using the pads of his fingers to give her as much direct pressure as he could. She was worked up enough that he could change direction and some of her frustration would dissipate, the hint of annoyance in her voice gone while the sensation was new.

She jutted her pelvis out toward him, and he thought the problem was moot once he found that firm stretch above her cunt that almost always carried her over. Her relieved moan went straight through him, and as much as he wanted to eliminate as much tension in her as possible, he also wouldn't mind scooping her up and carrying her out to the water now, if he could guarantee she wouldn't panic.

Her thrashing had all but undone the braid he put in, but the flush returned, and he could see her eyes spark in the way that meant she could felt it just out of reach. He followed the demands that amounted mostly to never stopping and doing what he was doing. Her cries surged. She lowered her bowed leg to strain harder against him, tiny keens interspersed with the moans.

"I can't," she whined. "That's so good, feels so good, I just can't." The look on her face was adorable in its mixture of pleasure and pout. "Need you to touch me," she insisted. "I don't care about the freaking sand."

He was inclined to agree with her, but not yet. He caught the stuck out lip between his. "Meredith Grey, you think you know all my tricks?"

"Yes," she insisted, but the way she licked her lips belied this. Truthfully, most of the tricks she hadn't experienced work better inside, but he had ideas. He kissed her for a while, reviving the rest of her body, and reclaiming heat that escaped in the almosts.

"Der-ek," she whined again. He loved when she did that. "I wanna come. Every time I move it's right there. Please."

"One more try. One more try and if you're not screaming I'll protect your clit from the sand with my mouth."

She narrowed her eyes, "Big words, bud. I'm good at being quiet."

"Not once you've chosen not to be," he countered, rubbing his knuckles against her labia. She tipped her head back, the oh coming out whether or not she'd been trying to stop it. He grinned to himself. She was unpredictable and so predictable at the same time.

He curled his fingers toward his palm and buffed his nails against her in quick motions, up-down and then left-right in bursts to determine which she preferred.

She thrashed against the blanket, her legs kicking out behind him as she thrust toward him. He could've sucked her through the fabric the bump of her clit was so well defined. "Yeah, yeag, ah-ahh-oh...nooo-fuck, Deereeek."

"I know, baby." He put his other hand on her belly, watching her mouth shift as she reacted to every touch. For her to shut that beautifully expressive face off from the world would've been the upmost of tragedies. He rolled his thumb up toward her nipple, which was pebbled against her top. Her cry lasted through a long frisson surging through her, and she took her other breast in hand, her back arching promisingly. He moved his hand to lean down and kissed her. She grunted in protest, fumbling to bring down the arm she'd had draped over her head.

"Ohhh, Derek-Derek-Derek-Der—!" She curled upward, her coccyx the only part of her in contact with the blanket. Released was absolutely the right word for the expression her settled into as the tension seeped out of her. He loved her all the time; every twitch of her eyes, every frown, and it wasn't as rare to see her happy anymore, but getting this carefree smile was a privilege.

He'd hoped to be able to get her off again at this point; hard and fast, not giving her time to think before another flood of endorphins. The best laid plans of mice and men, especially for Meredith..That had taken more out of her than he'd anticipated, at least. He brushed the hair that'd escaped her braid off her forehead, and kissed her. Her hands, he noted, hadn't moved. Her cheeks went pink as she caught the direction of his glance, but she didn't give into bashfulness.

"Not too much?" he asked. She shook her head. "Think we might've found the secret to striking something off the list."

"We could try now," she said, absolutely with guile.

"Oh, I have far better ideas for that," he said. "They require access to your bedside drawer."

Her eyes widen, and the corners of her smile go sharp, sly. God. He wasn't going to hustle her through this because he wanted her, but he wouldn't deny hoping that she acclimated quickly. And that she hadn't seen enough in the ER the intervening two years to take lake sex off the table. If she had, options existed. If she was okay in the water, there were towels in the bag to put over the blanket. Alternatively, he'd lay them out in the back of the Ranger, and make a mission out of rewarding her for trying. He'd been a boy scout, and he had a traumatized little sister. He planned ahead.

Meredith shifted, moving an arm up to her forehead to shade her glassy eyes. "What's the plan, doctor man?" He had Afterglow Meredith. That had not been a guarantee.

He put her shorts in the bag, and offered her her sunglasses. She shook her head. Not surprising. Any time the period she was conscious under the water came up, the two words she used were cold and dark.

"What the fuck?" She sat up, which was helpful, but he didn't know where the mystified expression had come from. "Swim trunks have pockets?"

"Yes…?" He glanced out at the still lake, and her hand closed over his arm.

"It wasn't all nude beaches and skinny dipping. I'm sure I musta watched frat bros pull hotel keys out of their shorts and wasn't paying attention."

"Wouldn't be a problem if it had been."

"That's not what you were thinking?"

"I was feeling sorry for you. Doing swim team when you did, it must've been all junior high boys in Speedos."

She shuddered. "You can absolutely do that. It was."

He kissed her. If only he could go back in time and slap himself for saying things that would feed her insecurities…. Hell, he'd created new ones. She'd withstood thousands of cuts, and he'd hit bone.

"Do you want options?" he asked. Her smile flickered, and he put his hands on her shoulders. "Or do you want directions?"

She folded her lower lip over her teeth. This choice—of whether she wanted choices—might be the hardest for her to make.

"I won't let you push too far," he reminded her. "We can always go back."

"I don't wanna chicken out."

"So…safe word."

"That's for sex…. Don't smirk at me."

"I'm not smirking, dear. It can be for other things."

She mumbled something that definitely contained the words show you dear, which was fair. She didn't have to be the one to say them to make most pet-names feel awkward. It made less sense the longer he knew her. Initially, he'd have said it was her…she hate if he used the word earthiness to describe her, and she'd be right, because the connotation of hippies and Birkenstocks was miles away from Meredith. Carnal came with similar issues. Meeting her, you wouldn't say she inhabited her body fully, because she could be clumsy, and her mind could be in three places at once. She didn't deny her body. She didn't live in the abstract.

After two years, after marrying her, he knew things, like that in spite of being the furthest thing from religious, she had "secrets with the universe." She'd thought not wanting romance meant not wanting love, and accepting the latter had led to her adorably awkward attempts at the former. She loved symbolism; if it meant something to her. From what she'd shared, the experience she had after drowning could've been the product of her mind or a custom afterlife, but it was impossible to know because the every detail made him think of course. Of course that person/place/advice meant that to you.

Knowing her, loving her, meant appreciating that you couldn't use any generic pet-name for her—and it wasn't as though Addison hadn't been dear to him, so much as he'd never thought about it. They used the words they'd heard from their parents, and that was it—You had to mean it with Meredith, and she had to be receptive. In this moment she didn't feel valuable, and "dear" got derision. If he had his way, one day that would never be the case, even if he had to find another word that wasn't as easily ridiculed.

"Give me options," she said, decisively.

"We can walk in, at your pace, no rush, or I can carry you to a certain point, and you can submerge all at once." She didn't react at all to his offer to carry her—doing it, yes, having it mentioned, no—She was terrified. "I won't just let you go, and we won't go past the point where your head is above water until you're comfortable going under."

At no point would her bringing up what he'd said that night in the trailer have made it clearer that in the immediate aftermath of his divorce, he'd forgotten how a relationship really worked. He'd done his job this week, and he'd put a significant amount of thought into how to keep his wife from drowning. They weren't mutually exclusive. He smoothed the furrow forming on her brow. He'd tell her that later.

"Walk in," she decided. He grabbed her under the armpits and stood them both up. She laughed, stumbling the first few steps forward. Going in on her own power would be good for her, but letting herself be taken in wouldn't have been bad. The method mattered less than the result.

"We should put in a dock," she said. "Whether or not I manage this, I can tell you to go jump in the lake."

"We'll teach our kids to swim out here."

"We can reinforce what a certified instructor teaches them," she countered. "Any kid we have is starting that survival swim thing as soon as they're old enough."

"Good idea."

She smiled at him over her shoulder, as if apologizing for her outburst. He kissed the back of her hand.

"I can teach 'em to cannonball, if—" She froze, and he stepped up to stand next to her. He was impressed by her precision; her toes were almost in the water, but they weren't wet. He started to turn to face her, but after a second thought he moved behind her, holding her hands and crossing his arms in front of her.

"You're in charge," he said. "But I have you."

"I know. Just...maybe…. Tell me more about your parents?." Her jaw was clenched, and he thought of her picked over pasta. He kissed the curve of her neck, trying to think of something that would distract her enough to move forward.

"They met at a USO dance. It turned out that they grew up within blocks of each other over in Brooklyn. Different schools, different friends. Dad was a year younger. Mom had decided she wanted to be a military nurse watching newsreels from the Western Front. Even though she knew my grandparents couldn't pay for all four years of nursing school, she enrolled. She was determined to get the military to cover the last two years, at a point where there were hardly any troops on the ground. In the sixties there'd be a huge push for nurses. Operation Nightingale. Mom worked on it, but she was back stateside with two kids by then. She stayed in twenty-five years overall, then moved into civilian nursing, part-time."

"A-And she still volunteers, right?"

"Yeah. At the VA, and sometimes the indigent clinic where we all learned first-aid and CPR. And I mean all." He'd gotten clinic hours there in med school, and Amelia had done community service there. He theorized that Mom didn't go there as much, because it took too long to update all the people who knew them.

A breeze hit, and the water, which was up to the gap between the pieces of Meredith's bikini, rolled in the facsimile of a wave. Meredith stood stock still, her fingers clenching then releasing, like she didn't want to give herself away.

"Surface waves like that are the most we'll feel out here. It's only the wind. No currents. Nothing tugging you under or out. Elliot Bay has the port. All the freighters and ferries going through there have wakes, and the Sound is an inlet of the Pacific. There are tides. Rip currents. This is a pond, technically." He paused, and it had almost gotten obvious when she gave a ha! he might not have heard without the wind. "Fully enclosed." She stepped forward with a longer stride, tugging away from him. "What are you thinking?"

"Keep tellin' me about your parents," The unevenness of her tone presented the bravado she wanted to give off, and disappointment aimed at herself.

"Any of those guys without pockets surfers?"

She planted her feet. "What?"

"Stands to reason. You were on the Mediterranean; there's surf there. You ever go out?"

She shrugged. "Couple times. Mostly wiped out."

"You got banged around, I bet. You didn't drown."

"I came close!" she snapped. "Surfing, body-surfing, car surfing, couchsurfing. They're all different things, and I've done them. You don't ride motorcycles, Derek? I rode a vespa in a metro tunnel that had a third rail. Been on a yacht in a storm. Stood up in a convertible. Put the tab under my tongue, swung on the rusted ladder, and followed the beguiling girl through the alley. Once did a diamond run after emptying a flask on the lift. Crashed Mom's BMW on the Florida Turnpike, and that was an accident. I have done heart-beating-out-of-my-chest, dancing on the edge of the grave. I wasNear Death Meredith, I was badass. Hardcore. Now I'm pathetic, and ordinary, and soft, and this is bullshit!" she screamed, loud enough that he felt her diaphragm expanding against their hands.

"You chose to do those things, They were a rush. They made you feel alive, and they sped the world up to your speed for a while. The rest of the time, you were going out of your mind with boredom. Last year, you were an intern. You were being challenged. It drained your excess energy. You had an IV of fear going constantly. And you had the thrill of facing down death. When you went into the water, the adrenaline rush of going to your first on-site mass casualty event was gone. Putting aside how emotionally drained you were—significantly—You weren't prepared, you couldn't page Bailey to teach you what to do, and the life you couldn't save was yours. Whatever you felt when you woke up, you were safe. There's no triumph tied with being down there. No exhilaration. All you had was fear."

She stilled, her body already leaning forward to create distance between them without moving any deeper. He was braced to hold her level if her foot slipped; it would be the worst timing, and she was Meredith Grey.

"It makes more sense like that. In that context," she said, moving backward enough to almost rest against him again. "Even the bomb was…it wasn't just me. It just…it feels like I was less scared, then."

"There was a single action you could take, and it was an either/or—I can't imagine how awful it was, but it wouldn't have felt as hopeless as being underwater, freezing, and not even knowing what direction you were going in."

"Yeah. It was…it was like that." She started walking again. "I was alone until I passed out."

"Right. The bomb guy was there to talk you through that. You're the one who did it, though," he added. "Who called you soft?"

"Mom. And…and Sadie. But she meant you. Us. I think she did. I mean, she was an intern, and I wouldn't…. You can't do someone's work as an intern. I would've picked up her slack."

"So, when she said you were both slackers?"

"She might've had some…misconceptions about my grades. Not my attitude. She…she wasn't around for the stuff I took seriously. Mostly. Sometimes she sorta…dismissed it. Except for…. There's a reason she's the only one of my old friends you've met, and it's not just that the two or three others I still talk to are across the country. I took us…our friendship, and our…whatever seriously, but if she saw it she ignored it. She was scared. Same reason she'd humor me about going to med school. She did, though."

"Mmm."

"Be honest. If I have to, you have to."

"She, uh, for lack of a better analogy, got thrown into the deep end. Even if you'd done everything you could without flat-out replacing her, it wouldn't have been enough of a life-saver. Letting her start in January wasn't fair to her. She got the wrong idea with the intern cabal. That was the—would you have done it? Genuinely curious."

"Wouldn't have started it. On a dare…? Not to the point of hurting another person. Myself…?" She sighed. "I paid a lot of attention to that third-rail. Sadie? Not so much."

"That's about what I would've assumed. Only having worked with dead bodies, and then having her closest colleagues treat each other that way…. Lexie's cohort was frustrated, but they were motivated by getting better. They came straight from being hyped up by med school professors. She wasn't getting the wins, and may couldn't tell that you were. Or she was simply envious. For all that I was about to throw a wrench in it, you were happy."

"Meaning no one from my old life is good at seeing me happy." She paused again, and he bumped gently into her. The water was over her breasts, occasionally hitting her shoulders.

"This is a good place to stop."

"I have to go under."

"You don't have to do anything."

"I knew she could be kinda like Mom. Cristina can be, too."

"So can you, love, in a good way. Your mother was a cold, callous woman—"

"'Call me callous, but you're unalterably callow,'" she said, almost singing the words under her breath.

"Sweet Jesus, I was about to say wasn't the devil. She said that?"

"'And that is only one of the traits that will tarnish my name if you insist on following through with this farce.'"

"When you took her your acceptance letter?"

"Yup." She tilted forward again, clinging to his hands, testing her limits. "I want to believe she was symptomatic. I don't quite."

He didn't, either. It wouldn't have occurred to him, if she hadn't woken up last year, thought that figut had just happened, and told Meredith immediately she didn't have to go to med school. It made it sound like she thought she'd been arguing the other side. There was a possibility that she'd mistakenly believed that a positive reaction from her would inspire Meredith to tear up the acceptance letter. That she'd been trying to push Meredith into going by saying those things—He'd never presume such cruelty was reverse psychology if it'd come from anyone else, but it had precedent. Don't call 9-1-1! Don't go to med school! It made more sense than that she'd been confused enough to argue against what Meredith wanted to do, or even that Meredith's MCAT scores combined with whatever symptoms she'd noticed had made her afraid of being replaced.

Telling Meredith any of that would devastate her. She needed to think her mother might've regretted not giving her a choice. Not that she'd said one of the things Meredith had needed to hear at the age of six out of confusion, or to get out of the nursing home she didn't recognize. She needed to have hope that she hadn't been rejected for doing the thing she'd been told to do.

"She had good traits," he amended. "She didn't wear them well. You're like her in that you're ambitious, and intelligent, and determined. You're brave."

She rotated slowly, uncrossing their arms and then looped her arms around his neck, making him think of escorting Marion MacNamara to her cotillion. He'd have been smacked if his hands had ventured as low as he situated them against Meredith, but he was ready to buoy her up if she needed it. "You and your sisters weren't expected to join up?"

"No. On Dad's side, our ancestors came over to escape the Famine, and had two sons drafted in the Civil War. One died, one was injured, and that made them decide enlistment should be a family tradition."

Meredith laughed, which was the point. He'd perfected that take on it as a kid who was mostly dissing the service to piss off his parents. "Fortunately, after that the generations worked out so that no one really saw conflict. Well, Dad's grandfather technically served in the First World War, but he got the flu in Basic, survived, and served a career before the second broke out."

"Seriously?"

"Luck of the Irish." He shrugged. "Dad was a medic. He had a Purple Heart, but he'd joke it was for a cigarette burn. I don't know. Re-upped a couple times while Mom was earning out her tuition, honorably discharged as a lieutenant. Vietnam wasn't what it became, but it was war. The house was an inheritance; every spare penny he got went to the store. We had Amy convinced she came with it for a while. She had bigger ambitions. She wanted to buy a town."

"What? Why?"

"A city would have too many people." He kept his hands locked under her, but let his thumbs sneak up to the elastic of her bikini. She inched one hand down to his pec, the other coiling further around his neck as she put her head on his shoulder. She was standing steadily, but he could hear how fast her breath was coming now. Her heart fluttered against his chest. Allegro, he thought, leftover from music theory classes, long ago written over by tachyacardic. He wished he knew any of the songs on her iPod, either the calm indie ones, or the angry riot grrrls. All he could do was hold onto her, and wait for her next signal.

"Will our kids say things like that?"

"Most of them do, Twosh."

She raised her head, and while he hoped that one day him remembering something she'd told him wouldn't mystify her, he did love the smile, and how she lit up, the gold flecks in her green eyes shining. He kissed her, and she raised up on the balls of her feet. When he shifted to boost her, she surprised him, springing up to wrap her legs around him. They were latched too tightly for her to maintain. He moved his hands to her back, and his focus drifted to the heat of her mouth, her finger digging into his shoulders, the small adjustments she made to stay in place.

"Will you think I'm a coward if I ask you to…to take me under?"

"I will never think you're a coward. Is that what you want to do?"

"I don't remember you pulling me out. I want to be able to do it for myself, but—"

"One step at a time." She nodded. "Are you ready?"

"I…I think so. That's all I can give you."

"Okay. Inhale on my count. One.…" He bobbed her up slightly. Her hands linked behind his neck again; her eyes fixed on his. "Two…." If he were a list-maker, he'd probably have put "pulling Meredith underwater" on the list of things he'd never want to do. But she'd asked. She'd come within a syllable of saying "hold me" in the open, when it had nothing to do with sex. Everything she'd made it past in two years was encapsulated in that. "Three."

He remembered to inhale himself at the last second before ducking under. Her eyes were squeezed shut as he propelled them below the surface, but when they popped open he knew that had been instinct. They darted from side to side, always centered on him. He watched several individual bubbles escape her thin lips and pursed his, blowing out pointedly. It took another moment, but she started letting out enough air to create a series of jagged streams. As they petered out, he brought them up.

She gasped as they broke the surface, but then she laughed. He spun her through the water, doubling the strength of his hold on her as the ripple of their wake rolls through. Her face stayed alight as she straightened her legs. They'd drifted slightly deeper; the water hit the top of her shoulders, and he started to back up.

"Wait. It's….I need to try, and it's easier…I think it'll be easier."

"Okay."

"Derek? Let me go."

He moved his hands up to her shoulders and took them off her slowly, which felt painfully counterintuitive. Hers stayed latched. "You don't have to do this right now," he reminded her.

"I do. You're pretty impressive at predicting Meredith brain, but I've been living in here for thirty years, and if I psych myself out now, I'll just freak out more next time. It's a band-aid at once thing." She loosened her grip slowly, and he could see the moment where she steeled herself to make the cut. "Move," she murmured. He cleared her path, and her eyes stayed on the shore. "If I panic?"

"I'll be there. I will breathe for you."

"But you think I can do this?"

"I do."

"Okay…. Okay…um…. Count me?"

"Inhale on my count. One…two…three." He expect her tostall out, but he was prepared for it. He expect that he'd have to reach over and pull her up either, but he was braced to do it. Did he expect the slightly uneven stream of bubbles to move? To cover several feet toward land before curving at a clip? No. He paced her, not hovering, hopefully, but close enough that if running out of air was triggering, he'd be there in a fraction of a second.

She surfaced six or seven feet away. "Derek, did you—?" Her eyes found his, and she cut herself off, ducking her head.

He glided over to her. "I saw you, precious," he said, clearing sodden locks of hair out of her face. "That was incredible."

"I did it. I can still swim."

He didn't know what to say to that. He'd thought about the how's and what-ifs, but not the whys. Not why she wanted to get past it so badly, or why she'd wanted to do it here. The morning after he'd shown her to the trailer and given her a personal ad's worth of information about himself—it'd been big, then, to figure out what was true with Addison edited out, but today made it paltry—he'd caught and cooked trout, and they'd explored the property all day, ending up here once the late, late summer sun had warmed it enough to be bearable. He'd pictured her cutting through this water so many times the day she fell in the bay. It'd been within a week of Addison's arrival. He'd never put the two together in a way that let him truly understand what it meant to her. She'd reclaimed another part of herself that'd gone missing in the aftermath of that bomb.

It'd been almost exactly two years. She was more than she'd been then, in so many ways that he could almost forget how much he'd taken from her. He didn't want to do that. He let himself bask in the confidence she was displaying, but didn't let that overwrite the comparison with how much more she'd had then. She didn't go far, and she found him every time she surfaced, a dancer spotting to avoid dizziness. Then, she'd been truly carefree, and he hadn't appreciated it enough. Hadn't known that he wouldn't see it again for a long time.

Around her dozenth lap, he caught her around the waist and scooped her into his arms. "Derek," she whined, panting enough that he didn't let her break away.

"Take a breath, Dory."

"Excuse you?" She whirled on him and the bases of her fists were colliding with his chest before he could realize what he'd done. "The fucking forgetful, blue fish?"

"Oh, shit, I didn't—" He tried to stifle his laughter enough to apologize while holding her off, but she reminded him too much of the niece he'd taken to see that movie. Hannie had been all of three, and it was honestly a miracle he remembered any of—

Meredith slipped.

He'd raised his hands to surrender to her ire, and either the wake of their horseplay knocked her over, or she overbalanced shoving him. She'd gone under limbs akimbo, and there was a chance that thrashing to right herself—Her hand grabbed his arm before he reached her. He pulled her up. She truly weighed nothing soaking wet. In his memory, he would see the resemblance to a pissed-off cat as she spluttered, but in the moment he could only hold her far enough out to see her face, to watch her breathe.

"Okay. I'm okay. Seriously, isn't salt water supposed to be what's gross?" She turned to spit over her shoulder. "This is nast—Derek?"

He heard her, and he could see her standing in front of him, solid, breathing, her cheeks sun-kissed. She was draped over his arms, her head lolling, and her skin more than pale. Deathly blue. He felt her chest moving under his hands, and then still. Her hair was cold. Everything was so cold. Bone cracked under his hands. Tossing his head to get his wet hair out of his face did nothing to clear it. She could swim. She swam. She fought. She's going to fight. Meredith is always a fighter. She'll make it. She made it. She makes it.

"Derek?" Her slightly pruny hand stroked his face. Her eyes were open, concerned, blue-green like the water further out where there was more plant life. "Hey, talk to me, McDreamy. What are you thinking?"

"You're okay."

"I am. I'm okay. I'm breathing. I'm right here." She ran her thumb under his eyes again. That he'd been crying occurred to him right as her lips flittered against the same places, kissing the tears away, like he did for her. He pressed her against him, and kissing the side of her neck. Telling her it didn't matter if she was learning gestures like that, the feelings they represented had always been there.

"I love you," he breathed into her ear.

"I love you, too." She leaned back with her hands on his chest. "More than anything."

She must've pulled them to shallower water; he could kneel and keep above water to his sternum. He pulled one leg up, and she straddled it.

"This is how I like you down on one knee," she said, sliding against him.

"Definitely more us." In response, she reached around and untied her bikini top. "Sure about that?"

She smirked, lifting one leg to rub her calf against the front of his trunks. "You expecting difficulty?"

His hands were still shaking slightly, but the tone of her voice, her crotch rocking lightly against his leg, the promise of the bikini top coming off—"Definitely not," he assured her.

She shrugged the straps of her top down and let the top drop off, and the water covered her tits. She hummed in pleasure. He shifted his leg, putting her at a height where they weren't totally covered, and water continued to lap at bare skin.

There was more to the relief that made her eyes close, but he took advantage of it. He got his hand into his pocket and took the other off her thigh. She tensed, slightly; she knew what was coming, but she didn't open her eyes. With the silicone-based lube on his fingers, he slipped his hand past the elastic of her bottoms. He found the path to her clit easily. God, that smile was a blessing.

She pressed against him everywhere she could, and he felt feel her tornado of emotions becoming arousal under his breathed her in with the mad thought that this was how Meredith showed pride; somewhere you only got to know if you loved her the way she deserved. He circled her, doubling back until she closed a hand on his wrist.

"Wait," she said, her voice hoarse, the unyielding stream of sound she'd been making soft, but desperately into his ear leaving her mouth dry.

She rotated to sit sideways, sighing as she slid back to pull her leg over, and then tugging down the bottom half of her suit. "If I get a weird parasite fish in my cunt, you're doing the talking in the ER," she said. He grinned, tweaking her clit. Her eyes rolled, lids twitching over dilated pupils rimmed in green. "Unfair," she moaned, not quite managing accusatory.

"I know. Give me those." He took both pieces of her swimsuit from her. She straddled him again, and enough of the lube had transferred onto her quim for her to slide. It was incredibly distracting, but she'd dp more than distract him if he fucked this up, he had no doubt. He'd found the ring, sure, but they didn't make fabric detectors. He didn't think. He was not going to have to find out. He swung the top over his head and lobbed it toward the blanket. It landed about ten feet further up.

"Eh. Seven points," Meredith said, leaning into his side.

He looked down at her. "How are you calculating that?" She shrugged. There was a gleam in her eye that made him decidedly nervous. She'd moved her arms, ostensibly to grab onto his, but she was very focused on the hand poised to toss the bottom half of her suit. "If this goes wild due to interference, you're going after it."

"Derek." She blinked at him. "I don't speak sports words."

"Oh, really, Miss 'I hustled guys in Fenway bars?'"

"That is why I don't tell you things," she said, grinning. Like almost anything she'd claimed to hate out of fear, being known was something she'd ended up loving.

"Sorry to ruin whatever you were about to do."

"Toss the thing already."

He squeezed a last stream of water out of the fabric and balled it up before he lobbed it. There was a distant thwop as the bottoms hit their bag. "Ha!" He slammed a fist into the air. Meredith didn't look impressed. "What? Ten points!"

"They're gonna drip on my clothes."

"Oh yeah?" He gathered her legs up, one arm under her knees, and the other hand on the inside of her thigh. "I think we can kill the time they'll need to dry."

"More big promises."

He stretched a finger out, and her breath caught. He paused, examining her through the distortion of the water, and quickly switched his tactic, taking her clit between two fingers. She bucked in his arms, moaning against his shoulder as he stroked her. When he pressed another finger against the tip of her glans, she shuddered hard enough that he thought she might be coming already.

"Fuck," she gasped, releasing her hold on his neck to jam a hand in his pocket. He grabbed her by the waist to keep her from twisting away from him, and she grunted in protest.

"There aren't currents, but this is still water."

"Whatever." She was not, he knew, ready to be dunked, but she was wrong if she thought he wasn't keeping a tally for the future. A future when she wasn't pulling his cock out of his swim trunks, her hand slick, and her mind as one-tracked as it ever got.

Her exclamation as he entered her held the crow she'd held back the first time she'd surfaced. He moved down onto both knees, supporting her back as she got her balance.

"You okay?" he asked. The flash in her eyes told him exactly what she would've demanded in any other context, or at least that every other word would've been a variant on "fuck." Here, surrounded by water, and with him the only thing holding her up save for her narrow feet dug into the silt, she hesitated.

"Yeah. I am."

It took a minute to find an angle that worked for her, and he considered retreating to the shore where one of them would have a hand free. Then, her fingers dug into his shoulders. "There?"

She nodded, crying out again as she bumped against his pelvic bone. The buoyancy made it easier for her to rock forward, rubbing against him as he thrust, but he could see her holding back.

"I'm not gonna let you fall." He moved one arm under her again, which turned out to be the right call. Her cry of relief was followed by another, more frantic yelp. She'd pulled her legs up too far as she arced backward, and missed the mark trying to get her footing. "Got you," he reminded her, tightening his hold.

"Yeah." For a moment, she was still but for the loose pieces of her hair floating around her, and her chest heaving as her breathing evened out Her eyes would only only be unfocused like that for a few blinks, but to see her like that, not weighed down by anything, was all he needed.

She hadn't stopped smiling by the time he set her on her feet by their things, and he pulled a towel out of the bag for her, deciding to let her see for herself that her bathing suit had not, in fact, soaked through to her clothes. He couldn't get over how alive she looked.

"Definitely a dock," she said, plopping down on the blanket.

"We'll come out here every weekend."

"When we can," she amended, always so much more realistic.

He sat next to her, resting his chin on her shoulder. "Hey. I'm proud of you."

She squinted out at the water. "Me too."

It would take another year for them to get out to the lake-pond again; a long year, that left both of them significantly more scarred. He'd notice her trace the mark from her liver donation, made within a week of their venture into the water. She wasn't used to it; he'd know that, but she'd still have worn her shorter bikini. Meredith Grey had learned that her scars didn't always have to be hidden once they'd healed, and he'd consider himself privileged to be the one she let see the pain they caused in the process.