Callie was nuts. Meredith had suspected it for years. She respected it. She was also not having it. The sickeningly sweet smile shifted into an exasperated line. That made things better, slightly. She looked more like Callie. She was still nuts. Cracked. One of them had a cracked head, and it was not Meredith. She'd seen the X-rays.

Derek squeezed her hand. She narrowed her eyes at him. Her left eyelid felt strange, a little bit like the time she'd decided rhinestones were a great idea, but she knew it was only puffy. She'd touched it enough that Derek had taken her wrist to make her stop.

He'd been touching her all day—lightly, waiting for her to flinch, but she didn't. Not when it was him—like she was the one who shouldn't be here. Maybe he was saving up, so when he had to leave, he'd be able to reassure himself she was alive. She wouldn't be able to tell him. Jackson had held up five fingers wherever she pointed at her mouth. The blurry week that'd passed had been one of six. Once he'd gotten that across, he'd rocked his hand in the air. Five weeks left, maybe. Callie had held her hands up; her uncertainty overplayed. Whomever she'd been in high school, Calliope Iphigenia Torres hadn't been in drama club.

A tibial plateau fracture. Six weeks could pass before she could bare weight, and her wrist bones might be fused by then. She could breathe, at least. That was a novelty, and she'd taken such deep breaths the first few times she woken up that Derek had put his hand on her chest like he thought something might be wrong. She didn't blame him. Her scans had been a mess. The one place he didn't touch was her throat. He could've. The fingers that had dug into her neck had been thick and rough. Nothing like his.

He could take his hand off her freaking arm, though. She wasn't getting up. They'd raised her into a sitting position; and wherever she lifted her head further the shrieking tea kettle sound got worse, and her skull tightened around her brain. It made her clench her jaw, which hurt like hell regardless of the Dilaudd Nurse Stella had released into her IV. They'd switched her off the morphine, post-op. She'd never gone in to mark it as an allergy, but after her appendectomy she'd had too many things she didn't want to let slip out; especially if she'd forget saying them. She was grateful Derek remembered that. Whether he'd be here until they took the IV out or not, he couldn't stay with her around the clock, and eventually writing wouldn't make her head spinny. Derek had showed her the CT from yesterday. Clear. All signs were that the concussion was healing. Slowly. Her patients' follow-up appointments always snuck up on her, but on the other side, everything moved so freaking slowly.

Oh, now he was giving her a look. Meredith, he mouthed. Well. Probably said, but she couldn't be certain. She never claimed to be able to read lips. Lexie had, and she'd sort of sucked at it. Come on, he added, ormaybe you're a surgeon. She hadn't said that when her mom had been a belligerent patient. And she wasn't doing that. Today.

"Meri, Meri, quite contrary." She grimaced at the voice in her head. If her audience thought it was for them, fine. Callie was snapping her fingers at Derek. Her lipstick was incredible as always, regardless of the fact that Meredith didn't understand that she'd said phone until he put one in her hand. She swiped and held it up. Meredith side-eyed it, expecting some reminder of the injuries Callie had gotten through. Dirty pool. The picture was of Zola and Bailey. Dirtier pool. She tried to respond, but Derek was holding her fingers together, pressing the middle one the hardest. McJackass.

Stubborn McJackass who knew her too well, and was perfectly capable of waiting her out. Okay, fine. She met his eyes, and he shifted his grip, his arm pressed against hers to help her pull up a few inches. Her right foot slipped in spite of the grippy sock on her foot, giving Wilson, who was holding the catheter bag, a full view of her vulva. At the same time, her gown flapped down to hang off her elbow on her good arm. They hadn't retied it after taking off the EKG pads. Derek grabbed it with the hand he'd had on her shoulder, but if he could've broken the grip she had on his hand, he didn't try. His eyes shot over to Jo, who put the bag down and came around to fix it.

Meredith looked down; immediately regretting it. The bandage on her chest reminded her of Derek's after the gunshot. She didn't want to imagine what the skin under it looked like, but she could, based on the marks above and on top of her breasts.

"Fucking snitch."

She swallowed. It hurt. That was why there was no damage closer to her other scars. He'd had a goal. A primary goal. Jo's fingers were cold, and Meredith focused on that. She wasn't modest. Her body was a body. Other people were, though, and that was what made it weird. She couldn't avoid making eye contact with Jo, not unless she closed her eyes, and that took her downstairs to the treatment room. The resident's expressive face was still. She made a bow with the ties, her fingertips darting over Meredith's shoulder. Meredith searched her gaze for pity; she'd found it in most of them. If it was there, it was deeply buried. She finished the double-knot and nodded at Meredith. Not pity. Empathy. She felt the question build in her own eyes. Jo backed away.

Her arm was shaking. Derek moved closer, easing his under her shoulders. You've got this. Callie lifted the whole pillow propping up Meredith's leg to move it to the chair she'd arranged next to the walker. Her spine bent back, like her body was trying to find a way to release the scream she couldn't voice. She couldn't do anything. She needed her to stop but moving it back would hurt just as much. Trying to move it herself hurt. Callie gestured for her to rotate toward her. Meredith shook her head. She wasn't ready for this. Not yet.

She clutched Derek's hand. He'd read her mind before. Couldn't he hear her begging to stop? He pressed his lips to her temple and hummed, rocking her gently like she was Bailey. She couldn't hear him, but it felt like she could, almost. It gave her something beyond the damn squealing. She slid her right leg across the sheet and onto the floor. Derek guided her hand to the walker, moving his hold farther down. She gripped it.

She gripped his wrist. Trying to break his grip. Gripping her throat, be lifted her off her feet.

Callie had Meredith's elbow cradled in one arm, and her other hand in her armpit. Jo held the wide end of the walker down. Four of them for her to rise from a bed, something she'd thought nothing of under a week ago. It had been a week.

She pulled up.

The two limbs holding her weight shook. Her chest burned. The shrieking returned, and Meredith squeezed her eyes shut. Blood fled from her knuckles. Derek and Callie were holding her steady. In her head she knew that. In her head she was falling. Her stomach dipped with the feeling. Sweat rolled down her forehead and mixed with the tears that rolled off her chin. Her already-swollen throat tightened.

Her eyes met Jo's. The resident's watchful expression changed. Her lips moved sharply, and in spite of the way it now felt like giant hands were gripping her head, about to fling her down to the floor, Meredith felt a rush of relief.

Okay. Callie's lips stretched to form another word, easy, or wait. It didn't matter. Meredith sank onto the side of the bed. She breathed heavily through her nose, swallowing convulsively, in spite of the pain, but was no use. Spins were a calling card.

Saliva flooded her mouth, and she pressed her lips together. That wasn't right, but she couldn't think of what was; not until her body heaved forward. Callie grabbed her shoulder, tilting her sideways, and Derek was moving her hair out of the way. A glove pressed against her lip, and she remembered watching Jackson explain this situation to a patient. She'd told him he'd looked like he was demonstrating something else entirely, and he'd said, "you'd know," and Alex had responded, "You think Grey still has a gag reflex?" and she'd shoved him, and had any of them ever thought about how miserable it would be to have Ensure puke dribbling out of the side of their mouth, while someone pulled their cheek back to be sure they didn't aspirate?

She stopped heaving, and Jo withdrew her finger. Meredith lowered her eyes. She'd puked in front of the whole surgical floor; those who hadn't seen her naked on an OR table might've seen her dancing on a table at Joe's, and she couldn't be sure she'd never flashed her boobs there. She'd flashed her everything at Jo within the past five minutes. Meredith Grey had finally found the mortification line.

She let Callie lift her legs onto the bed while Derek shifted, lying her down on the recumbent bed. She expected him to pull away as the other two repositioned her tubes and straightened her covers, but he didn't. Slowly, she curled against him; his sweater was so much softer than the hospital pillowcase, and he was here. She could let him hold her for as long as that was true.

Derek did not like this situation, especially because he wasn't sure how it'd happened. Karev had written WEDNESDAY on her white board, and Meredith had nodded, then pointed at the clock, Derek, and the door. He got the message. Karev was on-call; she wanted him to leave. But being on-call didn't mean he'd be free to spend the whole night in her room. She'd shaken off the residual grogginess from the second surgery, and the renewed energy suck of the incisions. She could hold onto true wakefulness about a third of the time, and far too much of that was taken up with poking and prodding that put her in visible pain. The rest was excruciating in a different way; she couldn't look at a screen for any amount of time, and print wasn't better. If he put the wall TV on, she could watch peripherally for longer than looking directly at a tablet, but where she was hilarious making up commentary for subtitled films, she must not have been holding her own attention. Leaving it on didn't do much to change the time it took her eyes to lose focus. He wished he could at least know where she was going. Sometimes he noted a familiar impression, and thought Ellis, Cristina, Lexie, but he couldn't be sure.

Getting her up had gone better than yesterday. Her breathing wasn't the slightest, and at once she'd been settled in the glider for the nurses to change the sheets, she'd sat upright, looking out the window. She'd made a face at the parking lot, and they'd had a silent conversation about what she could and couldn't do with that kind of view. He'd pointed to the interior window, the one that faced the nurse's station, and an adorable dust of pink had risen in her cheeks. She'd pointed back at him.

"NOPE! I ARRANGED THAT PEEPHOLE FOR YOU SWEETIE," Callie had said.

He'd turned to take in Meredith's reaction, hoping she got at least a hint of the strangeness of Callie's ponytail bouncing along with the word peephole. Her eyes had been on the accessories in Callie's hands. Crutches.

"OH, DON'T WORRY. I'M NOT A MASOCHIST. THOSE ARE FOR TOMORROW." She'd waved her hands, which definitely looked more like she was shoving the idea into the far future. Meredith relaxed. He'd given Callie a look while rubbing between Meredith's shoulder-blades, above her bandages, "WHAT? BETTER FOR HER NOT TO WORK HERSELF UP ABOUT THEM, RIGHT?" Callie had given Meredith a smile that would've made Zola—potentially Bailey—side-eye her, and then moved the crutches further into the corner of the room, out of sight of the head of the bed. He wasn't sure how she could know Meredith so well and be so off-pitch, but he figured it related to Arizona's hospitalization.

Other than that, the one distraction he'd been able to offer had been tic-tac-toe on the white board. Maggie was going to run her through the ASL alphabet tomorrow, and if she could keep her head up the way she had today, he was going for hangman.

Still, the day had been a lot, and she'd been dozing when Karev had come in with the day nurse doing her last circuit. He hadn't come in while she wasn't paying attention since Thursday, and he obviously didn't know where to stand. She'd been taken off the PCA, and rather than keeping her asleep, the sudden injection of pain meds would wake her. It was a gentle awakening, not like the jolts that caused more pain. It might be too much to hope they made consciousness the better option, but they were the intervals when she'd fight returning to sleep. He'd positioned Karev off to the side, so that he could guide her attention, and she'd gone from drowsiness to smiling without a stop at confusion. He'd squeezed her hand, aware that she'd say he couldn't be proud of her for that.

He was.

"Jo's on, too," Karev had said, while Derek took his time getting together the stuff he'd take home to stay overnight for the first time in over…well, in four months. Karev wouldn't take any bullshit her increased coherence might inspire. That didn't make it easier to leave her. He'd been trying to figure out if it was possible to subtlety get his sweater off and tuck it under her pillow when she let her eyelids flutter shut.

It wasn't as though she was in danger. They wouldn't have let her out of the ICU—especially, he'd hated to think, with her name on the hospital. Still, he'd spent the whole trip home sure he should retrace his steps once the kids were asleep.

He might have, if his phone hadn't rung while he was shutting Zola's door when his phone buzzed, and he leaned against the door in relief that it wasn't Karev's face on his screen. "Cristina?"

"Not exactly."

He crossed the hall to his and Meredith's bedroom and closed the door; he might've only had one sister in the house, but she was the nosiest. "Harris."

"Shouldn't you sound happier about that? You sent your pinch hitter country-hopping to find me, Dr. Shepherd. I never thought I'd cross your mind again."

That Meredith's "ex-whatever" held strain in her voice the same way his wife did was all that kept Derek from unloading on her. "Is she there?"

"If you think I left my phone in her hands, this is taking a serious toll on you," Cristina's tone was as dry as Sadie's was flirtatious. Bravado. Whistling in the dark. "How is she?" she added.

"She's…." Shying away from a P.T. she didn't recognize on sight. Crying because she'd been woken by the pressure of swelling under her leg cast; her shoulder aching no matter how her arm was propped. Curling up whenever her head felt like the world wanted to shake her off, and unable to tell anyone about it in more than grimaces and rough strokes on a whiteboard. All weakness in her mind. Even for—especially for—a surgeon who knew that her body was going through natural cycles. Both women had been Meredith's capital-p Person at pivotal points; they'd seen her mettle, and her vulnerabilities. But he'd seen her eyes whenever she related that one or the other had called her soft.

He shared the success of the stabilization, the removal of the NG tube, and the beginning of a liquid diet. Facts. The feelings were hers to give. (The face she'd made at the taste of vanilla Ensure he held onto selfishly.)

"And she's not talking. It's not just that she can't…I'll stave off the police as long as she needs me to, but she hasn't asked what happened, or to speak to the police. I'm sure that if she thought anyone else might get hurt, he'd be in custody. But if she didn't know that…. Almost all her injuries make communication more difficult. The hearing loss…I don't know if that could've been purposeful, but everything else…. But I don't know why anyone would want…." He slammed his fist against a pillow, and then tossed it toward the bag he was going to take with him to the hospital.

"There are people who simply like causing detestation," Sadie said. "There are also people who can make just about anything look accidental."

"I know."

(About Sadie's father, Meredith had once said, "He's a medical magnate who'd hire Mengele if it couldn't be traced back to him. At home, his corruption wasn't as well hidden.")

"The detective thinks it has something to do with her staying over at a Sea-Tac hotel in December."

"I can't help you, there. I haven't been in the States in six months."

Derek threw another pillow. The more he'd thought about it, the more likely it had seemed She'd had popped in and out of Meredith's life from the time they were teenagers, and shown up on their doorstep after five years of chance run-ins. A meet-up six years after Sadie had taken off without a wave made sense, and the holidays had made it more likely that she'd be in the country—To him, anyway. For her, it might be the opposite.

"You can help us somewhere," Cristina snapped. "Is that what you actually said?"

After their single group night out, he'd laughed at Meredith's micro-crisis over how similar her best friends were. They'd never see it. They'd snapped at each other the whole time, and he'd discovered that Lexie had a murderous glare that intensified whenever Death and Die shared a look. Protectiveness or jealousy, either was sweet—although it had taken him a little while to be sure Meredith wasn't the one she'd envied.

"Maybe," Sadie said, after a long pause.

That was the hesitance that'd made him give her the benefit of the doubt while she was an intern. Her time at the morgue could've explained her initial attitude. No matter how much a program emphasized that the cadavers their med students were working with had had identities, it sometimes took time for them to think of patients as people. She had progressed over those few months, but then seeing her screw-ups affect people had intimidated rather than motivated her.

"This might not be relevant. She never told me the whole story. Actually, she never told me any of it. I collected it in drips and drabs. None of the other little medical legacies quite got her, and whenever she gave them something new to talk about, the old would be hinted at. You know, 'Did you hear Grey burned her acceptance from Harvard?' 'That's noth—"

"—she what?" Cristina exclaimed in the background. Derek smirked. It was petty of him to be competitive over which of Meredith's stories he knew, but he was a flawed man.

("Mom didn't get in at all," she'd told him, obviously relishing the words. "I found rejection letters for Radcliffe and Harvard Med filed away. A bunch of my teachers were graduates, though, whenever there was an article in the Globe about the timeline of the Harvard-Radcliffe merger, I'd bring it in and ask for their opinion. The alumni would sort of stutter through an attempt at feminism, but the alumnae would go on for a whole class period about sexism or solidarity. Got a calc test postponed that way junior year." Whatever the story he was about to hear from Sadie, he didn't think Meredith would crow over it the same way.)

"I don't know why anyone would track her down over this particular scandal," Sadie said. "But I'll tell you-"

"And the police," Derek cut in. "If it's relevant."

"Yes. If that's the case…but you should know, after Seattle…well, last time I checked, they don't consider crazy, lesbian, ex-felons who dabbled in coke to be reliable witnesses. No matter how attached, sober, and medicated they might be, presently."

"Lesbian?" Cristina asked.

"Men never actually did it for me. They simply had their uses. Sorry, Dr. Shepherd."

"I…don't mind?"

Keeping mum about her past, and then dump out a series of details for his judgement was one of Meredith's old tactics. She'd never revealed everything, that couldn't be more obvious, but Sadie hadn't exactly bowled him over. He knew that while she might've been picked up for coke, she'd done worse.

"Yang says there are kids, now?"

"Er, we…yeah, two." He glanced at the monitors sitting on the bedside table. "Why?"

"Do you let them loose in the hospital?"

"Of course not!"

"Why?"

"Because it's dangerous."

"Lawsuit waiting to happen." Cristina added.

"I imagine the higher-ups at MGH were balancing those reactions whenever they caught little Meredith in an unauthorized area."

He tried to imagine Zola navigating the surgical floor of Grey+Sloan alone. It was impossible because someone who knew her would be around every corner. That must've been closer to what Meredith had had at Seattle Grace. She'd escape from daycare, an on-call room, or Thatcher, and before she could…spend too long in trouble, Richard, or Adele, or whomever would intercept her. She'd still gotten further than Zola would. Any hospital would've been far more familiar to her than a new home, in a new city.

"They told Ellis not to let it happen again. Ellis passed that message on."

"She told her first grader not to get caught?"

"Correct. She treated it like a building-wide game of hide 'n' seek. If a babysitter backed out, or Ellis was too busy to take her home, she'd put her to bed in an on-call room. Death used to say she never got caught wandering, because she had an uncanny sense for when Ellis would come back. I'm sure she did, but also, I doubt she got checked on much." Derek bounced his fist against the comforter. Would she sense Karev was coming back if she woke up alone? "Once she could take the T on her own, I think she spent more time there. Got all of her school-mandated volunteer hours candy-striping; would rather be in the cafeteria getting surgery-sniffing residents to help her with Algebra II homework than doing it at home. By the time I knew them, she was sneaking into galleries. If Ellis noticed her, she'd get quizzed on the procedure over whatever meal they next sat down to. She watched plenty more without being detected."

"What'd she see?" he asked, thinking of her eyes darting around the room constantly over the past week, the rings of bruises surrounding them the determinant for whether they looked more blue, or gray, or if the tiny blue-green flecks stood out.

"Many things, and more. One situation in particular had to do with a Dr. Schraeder—"

"Schroeder?"

"No, sorry, too used to German, I suppose. With an 'a.'"

"Oh.… I thought… the piano kid. From Peanuts?"

Sadie laughed. "That would make sense, wouldn't it? No, she loathed piano, because Ellis forced her to be diligent about it, and Meredith did well, progressed on pace, if not better but her mother never went to a recital. Then, when she wanted to add drums—"

"And Ellis made her take the AP Music Theory exam. Yeah, I heard that. Seen her play drums, but never piano."

"Same here," Sadie said, pointedly. "I used to think it might be Ellis's distorted method of giving her a fallback plan. Didn't know her as well, then. I didn't expect her to lose her shit over her getting into med school. It made her reaction to the idea of Death running off with the band seem supportive."

"She didn't know how to be supportive," Derek said, and Cristina hummed in agreement. It'd be almost nice to think that Ellis saw Meredith's potential and knew herself well enough to try to shield her from losing someone she loved to jealousy.

Meredith had told him what Richard said about his decision to leave Ellis. It'd burned in his chest in the middle of the night. Had that jealousy had truly come out of nowhere? They'd worked together for five years. He'd had times where he'd envied Addison, and…well, Miranda had a point about Mark, but it'd almost always been tempered by knowing that they wanted him to succeed alongside them. That they believed in his skill. Ellis admired Richard as a surgeon. He'd picked up enough from surgical videos, from excerpts of the journal, and out-of-context comments in Roseridge's confining living room, but there was a difference between saying, "you will do this," "I know you can do this," and "I believe you can do this, and I will be there every step of the way."

Christ.

"Schraeder was a general surgeon," Sadie continued. "Maybe trauma. Whether he was an Angel of Death or a Dr. Dick, I don't know. Kelsey Van Der Hout insisted that she found him OD'ing."

Derek winced. He had seen pictures of Meredith as a child; potentially all of them unless Thatcher had single copies inaccurately labeled Molly. It wasn't impossible to imagine her appearing in a doorway, taking in the man with his sleeve rolled up and saying, "What are you doing, Dr. Schraeder?"

"Whatever his crime," Sadie said. "She testified against him."

"What?" Cristina asked, at the same time Derek demanded, "How old was she?"

"Eight or nine. It wasn't fresh gossip at the time I came to live with Dr. Harris Himself."

"When she was thirteen," Derek clarified.

"I used to say she was my fourteenth birthday present from the universe. Always got her to stop yelling at me. She'd give me that side-eye and tell me to shut up. Embarrassed that she might be seen as a gift."

"She is."

"Oh, I understand that, now. Then, I was being manipulative and self-serving. I really did…I appreciated her, in my twisted way. I realize that's exactly what Ellis did, but that woman was not the one who sat through two showings of 10 Things I Hate About You on her twenty-first birthday."

"Seriously?" Cristina asked.

"She saw it at least one more time; I found the ticket-stub in the washing machine. She always wanted the declarations and the family. She just…."

"Didn't know how. Okay," he said. "What you're suggesting is that someone was, what? Taking retribution? Twenty-five years later?"

"It might have nothing to do with that. There are all kinds of remote possibilities. Maybe she pissed someone off in Italy during her semester abroad, or somewhere we met while traveling. Could be about the summer Ellis was doing research there in Seattle. She's…she's told you about that, right?"

"Yeah," Derek said, at the same time as Yang's, "Duh."

Fifteen-year-old Meredith had come to Seattle in 1993. She'd discovered concerts, and had had a girlfriend, her first sexual relationship, and according to her, the only romantic one until theirs.

"It could be a grudge from Dartmouth," Sadie added. "And I wasn't around for everything in high school."

"You were both teenagers who shoved people away—"

"Himself sent me to boarding school sophomore year. Even with the 'generous donation' that 'coincided' with my enrollment, I got booted halfway into my junior year."

Did you bite four people?

"Meredith might be squeaky clean these days, but my Death wasn't. I didn't teach her to ignore the rules, either. You know about the bois next door?"

"Mmhmm." It'd been surprising that Meredith had had babysitters from the house next door, since "they called it 'a house of queens: men, sisters, and in-betweens.'" He couldn't tell if it'd made Ellis seem more or less human, but voice that had only made Meredith snort. "Ports and storms. I spent as much time with the nuclear family on the other side."

"She'd prop an emergency door to let them in to the AIDS ward after visiting hours."

"Not to contradict you, Harris," Cristina said. "Because part of being Mer's friend is never knowing everything, but that's definitely our Meredith."

"Yeah." Derek pressed his thumb and forefinger over his eyes. "It is." His Meredith wasn't clean, or dirty. She had fifty-one wins; she wasn't afraid to get blood on her hands, but she'd do everything she could to keep it from spilling. Was she protecting someone? Taking on someone else's pain? Hiding a spot he'd think was too soft? He had to convince her that there was no such thing, and he'd have to do it without words, whether or not she could hear him.

Derek crossed his arms and tried not to let Maggie see him shift his weight. Meredith had her head turned away from them, but he didn't think she was asleep. Inspired by the way she'd clutched his sweater whenever he got on the bed with her, he'd stopped in the gift-shop on the way to daycare that morning, and charged the kids with finding "something for Momma." He'd been prepared to end up purchasing three plushies. They'd surprised him by picking out a fox with knobby fur and a fuzzy tail.

He'd given it to her with a picture of them standing in the lobby holding it, and her eyes had glistened. Then she'd zoomed in, moving the focus from Anatomy Joanne to Tiggy. The loveys were meant to stay in the car, and had been since the time Gigi, Zola's giraffe had been left in the toddler room. They'd been desperate enough to travel the ninety minutes round-trip to retrieve it, and then hadn't had the hospital master key, so Owen had had to be called.

Zola had passed out in her car-seat on the ferry home. Meredith had climbed into the back with her, tracing the tear tracks on her cheeks with a knuckle, and told him about leaving Anatomy Jane behind in Seattle. "We passed the hospital. Mom said something about never seeing it again. That's when I understood. I didn't say anything. I'd been trying so hard not to upset her, and I want to think that if I'd cried, she'd have figured out why…. But I'd been carrying her around for two years, and I don't think she ever realized I left her."

Twenty-four-hour daycare had lowered the risk, along with the duplicate Tiggy hidden in the back of their closet. He'd tugged the photo down to put the diaper-bag at the center, letting her know the toys had ended up securely inside and tickled her cheek with the fox's tail. She'd snatched it away and smacked his arm with it.

Now, she was gripping its fur tightly. Those agile fingers were the source of her sister's ire. Between the three of them, they'd cataloged the baby signs Bailey used. He was sure Meredith had learned others he hadn't picked up, but Maggie had declared that excellent, and then pointedly signed A-B-C.

To her credit, Meredith's expression had been chagrinned. What had followed was the release of a certain percentage of sisterly frustration that should've happened about the time they were Z and B's age. Maggie had demonstrated, Meredith had tried to copy her. Maggie had grabbed her hand, Meredith had smacked. He'd interceded somewhere around M, guiding her fingers the way he had while teaching her how to hold instruments.

"Why's she all pliable for you?" Maggie had demanded. "Nope, don't give me whatever's behind that smirk, Derek Shepherd. Find another answer."

"Don't yank her around. She's protective of her fingers. Guide her, don't manipulate her," he'd tried to explain.

"I feel like you're still not talking about signs."

He'd shrugged. Meredith had looked at him, signing "what?" with one hand, which evoked an exasperated noise from Maggie. "The babies weren't going to need to spell," he'd pointed out.

After they'd finally gotten through to Z, Meredith had tapped her temple, and then clumsily spelled out "S-E-S-A-M-"

Maggie had waved her hands to cut her off. "Sesame Street? You only know fingerspelling from Sesame Street?" Derek gave her props for enunciating, whether she'd meant to or not.

Meredith had folded her lips and winced. The cut was almost healed. He hadn't noticed her picking at this one, the way she had with her scrapes post-plane crash. People had almost immediately treated her like her lack of injury was a lack of damage—Long before he'd stopped checking the wound in her leg for inflammation—

He knew it was better this way. He wouldn't be nearly as able to help her one-handed, but hadn't she been singled out and isolated enough?

"With Z-O-L-A?" Maggie had asked.

Meredith had shaken her head.

"Then, when? In, like, 1984?" Maggie had started flashing ASL numbers, and then redone them with two hands. Meredith rocked her hand in the air, and her sister had shaken her head, wide-eyed. "Good grief! Where'd she learn the baby sign from?"

"Uh…. A YouTube channel, I think."

"Can we ask her on the iPad? Thirty seconds. I can build on that."

He'd typed the question, watching how she'd squinted at the screen. She'd closed her eyes not long after he'd put it on the rolling tray out of her reach. A protest, yes, but he'd also seen the tightening at the side of her forehead. She wasn't ready for more than momentary screen time; no matter how many problems it'd solve. He'd indicated for Maggie to come over to the window. He'd had a favor to ask of her, but he hadn't gotten a word in yet.

"I don't want to frustrate her more than a white board." she was saying. "Most of the floor nurses know, you know, 'toilet,' 'eat,' 'hurts.' Everyone knows the alphabet, save Oscar over there. Who didn't get the ABCs in Pre-K?"

"She's in a pretty good mood, actually. Not sure she went to Pre-K. Kindergarten may have been a wash too," he said, and then winced when he remembered why that was. "Kind of amazes me Ellis let her watch Sesame Street consistently."

"Too irrational?"

"Whimsical. All the press was about how it met kids where they were. Taught them the basic skills on their level.… Ellis always wanted better than that. An innovative surgeon has to have an amount of creativity. I guess at some point she understood that or read the studies about how kids process information. Maybe it was Thatcher." If Ellis had read a word of child-psych, wouldn't she have seen that hers was traumatized? She was lucky that Meredith had caught up in school, let alone that she'd done well. "Keep at it. She catches on quickly, and it'll give her something to think about. She's gonna need that."

"Yeah." Maggie sighed. "You wanted to ask something? I'm on-call tonight, but if you need a babysitter this weekend—"

"Ah…maybe. That's not—If you're not comfortable with this, I understand, but…while you were getting your adoption records, did you happen to make friends at the courthouse?"

"I mailed in a form from the DFS website."

"Oh. That might be something we can—"

"But I might know someone."

"Oh," he said again, and she cocked her eyebrow. "Okay. You know Yang? Of course you do. I, uh, I sent her to Berlin."

"Excuse me?"

"Meredith had this…other friend. Sadie."

"The crazy ex-girlfriend?"

"Apparently, the diagnosis is new, but…you knew that?"

"That she's bi? We watched Legally Blonde last time I went over. She's right, Emmett could be replaced with Vivian."

"Uh, he could, yeah. She also has a thing for Selma Blair. So, okay, Sadie's in Berlin, and I thought she might have been…something might've happened while they were younger. Turns out, it did. Maybe. Meredith was a witness in a case that got an MGH doctor charged with a felony. From what I can gather, he was assaulting patients, but there's not much online. I don't want to bring up something like that and find out it has nothing to do with this. I thought if someone could pull her records…."

Maggie bit her lip and looked past him at the slanted blinds. "You going to fill the police in? Or let them know I did anything?"

"I'll give them the information, not the source. I'm worried that they're too busy trying to figure out who she's cheating on me with to look further."

"Pah!" Maggie waved a hand in front of her face. "Sorry, She may've been pissed at you, but it was still Derek-this, Derek-that. With how much she's been working, and the time she spends on the kids? The effort she put into Christmas, alone—"

"I know, I was here!" He stepped back, flattening his hands on the windowsill. "Sorry. She's not the only one spending a lot of time in their head, and—I keep thinking I could've done something then—I barely…. We…."

"Zola says it was the best Christmas ever, she got all kinds of brave princess stuff, and according to Richard who 'can't say much, you understand,' you two didn't stay in the same room if you could avoid it."

"That's not— It's not—" He thought of Meredith in his lap while everyone sang carols, the only full memory he had of her once the kids were done opening gifts, and then having Zola meet him in front of the nursery door to tell him Mommy had fallen asleep in her bed. Realizing that he hadn't heard her snoring in the three days he'd been home before that. "It could've gone better," he acknowledged. "I didn't want her to think I was only trying because it was Christmas."

If he'd been talking to Miranda or Callie, they would've told him how stupid he was. Maggie only pursed her lips. "Well, considering all of that, she'd have to be a lot less obsessed with you to have room for an affair in her brain."

He leaned against the window, watching Meredith's thumb worry the fox's torso. "Her mind is pretty complex," he said. "But I know it's not that."

It said something that he did, didn't it? If they were repeating cycles? But he'd known it for a long time. He'd known could've lost her over what happened at the prom. Her aversion to cheating had been there before she'd understood what had happened in her family. In actually, it might not have been Thatcher whose broken vows she'd built her values around, but Richard's broken promises. The rejection of love in favor of fidelity—and selfishness.

Her understanding of fairness wasn't the same as his. She was big on forgiveness, but not to the point of someone getting away with this kind of violence without some sort of intervention, be it punishment or assistance. Unless…Derek curled his fingers into his palms and squeezed his eyes shut, turning to the side so that if Meredith looked this way, she wouldn't take on responsibility for his fury. It wasn't hers. It belonged to everyone who'd had any part in making it plausible for her think she'd ever done anything to deserve this.

A/N If you missed it, last week's update was a one-shot called Covalence. Follow me to be sure you catch the one-shot on the last Friday of May!