Freaking jewelry.

Meredith had started planning this outfit too long ago to not be changing into it as easily as Clark Kent in a phone booth, but she'd frozen in front of her jewelry box. She'd inherited her grandmother's pearls from her aunt. They'd long been her most expensive piece, even once she'd taken on her mother's broaches, and the studs that'd been all she she'd worn once she'd taken out her unconventional piercings.

She'd worn a uniform for twelve years. Accessorizing had meant coloring her nails black, and donning leather cuffs, dark eyeliner, and combat boots. On weekends, grunge made it acceptable, hell preferable to wear the worn out jeans with holes that might double again before her mom noticed she needed new ones.. She'd collected and worn band tees ragged, borrowed from roommates, and used scissors and safety pins to adapt dresses purchased for fundraisers and recitals to wear clubbing.

College, and the facsimile of post-grad poverty she'd taken on to avoid having to ask for money more often than once a quarter, hadn't done anything to change her style. Then, she'd gone to the first of Mom's doctor's appointments wearing a wrinkled shirt, an old uniform skirt, and Docs that still had Dutch dirt in the soles. The doctor, who they hadn't seen again, had tossed a couple of phrases about the benefits of "moral support" at Meredith. She hadn't had to say anything. Her mother had still been Ellis Grey, and she hadn't let herself be steamrolled.

He'd left the room to get something, maybe one of the hundreds of pamphlets they'd collected, and Meredith had slumped in his studded leather chair. "Crap, what a dick." Her mother hadn't replied. Meredith had sat up. "How'd you get in with him this fast? Friend of a colleague?" Silence. Her hackles had risen. Her mom didn't go quiet unless she was super pissed. "Mom? Did I say something wrong?"

Her mother had turned to her, blank-faced. She hadn't been having flashbacks yet, but there'd been a few of these moments where she'd look around like a child lost in the park, recognizing no one, so thrown off by not knowing who she was. It'd passed by the time the doctor returned, but it'd been enough to show Meredith that she wasn't going to be given time to adjust. To represent Ellis Grey, she had to be as much like Ellis Grey as she could. She'd have to be the adult in the room.

Her mother had known little about Meredith's life and approved of less, but her sizes hadn't changed since tenth grade; she'd been getting sweaters for Christmas for years. She'd taken them out of storage and started med school. She'd watched her classmates metamorphose into adults, bursting out of Hanover as business casual butterflies who were easy to match with the college-kid caterpillars they'd been. Meredith's wardrobe hadn't evolved with her; she'd had to grow into it. She'd had to learn what she liked, not just what she thought she should wear.

Somehow, in all the time-she-couldn't-get-back spent making her brain come up with outfits like Cher's computer in Clueless, she'd neglected to request accessories for this one. She should've just changed into jeans to play Santa last night, so she could rewear that, but that'd never been part of the plan-which had involved not an intricate computer program but diagrams Derek would never see. She'd refused to be seen taking any path of least resistance. Even when they'd only been going out to dinner last night, her Christmas Eve ensemble had been unrelated to what she was going to wear on Christmas Day.

Plans could change. The look wasn't one could've pulled on their first Christmas—She wouldn't have tried—and she had options in case it'd felt too adult, in the stuffy, snobby way. While they decorated the tree, she'd worn jeans and a green sweater over a button-up. She had a cable-knit v-neck in a deep red that could work. She'd probably match Derek, but whatever. He was how she'd come to appreciate how versatile the style could be—He'd stuck to ties even as the weather cooled this year, sub(?)-consciously dressing for the job he'd rather have—Bonus, she could still pull off the ankle boots that were the only item that hadn't been traded out. Everything else she'd started with was too formal for her friends, too stiff to play with the kids, so unusual that Derek would notice, so ordinary that he wouldn't notice her.

Shoes were easier than jewelry. They'd been the one vanity her mom splurged on, saying, Men don't care what a woman's shoes look like, only what they do to her silhouette. Shoes are a way of connecting with other women (Ellis Grey for "making them jealous"), and pleasing myself—while Meredith went through year after year of loafers, gym sneakers, boots, and Mary Janes. If she'd been able to wear her mother's size, she might've rebelled by "borrowing" them, but she'd never grown into them, not even while pregnant with Bailey. The symbolism was as painful as her failed attempt to stuff and wear her mom's pumps. After that, she'd relied on Converse and Doc Marten's for a long time. Even after her college roommate had taught her to balance in heels, and she'd fallen for the siren song, she'd erred toward comfort. She'd learned to appreciate the power of a sharp stiletto, or strappy sandal, but she'd watched her mother kick her shoes off every night. The world was rough enough without your feet hurting.

Other accessories were harder. You could stay while invisible looking at shoes. Staring at jewelry could end with a pointless, catty glare, or, better, a rendezvous in the restroom. Smetimes you really did just wonder where they got the necklace. You could wander around a shoe department without being harassed by a clerk who refused to accept "just looking" and would essentially take her wrist hostage, oh, isn't that gorgeous? It's genuine blah-blah-blah alloy, with blah-blah-blah stones, cut with a microscopic drill! Here's my card. Slip it into your boyfriend's wallet, and I'm sure you'll find it in your stocking! She'd walk away feeling like Dopey in Snow White, her eyes turned into gemstones that she could no longer even see. The one piece she'd bought herself past the age of Hot Topic and Claire's was her watch, and her specifications had been "I'm about to be a surgical intern. I need something durable, and it needs to look like it fits me, not like I inherited from someone with a normal-sized wrist." She hadn't wanted questions about a Grey heirloom. She'd earned the damn thing herself.

If you accepted that even the pearls were functional, which she did, it wasn't until Derek came into her life that she'd had anything frivolous that she'd actually wear, and she had no doubt everyone knew he'd given her almost everything in her jewelry box. They'd be paying attention to things that would normally be unnoticed. She understood. She got swept up in other people's problems all the time, especially if it gave her the chance to ignore her own. That didn't mean she wanted the day to be full of scrutinizing looks, and conversations that ended whenever she or Derek entered the room.. She knew these people. They were her people. If the tension was obvious, or explicit, they'd contain themselves to empathetic expressions. If they thought she was overcompensating, she'd be pulled away constantly, and Derek would be dodging daggers from glares that said, what did you do this time? Their attempted return to their usual dynamic, without totally sweeping the damage under the rug, would probably have been attributed to denial if this was another birthday. In context, they would see the ring and the mother-in-law, that taken together screamed, It's Christmas! The time for truces! They wouldn't mean to be judgmental, but they would be. Eerily matchy weekend casual wasn't going to help change that.

She'd told herself that the shades didn't have to match exactly. It was Christmas; everyone was wearing reds and greens that clashed with each other. The black diamonds in her earrings would match anything; it didn't matter if the rubies below them didn't match her scarlet sweater dress. The problem was that they did.

The simple drops hadn't crossed her mind on the shopping trip where she picked out this scarlet sweater dress. It didn't seem statistically possible for them to be a perfect match—she needed Lexie to do that math, but Lexie would be smirking at her and quipping about other unlikely-but-perfect matches—but they were, which meant that the other part of the set, the riviere necklace that he'd given her for her thirtieth birthday, would, too. it would fall exactly right for the dress's square neckline.

Was this the right time to remind him of that first Christmas? Did he really not miss being the expert, while she tried to mask wonder with mockery? The awe hadn't left her completely. It amazed her that she'd adjusted to this—become compotent at it—this quickly. They were in it together, now, and it wasn't as though he'd lost his ability to surprise her.

In spite of the atmosphere shift, she'd been prepared for haphazard gifts. For shiny rocks that might at least be a financial sacrifice in some—most—situations, but would otherwise be as meaningless as she'd been raised to expect. She'd prepared to perform for the kids, while ensuring Derek got the you think I'm going to take that as an apology? If he had, it would mean he'd fully checked out.

How did he always manage to punch holes in her plans?

The bracelet he'd fastened around her wrist fell to the base of her palm as it hovered over the earrings. Derek tended to choose gold chains and settings to match her hair. Both the gift from today, and seven years ago sparkled silver in the morning sunlight. She ran a finger over the etchings. He wasn't going to react badly to memories.

He would've given her the moon and stars that first Christmas, if he'd thought she'd let him, but he'd figured her out instead.

He'd never made her feel like she should be more of a jewelry person. He didn't make a new piece the focal point of every birthday and Christmas. She didn't even wear what he did buy for her all that often. The tradition of male-provider buying empty-headed woman sparkly jewelry deserved her cynicism. It was patriarchal, controlling, and infantilizing. But starting with those earrings, she'd started to see beyond all of that. Yes, as her mother had often said, anything she really wanted, she'd be able to buy herself—once she'd gotten through her residency—but that was an example of how fundamentally her mother had misunderstood gift-giving. The pieces Derek gave her weern't what he would've given Addison, and not just because of their different colorings. They matched something he saw in her. Something beautiful and precious. If she'd been as clueless about gifts as everything else relationship, reliant on those What to Buy Your Hard to Buy for Man lists to reciprocate, she would've been screwed. A tie could never make him feel that.

It wasn't only the jewelry. The man could make lingerie meaningful. The times she'd discovered something lacy or lace-up under the tree, or upstairs once guests were gone and kids asleep, had been in years her body had changed: post-liver donation, whenever her period marked a monhly betrayal, after Bailey's birth. By that Christmas she'd known he was into her regardless, but it'd been a reminder similar to her slipping edible body paint into a gift-bag the year of the shooting. It wasn't as though they hadn't been having sex, or that she hadn't made it obvious that she admired his quick recovery. It'd put a pin on things, punctuating the year.

He wasn't a particularly easy person to buy presents for. Even working and living with him, it'd been hard to identify his needs, let alone tangible wants—the January birthday made it worse. She was not a birthday person, and had declared clearing out the study to be his birthday present that first year, and stuck to "experiences" from there.—Fine, yeah, there were fishing lures, but she had to leave something for the other people who, for whatever reason, wouldn't just put a bow on a bottle of Scotch.

Prior to this one, the Christmas immediately following the plane crash had been the most frustrating. The frazzled, pregnant, first-year attending in her had wanted to contend that ignoring his tantrums in order to get Liz across the country was a gift, but taking that credit would've made it easier for him to distance himself from his sisters. She'd refused to play the baby card. Bailey was a gift, that was for damn sure, but they'd made him together, and she hadn't been able to promise getting him safely out of layaway. Work-related stuff had also been a gamble, and even as his cheerleader, she hadn't trade in false promises. The Mariners-Yankees tickets she'd scored in the past would've been a painful reminder of Mark's absence. Luckily, there had been a new house to make theirs in every nook and cranny. The grill he'd dithered over. Framed prints for the study, including one of Joe Strummer and Courtney Love that seemed to have been taken for them. A digitizing turntable they hadn't had room for in Queen Anne's Hill. She'd been lucky that he'd overlooked the release of a book focusing on the Knicks of his childhood, and that she hadn't known the team was officially named "The Knickerbockers." More than anything, Derek loved having her rag on something like that. Overall, she'd considered it a triumph.

Last year, she'd had his presents before some aide at the White House dialed his number, and she didn't have to take it to Wyatt to know that if the holiday atmosphere hadn't frosted over so quickly, she wouldn't be stuck in front of a mirror worried that reminders of a good memory would send the wrong impression. So far, he'd read all his gifts purely: as attempts to prove she was supportive. She didn't have to dig very far to understand her pettier choices but was glad he'd missed them. Literally,, in one case. She needed to find an opportunity to retrieve the fleshlight hidden in the interior pocket of the duffel briefcase, and give it to him without alluding to the sex strike she'd declared at midnight last New Year's. (There'd been so many jokes about balls, blue and dropping, before it'd hit him that she was serious.)

Some of her success was entirely coincidental, or based on insight she couldn't be sure she'd had. She'd ordered the AppleTV, wall projector, and carefully picked DVDs thinking that the extended-stay must feel way too quiet for someone used to their clammer. No matter how much he'd complained about her roommates, or his sisters, he thought better with background noise. That, he'd say, was why he liked fishing: in the quiet, he didn't have to think. (She didn't even have to form the first word of "how does that work"for him to turn to her and say, "oh, you'd lose your mind." His smile always made it more reassuring than offensive.)

The digital frame had been for his desk at the NIH. If he'd pressed, she would've admitted to worrying that he needed to be reminded of their existence. Now, she thought everyone there needed to see him in other contexts and remember that he wasn't a free agent. (If they could see Zola's face and say "make it up to her," they needed to be sent over to the NIMH with the rats.)

"It can access the Dropbox folder," she'd told him. "If you want to watch that dance you just did on Bailey's wobble-board, you're not limited to your phone."

He'd smiled, softly. "I already drive everyone crazy refreshing that."

"For us, Daddy?" Zola had asked, transfixed by the decades of Christmas photos Meredith had already transfered.

"Yup. Looks like it can connect to the projector, too," he added, studying the box. "Watching videos will be almost like you're right there with me," he said. Almost. Meredith closed her eyes, momentarily breathless. "You have to do me a favor, though, okay? Use your new camera to take lots of pictures and videos of your mom, okay?"

"I will!" Zola held up the little pouch they'd gotten for her, and then frowned. "Auntie 'Melia, will you help me computer them?"

"If you ask nicely, any of your grown-ups would do that for you. Why not ask your mom?" In her periphery, Meredith noticed Carolyn frown, but this wasn't Amelia trying to avoid responsibility; she didn't do that with the kids. She knew Zola would have a reason.

Zola held the camera at arm's length. "'Hmm, I, Mommy, think Daddy would want to see you and B.B. Why don't we give him those only?'"

Everyone else in the room cracked up; even Bailey who had no idea what was going on, and she tried not to let on to how called out she felt. Derek saw through it, putting his arm around her.

"I thought that might be happening," he said. "But when you're the photographer, she can be your model."

"You're setting yourself up for a lot of pictures of my nostrils," she murmured.

"Never enough." He kissed the side of her nose.

Zola had handed the frame off to Carolyn and was inching toward the tree. Meredith surveyed the remaining presents. "Gold for Grams, Z."

While Carolyn opened the iPad from Kate's family, Meredith leaned against him. If she hadn't been adhering to a pattern Zola could follow—keeping her engaged even when it wasn't "purple for…?" "ME!"—he'd have skipped herself in the next round. "Never enough" hadn't even been on her list.

The new carry-on bag shouldn't have been a shock, given their situation, except that the one he'd given her for the birthday before her fellowship interviews had been hanging out in a closet for two and a half years. There was no reason for it, or the travel-sized bottles of her toiletries that she'd later find in her stocking. None other than encouraging her to visit him.

Discovering the LeapPad in her new backpack kept Zola from objecting to having breakfast before breaking into the stockings. The dishwasher door had barely closed before Derek started taking them down. Bailey had insisted on putting on his Sesame Street sneakers and was clomping back toward his brightly-colored horde carrying Elmo and his unopened "Lightning Da Queen" Duplo. Derek intercepted him, trading offering up a trade for the brick set. "This is Momma's stocking. Can you take it to her, please?"

It was a smart play. Bailey had started crawling behind Zola as she handed out gigts, and he took his chance to play delivery child seriously, perhaps believing it to be an audition.

"'tocking, Mama."

"Thank you, sweetie. Go get yours," she added, as Derek handed off the others. Amelia's hadn't been difficult to fill, lotions and potions, engraved pens, personalized notepads. That was the easiest part of her being 1. a surgeon and 2. a sister-in-law. It'd been great if she'd had more (any) warning that Carolyn's would be here, but Derek seemed to have managed. Meredith wasn't sure how he'd pulled off the fresh bouquet he'd put in the top, but it'd surprised the recipient even more, which was the point.

Bailey figured out the game quickly, and Meredith laughed at him plunking down directly in front of Derek to start unloading. Every time he pulled something out, he held it up like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat. "Dino! Car! Snuffy-up-gus! Tewwy! Bubbas! Bert!"

Zola leapt up, letting her own bottle of bubbles roll out of her stocking., and running over to one of the toy baskets. Derek, still standing in the middle of the floor, looked at Meredith with his eyebrows raised. She didn't think much about it when he frowned at her untouched stocking, especially not when Zola tugged Bert off of the puppet tree, and draped a doll-sized stethoscope over his neck.

"Hi, there! I am Dr. Derek Shepherd! See my bushy eyebrows?" It took some pulling, but she got her fingers in far enough to bend Bert's arm up for his hand to touch his forehead, then she dove onto the couch, wedging herself behind Meredith.

She took the puppet off of her daughter's hand and held it up to compare. "Stop scowling," she advised Derek. "You're making it worse."

"Let me see?" Amelia asked. Meredith tossed it. Derek lunged, but he wasn't close enough to intercept. "Oh my God. Mom, think of him with bedhead."

"I don't have to, sweetheart. Daddy and I saw Bert and Ernie in Derek and Lizzie the day that show started airing."

"Nuh-uh," Zola said, and Derek stopped smoothing his hair down. "Aunt Liz isn't Ernie!"

"Hey, Zo," Meredith said. "Don't you want to see what's in your stocking?"

"Mommy, they're not correct!"

"Oh, no?" Carolyn asked.

"Not for Daddy being Bert."

"Why, because they're obviously not siblings?" Amelia asked.

"I dunno 'bout that, but, but because, Mommy, do it."

"Hold on." Derek very much did not have to spin the puppets around to find Ernie, but he did.

Meredith groaned. "Gimme a break."

""Bailey? Take Ernie to Mommy, please."

Bailey took one more look inside his empty stocking, pulling it all the way over his head, and came over to her wearing it like Santa's hat. "Here Ernie, Mama." He stayed standing in front of her, expectantly.

Meredith had watched a lot of Sesame Street as a little kid. Enough for Richard to remember. The Bert and Ernie plush toys he'd given Zola for her first Christmas were now directly over their heads in Bailey's room. Zola had been even more enthralled by the illusion of talking toys than her brother was, and…. Whatever, she'd already made herself look ridiculous with one Muppet, why not make it two? Meredith put the Ernie puppet on her hand and made him muss up the baby's curls while she did the stupid, breathy laugh. At first, the kids were the only ones to react, giggling as much as they had every other time she'd ever done it for them.

"Wow," Amelia said, finally. "That's eerie."

"No, Auntie 'Melia," Zola said, and Meredith enjoyed Amelia's wince as she realized what was coming. "It's Ernie." She took both puppets and returned them to their spots before proceeding to dump out her stocking.

"You do have a lot of stripey sweaters," Derek observed, sitting on the couch next to Meredith. Rather than telegraph anything by calling him a kettle, she went straight for the hair. Her stocking fell off her lap. "Whoa!" He yanked it upright, which had been enough to make her curious. She expected to find something breakable, but he shifted when she pulloed out the velvet box, which meant it wasn't a gem-covered tennis bracelet, or anything that looked inherently valuable. There were four gemstones among the modular squares, possibly the only ones she could connect with the months they represented. Diamond, April. Citrine, November. Garnet, January. Emerald, May.

"Wow, bro, I haven't seen one of those since med school."

Meredith shot Amelia a glance, and she moved away from the arm of the sofa. It didn't keep Derek's hand from going to the back of his neck. "I wasn't sure…. I almost thought I should save it for your birthday…."

"No! I-I'm glad you didn't. Nomination was huge when I studied abroad, and I..I mean, I made fun of them all the time. Cliché. Everyone getting the same version of something meant to be unique. Gaudy—the tourists were. All colored enamel that clashed with the other links. But those were all generalizations, and I…" She raised her eyes to Derek. Uncertainty was etched as deeply into his face as the designs on either side of their birthstones. She held her wrist out to him. "I didn't think I was allowed to want one."

He smiled and draped the bracelet over it. "According to the jeweler in D.C., taking it down to sixteen links makes it inauthentic, even if I had it sent straight from Italy to his shop."

In D.C. He hadn't ordered it here, months ago.

She'd been glad she hadn't voiced the second reason she'd decided against giving herself a bracelet for the birthday she'd celebrated in Milan: She'd been afraid that there would've been too many blank spaces to make it look complete.

She watched herself run her hand over it in the mirror, and then touched the necklace. Them, now. Him and her, then.

"Mommy!" Zola came running into the bathroom, the buckle of one shoe flopping. "Can I wear my butterfly? I'll be so careful!"

Apparently, Meredith's mental block had extended to everyone'sjewelry today. "That's a good idea! Can you work on your shoe while I get it?"

"I'll try."

Except for the green tights, Zola's outfit today was the same as last night's, and she'd happily let Derek fix her Christmas Hair flyaways.

The buckle wasn't quite fastened when Meredith returned, but she understood how it worked, She just couldn't always manage the follow-through. Meredith secured the strap and undid the drawstring on the bag that would have it's own corner in her jewelry box, until Zola was ready for her own.

Giving her the necklace has been the best moment of her daughter's birthday. Meredith had been downstairs, cleaning up streamers and breaking down pizza boxes, pretending she wasn't listening to Derek's read Goodnight Goodnight Construction Site to Bailey on the monitor at her hip. She'd just managed to flip it off at the sound of this footsteps on the stairs. Taking off, now? Before Zola's in bed? Great—

"You ready?"

She'd stared at him for a moment, taking in the hunch of exhaustion. He really should've spent the night, but she'd guessed he would've if he could.

"Mer? You have the ne-?"

"Of course I have it." She'd retrieved the gift from stash in the study; a hiding place that was unlikely to last through to the next year. Zola was in her room waiting for her story, and showing Joanne's organs to Doc McStuffins.

Derek rapped on the door frame."Hey, princess."

She looked up, and her chin started wobbling immediately. "You gotta go, Daddy?"

Meredith looked at Derek, who didn't seem any less stormy than he'd been all day. Wasn't the point for him to stop infecting the happy people?

"Not quite yet. First, Mommy and I have a present for you."

"Really? But it's not Monday twenty-five, yet."

"You'll open most of your presents from us then, since November twenty-fifth is your actual birthday," Meredith explained. "But Daddy and I wanted to give you this together. That okay?"

"Yes, yes, okay!"

They'd gathered on either side of her on her bed. She'd unwrapped the velvet box, and then Meredith had opened it to avoid the risk of tiny fingers being snapped. Zola had squealed at the citrine butterfly.

"It's so beautiful!"

"It is," Meredith had said. "Jewelry is very nice. Sometimes you get it to match an outfit, or because you like it. Sometimes if it's something you get from from someone who loves you, to celebrate a special time, like this. We got you a butterfly to remember your fourth birthday, because we think you're ready to take care of it. See the chain that goes around your neck? It's very thin. You can wear it whenever you want, but when you do you have to be careful."

"I can do that."

"We know you can, princess," Derek said. "You're smart, and kind, and brave. We're very excited to see everything you learn and do at four." He fastened the necklace, and Zola had jumped up and gone to her vanity.

"I look so pretty!"

"You're always pretty, love-bug. Inside and out. But you're also wearing a very pretty necklace that looks even prettier with your eyes, and you feel special wearing it, doesn't it?"

"Very, very, very!" Zola exclaimed. "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

She'd thrown herself into the bed to hug both of them. Their eyes had met over her back, and for the time until their preschooler leapt up to look in the mirror again, everything has been normal. If she'd let the night end there, maybe the past few weeks would've been easier.

That didn't mean everything would be better.

This time, Meredith secured the clasp around Zola's neck. She'd never be told something she liked was "pure frivolity." If someone else gave her jewelry one day, she'd know how it should feel. If she decided she wasn't a jewelry person, that would be okay, too.

"My growing up girl. That looks so nice with your hair and your dress."

"Daddy said it doesn't have to be Christmas colors." Zola took Meredith's hand, pulling it over her shoulder to examine her bracelet. "You've got a lion citrine color. It's Rawr?"

Meredith smiled. That would be the easy explanation, but the reason she could turn herself in circles reading into things Derek said was that he communicated in layers. "Rawr might've looked like that before his mane grew in, but on here, it's a female lion. A mama lion. A picture that means something on its own like this is called a symbol. What's cool about symbols is that you can tell lots of stories with them. Lions do remind me of you, and not just because of your lovey. Someone told me once that good mommies are lions, roaring at anyone who could hurt their cubs, and you made me a mommy."

"You don't roar all of the times. You just take care of us."

"That's the important part, huh?" Meredith asked, seeing Ellis showing up in principals' offices to argue on her behalf, and then leaving her to take the bus home.

"Can you tell me another of the symbol stories?"

"Sure."

Meredith had no problem indexing the charms aloud; she'd been doing it in her head since the clasp was secured. Arranged between the four birthstones representing her family, charms that spoke to who she was alternated with symbols related to them, and what they'd survived. The lioness, an open torso with identifiable organs, a drum-set with a ︎ glyph on the kick drum, and a microscope. A single candle that could be from the house she'd built or those that lined the tub, a square outlined in Post-it blue with the letters MD in the center, a ferry-boat, and, where it wouldn't always be facing her: an airplane flying over the globe. Four blank tiles were interspaced among them because there were other chapters, and the story wasn't over:.

Derek used to be the sentimental one. Nostalgia was a difficult feeling to understand if you couldn't find the happiness of your present anywhere in your past. He'd changed, too. Referencing a deadly plane crash would've struck him as morbid, not a reminder that they'd gotten through it. But it wasn't simply that. The plane was flying East-to-West. Toward Seattle, with only Africa and North America visible. It alluded to the crash, but also a return home. Zola coming to them. The wait. The weight. That was the only charm tied to a location. Two Christmases ago, he'd had a picture of their house lasered into a keychain. He could've put the Space Needle somewhere, but had opted not to. No skylines, no Dartmouth seal. He didn't tie them to any specific place—or the same place.

Zola ran downstairs at the sound of the doorbell. Meredith turned to the mirror again to pull her hair back in a silver barrette. This time, she didn't hesitate before picking up the necklace. The weight settled comfortably against her clavicle. Screwing the backs on the earrings, she no longer cared what message anyone except Derek read into them. The woman he'd bought them for, was part of her, and if anything, they suited her better, now.

"You're killing me this week, babe," Derek murmured, the heat of his breath tickling her ear in contrast with the cold coming from the front door she'd opened. He let go of her arm and held open the coat she'd left draped over the sofa she'd been sitting on. She let him turn her to button it, and he nudged one of her earrings with the tip of his nose. The drop brushed the tender skin below her lobe. Message received. "Go. Play nice." The heat that had her chasing Alex had died down to embers. She hoped that kissing him again got that across.

Alex was walking around the trees closest to the swing-set, but he slowed his pacing when she caught up. "You brought my kids a tire."

"It's a tire swing," he said, grabbing a branch. He wasn't skipping arm day, either, which must be nice for Wilson. The branch bent low enough that the few leaves left on it touched the ground, and he let it snap back. "From me and Jo. You're all about classic toys. Came right off her car."

"The one she lived in?"

"Mer…."

She scowled. Maybe that had been low, but did she really deserve that exasperated tone suggesting she needed to grow up from Alex?

"Mer." That was more sympathetic, and she didn't like it much more, "Can we stop pretending you think I'm gonna put BeeZ in danger and get to the point?" He dropped from the latest branch, which hadn't sagged, and marked it with a piece of bright yellow sidewalk chalk. "What's up? I get that you're tired of being at each other's throats, but after he—"

"It's nothing! Nothing bad. It's…It's sort of the opposite." Meredith kicked a pinecone. Alex had let Jo ring the doorbell to unload the tire, and been on his way around the house while Derek intercepted her with the coat. She wasn't trying to be performative, hadn't wanted to be watched all day, but it'd be easier if he'd seen. "I'm not mad at him. We've been talking more than anything else."

Alex's jaw tightened. He'd been around for most of Zola's birthday, and had a rough sketch of what he'd missed. "Who started the 'anything else?'"

"Him. I wasn't exactly looking to be literally pushed away again. But I did the same thing for months—"

"You—"

"That really isn't one of our problems. He's not being all McDreary, but it's not…dazzle you with McDreamy so you don't look behind the...whatever." She touched the bracelet under her sleeve. "The times he's been quiet…he misses us. But if it was easy for him to give in to his feelings, he'd have left New York much earlier. He does what's expected of him. He's committed…to us and to the NIH. Not like...he's not leavingme, but not because of vows. Because he's not."

"But he's not leaving it, either."

"When I came downstairs Sunday, and he was playing with the kids…. They deserve more of that. We all do. Zo had a near-meltdown this morning that I don't think was entirely about toys, but she's…she's better than she'd be if he'd missed her birthday." Alex's face screwed up again. She narrowed her eyes until he shrugged. "He's shown up for them! And he doesn't think…. In the fall, there was that thing about Zola's coat.…" She plucked at the buttons of hers. Unwrapping it had made her think of that last fight, but she'd been reassured. If he'd ever thought of it like that, he'd have warned her, or saved it for her birthday, even though it'd be warm by then. "He's not lashing out. He doesn't think I'm screwing it up, and he…he knows I'm…I haven't had a bad outcome since he left."

"Seriously? In six weeks? Mer, that's—"

"I can hold things together on my own. I really don't think the position will last forever, and...he wants me to visit."

"Isn't that good?"

"Yeah, of course. Just…. It's not that I wantto make him come back, but I don't know what I could do if I did. IfI'd gone out there a couple weeks ago, it could've been a grand gesture…."

"Catch!" Alex tossed the bundle of rope over the branch he'd picked, almost beaming her in the head. "If you're talking, why not tell—"

"I held him back for six months. I'm no closer to curing death, and I could've had forty-seven wins in D.C."

"You don't think those had anything to do with having people you trust in the OR? People who trust you?"

"That's why I said no to Boston! That was my turn…. Giving up neuro was supposed to keep my family together, and then I…. When I said I was staying, I'd only just started feeling like I could catch up. My research went to shit, anyway. Maybe innovation isn't my thing. Since the trial, my successes have all been individual patients. Maybe that's a sign. If I'd known Adele was gonna die of something totally unrelated in eighteen months, while Richard wooed Jackson's mom…." She screwed her eyes shut against the white winter sunshine. "I would've done it anyway, and I can't fix what it did to his career. So, maybe I was wrong to ever stand in the way of this. I could take advantage of the nice sabbatical terms we wrote into the charter. It's not likely that I'll have a breakthrough of my own before I'm eligible for another. I could write a tell-all. Behind the Grey Method. It'd be just like Mom's, except not total bullshit."

Alex paused midway through looping the rope around in a knot she thought he might be making up. "I'm not helping you 'what-if' yourself to hell and back."

"That's where my marriage has been! I can put being a parent ahead of being a surgeon; I have proof of concept. Why shouldn't I? Because it's expected for me to be the one to do it? I've got a little knight-princess in there who'd benefit from seeing that 'expected' can look different for everyone."

Both of her children had used toy doctor's kits on their dolls before giving them bottles. It was good for them to see her work alongside being their mommy, but would it balance out having their father living on the opposite coast for who knew how long?

"You wouldn't resent the kids, but what about Shepherd?" Wouldn't she? Zola and Bailey would only be one portion of the equation, but five years from now, if she hadn't published or progressed past a schedule that was primarily biopsies and gallbladder excisions, she might. The lenses Alex saw her through were a little rosy sometimes. Derek said he looked up to her, which had terrified her when it was Lexie, but there was no reason that Alex couldn't take the glasses off by himself.

"I'm starting to resent myself. Jealousy came between my mom and Richard. His. And he was brilliant. He gave her a scapegoat...made me a scapegoat. She might have had six months where she doubted herself. I was nothing but doubts until I got here. I think…I think part of me is afraid I can't succeed anywhere else. I don't know what success means. What do I even want? Chief? Derek ended up hating it. I'm not going to end up totally alone, but hopefully the kids will become independent one day. I think of living like Mom did once I left for school—practically transient, between the UN, the Clinic; lecturing… no matter how prestigious or groundbreaking her work was, I almost understand the shit she said to get me to not take off for Europe." Alex winced like she had when Derek said the projector was almost like having them there. "I've bought Zola a dozen books that demonstrate that 'happily ever after' can vary. Before Derek, I thought it was one specific thing, and that wasn't an option for me. I never thought it was supposed to be my priority, and for the past, I dunno, nine months? I was starting to doubt its existence. I'm not stupid; I know what people think when they see Derek in a situation like this. I was scared…but we're not where he and Addison were. We can be good. I don't know how to make it stay that way."

"If I could tell you, I would," Alex said, stepping up onto the tire. "I told Izzie to go too, remember?"

Meredith shrugged. Izzie had been her third strike when it came to begging someone to stay. "She didn't deserve you."

"It might've been better if I'd thought about what I deserved." To be happy. It was so easy to think. Sometimes, Meredith wasn't sure it was something you achieved so much as something that happened while you weren't paying attention. "We were more like Torres and Robbins anyway. She'd been somewhere I couldn't follow."

She touched her bracelet again, searching out the plane. They'd gotten out of those woods. She was afraid there was only one way through these. What happened if you could follow, but you weren't sure you should?

"If you commit to anything today, I'm having you committed. I let you rant. I brought booze," Alex caught the tire, his hands hitting the rubber with a satisfying smack. "Want to swing it out?"

"Hell, yeah," Meredith said, already wedging the arch of one of her heels into place on the edge of the tire.

That was more what she'd expected when she'd claimed Alex Karev as her person. He took being a responsible adult seriously, these days, but sometimes the overgrown kid shone through, and she felt much less like an imposter.

It didn't solve anything, but for the first time in a long time, she flew without being afraid of a fall, and with the way Alex pushed her, she did more than that. She soared.