Meredith woke needing to run. It made no sense. She didn't want to leave the bedroom, where Derek was soundly asleep beside her, and she couldn't run. She had to escape. It wasn't a question. It wasn't something she could fight. Artemis followed her into the hall, matching her pace exactly going down the stairs. They ended up in the study. The arrangement of the house kept sound from there from reaching the bedrooms. Flipping on the stereo was something that made her sure she could hear in the quiet; that her mind wasn't filling in the dog's footsteps or even the sound of her own voice.

This morning, Derek had pulled the "where's your phone?" gag again. She hadn't been immobilized this time, and while she couldn't search him as throughly as she would've liked with the kids in the bed, she'd found it under his pillow, guaranteeing it was going to sleep under hers from this point on.

The songs on the playlist he'd made her while she'd mostly slept through Saturday were tracks they'd listened to often in the car, or while he cooked and she sat on the counter going on about her friends or patients. Their relationship could be traced through them, the gains and the losses. She'd had them playing all day, incorporating PT exercises into intermitant dance parties.

That wasn't what she needed, when her body buzzing with the need to get away, get away, had sent her away from Derek, even in a small way. (That wasn't what she wanted. It wasn't her choice.) She needed Felicia's Grrrl Power!'n'Grunge! tapes. (What'd happened to the mixes she'd traded for them? Had they helped Felicia at all? Had her parents ever played them, and been disappointed to hear her voice betweem tracks, not their daughter's? What if someone else had taken them out of Lissy's room? Someone else related to her?)

Meredith pulled one leg up onto the chair in the corner of the room, and stretched the other one out on the ottoman. Artie put her paws on it, investigating the space left, and then decided she'd fit. "This is kind of a squeeze, kid," Meredith told her, resting her left hand on the dog's head. "I'm sure I smell like a Grade-A freak-out is coming. Let's aim for not."

The playlist started with Sinéad O'Connor. "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got." Her relationship was in these songs, too. That had been Derek's decision: he wanted their family, and their lives here, and her. For once, she could believe she deserved it.

Artie's ears perked up a minute into the song, and a few seconds later Meredith heard the footsteps. Zola shuffled around the first floor, and Meredith was about to call out to her when she appeared, carrying Rawr by the tail. She didn't stop in the doorway, or hesitate before hoisting herself onto the round arm of the chair and sliding into Meredith's lap. "You're listening to more music, Momma?"

"Yup." Meredith kissed the top of her head. "Is that okay?"

"It's good. I stayed in my bed until morning!"

"Mmm. What color was your clock?"

"Blue," she said. Meredith waited. "Dark blue."

"Is that morning?"

"Not…a'zactly."

"Did you check the numbers?" Zola shook her head. Never wanting to lie, she tried not to look at the clock if she got up before there was orange in the mix. Meredith held up her watch. It felt strange on back on her left wrist. "See? The little hand is pointing to the three. Can you find the big hand?"

"There. On the nine. Is it three oh-nine?"

"No, but that's a good guess. For the big hand you take the number and multiply by five. It's 3:45. There are other ways to figure it. We'll talk about time another time."

"Another time to talk about time to talk about tiiii-" She shrieked and giggled as Meredith tickled her. Once she heard Zola say, stop, she stopped, and the little girl flopped against her with a sigh. There occasionally, lately, you could wonder what she was thinking about and not find out immediately, but mostly she blurted it out. Meredith wondered if her mother had noticed when she stopped doing that.

"Momma?" Zola said, and Meredith realized she was repeating herself.

"Yeah? Sorry, Zo."

"It's okay. You're not used to talking with your lips."

"That didn't mean I shouldn't be listening to you."

Zola turned to be sure she was looking and then signed, "I know."

"Smarty shirt."

"No! It's smarty pants!"

"Smarty socks."

"Momma!"

"I forget. I'm not used to talking, y'know. Smarty underoos? "

"Smarty pants!"

"Smarty sleep-cap?"

"Momma! I am not even wearing that!"

"And why not, smarty hair beads?" She flipped one of Zola's braids, and then flexed her fingers considering the tiny grains of metal she'd worked with forty-eight hours ago.

"It's not a biggest deal. You can do my knots in the mornings."

"Oh, can I?"

"Uh-huh. Daddy does nice braids, and Aunt Amelia did Bead-to-Seeds practice, but I like you doing it."

"I like doing it. I love it, in fact. But if we have to take knots out to put them in, you won't like it, smarty pajamas."

"That's the wrong say-it!"

"Why's that?"

"It's...it's..." Tap, tap, tap. "Not how they say it!"

"Who's they?"

"I don't know. I'm only four! The they people say smarty pants!"

"Do you think it matters?"

"Yes!"

"Yes, because...?"

"If it's a say-it, and you say it wrong, they might not know what you mean, and you have to explain."

"Good reasoning. You can tell the they-people your mommy says you're a smarty body."

"They might think I'm not if I get the say-it wrong."

"Anyone who thinks that is not wearing very smart pants."

"You're wearing silly pants."

"What? I think these pants are pretty!" Meredith teased. Hole's "Pretty on the Inside" had played a minute earlier; she wasn't sure if that was where she'd gotten the phrase, but it might've.

Zola's eyes screwed up in frustration. "They are, but if your pants are smarty when you are smart then they are silly when you are...why don't we say sill?"

"They didn't make it a verb."

As the expression on Zola's face transformed from exasperated to outraged, it was pure Derek. "Are all words say-its? Somebody made them all up?"

"Basically. Everyone says things a little differently, and sometimes you do have to ask them if you're right about what you think they mean. In England, if they say your pants are smart, they might mean you have nice panties."

"Nuh-uh!"

"Yes-huh. I've been there. They say trousers for pants. And bright for smart." (Her mind flashed to a memory of a girl she'd met at a Camden club, impressed by the silk underwear Sadie had egged her into buying in Paris: "Smart pants.")

"You're a brighty trousers!"

"You're a very brighty trousers." Meredith kissed the crown of Zola's head. "I like the way you think about words. You learned so much ASL this month."

"I hadta do communicating with you, and you couldn't 'splain all the signs because I can only do a little spelling."

"You know what? I didn't know the alphabet before this. Not in sign. I was learning too."

"Did Aunt Maggie teach you?"

"She helped. I watched videos and looked at books and practiced. Just like you."

"That's how you learn to be a surgeon?"

"It's how you learn all kinds of things."

"I wanna be a surgeon."

"Sometimes we want to do something because it's all we know. Daddy and I want to make sure you have time to discover all the possibilities."

"Your mommy was a surgeon. And all my uncles and aunts are. ALL of them," she added, making a broad scooping gesture and ending in the sign.

"That's true, but only some of their kids are. Daddy's dad owned a store, Grams is a nurse. My…my biological father was a college literature—books and stuff—teacher. So, it'll be okay if you change your mind on that."

"I don't think so that I will. Sofia's all her parents do surgery, and we're going to be best surgery friends. All your friends are doctors."

"Not all. My best friend when I was little was a boy named Will. He's a teacher. I had a friend named Sadie who went to medical school, but she's a businessperson, now."

She'd gone through several dozen drafts of the simple text she'd sent the number Derek had stored in her phone.

MEREDITH GREY: Sorry Derek sicc'd Cristina on you.

The reply had come in faster than she'd expected.

SADIE HARRIS: Please, coffee with the bloodhound wasn't half bad. Wish spilling your secrets had been more helpful.

MEREDITH GREY: eh. turns out he loves all of me. who knew?

SADIE HARRIS: anyone who's lived at your house.

i should've asked you about her.

MEREDITH GREY: i doubt i could've told you. that's a me thing.

SADIE HARRIS: let me have my ego, death, it was a me thing, too.

Meredith hadn't replied yet. She had to figure out an answer that wasn't simply, "true."

Zola was thinking again, her fingers sliding along the top of Meredith's hand. The Indigo Girls's "Romeo and Juliet" started playing. So many of the bodies who'd been in the classroom while she'd railed against that story were blurs to her. Felicia's laughter had been what put her on Meredith's radar.

"Momma? They say stuff at daycare. Not the they-people. The kids. The some kids."

"Oh, yeah?" Zola nodded. "Wanna tell me what?"

It took her a minute to respond. Meredith brushed Rawr's tail over her lips. Having this talk so soon after having the wires removed made it harder to stay quiet.

"Someones at daycare said you didn't have a fall down," she admitted.

Meredith exhaled. They'd gotten there. She hadn't wanted to push too far past what Zola already understood, but she was perceptive. Plenty of times, they'd been in the car on the drive from Sofia's, and Zola had asked about a conversation that'd happened while she'd seemed engrossed in play. The first meeting with the D.A. was scheduled for Monday. She didn't know how long anything would take, or if it would get press again. Hospital gossip didn't take press. It took have you heard Dr. Grey is [switching specialties/arranging a SANE training/back teaching]? Do you think it's because of what that man did to her?

"They said you got hurt by a person. A bad man. Man who did bad." R.E.M. was singing "Shiny Happy People." For all of Zola's life, Meredith had told her that people weren't their actions. Was it true here? If a boy whose possessive and perverse behavior—at the least—was never corrected grew into a man who turned to violence, could he be considered a bad man? Derek would say yes. Meredith wanted to, more than she had even facing down a serial murderer. She just didn't believe in evil. Not inherently. Psychopathy, yes, but even that disconnect didn't always lead to the cruelty of a Bundy or Dunn. Brain injuries could also damage the ability to feel empathy. That wasn't him. He was brutish, barbarous, merciless. Ruthless violence, not heartless, just the only hearts that mattered were his and his illusions about his sister's.

"I'm glad you asked me, Zo. You can always ask when you need to know what's true. People might start talking about it again, soon, because I'll have to talk to a judge about what happened. A man did hurt me. He wasn't a patient, or another doctor, and there's nothing you have to worry about."

"The police got him?"

"They took him to jail. Someone who hurts people on purpose has to spend a long time there, because grown-ups have a harder time changing behavior." Or it would be why, in an actual rehabilitation model, but that conversation was hopefully years down the line. "Most people aren't violent. We're born not understanding other people's hurt, and the first thing we learn is it gets attention. That's why babies pinch, and little kids bite. Eventually we learn that they feel what we would if we had those things happen to us. But the more you understand you're hurting someone else, the more you look for other ways to solve problems, and learn to control your anger. There are a very few people who don't understand that, or don't care. It's instinct to try to protect yourself if you're scared. That energy lets you fight back if you're in danger. To scream, and wriggle, and run away. If none of those things work, you fight in self-defense—to keep yourself from being hurt more."

Did she stop there? She wanted to, and Derek might. Someone who hadn't listened to "Dead Men Don't Rape" at fourteen. Who didn't think it was a crapshoot that she'd gotten this far without having had something worse happen, just because.

"Women can and do hurt, but most of the time it's men who were taught to think they should be strong, are allowed to play rough, and fight, but not not to cry. They think that they're supposed to be better than girls, and that a girl or woman can be theirs."

"Daddy cried about you were hurt. I told him all the doctors would make you better, and gave him hugs and kisses."

"I'm sure you made him feel a lot better."

Derek had tried to keep it together around Meredith—worried that him being upset for her would make her try to downplay her own emotions, she was sure—He hadn't always managed it. Supporting each other was how they'd gotten through the plane crash. That he'd at least let someone see his feelings, however unintentional, was a sign that he wasn't going to pull away again.

Zola curled up and put her head on Meredith's shoulder. "I wanted other kids to be repeating wrong, and you switched places with Daddy to D.C. doing the brain jotob, even you're a guts surgeon."

Meredith smiled to herself; a spark alight in her chest. It wasn't time to tell Zola that might change, by any means, but it was the hardest time she'd had holding words back shut since that had been her choice.

"You know I wouldn't have gone away like that without telling you?"

"Yeah. I used my 'magination. Should I say, 'sorry' to Daddy?" Zola twisted to look at her; Meredith didn't remember listening to "Friday, I'm in Love" much when it wasn't on the radio, but it was the best song for this moment.

"If you didn't really think he was lying, and didn't lie to other people about it, then no."

"Everyone has fall downs. You had one the time Bay-Bay became a baby." Zola exaggerated both syllables. Her pronunciation of "Bay-Bee Bay-Lee" had been a big part of several of her brother's nicknames. "Then I came to the room, and we took a first picture. Daddy had a one of you hurt. I wanted to come find you at the hospital, but Alex said the baby might be too rough, and it wouldn't be fair to go just me. Is that cause B.B. is a boy?"

Thank you, Dr. Alex. May she never find out that the baby came without her. "Not at all. While you're learning to use your limbs, it can be harder to be soft, and I had a lot of bruises on my body. I wouldn't have been able to hug you. And…I was worried."

"That he'd pull out your IV tube, and you'd have to be poked again?"

"No, that would've been fixabble. Mostly, I was worried that you'd be scared. I had all those bruises, and big casts, and wires on my teeth. And more tubes than the IV. I didn't look very nice."

"That's silly trousers. Daddy talked to us, lots. Bruises are where you bang, and the skin doesn't cut, and the blood stays there. It gets better faster than a wound hurt. We saw patients going home with casts, and he showed us wires like on your teeth bones."

Huh. She'd wondered why the wire had been in the arts and crafts box. "Did he tell you I looked like Frankenstein's monster?"

"You looked like Mommy! Pretty. But maybe you didn't feel pretty, if you hurt."

"People can be pretty to you no matter what, if you love them, and they are good to you. It wasn't fun, and I got very frustrated not being able to talk. but your daddy, and then you and Bailey made me feel pretty even when things hurt."

"You didn't scare me."

"What about last week? With Dr. Bailey?"

"You were scared."

"I was. Not for a reason that you should worry about. It was like when B.B.'s trains crashed in my hospital room. You remember? Whenever you have a big, frightening thing happen, your brain tells your body to protect yourself: to fight, or run, and it records everything, so that next time it recognizes those sights or sounds or thoughts, it can tell you there's danger faster. Sometimes those things don't always mean you're not safe, but it takes time for your brain to be absolutely sure.

"I knew you'd understand that. You're a very bright trousers. But you don't see your adults scared or upset very often. I saw my mom hurt and very frightened at the hospital when I was a little older than you. She was yelling, and I thought it was at me. No one helped me understand what was happening and I didn't ask her about it, in case that made her upset again. I didn't understand it for a long time I didn't want to you to be confused or scared."

"Do I have to have been?"

"No, of course not. You feel what you feel, Zo."

"If you knew I wasn't, you'd have wanted me there?"

"Asoltely. I did want you there, baby girl. I missed you so much." Making Zola and Bailey feel unwanted was one of Meredith's worst fears. Thinking about it made her face burn, but imagining herself in her mother's place with them standing in the doorway hadn't been any better.

it really wouldn't have been the same. Not with Derek there.

"I might've been not ready right the first day, but Daddy said getting over-wailed is like Bay's tantrums. He's fussytated, and mad, and stuff, and he can't stop. Daddy and you-when-you're-better can pick him up, careful. If I get in his space, and his hand hits, he is not set up for success."

Zola went quiet for a while, and half of Meredith's attention was on Liz Phair chanting "Girls! Girls! Girls!" when Zola tapped her lips and asked, "Will I get hurt 'cause I'm a girl?" She wrapped her arms around her daughter, wanting to say no. Never. No one will ever, ever want to hurt a hair on your perfect head. If they did they would answer to her scrappy Medusa mom.

"I hope not, Zo-Zo. You're safe with Daddy and me, and with your trusted adults, and at day-care. We teach you to be aware, because doctors see a lot of the damage in the world. Mostly it's accidents, but sometimes...people don't know how not to hit. Not to hurt. Not to be prejudiced against anyone because of something like that."

"I know 'bout prejudice, 'acause some people don't understand you're my mommy. Like they stare at our family at the store. They only know their 'spirence. The world is big, big, big, and we don't even know everything about our own bodies and brains. We are curious about new things."

"Those are people with racial prejudice—racism. People with prejudice about men and women are called sexist. That word was invented before we understood much about gender, which is being a boy or a girl or nothing or in-between, and sex, which is body parts. For a long time, before MRIs showed us how brains work, men who studied them thought, or told themselves there must be a big difference between male and female bodies and brains. What's that again?"

"Bodies with penis parts and vulva parts."

"Yes. Everyone's brain and body is different, and if you try to put them in categories, there will always be a lot in the middle that don't match. Sex parts usually go along with the baby-making organ inside of you, and there are some chemicals that tell your body to start being ready for that. They don't affect what anyone is best at enough to make rules about it. But if one kind of person makes the rules, and they make things better for themselves, it can be very hard to make that change. Women were expected to do caring jobs, as nurses, not doctors, if they worked at all, and to stay home once they got married."

"Doctors take care of!"

"I guess nursing looks more like taking care of a baby, and they—the men who made decisions—thought that the typical sizedifference in male and female bodies meant women were weak. That we couldn't handle blood, and guts, and bone." That assumption was so prevalent that even she'd wondered, and it really made no sense. Women's bodies did all the reproducing; somehow that made them less able to deal with bodily fluids? She'd follow if "the second sex" had said, look, we don't have tampons yet, we're staying home, take this honey-do list, but that wasn't what had happened. For centuries, it was said that women did all the talking, but they weren't listened to, and their stories hadn't been recorded. There were always poorer, and/or less-white women who didn't get the luxuries of being perceived as a lady, but had the hardship of being a woman.

"What about surgery scrubbing nurses?"

Ha! Who's raising the next generation now? Meredith wanted to hop up and dig out the book with the picture of a woman holding a tub to catch a foot being amputated during the civil war. The same book covered Florence Nightingale and Crimea. Nurses' training up through the mid-twentieth century looked more like intern year than intern year did, now.

"It wasn't all that logical. Things that supposedly just for boys or girls have changed back and forth over time. Kings and their guy friends did ballet, and wore high heels. Blue was a girl color, and pink wasn't really, until not long before Daddy was born. That's proof that likes and skills are more specific to a person.

"Until we could see the brain, and know it wasn't true, even scientists said fear of pain was a good way of teaching. Adults saw it as okay to hit children to make them not do something. That's a reason Daddy and I don't spank; an adult's strength shouldn't be used against a kid. Men who were bigger than women did the same thing.

"When Aunt Amelia was born, it wasn't unacceptable—not okay—to treat boys and girls differently at school, not have girls' sports, and to only hire men for certain jobs. By the time I was in school, we were told girls could do anything, but we were still expected to be better with words than math, know how to wear make-up, and always be sweet. Things that aren't bad; they just aren't for everyone, or any one type of person."

She'd made fun of the girls who pretended not to know things to protect boys' egos; put them all in the category of The Slits' "Typical Girls." She hadn't considered that they might be keeping themselves safe.

"Things didn't change all that much for boys. They got outside chores; girls got inside chores. Their moms did all the 'woman' things on top of having big jobs. They were expected to strong, and fix things, and not taught how to talk things out. Fighting was okay. Playing rough. Girls might do karate, but boys doing something considered 'girly' like ballet got made fun of. Some men still don't see women as equal, because they weren't raised all that differently from their dads, and their dads' dads.

"Sometimes if a boy does something that bothers you, a grown-up might say, 'oh, he just likes you,' or 'boys will be boys,' and you ignore them. It's not acceptable behavior. Girls got told that, and boys learned they could get away with hurting. You can say that if he liked you, he'd be nice to you, and use his words."

Sometimes those aren't the same thing, but let's take this one step at a time, baby girl.

"We teach more and more boys and girls how to deal with feelings. It's important that we don't make fun of boys for doing things that are supposed to be 'girly.' Anyone can be a doctor, or a mechanics, or post…person, and boys can be nurses, and nannies—"

"And women."

"Women can, too, yeah."

"No, Momma, boys can become women grown up. Tuck's Dr. Ben aunt did."

"That's true! Some transgender people don't know they're the gender that matches their sex parts until they're grown, but sometimes kids know and don't feel like they can tell anyone."

"Do girl sex people transgen-er so they don't get hit?"

Seems more likely than men dressing up to invade sae spaces. They didn't have to. They could be everywhere else, at any time.

"There have been situations when a woman pretended to be a man to do things they weren't allowed to do. That's called cross-dressing—when you're just pretending. Transgender specifically means that someone starts to be raised one way, but prefers to be another, or to not be seen the same way all the time. Something that needs to be fixed in our world is that people who are transgender get prejudiced against, too. People don't understand wanting to be a woman, because they don't think they're equal, or if someone was born with a female body, they can't be a 'real' man. Some people react to new things with anger or fear.

"If someone says something prejudice, you tell them it's not okay. That no one type of person is better or worse than any other. If they keep going, you just keep saying it. Let them know that Zola Grey Shepherd doesn't need to hit to show she can't be messed with, and if they don't listen to her, she'll get her momma."

"Yeah! You'll teach them. You teach people a lotta things. The residents follow you like—" Zola opened her mouth and did her best cross-eyed stare.

Meredith laughed. "What?"

"They ideal you. Alex says. He said I repeat you like a resident. Do I?" she added, enthusiastically. "Do I get my say-its from you?"

"Daddy says that you get lots of things from me. Behaviors and words."

"Yes!" Zola did an alternating fist pump that she ironically had to have gotten from Alex, and ended it by draping herself over Meredith's shoulders. "I'm gonna be just like you when I'm grown."

"How about you be just like grown-up Zola?"

"Yeah, but I will be a n'awesome woman mommy doctor teacher surgeon like you."

"You're gonna be an extraordinary woman. I know that for sure."

Zola made a humming sound against her neck, and Meredith discovered that her preferred left-arm position was perfect for keeping her hand on her daughter's back, patting it rhythmically like she had since she was a baby. She'd been humming songs like "Bad Reputation" at her since then, too.

"Did you fight the man who injuried you? 'Acause it was self a'fense?

"You bet I did, sister."

Zola gave her a beatific smile and laid her head down again. Soon, her breath was falling evenly and warm against Meredith's neck. Her thoughts were scattered as she slid deeper down in the chair and dozed; not quite sure what was memory and what was dream as the light went from dark to blue to pink. Her phone moved on to play the songs from the newest playlist. When she woke to his footsteps bringing him downstairs, The Postal Service played in the background. He took in the tableau and sighed. "Painkiller before your morning meds"

"I guess. You can bring them when you bring Bay down here.."

He nodded, kissing the back of Zola's head before he leaned down to Meredith, and by the time he pulled away the little girl's eyes were open. "Is it real morning?" she asked

"It is."

"I didn't get in your bed!" she declared. Her parents laughed, and Zola frowned like they just didn't get it. Derek lifted her up, and Meredith's shifting was interrupted by Artie draping her upper body over her lap.

"Our girls love you, Mer." An on cue sing-song voice came through the monitor clipped to his pajama pants. "Mama, I up. 'Good morning, Bay-yee.' Good morning, Mommy, good morning, Daddy..."

"And the males, too," Zola said. "You're a man, and he's a boy-toddler-baby."

"Fair enough." Derek kissed her temple and then set her on the floor. She went to the stairs. Meredith stroked Artie's back. "The D.A.?"

"I needed to talk to her, and I slept most of yesterday. It worked out. But, yeah. It's all part of fighting isn't it? Speaking and all. I'm shoving him off in that room until that's done, and there's parole, and…."

"Mer, if you don't—"

"No, it's not that. The opposite. I want them to try charging him with a hate crime." If he tried to hold back his surprise, it didn't work. "It's...I don't love the idea. I don't know if I believe... I'm no Anne Frank, I believe hate exists. I just...I want him to know he got her wrong. If he did this because of...what I am instead of who…. That's getting her wrong. It's also trying to give the kids the best world, and using the voice I have, and fighting back no matter how physically strong I am."

He smiled and kissed her for long enough that Zola yelled from the top of the stairs, "I helped Bay out his crib, but I cannot change his diaper, I'm only four!"

Derek snickered. "Stay here. Don't move. I'll be right back."

Meredith rolled her eyes at him and patted Artemis as he walked away. "He's silly pants, Artie, but we love him."

The dog gave a whuff of agreement.