Not for the first time, Meredith was questioning her life in a shower stall at the hospital. She'd probably done it with one leg up on the bench before. Say that to Derek, see what conclusions he jumps to.

Ugh. Unfair, Grey. She hadn't felt weird about it last night. Not after, anyway. She'd felt powerful. The beginnings of it. She hadn't been sure it would stick, but she'd sort of thought it would. She still did. She wasn't going to get experimental here—she didn't have time—but she'd woken up languid and happy, burrowed deep in a bed that smelled like him, and able to hear him downstairs. A hum in the back of her mind had made her start to slip her hand to her waistband. It'd been so different from nights early on when she'd carried so much stress and anger that she'd come multiple times over fantasies of shoving him into walls and riding his cockring-locked dick until she had well and truly fucked her brains out. Then she'd heard the phone.

"I do think I screwed up with the sex strike," she said, projecting over the noise of the water.

"The dude was using your trauma—"

She poked her head out from the curtained-off stall to make a face at Alex. "Thought you didn't say 'dude' any more."

"I do when he's being a lame-ass dude. And you don't get to drag me in here to talk about your sex life, and then change the subject."

"Changing the subject used to be the tole sex had in my life," she countered, holding the razor over her leg, mentally counting to three, and then going for it. Starting to shave made this a lot realer than the awkward text string. 'Before Derek, anyway. After...less than people think."

You still want to go?

If you do

I do

Then let's go. Pick you up at 7?

"Would you have wanted to screw him if you'd known he'd bad-mouthed you to Pierce, as soon as he found out she was your sister?"

"He was trying get her to stay."

"I don't give a shit. I was there when you found out about that, not him. That jacket still reeks of tequila puke."

"Sor—"

"Mer."

"Yeah, we're probably even. Look…he wasn't entirely wrong—"

"Bullshit."

"Alex…."

"You're a great sister. You manage his sisters better than he does."

"He said that too, Tuesday night. But…I had been terrible to Maggie, just like I was to Lexie at first, and he was just…surprised that I hadn't told him."

"When could you have done that? While he was yelling at you for taking a day off to drink, instead of considering that something might be up?

"Do you know when I last heard of you drinking because something was wrong?"

"You're usually right th—"

"While Z was gone. When you two had her, you weren't getting trashed on the nights he kept her. Before that, it was when he was spending all night speeding along I-5, and your hands were shaking too much to pour. I didn't exactly mark a calendar, but even intern year, it seemed like shit with your mom always put you over the edge, after the initial shock of Montgomery wore off."

Meredith flattened her hand against the tiled wall. Had that truly worn off, or had she surpressed it? If she closed her eyes, and let herself be swept into that moment, her heart felt like it might explode. "Why are you trying make me mad at him?"

"I'm trying to say he did stuff that justified not screwing him."

"He said that."

"Good, he's becoming self-aware. Didn't you call it off before he took off?"

"That was a truce."

"So?"

"So, it wasn't…. The thing is..." She hadn't known how to explain this to Cristina either. "Sex for us isn't like... It's sex, but it's also... it's part of how we communicate, or what…. No, it is. We can read each other without the spite we both let loose with words, and it's…it's a conversation. That's why we can pause. I mean, sometimes it's the only chance we have to really talk, too, but that's not what I mean. For whatever reason, it's when we can't lie to each other, and it's…I dunno…continual, and I…I shut him out.

"I'm his person, Alex. I have been since Mark died. Maybe Callie, for a little while, but mostly he was hers, and that got complicated by the sensors. He and Miranda aren't that type of friend. Amelia's his kid sister; they're just getting to know each other as adults.

"I shut him out while he was trying to let go of this really big thing. He needed me as his person, or at least his wife, and I was being Dr. Grey all the time."

"You are Dr. Grey all the time."

"Yeah, but not only, I'm Derek's wife, and BeeZ's mom, and Meredith-and I love all of it. The past two days...I was a happy person. And this morning, I felt so bad leaving the kids…."

She'd gone down to find Zola playing "Dora Castle," which meant running around wearing her new backpack, followed by Bailey portraying both of Dora's sidekicks in a Mardi Gras mask and rain boots, declaring,"'wiper no 'wiping! Aw, myeeeen!"

"Carolyn has sent me a half dozen videos of them today, and one has Zola all doctor-costumed up doing a liver transplant on Anatomy Joanne. They're having a good day, and a patient I've been waiting with for three years is finally off the transplant list. I was right not to pick up and leave Seattle."

"Yeah, you were."

"I wasn't just scared. It wasn't just the research, or stubbornness. I made a good choice. And he's... you saw him, Alex. He was a happy person this weekend, too."

"He was definitely more obnoxiously cheerful than he's been in a while. What was he like this morning?"

"I...uh... didn't see him. Carolyn said he'd gone to the office, and it took me a moment to realize she meant the study, but if he could do whatever work he had to do in there, it's good. I didn't want to interrupt."

"Ah."

"Don't 'ah' me like you have insight."

"I do. You're freaked that it was all a McDream. Were you back to faking Stepford girlfriend all weekend?"

"We're married, and it was 'girl in a bar.'"

"Whatever, you weren't. You were the happiest I've seen you in ages. Hell, I haven't seen you happy in ages. Not really.

"Look, last night, Arizona and I were having a beer while she opened her gifts. She said that she used to think that stuff like that, hosting holidays, and making sure everyone had presents was Shepherd's thing, but actually, that was a fundamental misunderstanding of you both. That he'd give everyone Scotch with bows tied around the neck, because everyone should be equal. You don't give a shit about that, or how much a gift is worth; you give just a little more than what someone is ready to accept."

"That's a misunderstanding. Look at Maggie."

"Yeah, look at Maggie. It took her months to tell you who she was. To get that lonely. She didn't have to take care of herself the way we did, but she's used to being by herself. In her eyes, you're this got-it-together mom with two adorable kids, a world-class neurosurgeon for a husband, and she's a kid. You showed her your ass; she wasn't ready for you. Since then, You've let her approach at her pace, even if that is a little bit because you don't want to have another person to lose."

"Derek…"

"Derek, what?"

"I don't know," she said, switching legs. "I worried that when he said he wanted me to have people when he was gone, he was thinking about leaving already, and that he didn't understand that sisters are different for me. Family is. I don't think family isn't as close as he believes it is….He refers to his sisters like they're an entity….I don't think it was always that way. I think it's to do with Amelia. I don't know, exactly, because we've been too busy fighting to talk since she moved in. But Mark was his brother, regardless of DNA. But I was the one saying I didn't need another sister, like Maggie wasn't her own person."

"Dude's big-headed about his massive family, for sure, and they were screaming in the halls more than you two. But you're so attached to the idea that you don't get family, and he knows what's 'normal,' maybe that's how he had to frame it to get through to you. You're so convinced no one thinks you've changed in seven years."

"I have changed!"

"That's not what I said! Mer, if you had gone with him, I think you would've figured it out, but what scares me... Last night, going through the pics of Sof I took for Arizona You've built this life that lets you be the person you want to be,. You're wrong to think it wouldn't have happened without him, and you're wrong about how people see you."

The clinking rings of the shower curtain echoed as Meredith yanked it open.

Alex rolled his eyes. "Dramatic, much?"

"Nothing you haven't seen." She took her towel off the shelf and started wringing out her hair. "I want ed to see your face while you bullshit me."

"I'm not that stupid." He wasn't a liar, either, but his view of reality was clearly warped. "It's true. Take him out of the picture. You still would've let George and Izzie move in. If you'd spent more time at Joe's, we would've been friends sooner, but my guess is you'd have gotten more sleep—"

"No, before Derek, I was a chronic insomniac. Even…." Even what? When had she been regularly falling asleep in the shower before her internship? Today, she wasn't as tired as she'd been for most of her intern year. Actually, she was surprisingly not tired. Shouldn't she be dragging, like Derek on Zola's birthday, at a minimum?

"Whatever. I…Alex, I wouldn't have figured it out. I would've been holding myself to this impossible standard, because I'm not reshaping medicine like Mom—"

He openly gaped at her. "Okay, that tab's gonna stay open. You didn't go to Wyatt for him."

"If I hadn't had a reason to want more—"

"Lexie shows up. Thatcher's a drunk. Both of your moms had died, you were cleaning blood off the kitchen floor, and trying to figure out why you couldn't let her in like you did for me, and O'Malley, Yang..." His not saying Izzie's name made her realize he'd skipped Rebecca/Ava's, too. "You weren't going to end up ordinary, Mer. You were meant to be Zola's mom, so—"

"Don't!" Meredith dropped her comb to hold her hand up. "Do not speculate my son out of this world..I don't believe in jinxes," she added, catching a snarl. "I just— He's climbing things. All our shelves are bolted. I got stairs on the castle thing, but..."

"I get it. All I'm saying is, Shepherd didn't make you able to be a mom. Arizona said last night that it was obvious from the start that you wouldbe good with kids. You just had to adjust, because you didn't spend much time with them, even as a kid."

"I did okay on the playground. Off of it.…" She thought of all the after-school sessions spent reading, trying to enter conversations with overheard topics a week out-of-date. She'd picked up a lot about childhood, not as much about other children. "All the snobby rich kids thought I was stuck-up," she acknowledged. "I opened my mouth, and they decided I was a freaky nerd."

"That's just true. It wasn't less of a thing with a bunch of professors' kids?"

"The professors are in Cambridge," she muttered. Alex raised his eyebrows. Figures, he was her only friend without ties to Massachusetts. "Boston-proper's sorta like the City of London—it's more than a square mile, but you don't have to go far to be in a different municipality, and theytheir own school systems, and everything. The other doctors' families lived in Brookline, because they aren't all paranoid about being in walking distance of work. Families live around Boston, unless you inherited the house. Mom spent the money to get the time. I'm grateful; I would've inherited her estate a lot sooner if she'd had to drive anywhere at speed. See?" she added. "Dark freaky nerd."

"How much of your allowance did you spend on drugstore valentines?"

"How'd you…?"

"I do listen. Ellis Grey wouldn't have wanted to spend money on something that frivolous. She sure as hell wasn't making them, and I figure you would've been too afraid that you were bad at it."

"Or I wanted them to forget I was the one who'd handed out anatomically correct hearts in second grade."

Alex whistled. "You were a nerd."

"Is it that so hard to believe?"

"No, that's my point! You put this hospital together. You have dance parties in the O.R. Everyone knows your kids—"

"According to Richard they all knew me, so that's—"

"You weren't being watched. If Bay or Zola is here, there's a surgeon around. They're supervised vagrants."

Meredith snorted in spite of herself. "Even I wasn't allowed to cross the street on my bike until I was ten."

"How old before you could've walked out the hospital doors?"

"Adam Walsh had an impact." She sighed at Alex's raised eyebrows. "What story d'you think she told me to make sure I locked the bolts when she had to leave before the babysitter showed up? Didn't say she wasn't a victim-blamer."

"Mine once said I was going to end up on America's Most Wanted while she was having a psychotic break. Your kids won't be. They're not getting snatched out of the hospital, either, because everyone adores them. You know that."

"They are adorable."

Meredith unzipped her toiletry bag and found herself smirking at the mirror inside of it. Would she have told Cristina that whole thing?

Cristina could pause for different reasons. In an unlikely way, sex was more physical for her. Meredith had used it as an outlet; body separate from brains. Cristina was attracted to power and intelligence, in very alpha-male types, but having sex was dealing with a physical need. Arousal more than desire. Everything she would've said about Meredith not needing a man, let alone a specific man, would've been true, and something Meredith believed.

What about the fact that she'd needed to hear it from Derek?

Had she needed to hear it from him? Or had she just needed to remember?

"You think everyone sees you as Shepherd's intern or Ellis Grey-reincarnated," Alex said. "It's not like that."

"You left out Medusa."

"You get that gorgons turn other people into stone?"

"What's the difference?"

"How long did we call...use that nickname for Bailey?"

He's starting to object to it, she thought, but she only had so long to stand here taunting Alex. Too bad, it was fun. The prospect of a date with Derek was….It hadn't always been a gamble. Hopefully, it wouldn't always be. Today, it was. "Until George delivered her baby."

"Are interns still intimidated by her?"

"Sure. And?"

"You model tough skin for the baby surgeons, but you don't hide who you are off-hours. You can't because you don't want to encourage anyone with your mom's tendencies. When Jo gave you that nickname, you were early-Bailey. Worse, because you'd just buried your sister, Sloan was dying, Yang was nuts, everyone was leaving…. And you know what else Medusa is?"

"Beheaded?"

"Female rage personified. Turns men to stone. From Jo, that's a compliment. You've stood up for yourself to Shepherd from the start. You're not the villain of that story these days: he is."

"So, I'm Anne Boleyn? She was beheaded, too."

"You faced down a gunman. You came out of that plane crash mostly unhurt. Pierce was told you 'basically did your own splenectomy.' All of that comes before anything that happened intern year. You're an icon here, and it's not because of Shepherd, or your mom—it's because you're a great person, and you're liked. Yeah, you're a little bit of a hedgehog, but you've been poked a million times."

"Poked?"

"Hedgehogs curl up and show their spikes…I work with children."

"I have them."

"Anyone here who matters knows how much you've been through, in the past two years alone. Is there talk about Shepherd? Absolutely, but you're the Grey in Grey+Sloan—"

Meredith whirled on him, wielding a mascara wand. "Lexie is the Grey!"

"I know that, but….It's what they say. No one wants to see you hurt, and no one is as hard on you as you are on yourself. You can afford to show more of the Meredith we got yesterday. You're still going to be respected."

"Mom used to say you weren't going to be handed respect. You had to demand it."

"I'll bet she did."

Meredith raised an eyebrow at his reflection. He raised both of his, and they both laughed. "Where would I be if you'd gone to Hopkins?"

"Glad I didn't."

"I am."

"That was a statement."

"Even when I treat you like a girl?"

"Absolutely. Now, what am I doing with your hair?"

For all the nonsense sisters could cause, guys with sisters could be handy to have around.

Okay, so the thing was, for most of her life, Meredith hadn't believed in romance like Zola didn't believe in Santa. She once had; she'd had sound reasons for questioning it, but she'd thought it was nice for other people, and she'd liked the stories. Meaning: she knew a thing or two about Cinderella moments. She'd engineered them. She hadn't expected to have one. It could be argued that she'd had dozens, one on Christmas Eve, but she didn't see it that way. Staircases at your house only counted at senior prom, and that didn't count, anyway.

It took a public staircase, and someone waiting for you. It took walking down the stairs in a dress and great shoes. There was also unspoken etiquette for eye contact and such, but she was at the top of the lobby steps, and could see Derek at the bottom, speaking to Nelson. Crap, Nelson. He made her feel like everything Alex had said was untrue, except that she knew it was his meanness and self-absorption she disliked. She took the slowest step down that she could knowing that she'd have to at least interact with the dolt.

Then, Derek made a gesture that could only be read as dismissal, and Nelson walked away. Meredith's snicker made Derek turn.

She'd seen his eyes hold all kinds of emotions this year, from the loopy pride the day she'd delivered his speech to the shuttered despondency of no longer caring what she did. How many times has she approached him in this lobby? Thousands, at this point, and in the majority of them what his eyes held was something she could only name in her head—enchantment. Had they showed something else a hundred times? Fewer? It shouldn't have been enough to make her stomach clench in the lead up, or her hands slide on the railing. But forty-eight hours couldn't erase two months of absence, and twice that of dark and dismissal.

Tonight, Derek saw her, and his whole face lit up. She gave herself a breath to acknowledge there was no "seen me naked" smirking. Nothing that made her jaw clench. He was more than happy to see her. There was something she didn't recognize threaded into it, but whatever it was, it didn't stop her apprehension from becoming anticipation.

As in every Cinderella moment, the prince offered his hand. Meredith closed hers over it to descend the bottom five stairs, and took an additional step forward to kiss him once her heels clicked on the lobby floor.

"Hey."

"Hey. How's your patient?"

"Groggy. Relieved. Looking forward."

"To?"

"Just forward, she said. Gina's like that."

"Oh, it was Gina! That's fantastic. She's been waiting a long time. Congratulations, Dr. Grey."

"Thank you."

"Smooth procedure?"

"For the most part." He pressed his thumb against the back of her hand, and she took the cue to elaborate, briefly, on the complications they'd run into. "It wasn't what Webber would do, but I'm confident it'll hold. It's still such a rush to see it go pink. I just…I feel bad for the donor's loved ones. Even if yesterday wasn't a holiday for them, it's horrible timing. Not that it's ever good."

"It's not, but thanks to you, there aren't two families suffering at the start of a new year."

She didn't realize how warm his observations had made her until he held out her coat, and it felt entirely unnecessary.

"That dress is beautiful." he added.

"Thanks," she said, glancing down at the sleeveless halter bodice, "It's Kepner's, but I think I'm going to buy it off of her."

"How did that happen?"

She tucked her hand into his arm. As they strode to the parking lot, she couldn't stop herself from wondering who, if anyone, was watching, in spite, or perhaps, because of what Alex had said. Let them see this, and carry it back to the surgical floor.

"When I left this morning the transplant team was a ways out, and Gina lives in Bellingham. I thought it'd be nice to take April their gifts, and have an excuse not to stay, since she probably doesn't want company. I'm surprised she answered, except it's April, so maybe not. We were doing the pleasantries thing when I realized I hadn't grabbed anything to wear tonight." Meredith laughed as Derek opened the door of his Porsche. "I did have to wear something," she added, slyly, looking up at him under her eyelashes while she arranged the calf-length skirt of her dress, which had a close-fitting layer of tulle with beading that turned the midnight blue expanse into a starry one. The smokey lids had been something to do with the time she'd had between Alex going back onto the floor and Derek's arrival, and it made up for the lack of extra adornment.

"It's a shame." He winked, and once the door was closed, she blew out a long breathe. She hadn't let herself stop to anticipate his responses. It'd been a long time since she'd expected him to only be McDreamy, but the wariness that came from living with McDisparaging for so long had had a similar effect. She was with Derek; she was going to be with Derek.

"You've had to think of everything for weeks." If the car hadn't started, she could've believed she'd created his voice in her head. "Seemed like you left in a hurry, though."

"You were working. Didn't want to bother you."

"You wouldn't have." He merged onto the street that led to the hospital. "So, what? You came to that realization, swore, and she offered to let you shop her closet?"

"More or less. More then less. She pulled this out, darted it, and got Jackson to bring it in. I don't know if 'darted' is the rightterm."

"Put darts in. Mom used to spend the last weekend in August doing alterations, and she'd say if she was teaching three, she might as well teach four. I was tall enough for Dad's shirts, and everyone said I'd fill out, but..."

"You were a teenager."

"More than less."

"I know the feeling. I got my visit from the boob fairy late. Started to think it was like Santa, and Mom wasn't doing something she was supposed to... what?" They'd pulled up to a stoplight, and he was gaping at her. What could possibly-?

"The tooth fairy."

"I said boob."

He straightened his feigned scowl out quickly. Don't do that. Your eyes are truthful enough. She didn't say it. She didn't want to go there. Not yet.

"I heard you. I just realized, you didn't get the tooth fairy, did you?"

"I've already decided we can tell Zola she only comes to kids in capitalist countries. She'll be the only first grader who buys into that, and not St. Nick."

"Great, solid, back to you."

"What do you think?"

"HThat she probably made a good call, because you would've set unbelievable traps."

"Traps?"

"Yeah. Every kid tries to trap the tooth fairy. Kath was a whiz with tinker-toys. Lizzie and I once lost teeth at the same time and tied this string of cans between our doors... Still not sure how they got past that."

"I did put together a good Rube Goldberg machine in seventh grade. It pulled a surgical knot tight. I think it was good. It didn't get graded. Mom tripped over it the night before we showed them off, and I flew out of bed to find her kicking it. All I could manage to say was it was mine, so she started yelling. I'd told her about it. I'd asked to use stuff she'd never have noticed were missing, and I was twelve, mad, exhausted. So, I finally just screamed, loudly enough that the guys next door called to make sure...Well, anyway, they'd actually listened to me explain the whole thing. She got off the phone, and actually wrote me a note. She said coming up with unlikely solutions was good for a surgeon. She didn't like going the long way for any small task, but if I cared about something, I shouldn't put it in…in someone's way."

"That...sounds like her."

Meredith could see the restaurant's sign ahead of them. It held a kanji character she didn't know, but was probably hope, or patience, or relax, Grey, you've tripped over enough molehills

"Hey, you know who must've been really good at Rube Goldberg machines and tooth fairy traps?" he asked.

"Huh? I mean, who?"

"Lexie."

"Holy crap, you're right! Oh, man. Imagine her trapping Thatcher!"

"If you decide not to go to lunch with Molly, I'll go in your place."

"Why?"

"We have no other way to find out how many bones were broken."

Derek couldn't have claimed credit for his timing, but he finished that explanation just as he reached the parking structure on the same block as the restaurant, and while turning in, gave Meredith the chance to take in the entirety of his wicked expression. She put her hands over her mouth, but there wasn't a way to stop sound she made inhaling her laughter.

He glided into a spot, basking in his success. She let him.

There'd been a time, periods of time, where she'd compared her own bearing up to Addison's and wondered how he'd been willing to be seen with her in public. She'd been brash and coarse-and proud of it. She wouldn't change for someone else's comfort. But as she'd encountered it other models of powerful womanhood, Addison's included, she'd seen the fatal flaw: she didn't enjoy making other people uncomfortable for no reason, not to the degree her mother had.

She'd felt elegant coming down those stairs, like she might've secretly imagined at sixteen, and more than she'd believed herself capable of at twenty-six. She beat Derek to opening her door, but what would've been the point in not taking his hand when it let her rise in one motion, not a series of scoots? Poise could be natural, and both of them were more at ease, not hiding behind an extreme, who gave a flip?

Sometimes, it was nice to feel like a freaking lady.

"You said four, earlier," she said, once they sat down. "Amelia didn't learn to sew?"

"She must've. She got more hand-me-downs than anyone, but I guess alteration day got more sporadic once Kate went away to school."

"Oh. Yeah. I forget how little she was." Meredith sipped her water, and took a beat to stare at the Chef's Special rolls.

"Hardly bigger than Zo."

"She's tall for her age."

"True." He smiled. "She was so funny today. She refused to let us take down her hair, and one of the wire thingys broke. She had antennae for a while "

"Craft store garland. Not meant for long term hair-styling."

"It was a brilliant idea in the short term. What made you think of it?"

"Her birthday. In school there'd sometimes be garlands around birthday cake plates, and we'd wear them as little circlets. I worried it'd be pokey, but we did test runs. It should come out tomorrow. She'll be excited about Kwanzaa colored beads. I'm glad you got time with them and your mom," she added.

The waiter approached, and Derek's expression shifted so quickly that she thought she'd imagined that it'd looked too complicated to be simple agreement.

"How was Kepner?" he asked with their order put in.

"Very interested in doing me a favor, and not interested in talking about anything else. Jackson's working. She's not. They already had a crib built... You know it was technically a late term abortion?"

"Incompatible with life after twenty-four weeks."

"Yeah. Doesn't match them. They're mourning a baby. It should be framed as...I don't know, induced pre-term labor. That's what it is for them. I don't know if it'd have been different if she'd miscarried. If Bay...he wasn't Bailey, yet, but... I don't know how I'd feel. I just know they lost a baby, and April... She was there for me—which is a really bad example since I didn't tell you—"

"You had reasons. I'd been shot, and then I was refusing to live in the real world. Still giving you a reason to be afraid of losing me."

"I guess... we didn't always face stuff together immediately, especially when..." Drink, be glad it's just water. "Jackson was at the hospital, which is his job, but he's there a lot considering it's only been a couple weeks. April sort of implied...I said that she had friends at the hospital, we'd be there, or do whatever, and she mentioned that the church people say that too. Then, she said, 'or that's what Jackson says.' Like he's the one going to church. That's…Jackson and I used to make faces at each other whenever there was a prayer during a banquet. Mom 'played along'—I'm sure a lot of people in there were—so we never got caught. We talked about it when Michael Jackson died right after the shooting—Not important."

"But fascinating. Did you refuse to recite the pledge, too?"

"Just 'under God.' It wasn't even in there until the fifties! I don't know about Jacko. I just wish….We've been through a lot of disasters, but I don't know how to help another couple do it, or if I should try, but I really don't know when it's that kind of fundamental... We weren't totally on the same page, but we read the same book."

"Mm, Our Family Tree: An Evolution Story," he said, referencing one of the kids' books. She laughed. "Cristina and I both believe in science, but she doesn't hope for an afterlife."

"Nope. 'Jewish atheist scientist, when she's done, she's done.'"

"Exactly. But after the shooting, it was the experiences we had had that helped. Partially, that I'd been her patient. I was proof she'd made it out. I had tried to stop him, too. And our dads, something totally unrelated. Didn't matter that I hope to see mine again. I didn't push her to work past anything. We rarely actually talked about it.

"I think you did good today., letting her be Kepner."

"I just needed a dress. But thanks."

She waited to ask the thing. The thing she'd planned to ask for days. She emptied her saké cup, and let him tell her about Bailey playing "Super Grober" with the knight's helm, and bantered about what it meant that his mom had gotten him the Clash's eleven disc box set, and that he'd put it directly into his car.

"She knows what I like," he insisted as a literal boatload of sushi was placed in front of them. "What's wrong with that?"

"Let's start with: was she buying you the original LPs, since you were, like, ten?"

Derek scrunched up his face exactly how that kid must have if he'd been called out. She knew better; he'd been a teenager by the release of London Calling, and likely as angry at the world as Meredith had been at the height of her Nirvana phase.

"I saw them at the Bonds Club in '81," he reminded her, indignantly. "They were the kings of New York for seventeen nights, and I got into five of them."

"Does Carolyn know that?"

"She does, because Mark scored us tickets for six, and Amelia tried to follow us to one of them."

"Mark scored? His parents…." She narrowed her eyes at Derek's face. "They got the tickets. They paid out the nose to get their thirteen-year-old—?"

"Fourteen. Not what we'd do now."

She shook her head. Every once in a while he dropped something about Mark's negligent, permissive, well-off parents that clarified another part of their friendship. Her mother had had nothing like Sadie's father's empire, but Meredith hadn't been as envious of her as she might have been. She might've tried harder to keep up if she hadn't known she was running a different race.

"Zola's already asking to go to concerts I don't approve of."

Derek poked a chopstick through a piece of nori. "What?"

"There's no way I'm sitting through The Wiggles Live."

He laughed, and she considered finding other anecdotes about the kids. There were plenty; they'd talked about B.B.'s teething, and Zola's wellness check on the phone, because milestones were safe. He'd left her in charge; most of the time she'd thought he could stuff opinions on her parenting, but she hadn't given him many opportunities to share.

She didn't. There were things she hadn't given him any opportunities to share. She had to ask the question. She swallowed another mouthful of saké.

"Do I need to submit a FOIA request to find out about your research?"

His lips parted, and she straightened her shoulders in response to the doubt that lingered in the tilt of his head.

"Seriously, Derek. It's not a trick, or... You can't have us and the work. Not... They can't be two separate lives. We have to be able to talk about your job. I want to hear about it. I've read the press releases—"

"You have?"

"Of course. You haven't exactly been putting selfies in the shared folder; what else was I supposed to do?" She caught a certain twitch in his face. Another indication of his lifelong friendship with Mark, and maybe some of her influence, silently saying, Maybe that was your problem.

She quirked her lip, signaling that she got it.

There wasn't a hint of meanness or degradation, and she could almost chide herself for anticipating it. Almost. If she hadn't caught herself slipping into old thought patterns, it'd be easier to believe he wouldn't. Neither of us is better than the other.

"Well," he said, tapping his chopsticks against a plate absently, already oblivious to the others in the small dining room. "You'll like this, it's very neurosciencey: We've got one team looking at neuropeptide 'Y' receptors in marmoset brains. I admit, that one didn't thrill me, but there are indications that developing an agonist could have implications for a medical treatment for alcoholism—Among other things, of course,"

"Sure." She put her hand over his. "There's a difference between personal and being too close. It can be powerful if it's personal."

"Yeah. Yeah. That's a good way to look at it." For a second she thought she might know how the marmosets felt being studied. Then he said, "Okay, so, the next team," and they were off.

His salesmanship was one reason she'd understood why the government had been after him, specifically; although she couldn't see how it'd gotten on their radar before it'd crossed over to the Seattle VA. It took knowing his preferences to identify anything he might be less than thrilled over, and it didn't change anything about how engaging he was. Listening to him, she didn't wonder which team perky-voiced Renée was on, or reconsider her choices. There were more important questions to ask and more interesting trajectories to follow.

"I don't get to work as closely on any of them as I'd like. I have ideas I'd like to follow through on, but..." He shrugged. "Honestly, the challenges are different than I expected."

"Oh?"

"Mmhmm. It...well, it's going to sound... it's something Nancy said the time she was out here."

Meredith swore as a piece of salmon nigiri dropped into her soy sauce dish. She could be clumsy, she got that, but she'd always had stellar fine motor skills. She'd mastered chopsticks when her social circle was still making faces at the idea of sushi, and that was with most of them having been overdosed on Chinese takeout by the age of seven. All the precise surgical training should've only improved matters.

"Hold on," she said. "I'll get the kiddie chopsticks, and you can say that again."

Derek laughed. This was not the type of place where the waiters were accustomed to folding the paper from disposable chopsticks and making pincers. "Zola insists on trying the 'real' ones first, too."

"She's getting better, actually. Beeb's still working on forks."

Beeb was going to be pissed about getting bottle not boob at about this time, but the sake wasn't empty enough for her to say that aloud, here. "I'm done, anyway. I think I ate more than my share here."

"I flew Super Grover around the living room. You did a... Did you eat lunch?"

"What about Nancy?"

He sighed. "It's nothing Earth-shattering. At the time, when she started in about how I'd never been alone. I thought she was just being her. She'd had a year of not being able to criticize me, maybe wanted me to detach and come home. I don't know. She'd jumped to so many conclusions in twelve hours—"

"Oh, I remember. I mean, she wasn't the only one. I just wasn't very up on the sibling thing, yet. Alex saw me get out of the shower today, and we aren't..." Meredith paused and put her sake cup down by the decanter. "I did not, in fact, eat lunch."

"Karev's slacking."

"He did my hair."

He'd also left a granola bar, which was in her purse. Coming out of the scrub room was always a moment of truth, where the abstract real world thoughts hit you at once. In spite of going in at nine and coming out at five, she'd been certain that her body would reject anything she'd tried to eat.

"Your hair is lovely," he acknowledged, his eyes moving from hers to the coronet of braids.

"And I'm not driving, your mom and like six other adults have the kids, I'm not on-call. I can be a... You weren't implying anything about me being a lush. Please return to what you were saying."

"Mer—"

"You'd never been alone."

He sighed. "I hadn't. Not for any more than a couple weeks. It turns out I'm not a huge fan. Not because I have to find my own dry cleaner's."

"I didn't say that! You…you should go on."

"This… isn't going to surprise you. You know me, far better than Nancy, even then, and depending on her motivation…. I don't love it. I pretend I have a life, because my fellows should. But an empty research facility…. I feel like… like I was in the beginning of another iteration of The Walking Dead. You'd think an empty apartment would let me keep thinking about the work, and I can't say I'm leaving it in the lab, but it's not…. I do laundry. Check my phone. Call the kids. Try to read emails, and end up watching old videos. Feel like a fool for bugging you about your roommates way back when. Finish a bottle of Scotch every other week. Anything else, I only want to share with you and the kids.

"Sometimes I've wondered what made Richard ask me out here. I thought he knew the city kid who married Addison, but the way he sniffs out the truth about people… I left Manhattan. Bought forty acres in the middle of nowhere, and thought I wanted to be alone. I had fly-fishing and hiking…things that have always helped me clear my head. It was like being back at Bowdoin. That's where you're supposed to figure out being alone, right? College? But Mark followed me up there, and I knew I'd go home; Mom and Amy were there. I didn't think much about where I was suited for, because it didn't matter."

He looked at her, his eyes wide, her first indication that he might've been as nervous about this as she'd been. "I didn't actually mean to say all that. I'm not trying to make you feel…anything. I made this choice, I just…."

"I've told you the bed is to big for me; what do you think the house feels like? Amelia has been working more since she took on Herman's case, and obviously the middle of nowhere is actually safer, but you wanna talk about final girl in a horror movie? I'm small and blonde."

"That why you're considering dyeing it?"

"Absolutely."

They stared at each other for a moment. He cracked first, letting out a breath that made his shoulders fall. "I really missed talking to you."

"Me, too. If we do it more, the quiet won't be as big of a problem."

"See?" he said. "That's the kind of logic I need more of."

"I am highly rational."

"You are many, many things," he said, reaching a finger out to trace the links of her bracelet.

Meredith had been a Cinderella analog, once. An intern doing SCUT, who had a tendency to run before anyone could discover the truth about her. If you wanted to get down to it, she'd even had a stepmother with two daughters. Black panties weren't exactly a glass slipper, but life wasn't a fairy-tale—Sometimes, she thought she couldn't emphasize that to her children too much. Others, she thought it was better for them to know that difficult and scary things could lead to beautiful things. They might not be opposite viewpoints—Those weren't her circumstances anymore. She would never be the Grey of Grey+Sloan, in her opinion, and while she had confidence in her skills, she wasn't delusional. She was a third-year attending, with nothing like the influence her mother had had. But hadn't she collected a library's worth of books to show Zola that anyone could be a princess? That it wasn't about following the rules of society, but setting them? Believing your own value, and the value others put in you? Meredith would not be ruled by her husband; would no longer accept anything but equal power.

"I know," she said. Derek's eyes could easily belong to Prince Charming, but if Meredith could've seen her reflection in those shining pools of blue, it would have belonged to a queen.