Meredith woke with the scent of fire in her nostrils, incongruous with the softness of the bed. Opening her eyes didn't mean having to dive for the basin Derek left her before going out to clear and burn leaves that had built up on every surface outside, which was an improvement. She'd known she wasn't ready to be out there before she'd found herself on the bathroom floor; her body hadn't needed to go this far to keep her inside.

"Promise it's not your head?" Derek had asked, the back of his hand checking her for fever, and his eyes studying her face. He might have been unsure, but she knew he'd have seen if that was the case.

She was pretty sure it was in her head. She'd almost wanted that moment in the OR to be the sign of an impending migraine. Something treatable. Sufferable.

She'd ended up puking without the fever and fatigue of flu; her mind spinning while the room stayed level. Her skin wasn't clammy. It wasn't anything. The snap meant the rubber band connected, but she barely felt the sting.

So much for a relaxing Saturday. Callie and Arizona had kept both girls for the first time in months. They were going to bring Zola home this evening and stay for dinner; Arizona's first time out just to socialize.

The pre-emptive attack was psychological overkill. Meredith had had her own to-do list of stuff to do inside. Would she have hung out in doorways, and ventured out if it looked like Derek support? Sure, but not if she thought she'd be the one who lost it.

You're fine. No nerve damage. No infection. No tubes and pins that—that kept Jim from causing more damage.

If she'd gone back and stitched his wrist closed with a thread from the gauze they'd found—It could've been another vector for infection. It might not have bee strong enough. She hadn't overlooked it because she didn't want to hurt him more. Stabilizing his fingers did that—A neurosurgeon couldn't have done more for the nerves. Callie couldn't have casted the bones. Meredith had saved his hand. Kept Mark alive. Brought her sister home.

It hadn't been l enough. She'd known it when she'd volunteered to go search for water, road, signage, a sign. Derek had fought her, afraid for her leg. He hadn't noticed that when she wasn't curled up next to Lexie just to tend to her. That was how she'd known he was still in the grip of blood loss. Shock. She'd been the best choice to monitor her sister based on Lexie's injuries, and had full use of her arms. It'd been a benefit er that in the shade of the piece of wing hovering above them, she could keep her eyes open, and her mind working simultaneously.

She was still in better shape than him. If her leg did get infected or just inflamed, that might not stay true. She'd intercepted the branch Cristina had made a walking stick of, and the bright scraps they'd gathered to use for rudimentary trail marking, and pick her way on.

The stick had been more trouble than it was worth. Trudging made falling harder. Pine straw was softer than it got credit for.

She'd heard the water right as she'd become sure she had to turn to head toward the smoke. How far had she continued with it at her back? A quarter mile? Half? A few dozen yards? The distance registered only as one miserable step after the next, pain shooting through her head and never settling into something tolerable.

Hurts-hurts-hurts-hurts-hurts….

It would've hurt lying in the clearing, and Arizona's bone had been visible, and water was there, there was water. That was all she needed—No. The bottles. Open, submerge. Close. Open. Submerge. Close. Open. Submerge. Close—again, and again until the bag was full, and she was done. She could rest, try to hide from the pain pulsing with her pulse—

"Meredith? Meredith!—Jesus, baby, I almost passed…You're here. At the water. You stopped at the water."

The water was cold. She didn't need to go into water to get cold.

"I know you're cold, beautiful. I should've said, you didn't stop until you found the water. The question is, how long ago should you have stopped?"

"Found…I…. You…."

"Yes, you found the water, you stubborn brat. I will always find you. We need to get you back to the fire. Can you stand up for me?"

She did so without hesitation, and pitched away from Derek, dry-heaving with no sense of where any part of her body was until he locked his arm over her chest. She'd tried to wrench out of his hold, still retching with no output. Instead, she'd taken him along as she sank to the ground. Her leg objected to being knelt on. She got it up, got her arms on her knees, found the dark.

"Mer, hey, what's happening? The water? Did you…? No. Oh, Christ on a crutch. Look at me."

"Uh-uh. Can't." She needed stillness. Stillness and darkness, and the cold didn't matter because it wasn't pain.

"You can, but I get it, I'd be pretty ashamed of me, too. I'm a neurosurgeon. I'm a neurosurgeon, we were in a plane crash, and I didn't check my wife. Don't occur to me before you went traipsing off into the woods….! Shameful."

"mma doctor."

"You're concussed. Let that get you off the hook."

"Gave that to you"

He started to laugh. Meredith stiffened, and his jacket crinkled as he pressed his face into his shoulder. "Oh, Mer, I'm sorry. Loud noises, bad?"

"Uh-huh."

"Vertigo. Judgmental impairment. Drowsiness?"

"That'd be nice."

"It would not. Photosensitivity."

"Mmm. Hurts."

"Light hurts?"

"Mmm. Hurts."

"Light hurts" he concluded. "Since yesterday?"

"This morning. Stupid birds. Stupid sun."

"That's my Seattle girl. Okay. Is it worse than it was while you were walking?" She made a noncommittal noise. "You don't know."

"Heard the water. Mattered more"

"Christ." The softness of the word hurt more than him shouting would've.

"Sorry."

"Absolutely fucking not. Try…stubborn, and brave, and far too self-sacrificing."

"Gotten better."

"Have you? It's not a bad thing to be. Not as a doctor. As a mom. But, Mer…. This isn't a survivalist competition. Hiding something like that….

"I cannot go home without you. Do you understand? Our baby needs both parents, and I need you."

"We all need water."

"We need you more! We're not out yet. Cristina could've come this way tomorrow. I could've. You could've rested and tried again.

"You did so much yesterday. It's amazing that you found this, but right now it's amazing that you're breathing. Until we get out of here, that's your goal. To be breathing. Are you hearing me, love? My actual words, not the spirit of the thing? Not a Mer-terpretation?

"Yeah."

"Good. I need to see your eyes. I want to be sure of what we're dealing with."

"Gonna triplane me?" She asked, referring to the first known brain surgery; a hole drilled in the skull, to relieve pressure on the brain, believed to be a precursor to craniotomy. Also, possibly done to release demons. If felt like that might be her problem.

"If I had to," he said. It wasn't the worst thing to know.

"You don't."

"Can I determine that? I want to be sure what we're dealing with, then we'll gonna try to wait it out. I'll be right here in front of the sun. I'll take a look at your pupils. Then we'll sit for a while. No moving. No nasty light. Just sitting. Get you some fluids—"

"Urgh."

"—If it starts to get dark, we'll reassess, but that won't be for a while. We have time for you to feel better, okay? I just need to look at those beautiful green eyes."

"I can track. Not stroking out."

"Great. Show me."

"I can't. Derek, plea—" She'd clenched her jaw against the word and lifted her head. No begging.

Where the fuck had this asshole found a goddamn penlight?

"I know, I know, sweetheart. I'm so sorry. You're done. Thank you. God, I'm sorry."

The tears the light drew into her ruts made her jacket slippery, and she made a pathetic noise of distress at not being able to settle.

Derek leaned over her, blocking the imposing tendrils of light. "How can I help?"

Days would pass before she actually cried— he'd say let herself cry, but the amount of helplessness in Derek's voice was one of the moments that came back to her when the blades of a helicopter broke through the barrier that kept this experience from feeling like it belonged in reality.

"M'okay. We're even."

"God, I hope not." He didn't mean for her to hear his response. It was obvious in the silence that passed between her words and his, interrupted by questioning murmurs as he brushed his fingers over her hair—"uh-uh"—the back of her neck—"mmm"—and firmly against her spine. He'd said it under his breath, not knowing how desperate her mind had been for any stimuli that wasn't coming from her body.

He'd said it thinking of how much he hated hurting her. She'd heard it as a measure of how much she'd had to hurt him.

Eventually she could rise without her inner ear revolting, she'd still had to squint. Derek kept his good arm around her; they'd cover a few yards before she'd realize how much she was leaning on him, and try to straighten. Her bag of water vessels dragged in the pine straw. There'd be a beam of light from the west, or she'd stumble and her vision would go white with the sudden surge of pain. He'd keep her upright, and her head would end up on his shoulder.

They were making no progress.

"Need a break?" he asked at the end of one of those cycles.

"I can't."

"Yeah, we can. Of course we can."

"I can't. I…I'm…I-I'm sorry. Your hand…" Crap. She was jostling him constantly. His other arm must've been killing him.

"I had access to the first-aid kit meds far more recently. If I'd thought…. We're talking about you."

The kit had had almost nothing but OTC meds; most of the vials, regardless of schedule, were broken. If Cristina had forced one of the few doses of morphine on him, he wasn't showing it. He tolerated them better than she did, but she'd gotten familiar with Drugged Derek in the weeks immediately following\ the shooting. She'd welcome his return when they got back. She wasn't going to risk checking out. Not while she was fighting to keep Lexie with them.

"l-I'm…I'm scared I won't be able to start again," she admitted.

"We can work with that." He'd kissed her, the arm steadying her gripping more tightly. The way his torso rotated, he'd started to move his injured hand to her face. "Do you think I'd leave you out here?"

"You'd hafta."

"No."

"Derek…."

"You made a pretty straight trail. I can carry you the rest—"

"Not with—"

"With my arm. One step at a time. The same way you got yourself out here in the first place. Even if I couldn't, I'd bust my ass getting back up there and bringing Yang to assist, I will come for you. I'll find you. Why can't you see…?" He turned his head up to the sky, and she'd followed his gaze too far. She pulled him forward to hide the cataclysm her body experienced in the next moments. A cymbal being hit, she'd decided. That's what it felt like whenever the light hit her eyes. And at the same time, it felt like nothing. It just hurt, it hurt, it hurt, it just hurt.

She wasn't sure when he started speaking; if she'd missed anything before her awareness clicked in again, and his lips were on level with her ear. His words stayed soft and even, like she was home in their bed with the curtains drawn. Where she desperately wanted to be. Where if she was hurt, he'd be whole, and Zola would be with them. "I've messed up. I've done something hugely wrong if you don't know that you matter more to me than anything in the world. You and Zola. That's it. Yesterday…the only clear thought I had was that I had to find you. There might've been another way out. I don't know. I don't care. If I can operate after this, it's because you're an incredible surgeon. If I can't, it'll be worth it."

"No. No, I'm not…. You can't…you can't put that on me. The people you….You're not…you're not just a resident, Derek—"

"Neither are you, ABS-certified surgeon Dr. Meredith Grey. You know there are more important things. You always have. I-I did, too, but I let it….Mer, you're shivering."

Maybe. Maybe she was trembling. Panic was squeezing in on her like a vice, and she didn't know why, exactly, only that they needed to get back to camp. She didn't have any fight left, she couldn't flee, and if she froze, they'd freeze.

"All right, we're stopping to figure this out." He leaned against a low hanging branch of a nearby tree, one low enough that she could imagine coaching Zola through climbing up from the single strong branch below. Tears swam in her eyes again. When she closed them, Derek's fingertips stroked her forehead.

"Anterior," she murmured."Medial occipital. S'not big. Not a full on goose egg."

"I'll look back at camp. I should've—"

"Shut up! Just...just stop. It doesn't matter! You can'tdo anything, unless your scoutmaster taught you how to make willowbark or freaking poppies grow out of nowhere. I'm not mad that you didn't diagnose me while I was pinning your goddamn wrist shut. You shouldn't have had to come out here after me. You should be resting. You, and Mark and Lexie—I've been gone for hours.…. Cristina can't take care of everyone."

"But you can?"

"I have two hands, I haven't lost half my blood volume, I didn't have anything crushed. A bump on my head doesn't—"

"Why do we use a pain scale?"

"Don't start."

"Answer the question, Dr Grey."

"There's no clear metric. It's experiential, and…and subjective. I was at like a twenty back there, is that what you want to hear?"

"Of course it's not," he said a reassurance that only served to make her feel like an asshole. "Now?"

"How's your wrist?"If she pissed him off enough, he'd start walking again. She might have to keep up for a couple dozen yards—

No. She wouldn't. He wasn't going to storm off. She knew better. Knew him better. Her mind was twisting things up, reacting like it was any other day.

"About an eight. Not all-consuming. You know what I can't judge?"

"Me."

"I'm not…." He'd pressed his forehead against the top of her head, a sudden role reversal. "I don't mean to judge you. I only…. You don't usually try to mask physical pain, so that you are…it's a big deal. What is happening with my arm has nothing to do with your head—or your leg, which you're limping on, by the way—and you're acting like it does. Like there's a quota of what the six of us can feel.

"Look at it this way, if I'd been operating for eight hours, and you'd had a thirty-six hour shift, would you let me drive you home?"

She wasn't at a ten, standing here. But walking…. It wouldn't get worse if she let him keep her upright. Probably.

"If Cristina had said she couldn't go exploring this morning, would you have said she didn't have that option?" he asked.

"Not equivalent. She has a really high pain tolerance, so it'd mean something was really wrong—What?" In the shade of the tree, she could focus on his shifting features, going from exasperated to baffled with worry undermining all of it. "Derek, I-I don't…I don't live at an eight anymore."

"I know, but—"

"Physically, I'm…normal? When I'm sober, anyway, but that's normal. This…maybe it's not all that different, in this kind of situation, because it's not…it's not pain tolerance, is it?"

"What?"

"The way I…. What I did getting here. it's dissociation. Up…Up to a point. I didn't recognize it, but…that's what happened. Funny, pain usually…" She clamped her mouth shut, and closed her eyes against a rush of dread and nausea. It made her skin want to expel her skeleton. Her bones repelled her organs. The sensation only lasted for a second; not one of the hours' long episodes where her nerves refused to respond, and the rest of her body felt unsteady at best, and usually foreign.

"Exhale, Meredith. Good. Inhale. Steady. Exhale. That's all you have to do, just breathe through."

Derek thought vertigo had caused her to cut herself off, not the other way around. The idea of correcting him made it worse.

What Wyatt called dissociation could come with the gut-churning feeling of detachment, but didn't always. Sometimes it was the sense of taking a passenger seat in her body, which had been the case during her intern exam.

"I'm okay," she said, opening her eyes after another breath to confirm it was true.

"You're a diamond."

"No, It's not being strong…it's….it's…. You haven't….With you, I've never…."

For a moment, the crags on his face multiplied. "Last year.…. Did it start in the hall? With Karev? The night Janet took Zola." Who'd taken Zola home last night? Alex? He was who she'd called. They hadn't just been late getting home from Boise. They were missing. Their plane had gone missing. Would there have been some other protocol triggered? The E.R. doctor had said discharging which meant going home, but Mom hadn't been able to bypass social services. Meredith hadn't gone home for a week, and it hadn't been home anymore. They were moving to Boston.—They were moving to Boston with their baby. The social workers in Boston—There weren't any— "I need more time…." Mom said that to a social worker. Had she asked for them to take Meredith?

" Hey, hey, look at me. Not gonna hurt you. Mer. There. Already so much more green in those eyes. Zola's okay. She's safe with Karev, or Callie. Maybe she slept over with Sofia last night. She loves her Sofi sleepovers. Remember the time they woke up from their naps, and we spied on them looking at Zo's books for twenty minutes?"

"Mm. Same week as this." She pointed to a spot to the side of her eyebrow, where, in March, a flung board book had clipped her on the forehead.

"Her cutest book moment, and her worst book moment were the same week? Sounds like your daughter." He kissed the place where that cut had healed. At the time, it'd been obnoxious having to explain that her daughter was actually the sweetest baby in existence; her mind had just put books in the projectiles category. She'd rather have dozens of those marks than the new places where branches had snagged her while she searched the woods for her husband.

"We'll get home," she said. "She'll have both of her parents. A-And yeah. Th-That day. It was…that's what happened You…You were in the hall. I-I-I saw you."

"And?" he prompted; his tone gentle, muscles tensing like he anticipated a blow.

"My instinct.… It was to go to you. A-And…." No crying. Crying was a surefire swoop back to twenty, and she had no reason for it. Not like Arizona. Derek was here with her. That night was ancient history.

"And you…you thought it was wrong." Thought? "I made you think that. It…It might've been. I don't… I should've gone to you."

"You were mad at me."

Mad was an insufficient description of what he'd been feeling, and they both knew it.

"You were mad at Karev. And I saw it. I saw your eyes. I-I'd thought I knew what…. I get the blue screen of Meredith. That's nothing in comparison to…to…you were gone.

"Not interceding…not being the one to take you home that night…. It's one of the biggest regrets of my life. Has been since I pulled my head out of my ass…. At the time….

"I regret what I didn't do. But I think it might've been the right choice. It's not weakness, when that happens. Your mind pulls you away from emotion that's too big for you to withstand alone. You're my wife. Holding you up when the weight of the world gets dumped on your shoulders is the most obvious part of my job. Especially when you're taking it on without being asked. It seems so simple. But I didn't trust myself. So if you had clocked me as safe that night, and I'd said the wrong thing? If I'd added to it? I would've lost you. That terrified me. What that could've done to you terrifies me.

"None of it changes that I failed you that night. I'm not going to turn away this time. You're not facing this alone. Let me look out for you."

"I can take care of myself."

He gave her a small smile and brushed a piece of leaf out of her hair. "Meredith, my beautiful, shining diamond, I'm not sure that's true."

"Excuse—"

"Not in the thick of it. When the storm is over over, and clean-up is done, you let yourself feel, and grieve, and hurt. I don't know how long we'll be out here. We don't have food yet. You have no fat stores, generally, and I don't think you've regained what you lost from that flu. If this happens again, and I can't go after you in time….

"If I'd been in your place this afternoon…how I imagine you were feeling, I wouldn't have left. if Yang had your symptoms I would've fought her on leaving, ,I don't think either of us would've hidden that kind of pain by default."

"I found water." It was her only defense, but it was a good one.

"You didn't know that was going to happen."

"No, but…but what was I supposed to do?" It sounded pathetic, and desperate, and petulant to her, and maybe to Derek, but the muscles of his face relaxed in a sigh. He heard sincerity. She'd been running on the instincts he told her to trust, but couldn't always understand. They'd gotten her to that moment in the hallway, and past it, and still she trusted them. Just like she trusted him.

"Tell us. That's all. We would've figured out another plan. I don't know what, because there are six of us out here. Everyone is having their own experience of pain, and fear, and hope. All of us care about you. You're not supposed to put yourself on the line l because you started off at a different place. Especially since you didn't. I'm still worried about your leg, even if I was l off base in thinking that was all that hurt more than you were letting on.

"Let me get you back to the clearing. "That paperwork we signed a year ago? That's what it was about."

That paperwork had been signed to bring Zola home. It'dbrought him home, a month later. Maybe in a twisted way it was her turn?

Whatever epiphany he claimed, could he really expect her to believe he wouldn't blame her if he couldn't operate? She didn't mind coming in even with his job. It was better than not ranking, which was how she'd grown up feeling.

"You can take care of Lexie, and keep watch once the sun's down—if the fire doesn't bother you. You cast yourself as a doctor yesterday, but you're also a patient. You're usually a better patient than a lot of us."

What choice did she have, really? She wasn't getting back without him. The stream had been half an hour from the clearing, maximum. Ish. She thought. Not much more. They'd traversed…a tenth? A fifth? Could've been less "Your arm stays in the sling."

He agreed so quickly. That meant it hurt enough for him to put aside any arguments about balance. It meant he didn't want to give her a chance to argue. He needed to get to camp. He could've gone and sent Cristina for her.

His grand plan ended up being piggybacking her the rest of the way. She stepped up in the tree so he wouldn't need to boost her, and wrapped her limbs around him, careful not to hit him her water or make him drop his.

"If this bumps you around too much, it's a no-go."

"I can hang on."

"Please confirm that you know those aren't the words I said, Koala Mer."

"Yeah."

"Please confirm you know I love everything about you, even when it's frustrating."

"Yeah," she repeated, softly, her breath feathering his hair.

The smoke plume finally started to get closer.

"Almost there," he said, eventually. "I think this is where you fell for the first time."

"Where who what?"

"Eagle Scout. You grabbed that branch when your feet went out from under you. Together, Mark and I could probably source the bruises you weren't planning to mention."

"I'm a city kid."

"Who likely couldn't keep her eyes open."

"Looking down made it okay, most of the time."

"What about now? I wasn't trying to elicit a confession. It was an easy reference for how close we are. The trees start to thin soon. I'm sure Yang's watching. Sort of surprised we haven't found her going after us. Do you want to walk from here?"

"Are you tir—?"

"Your decision."

It was almost dusk. If he carried her in, it'd be obvious that she wouldn't have made it before dark on her own power. He was the one who wanted her to be honest; why give her the option?

Three of them were ambulatory, down from four with Mark. It was going to look like they were dropping off at the rate of one per day. They would be. If Cristina knew how badly this had gone, she'd fight against her leaving again, if Derek was willing to let her. And whatever he said, carrying her had been taxing on him. Either way, one of them might not be able to follow this trail again.

"That wasn't a trick question."

"There's no good answer," she'd said, sliding down and taking his hand, along with the rest of the water.

That had proven to be a theme of the past three months. In the end, it hadn't mattered all that much that she'd walked the rest of the way. There'd been a night of Arizona cry,ing, because, unlike their's, this anniversary was about more than paperwork. A day, spent monitoring Lexie, and listening to Derek buoy Mark's spirits, and wondering what the hell she'd do if Lexie started to bleed out when they freed her. She'd had waking nightmares where she'd been desperately trying to cauterize a vessel with an open flame, and the fire caught, turning her sister into one of Mark's patients, the ones who didn't always survive the recovery.

When the decision had to be made, Derek was undoubtedly influenced by her second migraine hitting in the middle of the previous night. Her misery had mounted with every howl and squawk from the animals that paced along the trees, probably scenting them based on her trail through their territory. Lexie had been unconscious and Meredith hadn't had the strength to do anything but breathe intentionally, sure that the next moment would be the one that would break her. The worry she'd seen on Derek's face, even in darkness lit only by stars and the fire she'd needed for its heat and reviled for its light, hadn't made it possible for her to protect him from the truth. She'd wanted to lie still in his arms and be lost, but the nausea made it impossible. It hadn't mattered that she hadn't eaten, or that she'd hacked up the last of the water Derek had coaxed into her back when daylight hadn't seemed like an impossibility. The heaving kept returning. Sometimes she could sit up and get through it by remembering the sound of Derek's voice coaching her through an imagined moment of vertigo while he stayed asleep, and other times, her choking and whimpers had woken him, and she'd almost lost her victory over crying—actually crying, not the tears that came with other expulsions—because being held, being safe in the most unsafe situation she'd been in in her life—a life full of times she'd willingly played chicken with death—hadn't been enough to make anything better.

In the morning, the duller ache from hunger, and the smack of the ground against the back of her head had made the sharp, clawing spikes of the night before not into a dream or a nightmare, or a memory, or a warning—but all of them in one.

They'd levered the metal off, and her situation left the forefront of her mind, replaced by the fear that she'd stumbled into another waking dream. Or, once Lexie's uncovered body was before her, that she hadn't.

(She could still hear Mark, looking a second from passing out himself, making promises to her sister. Making her feel like the lives of her future nieces and nephews were in her hands, when it'd all been castles in the air, as translucent as the whispers they were created in. Lexie had followed his direction to stay alive, so what did Meredith's reaction matter? The words hadn't been for her.)

They'd fed her into the scanners in Boise, and Derek had asked about the results almost immediately on fully waking from surgery.

"You were worried," she'd noted.

"You weren't. Someone had to be."

There wasn't entirely true. She'd known there could've been something else underlying her symptoms. That she probably wasn't done with them, and chronic migraines were often treated, not cured. Treated by neurosurgeons, and neurologists, and of course her brain would be what got knocked around.

But she'd also had a feeling that her the pain would stay in the woods. Not noteworthy in the list of lasting changes racked up by the other five, even Cristina. She'd done so much to keep them alive, and it was incredibly, undeniably horrible of her, but Meredith sometimes wondered: if they'd been found before Meredith had given into the exhaustion the night had left her with, and not woken until a helicopter appeared to take over—the most distressing thing to happen to Cristina would've been losing her shoe.

It made sense for Derek to think she might've been trying to disguise another round of icepicks to the brain a full month after they'd seemed to have fully disappeared. But with the queasiness gone, and the smell of burning leaves taking her back to spring rather than ahead into the fall, she was left with the feeling he hadn't recognized. The one he'd tripped on by accident.

Her skin was numb—A dead kind, not the prickly kind— but it buzzed and crawled, and refused to settle. She couldn't explain the contradiction, she could only feel it. For weeks, the sensation had stirred with the whispers, and a constant gnawing certainty that if she'd figured out how to be the wife Derek actually needed, able to be both student and partner, she could've done more. It didn't matter that he'd say he wanted her—he'd prefer a better her by definition. It didn't matter that the fault actually lay with Boise. They'd been working with what she gave them.

I didn't have to burn her. I couldn't have. Couldn't have saved her from bleeds.

Until this morning, the rubber hand had kept the numbness at bay. It'd been enough for her nerves to remember how to feel. That she could. That she'd felt pain out there. Only out there. You've got all your limbs, your job, your husband.

"Hey, you're up." Derek's relieved smile was more proof that he hadn't quite believed her. He wasn't looking at her shaking hands, or the drawer of tweezers, nail scissors, and other tools she'd slammed shut.

"I am up." She sauntered over to him and draped her wrists over his shoulders, letting the "p" pop in his ear. She didn't know what she was doing. Trying to distract him, yeah, but following an instinct with a cloudier goal.

"You still look a little…." He trailed off, obviously unable to pinpoint what she was.

The word you're looking for is "crazy."

"There's time for you to take a bath and relax."

They were working toward opposite purposes. He shouldn't be working toward anything. He shouldn't be worrying about her. She'd come out fine. Nothing to report. Across town, Lexie was learning to get out of bed. Callie was probably having to convince Arizona to get ready to come here, where every other sentence would have a pause where Mark would've said something salacious. Derek was the one who must really be feeling like his mind was too much for his body, but he'd been taking care of their house—

"Mer?" He touched her face with the back of his hand, so gently, and it made her want to claw the skin off her cheek.

She grabbed his good wrist, not trusting herself with the other and walked him backward into the bedroom.

"I was thinking." She shoved him onto the bed. "That you h shouldn't have had to do all that work alone."

"You were—"

She cut him off with her fingers, digging them into his hair and yanking his head back. "That doesn't mean I can't make it up to you."

"There's nothing to—"

"There is!" She pushed him again. He caught himself on his elbows, looking at her with some amount of bafflement and concern, but she was straddling him and could feel that she was having an effect. She continued with a slightly modified tact. "Everyone's gonna be impressed at how well you're managing."

Confusion remained, but his nostrils flared. The implications hit, even if he knew there was intent.

"I mean, we all know you're capable of almost anything."

"Almost?"

What happened to supportive, Grey?That came to her in Mark's voice, and her stomach clenched hard enough that she could easily have been sick again, but it didn't jump to the front of her mind. She was aware of it, like she was aware of his hand on her arm, but she didn't feel it.

Tell him. Tell him you're dissociating. That you're overwhelmed by—by what? She had her life, her husband, her sister, her best friend, her baby, her job. What the hell did she have to be overwhelmed by?

Your husband, your sister, your best friend, your baby, your job.

No. That wasn't right. Those were the good things. The live-for things. The blessings. She was grateful for them. Lucky that she hadn't lost them. she'd been the only one to simply come home to her life.

"Show me what you can do for yourself, Derek. Make me feel it. Use me. Fuck yourself with me." She kissed him before he could really consider what she'd said, and he let her pull him onto the bed on top of her.

"You wanna be fucked?" he asked, unbuttoning her pajama shirt.

She caught her scowl. That wasn't what she said. She wanted to go limp and have him drag her on the carpet, slam into her. She wanted him to not care if he was hurting her. Not in a rapey way, just so he wouldn't pay attention to her responses or lack thereof. Come on, Derek. You picked me up at a bar.

While she tugged his shirt off, her mind raced through other ways to goad him. It wasn't like they never played rough, but even mad at her, he'd be trying to remind her of how much pleasure he could give her. Just taking what he wanted wasn't Derek. He'd want her to be beyond pain before inflicting it. How could she explain being beyond pleasure? It'd never mattered when she fucked some stranger to feel alive; they rarely caught on to what else she wasn't feeling. Derek knew her, and her body. He didn't know everything about her mind.

"Make me feel it," she repeated. "Make me feel everything. You're frustrated about your wrist. You hate teaching—"

"I don't—"

"For the rest of your career?"

His nostrils flared.

"I scrubbed in every day this week, did I tell you?"

He pressed his mouth over hers, and she started to slide her hands down to the waistband of his sweats. He mimicked her, without turning his nails in toward her back. They weren't long enough to do damage anyway.

She brought her legs together after kicking away her pants, and reached for his cock. She needed to assess the pre-cum situation.

He grabbed her wrist and pinned it by the pillow. Tugging only made him loosen his grip.

"I'm not mad at you, Meredith. I don't resent you. I'm not secretly honing an Arizona-level grudge."

You will.

"I won't," he added, like the thought had appeared in her eyes. He put a hand on her bare stomach, two fingers trailing the underside of her breast until he had her nipple between them. It was stiff, like her body was going through the motions without her. If she opened her legs, would it be like the night she'd been coming off the pain meds from the liver donation and he'd used his fingers to calm her restless legs, and she'd felt the effects without being able to feel the cause?

"Yes," she said. "Hard."

He raised his eyebrows. She loved him playing with her boobs, But maybe to make up for how much stamina she had in most regards, her tits could only take so much. Suddenly, she wished she had the clamps that she'd thrown across that chick's room ten years ago.

Derek twisted and rolled, watching her face. She wanted to bury it under a pillow. She couldn't. She couldn't hide from him.

"Mer, if you're not feel—"

"I am!" Wait, crap, had he been going to say this or well? "I'm fine."

"Yeah?" His braced hand slid down toward her mons. She'd never had to fake with him, doubted that she could. He'd happily do whatever it took to get her up if her mind was in but her body was sluggish, but he did it gently, based on knowing what felt good for her.

She closed her eyes, listening to the rhythm of his weighty breathing, and inhaling the mix of his scent and the ash of leaf corpses.

"I think you're full of shit. The longer you wait, the less viability for a nerve transfer. You're not pushing harder, because you're terrified it'll fail, and it's your last good option."

She opened her eyes to find Derek's glistening fingers curling into his palm.

"I don't know what's going on with you. I'm gonna take a shower while you figure it out. Don't follow me."

She didn't reply. First, because she couldn't say it hadn't been true. Second, because it was all she could do to breathe. The gasps she managed were jagged, crackling things. They made her head spin the way it hadn't that morning. It disconnected her nicely from her body. That was bad and stupid. It was easy. Nothing was easy. (Nothing but death. Get it, Derek?) She'd fucked herself. She was trying to fix it. (It's what you get when you make the whore yours.) The freaking rubber band wasn't working, was broken, as broken as her, broke and sprung away from her, passing by the bathroom door as it opened.

Derek trailed water across the floor in spite of his robe. Should she have left the room? He said her name and sat on the bed. They'd have to change the sheets. That'd been the plan anyway, before she'd had to call time on morning sex. She'd been into it, before she'd been puking.

Derek said to look at him. She was fine. Nothing hurt. She couldn't give him her eyes. Looking in his would mean seeing what she'd done. She hurt. It couldn't be okay. Didn't matter what he knew.

He knew:

She was in the woods.

Wanted him to bring her back.

Needed.

She hadn't known how to explain.

Thought he wouldn't understand.

Knew.

He couldn't hurt her when she was like this. Couldn't do anything to her. Not the same as waking her up with sex. Couldn't say way. He was sorry.

He shouldn't be.

He should. He was supposed to be able to help her. To trust what she said about her body. She'd always been honest in bed, but if she was also in the woods….

She couldn't be trusted.

He didn't say that. Maybe he was a hypocrite. What else might help? Tequila at two p.m. was not a great option, no. Hair of the—Right, she'd driven them home last night. He got it mixed up with the last date night, maybe. It couldn't have been…five months? Jeez. Clearly neither of them needed alcohol. Could they try the shower?

He lit candles in the bathroom. She'd bought Lemon Lavender as a joke; based on the scents she used in her hair. They'd gotten attached. She didn't remind him that it'd all started before he went outside. It did clear some of the fire out of her mind.

Lexie screams that fire is eating her spine.

She turned up the pressure on the faucet closest to her. The shower had all kinds of individual controls like that. Derek finished the routine he'd abandoned halfway through. Said he'd wash her hair. He reached for her shower caddy and jerked his arm out of the spray, grabbing her with his left hand. She slipped and slammed into his chest. His other arm went around her middle just in time. If she'd hit the granite, would it have been enough?

He waited for her to be steady before reaching behind the water for the control. He was being dramatic. It wasn't that hot. It'd felt good, actually.

Where was the baby's bath thermometer when he needed it? He squirted her shampoo onto his hand. It was a vanilla thing her stylist suggested. Usually it was overpowered by her conditioner. She liked the contrast.

Derek kneaded the lather into her hair, maybe harder than he usually would've. The water he rinsed it with was cold. He insisted that was true only in comparison to boiling. He combed her conditioner in with his fingers, and started dealing with the tangles her waves were prone to.

"Ack!"

Yeah, that was a good knot. He could braid it for tonight, if she wanted.

Zola liked seeing braids in Meredith's hair. She thought having her to take care of had been what had kept this at bay since they got home. Callie might feel like she owed them for watching Sofia so much in the summer, but Meredith decided to ensure they waited to try collecting on it again.

Derek admitted that he'd hated being alone out here while she'd stayed with Cristin after Dr. Mr. Feeney died.

They needed each other. Pushing him away would hurt them both. All. They all needed each other. Hadn't Cristina proven that by coming home?

She turned and put her palms on his chest. His heartbeat thrummed through her skin. Water rolling a from his shoulders settled on her fingertips.

She looked up, intending to tell him she was sorry, or she loved him. Their eyes met. He smiled. "There you are."

She kissed him, grabbing onto his shoulders to draw him closer. Her lungs burned by the time she put her heels on the tile, but it didn't stop her from surging up again almost immediately. She wrapped herself around him, needing as much of his skin to touch hers as possible.

When he started to boost her onto the wide ledge that was absolutely put in for this purpose, she wavered. "You sure?"

Derek ran the fingertips of his left hand over her face, crooking it against her lower lip. She brought her upper lip down automatically, sucking lightly. His other hand stroked her abdomen, rising to rest just under one breast, down as far as the hair on her mons, with no pattern to his starts and stops. She was aware of her own small noises of disappointment only because his finger slipped from her lip. When he finally went beyond the patch of hair, one finger extended to make side contact with her clit, her mouth hung open with anticipation, something she didn't notice until he tipped her chin up to kiss her. His tongue mimicked the strokes of his finger, creating a rhythm that pulsed all the way through her.

"Yeah, I'm sure," he said, seconds before sliding into her. She wouldn't have been capable of going limp at any point before he'd wrung her an out as thoroughly as the washcloth on the towel rack she grabbed to make up for her wobbling knees. In the bathroom mirror she noted a red mark on her shoulder. She touched it, inhaling at the small, sharp pain, and then letting her shoulder fall again, relieved.

"Hm. I wouldn't want elastic digging into that, if I were you," Derek teased, caressing down from her shoulder to her underboob. "I'm going to plug in some air fresheners and light a few more candles. Hopefully that'll help keep you here. You get warm," he added, touching a row of goosebumps on her arm. "And…dry." She followed his gaze to the purple mark where his finger had stopped.

"Rubber band snapped," she offered. "No big deal." That she could hold his eyes saying that made her wonder if it should've been.

While he did all he could to get rid of the :smoke smell—not just for her benefit. It would be good for Arizona, too—she searched out an older bra. She wanted to stay here, too.

Recurrent migraines would've been so much easier to understand. She wouldn't make the trade. Better the misery you know. If only she knew how to escape it.

A/B: And we're back! My procuedure was a bust. They tried, but couldn't do it under local, for reasons I'm not sure of, and because my veins hate holding IVs, I'll have to go inpatient to get a PICC line (essentially a temporary port in my arm). I'm also getting second opinions, because in preop the surgeon sprung on me that she'd have to sew my eyes shut for 3-7 weeks. No thanks. (Doing one at a time wouldn't help, I only have vision in one eye.) So, there may be another, slightly longer haitus later in the summer/fall.