A/N: Hello and welcome to...uh, a very, very long chapter?

I'm an evil writer, I acknowledge that every time I read your comments, but I wasn't going to make you wait any longer for this, so it is a long one.

I know some of you were surprised to see the ferry boat accident occur in this, and maybe you need to suspend your disbeliefs a little, but for clarification, Derek did not pull her out of the water or do any swimming or CPR like he did in canon, all he did was stop her from drowning long enough for someone to find them, and he definitely wasn't very good at it.

Anyway, you don't want to hear my rambles, you want to hear them talk, and reconcile!

So...Enjoy! :)

Neither spoke.

She thought he may say a word when Mark left the room, and he thought she may say a word when he left the room too.

But, still, neither of them spoke.

"Hi." She breathed after a long, long time. They'd of course already talked, but it was different now they were alone.

He smiled back, just a little. It was there, but it didn't last long. "Hi."

"Um-" She swallowed. "How are you feeling?"

"I...think I'm okay." He replied quietly.

"You feeling warm enough?"

"Yeah. Think...think so." He agreed, before breaking into a short fit of coughs.

"Are you okay?" Meredith asked instantly.

"Think I might have taken in quite a lot of water. Wasn't very pleasant." He explained, rubbing his chest with his hand.

She smiled a little. They'd checked his lungs when he got to the hospital and when he was admitted, so she wasn't concerned. "So...you remember what happened?"

"Mmm." He agreed. It wasn't a particularly good set of memories.

She ran her thumb over the hand she was holding as she smiled a little. "You're going to be okay. I imagine you're staying overnight, but you're okay. And I'm gonna be here too- Concussion rules, you know?"

He smiled. She'd said that as if we wasn't a neurosurgeon. No, as if...he didn't used to be a neurosurgeon. "But you're okay?"

"As I've already said, I'm fine. Quite hot now, actually." She reassured him again, pulling the blanket off of her shoulders. "Think I'm probably going to have another CT tomorrow to be safe, and gonna have to have another few days off of work of course, but I'll be absolutely fine. They let me out of bed, albeit with an IV pole, so they must think I'm doing okay."

"Good. It's-" He swallowed. "-really good news."

She felt her heart drop as she read his tone. It wasn't that he didn't believe it was really good news or that he was jealous that she was out of bed already and he wasn't, but rather something else. She sighed as she left her seat, and sat on the side of his bed. He placed his hand on her lap this time before squeezing it again. "Derek-"

"Yeah?" He asked softly when she didn't continue.

"You..." She sighed, and her demeanour changed completely. "You're an idiot."

"What?"

"You're an idiot." She repeated. "A brainless idiot. In fact, you're a brainless brainman. It's ironic. You do something stupid, and then you do something even more stupid; you don't care about the fact you're freaking freezing to death and go to an on-call room, and you don't even tell anyone which one you're in! That was so, so damn stupid. They were never going to go looking for you with all this chaos going on if they had to look through a hundred different rooms!" She sighed. "And don't get me wrong...I'm the last person that should be saying this, calling you an idiot- because I'm thankful as hell that you did it because...I really don't think I'd be alive otherwise if you hadn't- but-"

"-I'm an idiot." He finished for her.

"Unfortunately, yes, I believe you're an idiot." She agreed.

He sighed. "I just..."

"You just what?"

"I couldn't have lost you, Meredith. I-" He swallowed, hard. "I couldn't have done it."

She blinked, and felt tears in her eyes. "Derek-"

"I thought about it, you know. I did."

"Thought about what?" She asked genuinely.

"You said I was brainless but- I'm not." He sighed. "I thought about it. It wasn't an instinct. It wasn't a reflex. I made a decision. I...I thought about it, and I still did it. Because...I did it because...if I didn't do it, I would have lost you."

Her hand tightened around his.

"You don't understand what it was like before I met you. I hadn't smiled truthfully in so freaking long. And you actually made me happy. Even...even you telling me that in a lazy asshole because you refused to turn around and look at me on that first day...even that made me truthfully smile. Or your little laugh in the elevator when I cracked my first paralysis joke. I can't have lost you-"

"Derek-"

"And...I know what you said about etching things into my brain, and I'm sorry but I just...when I did it- what I was- thinking about-" He held his eyes shut, and didn't speak for a long moment. He let out a stressed sigh. "You had to be okay because...because- I'm not convinced I'm worth anything without you anymore."

New tears appeared in her eyes. Unlike times in the past, this time, it wasn't because he was being so, sickly sweet that he made her heart skip happily in her chest. She always felt embarrassed when he did that, but this time she really, really wished that that was what was happening.

Who in the world had convinced this man, her man, that he was this worthless?

And why the hell did they do it?

God, she freaking hated people.

He was worth so much. So freaking much. Much, much more than someone who waltzed around life without a problem in the world, judging, criticizing and belittling others. He'd fought so hard to just be breathing right now, nevermind anything else, and that deserved praise and love and admiration, not rudeness. Never rudeness.

"Oh, Derek-" She breathed, a tear slipping.

He shook his head to himself. "I...I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry-" She begged. "Please, please don't be sorry."

"I just- nowadays I find myself wondering-" He swallowed. "Who even am I anymore?"

She opened her mouth to reply, but she didn't get the chance to say anything before he continued.

"I'm not your boyfriend, and I'm not a neurosurgeon, and I'm not overly convinced I have any friends right now because I just kept on burning bridge and bridge and...you know, it makes me-"

"You are a kind, caring, loving man." She interrupted. "You have a passion for helping people, ferry boats and dogs. You're a nerd, but a statistically infrequent handsome one. You're amazing at darts because you can't play football- or at least that's what you told me. You are addicted to trees and nature and trailers, and everyone thinks you're really, really weird because of that. You hate going new places. You hate those weird plants that smell that I don't know the name of-"

He smiled, just a little. She was trying.

"You put everyone else first. You're not very good at looking after your own needs. You get too attached to people, but you do it because you care and have a big heart. And- speaking of hearts, you say yours is still about twelve-years-old and that's why you're so good with kids- because you are one, really, inside. You don't drink alcohol...or coffee- but you eat coffee ice cream; it's you're favourite. You also had something horrible happen to you. Something absolutely, horrendously atrocious. But you're still here. And that makes you strong, and brave, and resilient, and courageous, and freaking amazing."

He swallowed. "Mer-"

"None of those things are about me, or you cutting into brains, or your friends. Those things are all about you, Derek. That's you. That's who you are. And I freaking love that person."

He had nothing to say to that.

"It's okay to not be okay. It's okay to need help, to lose your way, to...not know who you are."

He shook his head.

"Yes-" She felt tears appear in her own eyes again. "It is. It really is. Especially when you're you. Every day when I woke up and you smiled, I was surprised. You have a right to all of those things."

"No-" He swallowed. "Being me is...it makes it worse."

"Because you've already spent a year burdening everyone else and you never want to do it again?" She guessed.

He smiled a little, sniffling. "I though I told you to stop reading my mind."

She returned it. "I know. I'm sorry. But...at one point, I did. Because...I couldn't understand what you were doing. I couldn't understand what was going through your head when you pushed me away, and then you started avoiding people, and not answering the phone, and then...you quit work. You just...Derek, you got rid of everything in your life. And I get it, you're scared and you're sad and everything sucks so freaking much but right now but...that is not the way to cope with that. It's actually a perfect way to make everything a hundred times worse."

He didn't say anything, but that didn't mean he didn't listen to every word, heart hurting in his chest.

She swallowed. "You shouldn't have broken up with me."

"I was hurting you, Meredith." He said in a pained kind of voice which hurt her in that very moment.

She swallowed. "And now you are hurting yourself."

He didn't want to think about that. "I know it's hard right now...but you'll get over me. And then you won't have to be in any more pain, and it will be worth it."

"Derek Christopher Shepherd!" She exclaimed. She loved him, and she understood that he was so extremely insecure, but she needed to fix that. Right now. Right freaking now. "I'm not going to get over you. I'm never, ever going to get over you. As long as I walk the earth, I'm never going to stop thinking about you. I'm never going to be as happy with someone else. I'm never going to smile as much. No one exists on this earth that I want more than you. Okay? I...I'm not getting over you. Ever. Ever, ever, ever, in a billion years. Why won't you understand? "

He couldn't reply to that.

What the hell would he ever say?

"You're not hurting me, Derek. Compared to what my life has been like without you, I can promise that worrying about you being ill or being in pain barely feels like a scratch on my skin. Because...right now, I feel like I'm bleeding out of something. Like-" She smiled at the accidental symbolism. "Like someone's stabbed me in the heart. Literally. Like...I'm bleeding out because my aorta has ruptured and I've got five minutes for it to be sutured before I flatline and they call time of death. That's what it feels like, Derek."

He blinked tears. He felt like her now, when he complimented her dress or told her how much he adored her and found tears to well in her eyes out of how extreme his admiration was.

"And, fine. Maybe you don't want to accept that in going to be okay when I have to worry about you so much. Okay. I get that. But...how about this- how about that...that if you'd jumped and saved me, but you died...that I'd grieve you like my husband? That I would have cried for freaking years and years? That I would have isolated myself from my friends and quit my job and hide from people as well?"

"I'm not going to die."

"Stop saying that! Stop it!" She shouted. "You don't know that! You're a neurosurgeon- you know better than anyone else in the freaking world that you can't know that. So stop. Stop trying to reassure me. Because all you're doing is lying and lying and lying- and that hurts me more."

"I...I'm just trying to- do something to stop you fro-"

"From crying? From shouting? Well it's not worked, Derek. I'm crying and I'm shouting. I can't...Derek, you can't- you- please, you can't- never-"

"Meredith-" He sighed. Those weren't even sentences anymore.

"I love you so freaking much that I want to just sit and hug you and kiss you and hold you for the next fifty years of my life. That's how much I love you. More than everything else in the world. And I love that I found you and it makes me so happy every single day but I...I can't lose someone I love this much. Okay?" All of her tears fell in a blink, and although they were silent, she was still left at a near-pant from how fast her heart was beating and how loud her shouts were. She licked her lips, swallowed, and practically whispered, "You can't die because...I won't survive losing you. I'm not strong enough to do it, Derek."

Not again.

"Oh-" He breathed.

He'd done the worst thing possible, really.

He'd broken up with her to save her a broken heart in a few years when the pain got to much or the compilations took over his body. But he'd dug himself such a big hole since leaving her that all he'd done is make it all worse.

He hadn't protected her at all. In fact, he'd almost died.

"Oh, god. Meredith-"

"No. It's okay. Don't say you're sorry again, please." She begged.

"I didn't even-" He swallowed. "I mean-"

"I know, okay? I know." She squeezed his hand again. "I almost lost you and it...it was horrible. So...now I'm going to talk to you for five minutes. You're not allowed to say anything. And at the end, I'll give you two options. Okay?"

He swallowed before tentatively agreeing, "Okay."

"You need me. You've told me before but I've never really gotten how much you need me. I knew it was bad before, and I know you're always going to struggle one way or another but-" She paused. "You need me to be happy. To cope. To be okay. I know that now because we weren't together and you started to ask yourself whether life was worth living."

"Mer-"

She ignored his attempt at an interruption; she'd told him that he wasn't allowed to talk in these five minutes. "And it's probably not healthy for you to need me in your life- it's not healthy to depend on me being there for you to talk to so you don't implode. But it's okay, because I'm not going anywhere. I'm never going anywhere. I love you."

"But-"

"And I know what you're going to say. That's it's not fair for me to have to hold you up...fix you. But-" She paused. "I have simply just...survived for years now. I pretended I was happy enough and I would tell people I was fine, but I used to just get out of bed each day, do what I needed to, and then go back to bed. That's what life felt like. It was like I was a machine. I just...did what I needed to with no joy, no fun, and then slept to escape the world. It was never living. But I just...I kept going with- whatever I needed to. Everyday was just...so grey, so blank, so empty, so boring. It was like...my life was lifeless." She swallowed, and smiled as she stroked his hair. "Until...I met you, Derek Shepherd."

He smiled, just a little.

"You made me feel happy. You made me laugh. You made me smile. You...you complete me too, just like I complete you. And-"

"And?" He pushed, holding her hand tight.

"You're not the only one who stopped making plans. You're not the only one who gave up on having a proper life."

He swallowed as her eyes got a little shinier.

"You're also not the only one who gave up on love, and having a family. When I-" She paused when the phlegm in her throat stopped her. "You've told me that I changed your life, but you've changed mine too. I just...don't think I've said that before because I've always tried to be so...bright-and-shiny for you. But I'm not bright-and-shiny. I'm all...dark-and-twisty."

He smiled a little as he muttered, "You know I love the bright shiny things and the dark and twisty things."

"I've been doing okay, I promise, please don't worry about me, but...I've eaten three cookies every day since we broke up. If not more. I tell Izzie that I'm fine and that I don't want them so she leaves me alone, but I do, so I eventually just submit and eat them all. Then she thanks me; it's mad."

He smiled, just a little.

"I got on an ortho rotation, and the surgeon was amazed by how hard I could beat things- I was just turning my sadness over you into anger and it meant I could snap freaking bone, Derek. Me- breaking things with my tiny, non-existent muscles." She continued. "And I cry. Okay? I cry. A lot. Because I miss you like hell. I miss you so much it hurts. I sit with our freaking reindeers in February, thinking about you. I mean, I'm nuts. I've lost it. It's like you've died or something. But you...you're right here. You're right here and-"

He couldn't tell whether he was supposed to speak this time, so he simply held her hand a little tighter.

"You're suffering too. We're both suffering. And it's so freaking stupid. You are so freaking stupid."

He smiled; he couldn't really disagree.

"Derek, I love you, in a really, really big pretend to like your taste in music, let you eat the last piece of cheesecake, hold a radio over my head outside your window, unfortunate way that makes me hate you, love you. And I know that I could go and marry that ortho dude every girl in the hospital thinks is a supermodel, or seduce that rich guy on the board who has five girlfriends living the life in Dubai. But, well- first of all, I think you could qualify as a supermodel too."

"I'm not convinced but...okay." He agreed with a creased brow.

"Secondly, who needs to marry McRich when I can live off your government benefits."

He laughed at that. "Jesus Christ, Meredith! For the last time, I don't get benefits."

She giggled too. She just had to have a little dig to spark some joy in him; she missed his smirk. "But...finally- I just- I need to say-" She swallowed, and moved the way she was holding his hand, so his forearm was facing upwards. He had a large scar there from one of his many surgeries. "Derek Shepherd, you are the strongest person I know. I know you think that you're not because the whole world freaks you out and you live in your anxiety-full brain, but...I mean, I don't know what happened to you, but I do know that you were having a perfect normal, happy life one day, and the next you wake up in hospital. You're told you were in an accident. They say...they say you were in a coma, and that you stopped breathing, and that you've had surgery after surgery just so you can keep on living, and even after all that fighting you did, you now have the hardest year of your life. You can't talk, you can't feel or move your legs, your motor skills are down the drain, you can't open your eyes when the light is on because it hurts too much and you can barely understand the doctors even explaining what is wrong with you and...and-"

His hand squeezed hers when a tear fell.

"And you cry. You do. I'm sure you did. I'm sure you shoved things in anger, and sobbed into pillows and locked doors on people who loved you. But you're here today. You're still alive. You're still smiling, just about. So my theory is that if you can survive that, we can survive anything. I mean, you hated yourself- still do, and you did all of those amazing, wonderful things-"

He smirked, just a little. Guilty as charged.

"-so imagine what I can survive when I love you, huh? Endless things. Every single thing. Ever. As long as I've got you, we can survive freaking anything, right?"

He didn't say anything for a long, long time before asking, "Um- what were they?"

"What were what?" She asked, confused.

"My two options- what two things am I allowed to say?"

"Oh." She breathed. "So it's either...'Yes, Meredith, I want to spend the rest of my life with you, I'm an idiot for ever thinking we wouldn't work because I agree that we are made for each other and are the best couple ever' or...'everytime I go near you, I end up in the sea or on the floor or reaching for the phone to call the fire department so I'd like you to leave before the hospital roof above us collapses and we both die a horrible traumatic death'."

He laughed. "Well, you're not wrong; your tendency to set fire things and trip over things is rather terrifying."

"But?" She pressed. "Tell me there's a but. Please."

"I'm cold again."

Her heart dropped. "What? Cold? Why are you cold?"

"Could do with a...bit of a snuggle to warm me up." He muttered with a mischievous smirk.

She smiled, although she was admittedly a little mad that he freaked her out like that. "You idiot. Don't scare me like that."

"Can we make a deal that if we get back together, you stop calling me an idiot?" He requested as she moved, lying beside him.

"But you are an idiot." She replied, hands clinging to him now.

"I don't want to be called one though."

"You want to be called something you are then?"

"Well, preferably." He agreed.

She smiled, and kissed him. "Okay, love of my life, I can do that for you."

"Love of your life, eh?"

"Yeah. It's true. Now...what's my cute nickname?"

"McClumsy." He answered with no hesitation.

"Idiot!"

A/N: Are you crying? I'm crying.

Idiot and McClumsy...oh, uh, Derek and Meredith are officially together again, and I promise to never split them up again (in this fic at least, haha!)

Next chapter has a time jump, but is full of flashbacks to help you out. Although they are of course very happy back together, if I wrote out the next few weeks for them, it would be them dealing with the aftermath of this accident and also working together to fix Derek's pain problems, and I thought you had enough angst, so where we land next chapter will be much happier, with lots of issues fixed thanks to the time jump.

Drop a comment, I'll send you a virtual tissue!