"Think she realizes I'd just go down there and yell at her if I was mad?" Meredith handed Derek back his phone with the message from Lexie saying she was eating lunch downstairs. It was just the two of them at the table; one of Zola's classmates was having a birthday, and they couldn't compete with cupcakes.

He smirked and took one of her fries before she could bathe them in ketchup. The glare she gave him was both deadly and adorable. "Get your own!"

"They're not that good."

"You just don't want people to see you with fries on your tray. Otherwise, they'll know that you're only a health food nut eighty-five percent of the time."

"It's about moderation!"

"He used to take Sloan's," Avery said, putting down a tray.

Meredith scowled. "I'm not talking to you."

"You just did."

"Wow, it's like you two knew each other as children," Derek said. "And you've regressed."

"He called Sadie!"

"It was Lexie's idea!"

"Yeah, but—" Meredith bit into her burger and kept talking. She never did that anymore if she wasn't trying to be obnoxious. "They have their own shit."

"Say it, don't spray it!"

"Kids!" Derek plucked a napkin from the center canister and held it in front of his wife's face. She snatched it, and this glare made him almost glad he'd be on call tonight.

He was hoping that by tomorrow Lexie would stop saying, "Derek would you…?" as though if she was left alone with her sister, she wouldn't make it out alive. He'd gotten tired of telling her to stand by her choice, especially since it hadn't gone badly. On the other hand, Meredith was in her third trimester. They'd come up with a few tactics that kept her from having to take on as much of Lexie's weight, but this was going to be the last time he took an overnight call without arranging for a PCA, or some other alternative.

"I cannot wait for Amelia to be here. I'm going to mock you every time you pout like a fourteen-year-old," Meredith said. "Carolyn wants pictures."

"When did you talk to Mom?"

It was difficult to stay stern with Zola in general, but especially when she imitated her mother's broad expressions; the quick ones that must've been made behind her mother's back. If their son inherited them, Derek would be in trouble.

He hoped it happened. Her caught look was especially useful.

"She…knows stuff. And she didn't call me slutty to my face."

"Who did?" Avery demanded.

"You sweet summer child." Karev let his tray clatter down on the table. The words sounded foreign coming from him, and the other two people at the table must've agreed. "I read," he insisted in response to their gaping.

"Since when?" Meredith assured, a teasing glint in her eyes. The cameo Lexie and Avery had arranged hadn't seemed to affect the levity he'd seen in her. It'd been noticeable after the vote to approve their proposal, but he'd started seeing it that afternoon he'd taken her and Zola to lunch from Karev's place.

The man himself was giving her a highly conflicted look. Derek could almost see the scales being weighted in his eyes: remind Meredith of what she knew—librarian's kid, boxes of paperbacks moved in and out of her place—versus not giving Avery fodder to give him shit about.

"Yeah, he used to get into discussions with Sloan about Mara Jade," Avery said. "Fairly sure she's only in the books."

Karev pointed a fork at him. "So, you're saying you—"

"MEREDITH GREY!" Richard's voice resounded through the cafeteria. The zap of adrenaline that shot through Derek took him back twenty years, to being an intern, carding through everything he'd done that week in the haze of forty hours' sleep deprivation.

Richard had been in New York for several years while Derek had become established, and even sought-after. He'd hired him in as a department head, as close to an equal as he could've been. Derek had operated on him, and stood up to him. He'd been in this role for as long as he'd been Richard's student. Yet, something in his intonation gave Derek insight he'd never had into Meredith's fear that Derek would always be liable to see her as "that wide-eyed intern."

Before he shook the feeling, his wife stood up. He moved to join her, but the third glare was truly intimidating. He held one hand up in surrender, and then through the side of his mouth added, "Amelia was faxing in her contract today."

Patricia might've retired, but most of the administrative staff held some loyalty to Richard. He'd never considered that to be a problem, but it might be worth looking into.

Being one of seven people running this place didn't seem like it was going to get less complicated.

"Shit. Okay." Meredith squared her shoulders, and started off. He clocked the direction she was going in, and turned to Avery, who was already clearing chairs out of her path. Richard hadn't moved from the place where he'd stopped, not more than a few yards from the entry to the cafeteria. It would've been rude at any point, but with Meredith being seven months pregnant, it was blatant disrespect. That more than anything made Derek think he should have pretended not to see Meredith's look. The table was too far away for him to hear them. He couldn't go after her; he had to weigh even turning to look over. Every staff member in the cafeteria had at least glanced up to see if it was a big enough deal to tune into. In his periphery, Karev cringed.

"What?"

"It's definitely about her switching specialties. He's pointing at you."

A moment later, Avery let out an "ohhh," his hand cupped over his mouth like he was watching a boxing match. Derek turned in his chair.

It'd never been difficult to understand how Richard could look at her and see the little girl who he'd failed thirty years ago. Richard was over a foot taller than Meredith, and the width of the baby, and its pull on her spine often made her look smaller. What had occurred to Derek at times, but not fully rooted in his mind, was that at those times she wasn't fully a person to the other man. She was as much of a pawn as she'd been at five, when he'd blamed his choice to leave her mother on her.

Meredith no longer looked small. He'd believe she'd somehow added the extra girth she was carrying to her height.

Derek was on Richard's chessboard too, but it wasn't as obvious. He'd gone in dedicated to neuro, but Richard had been the only surgeon who'd come close to poaching him during his intern year. He'd never had a serious interest, but he'd appreciated the encouragement. At the time, he hadn't been the mentee of anyone in his preferred department. Richard had kept hours close to intern hours. He'd understood about Amy. He'd listened to him talk about Michael.

"Son, one thing I've learned through the years is that we're all pinballs. Every hit resonates, but they're getting hit by others too. No one's path can be decided by the first paddle."

Derek hadn't been able to let go that easily, and once he'd officially become a neurosurgery resident, Richard had tried to distance himself. But Derek hadn't let him, had maybe been oblivious and could only see it now. His opinion of the man certainly hadn't changed. Not until….

Until?

He'd seen Meredith sink into herself so many times. Plenty of them were his fault, but if he really thought about it, how many of those moments had Richard's fingerprints on them? The moment Addison said "husband" was a prime example. It was Derek's mistake, but that scene was all Richard's doing. During the same period, there'd been machinations that had significantly affected Derek, too, and not only his relationship with Meredith. When it came to that, he'd believed that Richard's primary interest was in protecting her. But from what? Whom? Derek? Or himself? Had he seen himself in Derek as Ellis had?

"He's blustering," Avery noted.

"Look at her hands," Alex murmured. Meredith's fists were opening and closing at her sides. "Here we go…."

Derek braced for the explosion, but it didn't come. A little more back-and-forth, and then Richard became the one to turn away. It was then that Meredith's fists clenched. Derek wanted to go directly to her, but she needed to be seen walking away from this on her own. Conversely, he couldn't just keep sitting here for too long, or by tonight the grapevine would have them divorced.

He snapped his gaze to Karev. "Tangled."

"Got it," Karev stood. "I'll let you know where we end up."

The volume of the cafeteria had increased, so Derek could only guess that he approached her with a jovial request for a consult. He had as much experience watching Meredith be dressed down in public by a father-figure as Derek.

Would Derek's father have only seen himself in him? He didn't want that to happen with his son. He'd seen what Dad had been like through a daughter's childhood. Kathleen had been eighteen, Amy five, and Derek had paid very close attention to how Lizzie was treated in the interest of fairness. In his mind, thirteen months hadn't been significant enough for them to be treated differently. But he'd been the only boy, and if he was trying to avoid passing the worst of himself down to his son, how did he manage that?

The world wasn't the same as it'd been in the seventies. Raising a girl and a boy equally wasn't going to mean not acknowledging the expectations the world had for them, but his expectations wouldn't be what Dad's had been. The "man of the house" stuff that was put on his narrow shoulders hadn't been out of line with how Dad had spoken to him about being a man. Carrying on the Shepherd name. He loved his memories of fishing and playing ball with him, but he could admit that part of why he'd gone out for hockey was that he'd known it was something Dad would've understood, while he'd been less clear about jazz band. Owning a practice, owning a store; it wasn't hard to see that connection. And when his marriage had fallen apart, and he'd been sure of nothing but that his father had been devoted to his vows, had he just shifted his need for a manto emulate over to Richard?

Derek's pager went off. He swore, expecting to discover that Ramsey had taken on more than she could handle again, or something Nelson wouldn't touch had shown up in the E.R.. When he checked it, he almost laughed aloud.

JACKSON AVERY: 06

"GO" in the code that had its roots in class periods spent flipping arithmetic calculators upside down to turn 5318008 into BOOBIES.

"Thanks," he murmured. In the browbeaten, reluctant hurry of non-emergent pages, he wrapped Meredith's burger and boxed her fries. His own salad he left behind. He'd had more time to eat than she had.

He got on the elevator with only a guess as to where he was headed. The text that directed him to the attendings lounge surprised him. It wasn't just that someone could go in there at any minute, but that Richard could.

Meredith knew it, based on how her head swiveled at the sound of the door. He couldn't easily determine what was in the forefront of her mind, and often the important thoughts were behind that.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey." In the time it took him to cross to the sofa at the back of the room, he parsed that word, and her demeanor. She wanted him there, which hadn't been a guarantee.

As he walked around to the front of the sofa, he found Karev crouched in front of her. She had her feet up on the coffee table, which she'd been doing without prompting all week. Adapting to her body was something he'd noticed her doing more, recently. If the LODOX was why, he'd kick himself for not pushing on the anatomy scan, but her "parasite" philosophy did acknowledge that fighting the changes was senseless; they'd evolved to keep the fetus healthy, and keep herself well before and after pushing him out. It was more indicative of her ability to value that part.

What was concerning was that Karev had her hands firmly in his. Her butterfly knife trainer sat on the table next to a styrofoam cup holding melting ice wrapped in a paper towel.

"You already had all the interns wanting to be you when they grow up, you know. That just won over the residents," he said. "Leave some glory for the rest of us, why don't you?"

"Go earn it, why don't you? I don't need to be handled."

Dr. Wyatt would probe that, but Derek didn't. That was essentially what they'd done, and would do again. Not because she was weak. She was so strong. She'd rebuilt her life from the ground up. multiple times, before she'd known scaffolding existed.

He took a seat next to her. More telling than her words was that she didn't pull away while Karev shifted her trembling hands to Derek's one at a time. Taking them gave him a quick view of several pink crescents on her arms. None had been dragged into a scratch. Her watch was in place.

"If my hands don't stop being stupid I'm gonna have to seduce an intern and bribe them with above-pay grade procedures. Would you accept Brooks as our third?"

Deflector shields at maximum.

"They're cold. Warm and shaking means you're charting. What'd happened here?" He kissed the reddish-purple mark on her forehead. It hadn't been there twenty minutes ago, and tilted his head, questioningly.

"You can't make me chart. You're not my boss." A shadow passed her face, one he would've pegged as nausea if it'd lasted any longer. Thinking of who her boss was.

"She lost control of that thing," Karev said, standing up and indicating the trainer. Meredith scowled at him.

A few of the tricks she'd learned with it were new, but the basic tosses she'd have been doing were second nature to her. He was sure she'd been flipping pencils long before picking up a drumstick. The times he'd seen her show off with a blade had been bearable only because of how confident she'd been. He'd convinced himself that she couldn't miss. That she could made all the times she hadn't more impressive.

When he made himself take her down from the pedestal of perfection, he only come to love her more.

"I'll leave you to it?" Karev waited for Meredith's nod to head for the door.

"It's fetus stuff," she said, as the door shut. "My tendons are loose, and I haven't practiced much. Been using the punching bag." She swallowed, and her grip on his hands tightened. "I knew there'd be people who were gonna think my choice has something to do with them. I thought I was ready for it."

"You are."

She shook her head. "I could defend it to anyone, anywhere. He didn't want that. He wanted to shame me. 'What would your mother say?'

"I told him she's dead, and I'm not going to be pushed in the direction he wants me to go through references to my mother's opinion. I spent thirty years standing next to that measuring tape, not knowing that the units on it were constantly changing. I always thought he'd have stood up for me, but realistically, I think he'd have been as intimidated by her as I was."

Derek had been. He'd been meeting the source of every "my mother…" and Ellis Grey, who many surgeons credited for significant increasing the ratio of male to female surgeons. He hadn't been intimidated by Thatcher at all, even in theory, knowing he'd let Meredith go. He hadn't been able to do that when she'd been a grown woman whom he'd borne no defined responsibility for. He'd been conflicted over leaving behind kids that weren't his, who had parents and other aunts and uncles. He'd had dozens of yeah, fine, the test was easy, yes, Uncle Derek, I know, conversations long before he'd stopped hanging up on his sisters for saying Addison's name.

Richard had listened to him go on about them. He'd talked about how it'd been difficult for Adele to keep up with her family over the years they'd spent in New York, but she'd settled right back in. He'd evaded questions about his family, but I retrospect, some of those stories about Sabine made more sense if you put Meredith in her place.

"He's allowed to be disappointed," he said. "That's not what that was. It was a power play. Yours was the last class he had full control over, and more than any of them, you're conditioned to see him as the authority."

"Boss Doctor," she murmured. Those who'd thought she'd come expecting favors should've been told that to her Chief of Surgery had been a vice principal her mom answered to.

"Did…? I know your mom didn't exactly walk you through the next day during bathtimes, but…you were going into kindergarten…did she prepare you at all?"

"I…I still think that's where I was going to big kid school when we pass Queen Anne Elementary, and with the house…I think the plan was to stay. But they spent so long planning, it must've occurred to them that Adele and Thatcher should be the ones to stay here.

"I remember Mom going off for fellowship interviews. She'd take out the encyclopedia and read to me about different cities. Once, I remember I said, 'Daddy could take me to the beach.'" Her face bad taken on one of her distant expressions, but it was far from disconnected. In it, he could see the little girl who hadn't yet learned to hold her feelings back. "She looked sad. It scared me. Then, she said. 'I'll still be very busy, but I'll have some flexibility. Would you like it if Richard and I took you?' I was very enthusiastic, and not just because I kept imagining her doing back handsprings on the sand." She quirked her lip, but were both mourning the time where she could imagine Ellis so fancifully.

"I think there were a few more mentions of Richard in that context. Being with us. I doubt I understood that Daddy and Nurse Adele wouldn't come. To be fair, she couldn't be explicit. I could've given it away.

"In Boston, I said something about Richard coming, once, got a 'stop talking nonsense,' and that was that."

He nodded, slowly. "You were eleven the year she won the Harper?"

"Just. Spring of '89."

Derek nodded, slowly. "He was in AA by the time I met him—"

"At what point did he tell you that? I don't know exactly how it works. I was on the Dartmouth Class of 2000's list of likely functional alcoholics. My friend Tasha struck me off based on the 'functional' designation." she added, but if she knew exactly which part of that declaration his face was reacting to, she was ahead of him. "I'd made progress by intern year."

He brought one of her hands to his lips, kissing the spheres of her white knuckles. "Babe, do you want me to answer you, or do you want to distract me by insisting that where you are today is a matter of luck? You didn't get through because of your name. If anything— What?"

She widened her eyes over the palm she'd pressed to her mouth. "Answer," she squeaked.

He'd expected a comment on "babe," his own minor distraction, designed to reel her attention in.

"He's never made a huge secret of it. That's what I'm getting at. When I was Interim Chief, I wanted to get this place back on the path he started it on. I still wish I'd put more thought into what might be going on….

"Last year wasn't Amy's first relapse. 'Functional' is like a Jenga tower. It doesn't always look the same, but you can see the weak spots. I'd known he went to meetings for fifteen years, but he always spoke like it was something in the past. Richard's…an old soul. He's always talked in that around-the-world-and-back-again way. He was our residency director, so you had to take him seriously. But when I started my internship, he'd have been about the age I was during yours.

"There are a lot of assumptions about people in AA and NA, and I'm no saint to sit in judgement, even living with…maybe because of…." He trailed off. The blinds were shut, and he couldn't look away from the green of her irises in the yellow lamplight. They were cast down at their arms; his right wrist overlapping her left. She'd been with him through that, and he'd be at her side whether or not the pink line in her sites was opened again. It didn't feel right to say he'd lived through it with her. Why, if he wouldn't object to the reverse, he didn't know, but that suddenly applied far more to Amelia.

Yes, her behavior had affected him. He'd let Dr. Carr define resuscitating her as a trauma, and had a strong feeling that'd facing his sister would reveal that that iceberg went as deep as the Mariana trench. But he hadn't lived with her addiction.

"I need to be better on all sides of that. Separating Amy from her addiction; not forgetting it's part of her…." He sighed. "She talks about it in the present. That's accepted practice, because putting it in the past makes it easier to be less diligent. I know that, and I've said, 'Oh, really, Amy? I had no idea' once or twice. I didn't want to be reminded of it…. She can't get away from it."

They'd all called her self-centered at one point or another, because she was. They all were. It shouldn't have taken this long for him to consider how that having the arrogance that got five fatherless upstarts through medical school might've made it easier to lie to herself.

"All that to say…. Richard used the past tense from the start. But there was something about the way he talked about taking the job—he mentioned having had a 'brush with depression' before he started there."

"Jealousy." She looked up at him, a streak of pink in her cheeks."You think he could've hit rock-bottom in '89?"

"You saw where I was going with that the whole time?"

"Possibly before you did," she conceded with a smile that was very smug for being so small. "That seems late, but if it made him think she was okay—thriving—I could see it.

"But hadn't he…? He'd been in Manhattan for a while when you met, right?" She leaned against him. He considered reaching for the to-go box on the coffee table. He was sure her energy levels were flagging.

"A few years. We could pull up his CV?"

She gave a sharp shake of her head, and a lock of hair fell from the bun she hadn't stopped to take down between scrubbing out and making a beeline for the cafeteria.

Putting the knife trainer in her purse gave him an excuse to take out the hairbrush in the next pocket over, along with a beanbag stress ball—Zola simply did not have the willpower to resist biting into the silicon ones. Meredith's shoes squeaked as she started to move them off the coffee table, but he pressed down on her shoulder before climbing up onto the back of the couch, putting her between his legs.

"It doesn't matter," she said. "Not worth the hassle."

It did matter, he could hear that. He'd improved at following her thought processes. But while this one seemed straight-toward, there must be a reason that the word tangled kept flashing in his mind; other than the time it was taking to work out the hastily secured hairband. Everything she was saying was a thread in a huge knot she needed to take out herself.

Once he had the band freed, he caught himself starting to hand it down to her, but wrapped it around the brush instead. Her peripheral vision was too good for her to have missed it.

"After she got the Harper Avery, she travelled a lot. Lectures, trainings, consults. It was good press for MGH. She took a sabbatical for the book in the late nineties. Did some consulting for Washington under Clinton. Got on the U.N.'s radar, ages before she accepted I never understood….. Mayo was a good gig, but it only came after she finally accepted—"Hey, did you know a neurosurgeon named…uh, Hamilton, I think?"

"Yeah, David?" The brush caught on a knot, and he put the brush down. He used his fingers to get through the knots far more often, lately. The more she hurt herself, the worse he felt about hurting her.

"I think so. He was from New York. Drove Mom nuts, because whenever she was heading over there, he'd spend hours lamenting his decision to leave. You'd expect her to just shut him down, right? Thing was, every story reminded him of some restaurant within walking distance of U.N. Headquarters, and he never made a bad recommendation, and since she didn't know the city well…."

"Yeah, come to think of it, he did have a sense for hole-in-the-wall places," Derek acknowledged. " I can't say he'd have noticed if she had tried to shut him down. He had to go to the Clinic because no hospital in Manhattan could support his ego."

"That makes two of them. I always assumed he had a thing for her. Actually, I believe I would say he like-liked her, which always made her hang up."

"When was this?"

"Answer to your real question: twenty-three. She was there even after her initial diagnosis. I tried to get her to talk to him. Instead, they finished the project, and she set fire to another bridge. My guess is he got suspicious. She'd already been forgetting everything I said. Hard to say if that was a symptom."

The woman would have been scared. Possibly resentful, knowing there was nothing such a talented neurosurgeon could do for her. Derek still wanted to scream at how obvious it was that Meredith had had no one, and it hadn't been her choice, at all.

"She never dated?"

"She dealt with enough dicks in her working day, why in the world would she want to be bothered with them during her leisure time? Like she knew the definition of 'leisure.'"

Derek snickered. In the moment, it wasn't all that hard to imagine the spun gold hair he was parting tinted pink.

"She was confused that day—the gift day—But she…she changed when she heard Richard was chief. Like…like she didn't know. But….The…The U.N. started head-hunting her during the Year of the Woman in '93, and didn't feel like they'd filled the gap by the turn of the millennium—which says a lot, don't you think?"

"Mmhmm." You say a lot, when there's something else you don't want to say.

"So…. He was here by the time she took the job.f he was on his way to New York as early as '83…. He can't have not…. She published with Harper Avery. He took her on consults all over the place." She went quiet for so long that he had to concentrate on not rushing, twisting even pieces of hair into a French braid. "You started in '93, and he'd been there at least a few years. He started here in '99. That's the year I graduated from college, and she started at the U.N.

"Any time Mom went to Philly, she took me. We both loved the Mütter, and it was…those trips were actually nice. The first time I went to Baltimore was the summer of the Harper Avery, but I know she went to Hopkins for stuff. Conferences picked up then. Chicago, Aspen, Atlanta. She didn't so much care if I saw the world so much as that I could deal with going where the work was. And it was cheaper than getting someone to stay with me, like she did once missing school got more complicated.

"I went on field trips to New York. Ellis Island. I ever tell you that's where her name comes from? Her mom's parents went through—I remember deciding it was ironic that she became a doctor, when we were told they were the bogeymen of immigrants. Her full name and title made her 'Medical Authority' 'Totally Benevolent' 'It's Not Black and White.'"

He smiled at her dripping sarcasm. "Pretty sure benevolent was meant sincerely."

"Context, Derek. I…I think she took me to New York at least once. I begged for a sidewalk hot dog, and two bites in, I tripped and got ketchup all over my clothes. I remember every word of that scolding, but I can't think of anywhere we went. I stuck with pretzels everywhere for years afterward, I know that. I almost wonder if it was Philly. Whatever. He was four hours away for…let's say, eight years? And Mom….

"I just wonder if she knew he was in Manhattan, and she avoided it until he left.

"We could see if there are records. We have access to them, now."

He secured his grip before her emphatic no could yank her head away and hoped he'd remember to thank Amy for the muscle memory that went back to before he'd understood how sutures worked.

Meredith had been doing sutures before she braided her own hair. Both were the result of wanting to hold her mother's attention, even if stitching became something more.

"She was confused, but if she didn't know…. That day…. Did you see a hateful, hopeless jealousy in her?"

"I didn't see hopelessness. Not even when she demanded that you let her refuse the surgery. It's a little sick to think that might've been testing you…."

"Not impossible."

"I saw hateful," he continued. She'd changed her definition of "extraordinary" in the face of true mortality, without considering what that could do to Meredith.

"Mom applied for the job," she said, in a rush. Not the secret he was expecting, but a confidence nonetheless. "Chief, here. There was a whole folder in the storage unit filing cabinet. I found it ages before the move. It just doesn't seem….

"I don't know anything about Sullivan Penn, except that he was an attending when we lived here. They called him Sully. He could've given them the same nod Richard gave you and Addison. The hiring committee could've been a ruse. I could be a nut with a murder board. But….

"If you planted that seed in those two brilliant surgeons who were seriously underrepresented…. Twenty-ish years later, who do you back? Known loner, Ellis Grey, or congenial residency director Richard Webber?

"When she told me not to apply here, she said to just sell the house and be done with it. She must've kept it thinking she'd come back, eventually, and then…. Her diagnosis was like the bomb. It held steady for a while, but in the end it took her out, and I got to keep going."

"Mer…."

"It's a truer analogy than you know, okay? But I always…I told myself, she didn't get to finish…. "

Chief of Surgery at Seattle Grace would've been something akin to sitting back on her laurels; taking her illustrious career back to where she began. He'd bet she was counted out because the board knew she was needed in the wider world. Otherwise…from a managerial standpoint, Richard was the better candidate, but on paper, with the publications, awards, and prestige…."

"She never mentioned Richard. She…. TIt's silly to think about" Meredith admitted, almost whispering, like Zola with a secret. "But if she was avoiding him—if she never wanted to see him again…. I really fucked up by applying here and...

"He was tracking her career, I could tell when he asked me about her. Maybe he told himself he'd come out on top after all. He gave himself the power, and he…he didn't mean to put her through it all over again at Roseridge, but he did. If I hadn't come here…..Her and Adele….." She pressed her lips together. Her loyalty was to Ellis, but neither of them could deny the impact of an emotional affair. "But when she came in here, lucid, and not only did it seem like she hadn't known, she wasn't overwhelmed with envy. I get that she was effectively…. That she didn't think she'd…have another chance, and it seems like pushing emotion aside was her thing, but they had to cool off first. Maybe…Maybe she wanted it to spite him."

Yeah, he knew what that looked like.

"Mer, where is this…? I couldn't hear what you and Richard were saying. Did he…tell you something?"

"He told me I'm a fickle, disloyal brat. That we manufactured the purchase of the hospital to ensure that no one would object to a plan that was clearly about creating more opportunities for assignations." Derek gritted his teeth. "If I thought it would be good for our relationship—we're legally married, and there were almost scarce quotes—I should think about the years Addison spent training, and how you dealt with that.

"He regrets every minute he spent in the O.R. with me. I'm spitting on my mom's legacy, and for what? To spend the rest of my life in your shadow?

"I'm a liar, or did I not remember what I told him on the day of his ten-thousandth surgery? I reminded him that neuro hadn't been on the table, then. I didn't…I didn't bring up him neglecting Adele, or what I did for her. What I said at Christmas is enough—and she deserved that time. I don't regret that."

He put a hand on her shoulder. She tilted her head to look at him. "I know."

"I told him that he couldn't judge me for trying to reclaim the career I wanted in the first place. That...That it was good that you and I saw those parts of each other, but we both feel that we moved too quickly, because we didn't want to let a little girl suffer.

"That's…That's when his eyes got dark—

"Do you think he doesn't realize how many times he forced us to play out something he and Mom did? That he saw it because of Zo?"

"Could be."

"Speaking of which, what is it gong to do to Zola to have two parents on call all the time?" Her tone didn't change, and for a heartbeat he thought she was actually asking. "How often she'll be separated from us is the only way I'll be emulating my mother."

"Christ. I'm proud of you for not slapping him."

"I wanted to." Vehemence—or maybe violence—brought Boston into her voice. "I…. It feels like I owe her that. It…scares me how much I wanted to, because what if that's how…?"

"No one's taking her away," he reassured her. "But you would've faced consequences for his sake again. Not worth it."

"Could keep me out of the O.R. with him while fetus finishes cooking." That made him go cold. No fight—Nothing had ever made her reluctant to operate. "I…I told him I was sorry I hadn't spoken to him, but I didn't want it getting to anyone on the board before we made our pitch. I'd gladly give it to him; it'd answer a lot of his questions, and show him that I'm planning to interweave my general surgery training, which, thanks to him and Bailey, seems to surpass others on my level. That, um, not all mistakes can be fixed, but you can't use time passing as a reason not to try.

"He…He said he wished that was always true. I expected…you know…another list of excuses for never seeking me out. It's the one thing he tried to make up for. Sort of."

The apology Richard had given her for that had primed her for what had come next; it'd been more genuine than Thatcher's, and, he couldn't help thinking, the product of a much longer stint in AA—and meant far more to her than the latter's attempt at martyrdom. It'd also given Richard insight into how to get her on his side, and Derek was through wondering if he was overestimating him.

Her second year had been one of the points where she was most resentful of Richard. He'd identified with Richard at the time, but even his youngest niece had been eight; old enough to understand, and talk on the phone. The eleven nieces and nephews who were children had two involved parents each, and while his move had eventually changed their relationships with two uncles and an aunt, their lives hadn't been upended.

Richard's role in Meredith's life had been more than avuncular at the point of separation; making his excuses at the carousel resonate more with both Greys.

"A-And…A-And that….

"You're really not mad about the Sadie thing?"

"Mer…."

"Answer."

He slipped the first hair band onto his finger and started to braid the two ends together. "I'm a little annoyed at Lexie for blindsiding you. There'd be no reason for me to be mad at you."

"She flirted w—"

"I can be territorial, I'll cop to that, but you're not a possession. I could say 'I trust you, it's her I don't trust,' but if something happened that you didn't want, and I called it cheating…that'd be being something worse than an asshole.

"Sadie was your lover—" Meredith scoffed. "—but she was also your friend. Maybe you can rebuild that. You and I couldn't be friends, because we started differently. You don't let people go easily. My guess is part of you has been waiting for her to turn up. And you deserve to have someone in your life who's known you—really known you, for a lot of it."

"She apologized for expecting me to pull her along. I always had. Doctor's Kid solidarity. Maybe…maybe I should've done more, but I…I thought she must've gotten her shit together, too. I never considered the Scramble."

As he tied off the combined braid, he had a despairing second of knowing where this was going, and almost took it out to start over. He should've spent longer brushing it out..

"Her father?"

"Yeah."

Recently, the National Residency Matching Program had adopted a formal application program to place applicants who might not rank lesser-known programs in spots that were open after the algorithm that connected med student to residency had done its job. Not having a spot on the Monday in March known as Match Day could still be the result of a weak application—low board scores, a disciplinary mark—and he couldn't help assuming that had been Sadie's situation. In the past, the unlucky un-matched ones would meet with deans and employment facilitators, collect their materials, and read up on programs that had unfilled positions until noon on Tuesday. Then, an advocate from the program, a mentor, a parent, anyone with clout, would begin making calls and sending emails. That was known as The Scramble.

It could lead to prestigious placements; some hospitals were as picky as cocky students, and ended up with unfilled spots when ideal candidates were Matched to other programs. He hadn't paid enough attention to the Matches he didn't oversee to know if Seattle Grace was routinely one of them. Sadie's appearance in January implied that there were other machinations at play. Sure, Norman's collapse opened a spot for an intern, but they weren't so desperate for them that having it filled would've been a guarantee—especially with some kind of last-minute arrangement already having been made for Lexie.

"On her nastier days, Mom would say the time I spent on the phone as a teenager had prepared me for it."

Meaning that she couldn't expect Ellis to pick up the phone for her, and she didn't foresee anyone else going up to bat. "Jesus."

Meredith would've imagined being on her own for a process that could be over in hours, or involve another month of interviews and anxiety. It often ended in a student switching specialties. Ellis hadn't just implied Meredith would fail her intern year, but that she wouldn't get one.

She tilted her head again, with a sardonic smile. "She had precedent for thinking I'd bungle the landing, and I didn't start out great on paper. Average above average.

"In the year before mine, about sixty percent of fourth-years Matched with a hospital in their primary rank order list. Another twenty went somewhere between second and fourth. With about a hundred people in your class, you know where you fall.

"I wasn't in the bottom twenty. If I had the DK edge, it only showed in my test scores. The one thing that made me stand out was that I didn't interview further east than Missouri. That cut out almost everywhere on their lists.

"Four of us were aiming for general surgery. One going on to ortho, and…I applied to advanced programs in neuro, cardio, ortho, surgical oncology, and OB. I went to twice as many interviews as Flora—the ortho—but she was offered more."

He thought of the banged up overnight bag he'd replaced for Christmas before her fellowship interviews. He'd figured she'd had it a long time, but it did seem more like a piece a med student would buy to look professional than what she'd have taken between Boston and a Dartmouth campus.

"Erik went back to Quebec, so he was a geographical outlier too. Todd had a fiancée at Harvard. I had the Meredith factor. The thank you note packet I sent to the wrong Kaiser Perm. The missed flight that made me miss my first go at an UC-Denver interview—still put it on my first rank list. Colorado had some really good options for Mom."

The regret in her voice, made him want to go after anyone who'd made her think she'd ever been close to average. He'd gone through the Match twenty years ago, and he shuddered if he thought of the scheduling, the reams of paperwork, the plane tickets. Coordinating with Addison to Match as a couple didn't qualify as a complication in comparison to researching care facilities at the same time.

"I rolled my eyes at someone chewing out a barista, only to find out she was a chief resident at OHSU," Meredith continued, not privy to his rage on her behalf. "My interviewer at UC-SF didn't raise his eyes above my top button. I still couldn't bring myself to take it off my primary list—the history, Ward 86…. Then, at UC San Diego, the tour guide was a leg man, and he was just a second-year resident.

"I listed everywhere I interviewed. A lot of the places I knew wouldn't rank me after mishaps were the ones who made very nice offers last year. Remember that I know that."

Derek's stomach sank. He hadn't thought this was going anywhere good, but the confirmation was still a blow.

"There wasn't a single program director who didn't ask about her. Here, Faust didn't go on the way some of them did. I thought we got along okay," she said, bitterly.

Not seeing a safer way to do it, Derek swung his legs off the sofa, and then climbed over the back to sit beside her.

"I couldn't not interview here, you know? Just to see. When I was filling out initial applications the summer before my Match, I decided to ignore Mom, but also not to apply anywhere else in Seattle. Not Swedish Med, or Virginia Mason. I'd start my life wherever I landed.

"I wouldn't have ended up here with the merger, or been at Seattle Pres when a gunman shot up the hospital across town. And I…I told myself it was dumb, you know? The fate thing? But five years later, here I am, falling for it. I should've known…. I should've known!"

The beanbag went flying, smacking against the blinds. Seeing her fingers curl as she started to wrap her arms around her chest, he caught them. Her nails dug into his hands. He was only glad she hadn't gotten to the bare skin below the sleeves of her scrub shirt, but her eyes went wide, and her automatic resistance became purposeful.

She launched herself upward, which she probably couldn't have done without the need to flee controlling her. Catching her before she ran was a new tactic, which meant he didn't know if she would've always reacted like a trapped tiger. Rising with her, he barely managed to keep his hold. He couldn't manipulate her position as easily as he could without the baby, but he managed to get her in a twisted bear hug. Her arms were covered in goosebumps. A physical manifestation of the buzzing feeling she described?

"Mer, hey. Hey, listen, it's okay."

"Get off. Let me go, just—"

"Not happening, sweetheart. You're not hurting me, and I'm not gonna let you hurt yourself. Tell me what's going on. What did he say?"

"He…. No, no, I-i-it doesn't…. It shouldn't matter! He…. Y-You were…. He lured you under…under false pretenses. But it's not…. You were…. I'm not…. I'm not supposed to be here!"

There it was. The knot had come undone. Once he'd had a glimpse of the destination she'd had so much difficulty reaching, he'd known that if she didn't let it out, it would spread through her mind, growing vasculature that fed on every other thought.

"He made a call. I was the Murphy! That day…my Match Day, when it turned out…seemed like I'd been chosen by my first choice? That…. It made me think I could really do it. It…It changed the way my classmates looked at me. That was the girl you met. The one you fell for. She'd…She'd done it right. She…She thought…that maybe…maybe she was meant to be in that bar."

"You were."

"It wasn't real. It was all about her, and him, and his guilt. He…He wanted to he all magnanimous with his power. I wasn't good enough!"

"Mer, you…. It doesn't—It…It matters, because it's part of your story, but it doesn't matter for us. How you got here doesn't change anything."

"It's not even like he just put a good word in with Faust! He had to call the NRMP. This tour, this interview—they were good. I thought….I don't know what I fucked up. My name wasn't on the primary list. Alex failed the clinical boards, but my name wasn't on the list?"

"Alex lied in his essay. But that…It doesn't make sense. What did Richard say, exactly?"

While she played back the exchange in her mind, he was struck by how much she looked like Lexie trying to recall the name of a publication.

"He said my name wasn't on the list, and he called the NRMP president."

"Okay. Okay, so, only the NRMP can waive the commitment you made to take the offer you matched with. Maybe he did advocate for you, and Faust didn't listen to him. It would've been easier to manipulate the number of slots and gotten you during the Scramble, so chances are you weren't available. You did Match."

"Which just means there was somewhere that wanted me based on who I was! He didn't want me. He never did. He felt guilty for what he did…the time, the job…. Things were going downhill with Adele; he wanted my mom. She didn't want me to come here—she'd avoided him for twenty years—but he wanted me to be a lure, or…. At the most—the most—he wanted her daughter to be her second coming, and I've been a dancing monkey this whole time!"

"You have not. You're going to go into neuro. And…you know, I've wondered if I wasn't bait for Addison. I'm good, but I'm not the foremost anything on either coast. Getting her here the way he did; not talking to me…. That whole time I was working on limited information. We all were. Even him."

"I don't know what it's like to have all the information."

"And you deal with it far more maturely than he does." He kissed the crown of her head. It wasn't difficult to imagine he could feel the electricity of her neurons firing. "Do you wish you were in Portland?"

"Of course not."

"San Francisco?"

"Those hills? Like this?" She gestured to the baby. "But I guess—"

"We'd be together, Mer. We're meant to be. Just like we tell Zola. There'd have been a conference. A missed flight. A different merger that had you rematched here."

"Last time I checked UC San Diego is open."

"Can you imagine? Zola would move into the zoo."

"We wouldn't—"

"We would."

She turned to look at him over her shoulder. There were tear tracks on her face. "You believe that, don't you?"

"Wholeheartedly."

"You don't think…doesn't it make what I said in the fall stupid?"

"What?"

"About staying here. About Seattle."

"Why would it? This place still gave you all of us. It's still where you grew up. It's where Zola's growing up. It's where we have a hospital. Where we're going to have a baby. It was your first choice, Mer, and whatever bullshit your mother gave you about your abilities, you know your worth. You'd have been an asset anywhere, and if you weren't you—as strong, and smart, and talented as you are? It could've backfired on Richard. Instead, he got a lucky break.

"I don't know what Ellis knew, or what he assumed about her, but if there's still jealousy anywhere, I think he's jealous of us."

She laughed. "Was something in the fries I didn't get to eat?"

"A lot of sodium. They're over there, you're not operating until you eat more than five bites, and yes, I will resort to choo-choo tactics." He reveled in her increasingly bright laughter. "I'm serious. Look at our life. All the chances we've gotten, the mistakes we've fixed, because you refuse to fall into the holes they dug. All four of them. Thirty years later, and he can't break away from taking the safe road while manipulating everyone else."

Under his arms, she exhaled deeply enough that he loosened his hold. "He's…He had gotten better. Backing away from Adele was…. He meant to make things easier on her, and it shielded him from the loss. Made it gradual. But loving Catherine isn't safe. He was gonna retire in the face of Pegasus, but then he reached out to us."

"One day, you think we'll discover the limits to your empathy? It's the last frontier."

She gave him one of her ineffectual slaps. Back to pulling her punches. Her moments of truly lashing out were so like her crying jags; intense and quick. Because she could be peevish and blunt, people didn't see how much control she exerted over her emotions, or how she held in her humor, her gentleness, her sense of wonder.

He did his best to heat her food so that it didn't taste nuked; ignoring her protests that letting it stay cold would take care of that. His kid was not going to have a built-in preference for cold cheeseburgers.

"Hey, Mer? Did Ellis and Barclay cross paths?"

"Faust? I dunno. Why?"

"You not being on the primary list could've been the part that was her fault. Maybe whatever kept her from getting the job here burned bridges you needed to cross. Richard might've just been cleaning up her mess. I'm not defending him, but it makes sense, don't yoiu think?"

"I guess…it's equally likely. Isn't it?"

"Yes. Absolutely. You got the job here, Mer. She didn't have anyone willing to make a call for her."

She didn't muster the relish she'd had for her lunch an hour ago, but he wouldn't have to sacrifice plans for her birthday to bribe her to eat. He made her laugh pretending to sneak fries out of her box.

He couldn't help glancing at the door when he didn't think she'd notice, amazed that they'd managed this time alone. Under the table, with the skill he'd gained in the fall, he texted Karev.

Are you outside the lounge door or something?

"Am I clear to operate?"

"Our son will let you know."

She turned to him, a charmed smile on her face. "More like Hunt. Webber took me off for the day."

"He does that."

She shrugged and rested her chin on her hand. "I don't want this. Another Thatcher. Having the senior member of my department mad at me."

"You could take—" He stopped at the most furious glare he'd gotten that day. "I could—"

"Don't you dare! The only way out is through."

"Now that's a recovery cliché."

"That," she mimicked. "Is high school.."

His pager went off. MVA. All hands on deck. Mer was upright; he couldn't use her to justify ignoring it. He showed it to her.

"Maybe they'll all be high-GCS. Monitoring only," he suggested, shrugging on his coat.

"Ever the optimist."

"You have your moments." He kissed her, trying to read into how she accepted it, and then held her for as long as he dared."You're the best thing to happen to this place Meredith Grey. You chose it this year, and Richard knows that was a blessing. That was the last card he could play to make you feel like you owe him. That's just not true."

"I know," she said. "I see it. It's just hard…. He wants to be her…proxy, or stand-in, or whatever, but he didn't know her—who she became. He can't wield that over me. And she'd never come around to wanting what made me happy. He might…and that's why this keeps happening. He does care about me. He cares more about getting his way. If he's not careful, he's gonna end up just like her."

"And if that did happen?"

"It would not be my problem," she said, firmly. That she believed that now was more important than if it stayed true.

When he left the room, he barely dodged—"Brooks!"

"That's my name. Legally. I answer to Mousey. Never really had a nickname before but I—"

"Heather! What are you doing? Answer!"

"Yes, sir! I was in the cafeteria—and it, uh, just seemed like Dr. Grey was gonna need a few." She fidgeted with her sleeve, like she wasn't sure she should be saying that, even to him. "So, I hung out by the desk, until Dr. Karev did this—" She snapped and then pointed to where she'd been standing. "—thing. I told anyone who wanted in that there was faulty wiring, and I was waiting for maintenance. Felt kinda bad, because they're nice dudes, and someone could complain—"

"I'll take care of it."

"Yeah?" Her expression perked up immediately. "Cool, boss. You want me to stick around?"

"Have you gotten any sneakier since Dr. Robbins came back?"

"Uh, no sir, I have not."

It might not always serve her, but God that level of honesty in an intern; hell, a surgeon, was refreshing. "Better not, if you don't want your head bitten off."

"I'm pretty attached to it."

"Go find something to do, Brooks."

"Yes, boss."

She ran off while he made a mental note to page her if the consult became a procedure. He wasn't sure if there was anything telling about the way she'd run her hand up and down her arm, but if Heather recognized something in Meredith, he was sure, it'd only made the intern idolize her more.