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It's the story of Meredith's life, really. Every time she starts to get back on her feet, something new comes along to bowl her over, and it's all the more frustrating for the fact it forces on her, the realization that she's grown soft here. Things were so good for a while, so peaceful, at least compared to the lives she and Sean had led before;
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They're two unrelated ideas, but they're both still true and she's in no frame of mind to tell Lexie all about how they aren't real or whatever Lexie would take from it, no mood to have some bonding sisterly moment over being fictional or to bolster her spirits while Lexie freaks the fuck out. Meredith's too busy freaking out all on her own, heart still thumping in her chest, though she grows increasingly irritated with herself for so irrationally emotional a reaction. She knew this was a possibility. A probability. She knew they were talking about a church wedding. She's seen the ring. But there's a vast difference between knowing it would happen and knowing it has, in whatever form, and she still worries Derek will come here one day and insist she's his wife. She knows him so well still, and how is that possible? She knows he'd insist and she knows he'd retreat and she knows he would watch her the way he always does, give her new reasons to find it hard to breathe under his gaze.
This is too much already, this is more than enough even before she starts thinking about Sean in relation to it all; Lexie can wait to find out or George can tell her. This isn't Meredith's job. "So we're... married. And happy. And... it's been a while? It's not... last week, last month, it's... really sticking?"
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And thank God that's one bombshell that she's been spared from having to deliver. To imagine Izzie being here, a place with such limited medical capabilities while being as sick as she was, is so difficult that she nearly has to ask if not anymore means that she's dead, but she decides for the moment that she doesn't want to know. Maybe it isn't so bad. Maybe the island has magical, illness-curing properties and that's why there are hardly ever any sick people and even fewer surgeries. It would explain a lot. "But you and Derek, yeah, you're good."
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Except her and Derek, apparently, for what sounds like the better part of a year, which is, frankly, longer than she can remember their ever being together at a stretch. Longer than she once thought she and Sean would ever make it, for that matter, but here they are, nearly a year and a half down the line, still intact in spite of everything. They've had their problems, she can't pretend otherwise, but they've never fallen apart. (They could do it, right? If she and Derek have, she and Sean must be able to. She hates herself a little for digging for proof, like this isn't something to be taken wholly on faith.)
Anyway, none of it makes sense. She and Derek might once have, but not anymore, and the idea of Izzie leaving - maybe Alex, but all of them? Never. She can't think about it, she can't; it sets off another pang in her chest. "Okay," she says again. "So it's... we're good. That's... good. I just, you know, I wondered. I heard we were... considering it and I... well, I'm not really the marrying kind, so I just, I wondered. How that turned out. So that's good."
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"It is," she agrees, a little more brightly than is necessary, to compensate for everything that's filling her head. What she really wants is another sandwich. She'd rather have some chocolate, but that isn't quite so easily come by here, apparently. "It's really great. For you guys. Not - not that Sean isn't a great guy, too, I'm sure he is, I just mean, it's great for you guys back there." And it would be great, she thinks, if she could stop rambling like this, but she's pretty sure that isn't going to happen anytime soon.
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It is impossible for anyone to be the star of her story other than her, even some other version of her.
"And he is. Sean is - a great guy, I mean," she adds after a moment. It seems important. Lexie knows Derek, Lexie's used to her being married to Derek, and Meredith doesn't really care what Lexie thinks because she doesn't much care about her, except she needs her to like Sean better. Not that it matters what her opinion is, but she needs Sean to be the better man in this equation. He is for her. Without understanding quite why, she needs that to be true for anyone else, too, for no one to doubt her choice. Maybe all she really needs is for everyone to be on her side, not Derek's. It's been nearly three years since they broke up; he shouldn't still be haunting her. It isn't fair that Sean's still seen - not by her, not ever by her - as his replacement. "The circumstances were bad, that's all."
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Giving up, she crosses to the fridge, leaning over to search for a moment before finding half a leftover pie, which she pulls out to cut herself a slice. She tells herself it will just be the one; she doubts that will remain the case. At least there's nothing to do but walk everywhere here. "So, is... there anything else you want to know?" she asks, sounding, despite herself, a little hopeful. Better to put the ball in Meredith's court than to unload everything on her, even if she suspects she'll wind up doing the latter anyway. There just isn't anyone else she can turn to, George being the only other person here she really knows. It's getting tempting to just find a stranger and blurt everything out to them, if only so she won't have to shoulder the weight of the future all by herself. "About after when you're from, I mean."
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Their lives are always changing. Seattle Grace is always the place she knew, always home, but the people in it - if it's really been a matter of years, then there's just too much to know anyway. She glances at the pie Lexie's found, then finds plates, forks, brings them over. It's not an invitation. She just wants pie. "You haven't mentioned Cristina," she says. With their lives, god only knows what that means.
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"Oh, Cristina's good," she says, eyes a little wider, as she puts the cut slices of pie on the plate, leaving the rest of it out just in case. Good might as well be a relative statement for all of them, but it isn't like there've been any major crises or like she's up and left like Izzie did. "She's seeing somebody, Owen, the new trauma guy - well, he's not really new, but he would be for you, so, yeah, new - and they finally hired a new cardio attending and she's pretty badass, so, yeah. Good." Comparatively speaking, it's where things have been the least eventful, helping her with everything she wants to tell not at all.
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It's hard thinking of it that way, like something she's skipping over but will still get return to eventually. She doesn't know how else to think of it, though. These are her friends, her real family, and she's missing huge parts of their lives. "So... trauma guy, badass attending," she says, spearing the end of the pie with her fork. "And Izzie left? But she's alive, she's okay, but... poor Alex. That has to have been really hard on him." He's too much like her not to have felt the loss like a punch to the gut, a stark betrayal. Even here, now, god only knows how many miles and years away from it, it feels like one to her. They're the family she picked. They aren't supposed to leave, not when they have a say in it.
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Her smile fades, though, when she realizes she has to address the subject of Alex. She'd practically been asking for it, but at the same time, has no desire to at all, and as a result, sticks a big forkful of pie into her mouth, chewing and swallowing, before she says a thing. "He... managed," she settles on, shrugging, visibly awkward. There's no way she can't be, when she's been sleeping with a still-married man, even if the fact that Izzie left him makes it not something to feel too guilty about. "I mean, yeah, of course, it was really hard for him, but I think it was harder when she was just all, not answering her phone or returning calls or showing up for doctor's appointments. She came back, there was closure, sort of, a little. We're - he's, he's okay."
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"That's insane," she says. "Izzie can be... special, but she would never just miss her appointments. She is too smart and, and too much of a doctor not to come in when she's supposed to. She knows better than that, so what is going on here, Lexie?" If she plays into this somehow, Meredith won't know how to forgive her, but even though Alex has made mistakes in the past, she can't see him cheating on Izzie when they're married and she has cancer. It has to have been something else. Not that anyone in their circle, it seems, is immune to adultery, a thought that just makes Meredith set her shoulders and lift her head, taking a bite of her pie. She's not a part of that. She cheated once and Finn forgave her, but she'd never do that to Sean.
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Izzie left her.
"While he was married, Lexie?" she demands, knowing just how hypocritical that is the second it's out of her mouth. Well, fuck feeling bad for that. She didn't know about Addison. Lexie knew Izzie, worked with her. The two stories are goddamn worlds apart, whole universes. "You didn't know she wasn't coming back. Does Izzie know?"
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At least, she's pretty sure it was his idea, but it's close enough that she sounds entirely certain when she says it, even if she is just making excuses. She's a dirty mistress and she knows it. Taking a few more bites of pie, she stares fixedly at the table, as if there will be some answers printed on it that she hasn't yet come up with herself. "But after the first time, they were broken up for good, and I did know. I don't know if she knows, we don't really talk about her. Or anything. We're trying not to feel things."
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But she can't blame her for Izzie leaving if Izzie never knew, and she can't really yell at her for the rest when she's done it all a hundred times and worse besides. The woman she once was... well, she doesn't regret it now, but she's not like that anymore, and being here at this table with Lexie, forced to look at her and see everything she missed out on, it just makes it that much harder to ignore the woman she's become instead - still not the one she wants to be. She's not sure she ever can be, not when what she said to Lexie once is as true now as it was three years ago. Their father picked her.
Twenty-five years and she's still picking up the pieces from that.
She stabs her pie. "As far as I can tell, you're all feelings."
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