Ghosts That We Knew [3/6]
Title: Ghosts That We Knew
Author: greymcdreamysgh
Pairing: MerDer
Rating: PG-13
Summary: MERDER. Picks up after 9x11. A short multi-chapter fic that deals with being a family, preparing for a new baby, recovering from the plane crash, and dealing with survivors' guilt.
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
So lead me back, turn south from that place
And close my eyes to my recent disgrace
'Cause you know my call
And we'll share my all
And our children come and they will hear me roar
Eight weeks after the checks show up at their house, the layoffs start.
They start with people who have lower profiles: the housekeeping staff, lab techs, the line employees in the cafeteria. Meredith assumes that the board thinks that these people will not be missed by the doctors and nurses, and therefore their absences won’t cause a panic among them about job security.
Unfortunately, though, the board does not spend enough time in the hospital to understand. Omar, the man who cleans Meredith’s favorite OR after her surgeries is there one day and gone the next. When she asks Murphy for lab results, saying that if she asks Jerry to do them they’ll get done more quickly, Murphy tells her that Jerry got laid off. And the Barbara, the woman in the cafeteria who toasted many, many bagels for Meredith during the long months of morning sickness, is gone without a trace.
Most other doctors have similar relationships with other hospital employees, but even if they didn’t, Meredith is quick to realize that there’s nothing the board could have done to avoid a panic. The nurses look harried, and the interns are getting sloppy. Even Bailey seems worried, which Meredith has learned over the years is never a good sign. Everyone seems to think that they will be next to go.
“You’d think the hospital would have a little more cash on hand,” Cristina says when they sit down to lunch. “People are dropping like flies. It took me forever to get my post-op labs back for yesterday’s triple bypass.”
“I know,” Meredith replies. “It doesn’t help that everybody is freaking out. Every intern I’ve had this week hasn’t been able to focus.”
“Yeah, well they’ve been idiots since day one,” Cristina says.
“Well, it’s been worse since this all started.”
This group has been a little wackier than those in years past, Meredith has to admit, but even for them, this level of craziness is unprecedented. They’ve been here for eight months and lately, they’ve been acting like it’s their first week.
Meredith won’t let any of them do more than observe her surgeries. Part of her thinks that it might be counterproductive, that they’ll feel like they’re being shut out and therefore everything will get worse, but she is unwilling to let their inability to keep their eyes on the ball harm one of her patients.
She takes a sip of her water and, out of the corner of her eye, catches a nurse in the cafeteria line say something to her friend in line next to her and cock her head towards where she and Cristina are sitting. Meredith makes eye contact with this woman for just a second, and then they both look away. It’s just the most recent in a long series of moments over the past few days exactly like this one.
“Do you feel like people are staring at us?” Meredith says quietly, even though nobody could possibly hear their conversation over the dull roar of the cafeteria at lunchtime.
Cristina shrugs, and Meredith takes that as a yes.
“This is our fault.”
“No, it’s not,” Cristina says firmly.
“People wouldn’t be losing their jobs if it wasn’t for the lawsuit though.”
“There wouldn’t be a lawsuit if our plane hadn’t crashed,” Cristina replies.
Not since the merger has the hospital been this tense, and even then, the hospital wasn’t planning to shed as many jobs as they are now. They’ve tried to dress up the whole process with fancy words that sound good like ‘streamlining’ and ‘creative solutions’ and ‘twenty-first century medicine’ but what it all seems to mean is that whoever is left standing at the end of this will be forced to do more with less.
It is terribly ironic to Meredith that she herself has never felt more secure in her job at the exact same time that she has just come into extraordinary wealth. She worries about what it means, about what it says about her, that her job has been saved and she has been paid and the people who make barely more than minimum wage were sacrificed in order to make it possible. She feels worse that this is surely just the first step. The board and the hospital’s accounting department will undoubtedly try to plug the huge financial hole that the five of them have ripped open with nurses, interns, and residents next. And after that, the patients will pay.
“Don’t you feel even a little guilty though?”
Cristina sighs. “Don’t you think that anybody could understand that we all would rather this have never happened?”
*
Derek has been thinking that he needed to make this call for awhile, but he doesn’t actually do it until Meredith is 24 weeks pregnant. It took him that long to psych himself up, even though he’s not sure why. Afterward, it takes him three days to tell Meredith. He knows exactly why he is hesitating for that.
Late one night, after Zola has long since been asleep, he stands next to Meredith at their bathroom sinks while they get ready for bed. He catches her eye in the mirror while they brush their teeth, and after he spits into his sink, he finally tells her.
“I called our lawyer this week.”
She leans over the sink as far as she can with her belly in the way, spits, and cups some water in her hand to rinse. “About the money?” she asks.
“No,” he says. He knows it’s been bothering her a lot, especially since they’ve all started to feel the repercussions of the payout at work, but he hasn’t been able to muster up the same concern. Of course he feels badly about people losing their jobs, but he feels worse about everything that has happened to them.
“I called her about updating our wills,” he says. “Because we almost died. Both of us.”
“And Lexie’s dead,” Meredith sighs, and he knows she understands.
“We should talk about who we want the guardian to be now, just in case,” he says.
“Cristina,” she says immediately, but he shakes his head.
“No,” he replies.
“Why not?” she asks, and he can tell she’s already getting defensive. “She’s Zola’s godmother.”
“We’re not naming Cristina guardian,” he says firmly. “I know she’s your person, but…”
“But what?”
“Meredith, would she even want them?”
The words are out before he can stop them, and while he doesn’t like the hurt and surprised look in Meredith’s eyes, his first priority here has to be Zola and Baby. He cannot forget the fight that Cristina had with Owen at Zola’s birthday party last year, and while he acknowledges that their relationship isn’t really any of his business, putting his kids into it very much is.
“Derek,” Meredith warns, and suddenly the discussion has escalated.
“I’m serious! She didn’t want a baby with her own husband. Why would she want to raise our kids?”
“Because they’re our kids!” Meredith fires back.
“I know she loves Zola, and she’ll love the baby too,” he says, trying to keep his voice level. “But there’s a difference between loving them and raising them. She didn’t want kids for a reason, Meredith. You have to respect that.”
“You think, if both of us died, that she wouldn’t take them?”
It’s not like he hasn’t thought about it. It would be impossible not to, after all that’s happened, and it’s why he called their lawyer in the first place. He should have done it the day they got rescued from the woods, but somehow it’s taken him until now to stare this in the face. When he forces himself to imagine it, he of course sees Cristina taking Zola and the baby if she had to. And maybe for awhile it would be ok while they all fought to keep the grief from swallowing them up. But kids are for life, and Cristina will still have to be there with the same intensity and the same love and the same commitment when the girls are nine and seven years old, when they’re teenagers, and forever after that. It’s a lot to ask of someone who has made it explicitly clear that it is not the life she has imagined for herself.
“I think she’d take them,” Derek replies. “And it might even feel like she wanted them at first. But she doesn’t want to be a mother and that’s what she’d have to be.”
“Cristina’s the only one besides Lexie who I trust to raise them the way we would raise them,” she says defensively.
“Cristina wouldn’t raise them the way we would!” he says. Meredith’s love for her friends, especially Cristina, has blinded her to a lot of things over the years, but how can she not see this? The only way that this conversation could be going worse right now is if he raises his voice to the point that Zola wakes up, so he tries to be conscious of that when he says, “Cristina would raise them the way your mother raised you! That’s why we picked Lexie in the first place!”
“Who would you want then?” Meredith replies.
“I was thinking maybe Liz and her husband,” he says.
Meredith is staring at him, leaning against the bathroom counter looking at a loss for words. “Seriously?”
“She’s my sister.”
“Yeah, and we’ve been together seven years and I just met her three months ago, Derek,” Meredith cries. “And all of a sudden, we’re giving the kids to her?”
He can understand where she’s coming from, but when he thinks about it-especially the fact that anybody else he would have trusted his kids to was on the plane with them and is either dead or could have died just as easily as they themselves could have-it’s the only way forward that makes sense to him.
“She has kids. She would love them like they were her own. She’s my family.”
“Cristina’s my family,” Meredith says. “And I have to say, Derek, my family and I fight a lot less than you and your family do. Come on, half of you don’t even talk to each other!”
Part of him thinks it’s a bit rich of Meredith to talk to him about dysfunctional families. Part of him knows she has a point. But he feels somewhat trapped by the knowledge of his own mortality, and they have to do something.
“Liz already has kids,” he says. “She knows what she’s doing.”
“No,” Meredith says firmly. “I don’t want them taken out of Seattle. This is their home.”
“Don’t you think that if we both died, it would be more important for them to be with someone who loves them?”
“Cristina loves them!”
There are almost no pictures of Meredith as a little girl, but he’s seen a few, and whenever he looks at them, he cannot help but imagine the horror that was her childhood. She is tough, but he sees the effects her upbringing had on her manifesting themselves even thirty years later. He watches her trying to make everything she does for Zola different and better than what she had, and it breaks his heart.
Cristina is not the same as Ellis. Deep down, he does know that, just as much as he knows that Cristina truly does love his daughter. But it’s not enough to change his mind.
“I won’t allow it, Meredith,” he says.
“You won’t allow it?” she asks.
Her eyes fill with tears, and she pulls her shirt down a little further over her belly. He hasn’t meant to make her cry, and with how emotional she’s been lately, he’s surprised she’s lasted this long.
“I don’t want to talk about this now,” she says, turning to go.
“We have to, Meredith.”
“Why?”
“Because we could die!” he says helplessly. “We could drown or get shot or get crushed under an airplane. And we have kids. We have to talk about this. It’s not just us anymore, and Lexie’s dead, so we have to talk about this because we could die.”
“I can’t,” she replies.
She leaves the bathroom and he can hear her walk downstairs before he can say anything more, before he can say that he can’t stop thinking about what his life might have been like if both of his parents had been in his father’s store that day. That nothing but dumb luck kept both of them alive when a man pointed a gun at both of them. That there’s no reason why either one of them didn’t die under a twisted piece of metal in the woods.
*
She can hear him walking around as she sits at their kitchen counter, a glass of water cupped in her hands, but she can’t go back upstairs. Not yet. She needs a few minutes to catch her breath, to feel a little bit more prepared to have this conversation.
She has forced herself to think about Zola growing up without her before, back when they thought they might not get her back, but she has never considered it in quite this way. She’s been so focused on keeping the baby alive over the past few months that she has not given her own mortality much thought.
Finally, he comes downstairs and sits down next to her. He stares at her for a second and then quietly says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get you upset.”
“I’m not going to give my kids to just anybody,” Meredith says. “I know Liz isn’t just anybody,” she continues before he can interrupt. “But neither is Cristina.”
“I know,” he replies. “What about asking Callie and Arizona?” he asks.
“Really?” Though she does not immediately hate the idea, it takes her a bit by surprise. She has gotten closer with them over the past two years-certainly, at least, since the plane crash-and she is grateful for everything Callie has done for Derek. But she never thought about them in this way before.
“Maybe,” Derek says. “They’re in Seattle. They have a daughter. Who, as an added bonus, is Zola’s best friend. They would do a good job with our girls, Meredith.”
“A compromise,” she says.
He nods.
It wouldn’t be as good as she and Derek raising them, but then again, nothing would be. This solution makes sense, but it gives her pause for a reason she doesn’t expect. She worries a little about Baby, and how she might feel if Zola and Sofia are as thick as thieves and she must always compete with Sofia for her big sister’s attention. The hypothetical alone makes her feel guilty, but she supposes that if she and Derek are both dead, then both girls will have bigger problems.
“I think that would be ok,” she agrees.
“We should ask them soon,” he says. “Do you want Cristina to be a back-up?”
“Aren’t Callie and Arizona already a back-up for us? Isn’t that the whole point of naming a guardian? Do we need another one?”
“I would feel better,” he admits.
“Ok, Cristina then.”
“And then Liz?” he asks.
“Derek,” she says. “I don’t know if this is really necessary.”
“Please? I’d rather us be over-prepared.”
“Ok,” she sighs, and she notices that he looks visibly relieved.
He stands up, and kisses her. “I’m sorry I yelled,” he says. “Will you come to bed soon?”
“Yeah,” she replies, and he goes back upstairs.
She finishes her water, and tries to collect herself before she gets up. She peeks into Zola’s room, easing the door open slightly so as not to wake her. Zola sleeps in a toddler bed now, and even though it’s only about a foot and a half off the ground, Meredith has put pillows and blankets all over the floor surrounding the bed just in case she falls out. They made a big deal about getting her this bed, telling her that she was going to give her crib to Baby Sister, and that made the transition a lot easier but Zola was ready anyway. She’s never fallen out of bed.
Meredith tiptoes inside and sees that Zola has kicked all of her blankets off herself and is lying on her back with her arm over her head, peacefully asleep in green pajamas with pink hearts printed on them. She must have gotten out of bed soon after Meredith and Derek put her down because there are definitely about six more stuffed animals in bed with her now than there were a few hours ago. Meredith kisses her forehead, pulls the blankets back over her, and leaves to go to bed herself.
He’s still awake when she slides into bed next to him, and she doesn’t think anything of it until she turns the light off and he says, clearly but quietly, “I’m scared we’re going to die.”
She rolls on her side and strokes his arm before taking his hand in hers. As far as he is concerned, the trauma this hand sustained-and the possibility that Derek might have to live a life without surgery-has been her biggest worry for months. But now that is not going to happen. Derek is back in the OR, whole and healed, or so she thought.
“We’re not going to die,” she says, for both of them.
“I don’t want the kids to grow up without us.”
“They won’t,” she says softly.
He squeezes her hand, and her thoughts vacillate between the memory of him holding Sofia at Mark’s funeral and the image of him as a boy at his own father’s funeral. She has been in such a fog of grief for Lexie and worry for Cristina and Derek that she has not seen this clearly up until now.
She moves closer to him under the covers and kisses him. When she rolls on top of him, it’s a little awkward trying to work around her belly, but it’s still the best way she knows to make him feel better.
She kisses him again, and he sighs when she pulls away, running his hands through her hair and then down her arms.
“Is this ok?” she asks.
“Yes,” he breathes.
She kisses him over and over, on his mouth and then on his neck, and her hair falls forward to frame both of their faces. He rubs her back a little before his hands come to rest on her sides, just under her breasts. He grows hard underneath her, and she wants him too, but comfort is not to be rushed. She takes her time with him.
“We’re not going to die,” she says again, breathless between kisses.
“We’re alive,” he says.
He groans a little, and takes his hands off her ass to tug at the hem of her shirt. He looks into her eyes with so much trust and desire and adoration, and she doesn’t know how else to articulate what she is feeling except to tell him that she loves him.
*
A/N: Sorry for a bit of a longer wait between chapters this time. Despite getting a flu shot, I got sidelined with the flu this week and it was slow going for awhile-which might be why I’m not 100% sure about this chapter because it was written in such a piecemeal way. I’m feeling better now and I would love to hear what you thought, even though I think this will likely be the weakest piece of this fic.
I am pretty excited about the direction in which the show is going right now, and I’m also wondering if you would share with me how you feel about it. I have plans for what to do with the money here, but I’m wondering how much attention you’d like it to be given or if you’re kind of burnt out from what has-admittedly-been a very long story arc on the real show.
Author: greymcdreamysgh
Pairing: MerDer
Rating: PG-13
Summary: MERDER. Picks up after 9x11. A short multi-chapter fic that deals with being a family, preparing for a new baby, recovering from the plane crash, and dealing with survivors' guilt.
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
So lead me back, turn south from that place
And close my eyes to my recent disgrace
'Cause you know my call
And we'll share my all
And our children come and they will hear me roar
Eight weeks after the checks show up at their house, the layoffs start.
They start with people who have lower profiles: the housekeeping staff, lab techs, the line employees in the cafeteria. Meredith assumes that the board thinks that these people will not be missed by the doctors and nurses, and therefore their absences won’t cause a panic among them about job security.
Unfortunately, though, the board does not spend enough time in the hospital to understand. Omar, the man who cleans Meredith’s favorite OR after her surgeries is there one day and gone the next. When she asks Murphy for lab results, saying that if she asks Jerry to do them they’ll get done more quickly, Murphy tells her that Jerry got laid off. And the Barbara, the woman in the cafeteria who toasted many, many bagels for Meredith during the long months of morning sickness, is gone without a trace.
Most other doctors have similar relationships with other hospital employees, but even if they didn’t, Meredith is quick to realize that there’s nothing the board could have done to avoid a panic. The nurses look harried, and the interns are getting sloppy. Even Bailey seems worried, which Meredith has learned over the years is never a good sign. Everyone seems to think that they will be next to go.
“You’d think the hospital would have a little more cash on hand,” Cristina says when they sit down to lunch. “People are dropping like flies. It took me forever to get my post-op labs back for yesterday’s triple bypass.”
“I know,” Meredith replies. “It doesn’t help that everybody is freaking out. Every intern I’ve had this week hasn’t been able to focus.”
“Yeah, well they’ve been idiots since day one,” Cristina says.
“Well, it’s been worse since this all started.”
This group has been a little wackier than those in years past, Meredith has to admit, but even for them, this level of craziness is unprecedented. They’ve been here for eight months and lately, they’ve been acting like it’s their first week.
Meredith won’t let any of them do more than observe her surgeries. Part of her thinks that it might be counterproductive, that they’ll feel like they’re being shut out and therefore everything will get worse, but she is unwilling to let their inability to keep their eyes on the ball harm one of her patients.
She takes a sip of her water and, out of the corner of her eye, catches a nurse in the cafeteria line say something to her friend in line next to her and cock her head towards where she and Cristina are sitting. Meredith makes eye contact with this woman for just a second, and then they both look away. It’s just the most recent in a long series of moments over the past few days exactly like this one.
“Do you feel like people are staring at us?” Meredith says quietly, even though nobody could possibly hear their conversation over the dull roar of the cafeteria at lunchtime.
Cristina shrugs, and Meredith takes that as a yes.
“This is our fault.”
“No, it’s not,” Cristina says firmly.
“People wouldn’t be losing their jobs if it wasn’t for the lawsuit though.”
“There wouldn’t be a lawsuit if our plane hadn’t crashed,” Cristina replies.
Not since the merger has the hospital been this tense, and even then, the hospital wasn’t planning to shed as many jobs as they are now. They’ve tried to dress up the whole process with fancy words that sound good like ‘streamlining’ and ‘creative solutions’ and ‘twenty-first century medicine’ but what it all seems to mean is that whoever is left standing at the end of this will be forced to do more with less.
It is terribly ironic to Meredith that she herself has never felt more secure in her job at the exact same time that she has just come into extraordinary wealth. She worries about what it means, about what it says about her, that her job has been saved and she has been paid and the people who make barely more than minimum wage were sacrificed in order to make it possible. She feels worse that this is surely just the first step. The board and the hospital’s accounting department will undoubtedly try to plug the huge financial hole that the five of them have ripped open with nurses, interns, and residents next. And after that, the patients will pay.
“Don’t you feel even a little guilty though?”
Cristina sighs. “Don’t you think that anybody could understand that we all would rather this have never happened?”
*
Derek has been thinking that he needed to make this call for awhile, but he doesn’t actually do it until Meredith is 24 weeks pregnant. It took him that long to psych himself up, even though he’s not sure why. Afterward, it takes him three days to tell Meredith. He knows exactly why he is hesitating for that.
Late one night, after Zola has long since been asleep, he stands next to Meredith at their bathroom sinks while they get ready for bed. He catches her eye in the mirror while they brush their teeth, and after he spits into his sink, he finally tells her.
“I called our lawyer this week.”
She leans over the sink as far as she can with her belly in the way, spits, and cups some water in her hand to rinse. “About the money?” she asks.
“No,” he says. He knows it’s been bothering her a lot, especially since they’ve all started to feel the repercussions of the payout at work, but he hasn’t been able to muster up the same concern. Of course he feels badly about people losing their jobs, but he feels worse about everything that has happened to them.
“I called her about updating our wills,” he says. “Because we almost died. Both of us.”
“And Lexie’s dead,” Meredith sighs, and he knows she understands.
“We should talk about who we want the guardian to be now, just in case,” he says.
“Cristina,” she says immediately, but he shakes his head.
“No,” he replies.
“Why not?” she asks, and he can tell she’s already getting defensive. “She’s Zola’s godmother.”
“We’re not naming Cristina guardian,” he says firmly. “I know she’s your person, but…”
“But what?”
“Meredith, would she even want them?”
The words are out before he can stop them, and while he doesn’t like the hurt and surprised look in Meredith’s eyes, his first priority here has to be Zola and Baby. He cannot forget the fight that Cristina had with Owen at Zola’s birthday party last year, and while he acknowledges that their relationship isn’t really any of his business, putting his kids into it very much is.
“Derek,” Meredith warns, and suddenly the discussion has escalated.
“I’m serious! She didn’t want a baby with her own husband. Why would she want to raise our kids?”
“Because they’re our kids!” Meredith fires back.
“I know she loves Zola, and she’ll love the baby too,” he says, trying to keep his voice level. “But there’s a difference between loving them and raising them. She didn’t want kids for a reason, Meredith. You have to respect that.”
“You think, if both of us died, that she wouldn’t take them?”
It’s not like he hasn’t thought about it. It would be impossible not to, after all that’s happened, and it’s why he called their lawyer in the first place. He should have done it the day they got rescued from the woods, but somehow it’s taken him until now to stare this in the face. When he forces himself to imagine it, he of course sees Cristina taking Zola and the baby if she had to. And maybe for awhile it would be ok while they all fought to keep the grief from swallowing them up. But kids are for life, and Cristina will still have to be there with the same intensity and the same love and the same commitment when the girls are nine and seven years old, when they’re teenagers, and forever after that. It’s a lot to ask of someone who has made it explicitly clear that it is not the life she has imagined for herself.
“I think she’d take them,” Derek replies. “And it might even feel like she wanted them at first. But she doesn’t want to be a mother and that’s what she’d have to be.”
“Cristina’s the only one besides Lexie who I trust to raise them the way we would raise them,” she says defensively.
“Cristina wouldn’t raise them the way we would!” he says. Meredith’s love for her friends, especially Cristina, has blinded her to a lot of things over the years, but how can she not see this? The only way that this conversation could be going worse right now is if he raises his voice to the point that Zola wakes up, so he tries to be conscious of that when he says, “Cristina would raise them the way your mother raised you! That’s why we picked Lexie in the first place!”
“Who would you want then?” Meredith replies.
“I was thinking maybe Liz and her husband,” he says.
Meredith is staring at him, leaning against the bathroom counter looking at a loss for words. “Seriously?”
“She’s my sister.”
“Yeah, and we’ve been together seven years and I just met her three months ago, Derek,” Meredith cries. “And all of a sudden, we’re giving the kids to her?”
He can understand where she’s coming from, but when he thinks about it-especially the fact that anybody else he would have trusted his kids to was on the plane with them and is either dead or could have died just as easily as they themselves could have-it’s the only way forward that makes sense to him.
“She has kids. She would love them like they were her own. She’s my family.”
“Cristina’s my family,” Meredith says. “And I have to say, Derek, my family and I fight a lot less than you and your family do. Come on, half of you don’t even talk to each other!”
Part of him thinks it’s a bit rich of Meredith to talk to him about dysfunctional families. Part of him knows she has a point. But he feels somewhat trapped by the knowledge of his own mortality, and they have to do something.
“Liz already has kids,” he says. “She knows what she’s doing.”
“No,” Meredith says firmly. “I don’t want them taken out of Seattle. This is their home.”
“Don’t you think that if we both died, it would be more important for them to be with someone who loves them?”
“Cristina loves them!”
There are almost no pictures of Meredith as a little girl, but he’s seen a few, and whenever he looks at them, he cannot help but imagine the horror that was her childhood. She is tough, but he sees the effects her upbringing had on her manifesting themselves even thirty years later. He watches her trying to make everything she does for Zola different and better than what she had, and it breaks his heart.
Cristina is not the same as Ellis. Deep down, he does know that, just as much as he knows that Cristina truly does love his daughter. But it’s not enough to change his mind.
“I won’t allow it, Meredith,” he says.
“You won’t allow it?” she asks.
Her eyes fill with tears, and she pulls her shirt down a little further over her belly. He hasn’t meant to make her cry, and with how emotional she’s been lately, he’s surprised she’s lasted this long.
“I don’t want to talk about this now,” she says, turning to go.
“We have to, Meredith.”
“Why?”
“Because we could die!” he says helplessly. “We could drown or get shot or get crushed under an airplane. And we have kids. We have to talk about this. It’s not just us anymore, and Lexie’s dead, so we have to talk about this because we could die.”
“I can’t,” she replies.
She leaves the bathroom and he can hear her walk downstairs before he can say anything more, before he can say that he can’t stop thinking about what his life might have been like if both of his parents had been in his father’s store that day. That nothing but dumb luck kept both of them alive when a man pointed a gun at both of them. That there’s no reason why either one of them didn’t die under a twisted piece of metal in the woods.
*
She can hear him walking around as she sits at their kitchen counter, a glass of water cupped in her hands, but she can’t go back upstairs. Not yet. She needs a few minutes to catch her breath, to feel a little bit more prepared to have this conversation.
She has forced herself to think about Zola growing up without her before, back when they thought they might not get her back, but she has never considered it in quite this way. She’s been so focused on keeping the baby alive over the past few months that she has not given her own mortality much thought.
Finally, he comes downstairs and sits down next to her. He stares at her for a second and then quietly says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get you upset.”
“I’m not going to give my kids to just anybody,” Meredith says. “I know Liz isn’t just anybody,” she continues before he can interrupt. “But neither is Cristina.”
“I know,” he replies. “What about asking Callie and Arizona?” he asks.
“Really?” Though she does not immediately hate the idea, it takes her a bit by surprise. She has gotten closer with them over the past two years-certainly, at least, since the plane crash-and she is grateful for everything Callie has done for Derek. But she never thought about them in this way before.
“Maybe,” Derek says. “They’re in Seattle. They have a daughter. Who, as an added bonus, is Zola’s best friend. They would do a good job with our girls, Meredith.”
“A compromise,” she says.
He nods.
It wouldn’t be as good as she and Derek raising them, but then again, nothing would be. This solution makes sense, but it gives her pause for a reason she doesn’t expect. She worries a little about Baby, and how she might feel if Zola and Sofia are as thick as thieves and she must always compete with Sofia for her big sister’s attention. The hypothetical alone makes her feel guilty, but she supposes that if she and Derek are both dead, then both girls will have bigger problems.
“I think that would be ok,” she agrees.
“We should ask them soon,” he says. “Do you want Cristina to be a back-up?”
“Aren’t Callie and Arizona already a back-up for us? Isn’t that the whole point of naming a guardian? Do we need another one?”
“I would feel better,” he admits.
“Ok, Cristina then.”
“And then Liz?” he asks.
“Derek,” she says. “I don’t know if this is really necessary.”
“Please? I’d rather us be over-prepared.”
“Ok,” she sighs, and she notices that he looks visibly relieved.
He stands up, and kisses her. “I’m sorry I yelled,” he says. “Will you come to bed soon?”
“Yeah,” she replies, and he goes back upstairs.
She finishes her water, and tries to collect herself before she gets up. She peeks into Zola’s room, easing the door open slightly so as not to wake her. Zola sleeps in a toddler bed now, and even though it’s only about a foot and a half off the ground, Meredith has put pillows and blankets all over the floor surrounding the bed just in case she falls out. They made a big deal about getting her this bed, telling her that she was going to give her crib to Baby Sister, and that made the transition a lot easier but Zola was ready anyway. She’s never fallen out of bed.
Meredith tiptoes inside and sees that Zola has kicked all of her blankets off herself and is lying on her back with her arm over her head, peacefully asleep in green pajamas with pink hearts printed on them. She must have gotten out of bed soon after Meredith and Derek put her down because there are definitely about six more stuffed animals in bed with her now than there were a few hours ago. Meredith kisses her forehead, pulls the blankets back over her, and leaves to go to bed herself.
He’s still awake when she slides into bed next to him, and she doesn’t think anything of it until she turns the light off and he says, clearly but quietly, “I’m scared we’re going to die.”
She rolls on her side and strokes his arm before taking his hand in hers. As far as he is concerned, the trauma this hand sustained-and the possibility that Derek might have to live a life without surgery-has been her biggest worry for months. But now that is not going to happen. Derek is back in the OR, whole and healed, or so she thought.
“We’re not going to die,” she says, for both of them.
“I don’t want the kids to grow up without us.”
“They won’t,” she says softly.
He squeezes her hand, and her thoughts vacillate between the memory of him holding Sofia at Mark’s funeral and the image of him as a boy at his own father’s funeral. She has been in such a fog of grief for Lexie and worry for Cristina and Derek that she has not seen this clearly up until now.
She moves closer to him under the covers and kisses him. When she rolls on top of him, it’s a little awkward trying to work around her belly, but it’s still the best way she knows to make him feel better.
She kisses him again, and he sighs when she pulls away, running his hands through her hair and then down her arms.
“Is this ok?” she asks.
“Yes,” he breathes.
She kisses him over and over, on his mouth and then on his neck, and her hair falls forward to frame both of their faces. He rubs her back a little before his hands come to rest on her sides, just under her breasts. He grows hard underneath her, and she wants him too, but comfort is not to be rushed. She takes her time with him.
“We’re not going to die,” she says again, breathless between kisses.
“We’re alive,” he says.
He groans a little, and takes his hands off her ass to tug at the hem of her shirt. He looks into her eyes with so much trust and desire and adoration, and she doesn’t know how else to articulate what she is feeling except to tell him that she loves him.
*
A/N: Sorry for a bit of a longer wait between chapters this time. Despite getting a flu shot, I got sidelined with the flu this week and it was slow going for awhile-which might be why I’m not 100% sure about this chapter because it was written in such a piecemeal way. I’m feeling better now and I would love to hear what you thought, even though I think this will likely be the weakest piece of this fic.
I am pretty excited about the direction in which the show is going right now, and I’m also wondering if you would share with me how you feel about it. I have plans for what to do with the money here, but I’m wondering how much attention you’d like it to be given or if you’re kind of burnt out from what has-admittedly-been a very long story arc on the real show.